Angels I Don't See (Spotting Love) returns soon

The latest chapters of Angels I Don't See have been written and I am excited to announce that they will be posted here soon.

Until there's a cure...we

There is hope!

With each day that passes we are one step closer to finding a cure. The rapacious executioner that AIDS was is no more. The idea that it is a plague is a thing of the past.

However, as my household knows all too well, AIDS still debilitates and scars and even still sometimes kills swiftly. And until we find a cure, we must remain vigilant.

Did you catch that?

We.

It is up to we to find a cure for this disease, it is up to we to care for those afflicted. It is is up to we to make sure that this disease does not claim thousands more lives. We give, we pray, we hope, we live.

And we walk.

I am walking this year in the AIDS walk in New York City. It would be such an honor if you could sponsor me. The link below will take you to my fundraising page where you can give anywhere from $25.00 to $1000.00. If you want to donate less than $25.00, just email me and I will give you instructions.

Thank you in advance for giving of your hard earned money to help in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

I will walk on May 16 for Ric. I will walk for my friends. I will walk for me. I will walk for you.

I will walk, most importantly, for we. Until there’s a cure…we

Donate here: Jon-Marc's AIDS walk page

Angels I Don't See PART XXI: Blood Angels

If you want to read the parts leading up to Part XXI click here for Parts I-XX

Part XXI: Blood Angels

Late January/2009

The day my father was to arrive a snowstorm was predicted up the Eastern seaboard. We were both apprehensive about this but my father, who has an SUV, insisted that he could beat the storm if he left early enough. Putting my nervousness aside I tried to get some sleep.

But as I twisted and turned all night I could only think about two things. The first was my scheduled court trial the following day and the other was my dad’s arrival.
I was nervous that at the trial the man who filed the police report would be there and ultimately I would have to explain to the judge the truth about Ric driving without a license and fleeing the scene. Points would be added to my license (I was not worried about jail since no one was apparently injured) and that I would be forced to pay hefty fine with money I did not have.

I was also worried that it would be my father keeping an eye on Ric while I was at court. Did my dad fully grasp Ric’s mental condition? Would he realize that unleashing a torrent of verbal assaults on Ric would be futile as Ric would not understand a word he was saying? Would my father be physically able to carry Ric to bathroom or pick him up if he fell?

All these concerns and more were on my mind as I tried to get some much needed rest.
Around 3:00 in the morning, after finally falling asleep, I awoke to the sound of a dull thud. Normally such a noise would not rouse me from my sleep but, with Ric in such a fragile state, I became much like a new mother who awakes when her baby so much as rolls over.

Turning on the light at my nightstand, I looked around to see where Ric was. He was not in bed, he was not anywhere in sight and our dog, Trotter, usually nestled in her bed at the foot of our bed, was standing at the door, something she never did.

“Ric?

Ric?

RIC!!!!!” I screamed, manically jumping out of bed and into the hallway of our building in nothing but my boxer briefs.

There he was, about twenty feet down the hall, in a pool of blood, lying on the floor like a limp doll. How I managed to hear him fall so far from our apartment is beyond me. As I ran to him, with his blood soaked clothes and blood on the floor, I grabbed his wrist for signs of a pulse.

“Oh, hey babe” he said, turning his eyes up to me.

“What happened? Why are you out here? Where did you cut yourself?”

“I came out because I wanted to go outside and see the snow.”

It was 3:00AM; he was wearing underwear and a t-shirt with no shoes or socks. Had he made it to his destination, he would surely have frozen to death.

“Where’s the blood coming from? Where did you cut yourself?”

“Huh? What blood? I didn’t cut myself. That’s snow babe. Isn’t it pretty?” he said as he began to move his arms along the floor smearing all the blood around him. “I’m making snow angels”

“Babe, before I move you I need to know where you cut yourself so I don’t do any more damage than has already been done.”

“Make snow angels with me and then we could build a …..”

Before he could finish his sentence I was already back in the apartment getting alcohol, gloves, band-aids, bleach and paper towels.

When I made it back out he was sitting up. Reality had hit him.

“Babe! I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding! What is going on?” he screamed.

