Bill was my first serious relationship, when I was in college. We met at a meeting of Gay Youth — he started coming as a regular when I was president in 1971. He was aggressively snobbish about language and intelligence and used it as a defense since he was hit on by lots of guys of all ages. It made him hard to get to know. In fact, I didn't even like him when we first met. And he was never easy. But he was an original — and he was always an activist. I loved him a lot. And I miss him to this day.
When we first began our relationship, he was still smooth and free of chest hair. And he knew it was a look I preferred, this being the androgynous '70s. He asked me once, "Will you still love me when I'm hairy?" I told him yes, and I did. Even when he grew a wild beard. His wild heart took him to traveling the country — he lit out for the territories. We were each other's first — and the memories I share of him to this day with my friend Marion, who was there, leaves us both laughing and crying at the same time.
At his memorial service I was weeping uncontrollably — and then the rabbi came out to speak of him. The rabbi was cute, and I turned to Bill's brother and said, with a moment of lightness in the grief, "Bill would have said this rabbi was cute." His brother said, "He did, he me the rabbi before he died, and that's just the first thing he said to the rabbi — 'you're really cute.'" And then we laughed and cried at the same time.
Bill was one of the first to be diagnosed with HIV, and he was a founding member of the PWA coalition. He wrote for their magazine — articles like "THE CONDOM CONNOISSEUR" — and he hosted their cable TV show.
If you're a regular reader, you will know I've written about the Tupelo tree in the Ramble's Tupelo Meadow in Central Park. Bill and I used to climb that tree together. And when I took this photo out to scan it, underneath it I found a poem written for Wolf (he was always Bill to me even though he changed his name to Wolf, which was in fact the English translation of his Hebrew name, Z'ev) by Eric Thorndale, one of the original members of GAA who we were friends with and worked with as part of GAA's AgitProp committee. Eric, like me, was interested in medieval and renaissance English literature. The difference is that he regularly wrote poems in the style of the period. The poem below, that he wrote for Bill, mentions the Tupelo tree in the first line.
Thou comely Swain by Trysting Tree,
I sought in Words a looking Glass
That long undimm'd might shine of thee
But as I laid me on the Grass
And watch'd the lighted Morning shine,
I thought how Words might wane and pass,
Which Thought the while was woeful Tine.
What Words need I when all's behight?
I'd bed in Burrs could I but cleave
To thee in blazing Bliss unstight —
How would that Joy me speechless leave
How would my leaping Heart be blithe
When wordless in thine Arms I writhe!
I met Bill when he lived on Cathedral Avenue (115th Street?) back in 1975 or thereabouts. John Chiafalo introduced us. I fell in love with him and we had a brief fling. I'd heard he was one of the early ones to die and was heartbroken. He had a wild streak, for sure, but he was so smart and so sexy. Even now, 22 years since I last saw him, I miss him....
Posted by: richard | December 26, 2009 at 02:13 PM