When I was a kid, I was obsessed with astronomy, the space
program, anything to do with outer space. This was odd because, living on
light-polluted Long Island, it was difficult to see much of the night sky, even
with my older brother’s 40-power telescope. Nevertheless, I cut out newspaper
articles about Mercury and Gemini missions and put them in a scrapbook. I read
every book I could find about the Solar System, the Milky Way Galaxy, and
beyond. I even created an admittedly short-lived Astronomy Club which I cajoled
the other kids in the neighborhood to join with the promise of… a newsletter on
all things astronomical! As you might guess, it didn’t last very long, but I do
recall typing up five individual copies of a two-page flyer on the phases of
the moon, with hand-drawn illustrations, on the manual typewriter in our
basement.
I read about Galileo and Copernicus and even Aristarchus,
who in the fourth century BCE was the first known Greek philosopher/astronomer
to propose a heliocentric universe, one with the sun in the middle and the
earth and other planets revolving around it. His insight was, of course,
rejected since it was obvious that everything in the heavens circled the earth,
and it would be two millennia before his ideas were accepted.
I became enthralled with the distinctions between gas giant
and rocky planets (Jupiter an example of the former, earth of the latter), of
Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion, of speculation on the origin of the Asteroid
Belt (a destroyed planet or one never-formed?), the names and numbers of moons
of each planet, how the planets and stars appeared to us on earth.
One of the quirks of planetary motion is the concept of Apparent
Retrograde Motion. Each planet moves at a reliable, predictable pace in its
unique elliptical orbit around the sun. Inner planets move faster than those
further out just as water circling a drain moves faster the closer to the
drain. We on earth see other planets moving fairly constantly through the field
of background stars, but there are times when earth is lined up in its orbit
with another planet in relation to the sun where earth is either passing that
planet or that planet is passing earth, and it can look like that planet has
reversed its motion in the background star field. This is Apparent Retrograde Motion.
It’s similar to being on a highway with other cars. If you think of yourself as
motionless, a car passing you will be moving forward against the background of
trees, houses, and billboards on the side of the highway. However, when you
pass them, they may appear to be moving backwards. Something seems reversed,
out of sync.
I tell you this because recently I have been living with a
very particular sensation of Retrograde. It has to do with being a gay man in
his very late 50s in America who has been out his entire life. At this
historical moment, life is backwards.
Just last weekend I performed a monologue called “Shadows
and Light” at the Gateway Men’s Chorus concert, “The 80s Show.” I had written
it a few years ago, and it recounts my first experience as an intern in 1981
having a glancing encounter with a patient – actually with his chest X-ray – of
a young gay man with a new, terrifying disease with no name. The monologue
covers that day and flashes forward to how this affected my professional and
personal life, my sense of mission, and my duty to my community. Although I do
not name the disease in the monologue because at the time of the events it had
no name, it is, of course, AIDS. (If you haven’t read the piece and would like
to, it's here on my blog from December 2013.)
It was a very personal and difficult piece to perform, especially
at the end as I turned around and saw a projected contemporary photo of myself
and Bob Corsico, my lover then, who would succumb to the disease 13 years
later.
Yet what truly amazed and moved me each night as I left the
theater was that people I had never met sought me out to tell me how much this
my story had affected them, what memories it brought back, how these men who
had died so many years ago and decades too soon would always live in their
hearts.
During these same few weeks, my Facebook Newsfeed has been
full of joyous announcements of weddings of male couples and female couples,
people who have been together for years, decades, or just months who are now
able to move forward to publicly express and to have the government officially
recognize what we have always known – love knows no gender. This movement will
not be stopped, and I see signs of it everywhere.
This Tuesday, for instance, mere days after I had performed
my monologue at the GMC concert, I saw “27,” a world premier opera at Opera Theatre
of Saint Louis about the lives of the American writer in Paris, Gertrude Stein,
and her wife, Alice B. Toklas, and the many artists who visited their salon at 27
Rue de Fleurus in the early decades of the 20th century. I was
intensely moved by this story of love between two women lived openly and
without shame nearly a century ago and of how love endures even after death. I
had the opportunity to talk to the brilliant Stephanie Blythe, who plays Gertrude Stein, after the show, and she said
to me, “This is the most moving depiction of love between two people that I
have ever seen in all of opera.” And I would have to agree.
To me, what is just
as moving is the fact that, from my seat in the center section about halfway
back, I could clearly see the faces of many audience members, especially on the
sides of the thrust stage. They were enraptured, not just by the soaring score
of Ricky Ian Gordon but by the palpable love between Gertrude and Alice as they
held hands, gazed lovingly at one another, embraced, kissed. As the opera
concluded, these mostly older (yes, even older than me), well-to-do opera fans
leapt to their feet to give their thanks with thunderous, nearly unending
applause. These audience members were showing their gratitude to the story of
two women in love.
Well, those of you who
know me know that I am a crier. I will cry at cute puppy videos on YouTube. But
this went beyond that. I wept. I was so moved by this story, by this art, and
by this rapturous reception from an audience in St. Louis, Missouri, in the 21st
century. We will never go back. More and more, we are all part of the family.
But in this moment I
paused. These women on stage openly in love, these people on Facebook setting wedding
dates, these men from three decades ago gone much too soon… Life is out of
order.
People should be
spending their 20s going to weddings, celebrating love and the building of
families and communities. Our 50s should be the absolute earliest time in our
lives when we should begin to mourn our contemporaries and start letting go of
those we love. For me, and for so many men who survived, the timeline is
reversed. Our lives are in Retrograde.
Of course, when it comes to planets, Retrograde is an
appearance, not an actual state of motion. It results from our vantage point. Planets
actually move forward, as must we. And of course, this vantage point comes from
things converging in unique and unusual alignments. To hear the story of love,
loss, and love eternal in “27” within days of telling my own story with this
same arc informs me that the alignment of events in my life is less a
disruption than it is, finally, a completion. At last, there is Synchronicity.
So I tell you this because, as I hear your happy news, you
may see a tear in my eye. It is for you, of course, celebrating your love and
your future. But it is also there to honor those who did not live to see this
day, who will not stand beside me as I attend your wedding, but who will move
forward with me through Apparent Retrograde as I carry them always in my heart.