“Calm down, babe. It’s ok. You just fell. Don’t get worked up and don’t scream. You’ll wake the neighbors.” I said as I found the source of what seemed like pints and pints of blood; a small cut on his right wrist. I immediately took his t-shirt off and used it as a tourniquet on his upper forearm.

Then I grabbed the alcohol and began trying to wipe the blood from the wound. After a few minutes of trying to get the small cut to clot, it slowed enough for me to put some ointment on and bandage it.

“Babe, I’m scared. Are we in jail? Did I get beat up?” Ric said, shaking from fear and the cold.

With the pool of blood still around us and the paper towels, gloves and bleach just sitting there, I pulled him close to my chest and held him, whispering “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I am here. We are home. You are safe”

“But I am bleeding”

As I felt the warm blood from his arm drip down my back as he was holding on to me I whispered again “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I am here. We are home. You are safe”

“But you’re crying. Why are you crying, babe?” he said as I lifted him off the ground and carried him back to the apartment with blood now all over my face, chest, hands and back.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. I am here. We are home. You are safe”

After changing his clothes, wiping up the rest of the blood on his body and putting him back into bed I went back out in the hall to sanitize the area. When I came back in, I went to the bathroom to clean myself up. As I looked in the mirror, my face was crimson red with his blood. The only places on my face that were clear were where my tears had rolled down my cheeks washing the blood away.

There was nothing to be afraid of. I was there. We were home. He was safe.


PART XXII SOON

Scream it, Tom!

This is my life's mission. People like Tom Duane, who lived through the horrors of this disease for years, are my heroes. They continue to fight and they continue to win.

I am the accidental activist but I will not stop fighting until there is a cure. Scream it, scream it, scream it Tom!

And if you don't have time to watch all 22 minutes and 12 seconds, don't bother. It is too powerful not to watch it all the way through

Angels I Don't See PART XX

If you want to read the entire story leading up to part XX, click here for Parts I-XIX


The following takes place at the end of January, 2009

Since, at this point in the story of Angels, my father emerges, I should take some time and explain my family. My brother and I have often discussed turning our family life into a play. My brother is a theatre major at NYU and given the material with which we have to work is plentiful and replete with dysfunctional tales of family drama, I am certain we would have a hit on our hands. And the play would not be exclusively focused on my mother and father. It would include a cast of characters that include my extended family, most of whom make Mama’s Family look like the Brady Bunch (and I mean that in a good way…I think?).

My relationship with my father has been, to say the least, a strained relationship for many years. People often assume that since my father is also gay we have this fabulous, Rainbow-Brite, boa tight bond. Actually quite the opposite is true. In fact when I told my father I was gay, three months after he told me he was gay, his first response was “But I wanted grandchildren. Now I’ll have to wait years for Grant to grow up and have kids”

It was, to say the least, not exactly the confetti and ticker-tape, welcome-to-homo-land reaction I was expecting. Similarly, my mother, years after finding out I was gay, during a conversation (actually it was a yelling match, of which we’ve had many. My family loves to yell, myself included) said, after I asked her about my right to marry the man I loved, “What about my right to grandchildren!?!??!”, a non sequitur to be sure, but when my family argues, logic rarely makes an appearance. We tend to go for the jugular (or in this case, the non-existent grandkids). We are ruthless and logic is the farthest thing from our mind.

My parents really want grandkids. And God help my little brother if he doesn’t produce. My mom and dad just might literally melt or go steal babies from maternity wards. God help my brother and all the maternity wards in my parents’ respective cities if he tells my parents that he does not want children, I hope he does it over the phone, thousands of miles away from where either of them could get to him.

A few years ago, while my brother was still in high-school, my father, his partner and my brother paid Ric and me a visit. It was not the first time they had visited us so I was perplexed as to why my father suggested after lunch on the Upper East Side that we go to F-A-O Shwarz. What in God’s good name would he possibly want to do there, I thought?

After strolling around the store with my father et al. in tow Ric and I decided to look around the store ourselves, alone. Though I have never been a big fan of F-A-O or anything in New York that attracts hordes of tourists like mosquitoes to a blood-bank, I have always been fascinated with their Barbie section (whatever! Stereotype my ass if you’d like!), and F-A-O has this fantastic collection of Barbie dolls.

