"Your life on earth," Death asked,
"What would you compare it to?
“A dark closet. I lived in fear so much of my life,
from family, from God, from everyone, always ashamed.”
“My father
was a Pentecostal minister; we grew up in the aisles of busses and under the
canvas of tents. We toured the country, at least Michigan and the Great Lakes
states, as part of a revival.”
“He was fire and brimstone and hell bent on never
spoiling the child.”
“I hated and loved him, but when I was 14 and found
myself looking at other boys, wondering and eventually kissing one, I knew that
marked me for hell so I ran away to Atlantic City.”
“I might have been better off staying and having my
feelings being beaten out of me, it was harsh there and I was used.”
“Eventually I found a way to Baltimore for some
reason, and my Uncle Lewis’s house. He never got along with my father, Uncle
Lew was a siding salesman and he traveled but he also liked women and cards, so
he and father were obviously opposed.”
“It was, ok for a while, Uncle Lew was good to me
and gave me a place from 16 to 19, but then he was killed in a car accident.”
“He had set aside money for me to go to school, so I
went to Columbia College, but it wasn’t, I was afraid, this was 1973 and no one
I knew was gay and certainly not there, I’m not sure I remember anyone saying
gay then, I felt dirty and foul and unworthy of the light of God any way.”
I struggled and eventually dropped out, I took a job
at a drug store, and that was the first of many, I didn’t like life. I found
myself eventually in Florida and then the Keys, strange I started working with
sailboats, I apparently had a knack for it.”
“Eventually my sister found me, I don’t know how, I
didn’t spend much time around people, in bars just work and back to my little
hurricane house.”
“She told me how my father never even mentioned me
after I ran away, which seemed like what he would do. She had left my father’s
church too, she had followed a similar road as I and worse, she died from what
I eventually learned was AIDS.”
"That was terrible, we loved each other. I notified my family but never heard from them."
“I lost everything when Andrew came through, and I
guess that’s how you found me, I couldn’t try anymore after that, some might
say it was a coward’s way out but I couldn’t take being in that dark closet
alone anymore.”