After getting my fill of all things Barbie we went looking for my father, his partner and my brother. As we were descending the escalator I noticed that they were all staring at a huge display full of plush stuffed animals.

“What are you all doing?” I asked

“Oh, nothing”, my father replied, “just looking at all the stuffed animals I want to buy for my grandchild”

“You do realize that you don’t have a grandchild, right dad?” I responded, a bit flummoxed at his answer.

“I know I don’t have a grandchild!” he yelled in disdain, “But Grant will have children one day and I was just thinking about when I will have the chance to buy the baby all the stuffed animals and toys and things”

Daydreaming about what amounted to a fictional character in his life? If my coming-out response was not enough, this episode of delusion cleared up any notion in my mind that my father had moved past the grandchild kick. He was, without question, obsessed. And my brother was the vessel by which my father’s dreams would come true.
I tell that story to give you an idea of my father. As I have written in previous parts of this story, I have done quite a bit to earn my father’s rebuke. But one thing to keep in mind, due to all that have done, is that he has pinned all his hopes and dreams of grandchildren, among other things, on my brother. I don’t envy my brother’s position at all (well, except for the new car, the paying of his college tuition, the first class trips to European countries, and *fill in a plethora of resentments here*)

Anyway, as so many can relate, my father always expected more out of me. I never went to the right college, “worshipped” the ground my late maternal grandfather walked on (whom my father hates to this day and cannot have a conversation, any conversation, without bringing my grandfather up), never followed through on anything for more than a few weeks. And finally, my father does not believe in alcoholism and feels as though, when I bring it up, I am using it as an excuse for my behavior. Needless to say, our relationship has been tumultuous. Much of my father’s criticisms of me are valid and, of course, much of them are not. Two queers, father and son = High Drama.

This is not to say that my dad is a bad man. Far from it. I have never doubted his love for me and he always provided the necessities of life growing up, and then some. I was not abused, or neglected or even shamed as a child. But as I became an adult, just as my parent’s divorce was underway, my dad expected far more from me than I was able at the time to give. Their divorce became a battle royal for custody rights for my brother and, being away at college, I never really knew what was going on. What I did know was that it was a brutal, devastating divorce that was as nasty and heartbreaking as anything I have known.

But my mom and dad do share something in common. Heaven help anyone they perceive to have slighted either of their two children. My mother will rise up like an erupting volcano if she perceives her children being treated negatively. She is not a protective mother – she is THE protective mother who will fight like mad to protect us, even to this day. Similarly, my father will do anything to make sure that anyone who hurts my brother or me is met with an iron fist. His protectionism is more like a tornado set to destroy anything in its path. It is comforting to know this. In fact, my parents have been excellent parents and my love for them knows no bounds.

So anyway, as I was preparing for my father’s arrival, I was preparing for the worst (as is my standard operating procedure when waiting for an event to occur, any event). There were at least four things that I knew my father was not happy about:

1) That I called him only when I was in dire need of help after not speaking to him for nearly three years
2) That Ric kept his status from me for many months
3) That I was going to court to cover Ric’s ass after all that Ric had done to me and my father was livid about that as well considering that my father and his partner are the ones that bought the car involved in the alleged accident.
4) That Ric’s family had done nothing to help.

All four were fair game and he had every right to be upset. The problem is, especially when it comes to my father, whether or not I am right, I can never stand up to him and tell him what I think. I tend to keep my mouth shut until I am at the tipping point and relapse and then I call him and lose. It’s not just drunk dialing, it’s drunk dialing derangement syndrome. My mom and my dad are usually the targets but occasionally I will unleash my venom on others as well.

I was also preparing so many other things. The paperwork to get Ric on all the different programs he needed to be on in order to survive was endless. As I have written previously, many agencies ask for financial records that are impossible to produce and many others ask such intimate questions that you nearly want to just throw the applications away. I mean it was almost to the point of “Please, in inches, tell us your penis size, flaccid and erect. Girth and length must be included. If you choose not to answer, or answer incorrectly, it could delay the application process for up to ten years”. Some of it was just that bat-shit crazy!

Needless to say, the day my father arrived, I was a big hot mess of over-the-borderline get-me-in-a-cell-with-a-padded-room, stat!

Part XXI here