Love, Life and Michael Tolliver

I've been doing a lot of reading since the first of the year. Among the books I've read in the past four months have been six books in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City Series: the last three of the original series and the three that have been published more recently.

For those not familiar with the series, Maupin, an openly gay man, started writing the books in the mid-1970's. They feature a core group of characters who live in San Francisco that includes gay men, lesbians, straight women, straight men and trans men and women. Since the original book was written in the mid-1970's and the most recent book was just published, the series follows the lives of these core characters (as well as others introduced from time to time) over the course of 40 years.

My favorite book in the series is Michael Tolliver Lives - the first Maupin wrote after an almost 20-year break (which I'll get back to below). Michael, a gay man originally from central Florida, was one of the original characters whose youthful wit and vitality very much reminded me of the character Emmett Honeycutt (pictured above) from the TV series, Queer as Folk. When the Tales began in the mid-70's, Michael was in his 20's; in Lives, he is in his 50's with the third great love of his life, the first having died of AIDS, the second, Thack, having moved on.

Coming Out and Learning to Love Oneself

Michael had a lot to say over the course of the nine books about being gay and about sex, love and relationships, and I would have loved the novels based on his character and his comments alone. I first truly fell in love with him when, early in the series (More Tales of the City), he wrote a coming out letter to his very religious, very conservative "Mama" back in Orlando who had become involved in Anita Bryant's anti-gay crusade of the mid-late 70's. I wrote about this letter here, and I'll just include the following passages in this post:

"I know I can't tell you what it is to be gay. But I can tell you what it's not. 

"It's not hiding behind words, Mama. Like 'family' and 'decency' and 'Christianity.' It's not fearing your body, or the pleasures that God made for it. It's not judging your neighbor, except when he's crass or unkind. 

"Being gay has taught me tolerance, compassion and humility. It has shown me the limitless possibilities of living. It has given me people whose passion and kindness and sensitivity have provided a constant source of strength. It has brought me into the family of man, Mama ..."

Living and Loving in the Shadow of Death

Jumping ahead to the book, Sure of You, Michael and his lover, Thack, deal with Michael's HIV-positive status. This novel was written in the late 80's, and at that time there was virtually no assurance that anyone who was positive would survive. Life became a waiting game to see if HIV became AIDS. In this environment, Maupin put the following words in Thack's mouth:

"Sometimes I watch [Michael] with [the dog] or digging the yard. And I think: This is it, this is the guy I've waited for all my life. Then this other voice tells me not to get used to it, that it'll only hurt more later. It's funny. You're feeling this enormous good fortune and waiting for it to be over at the same time."

This passage obviously resonated deeply with me. Mark is the one I've waited for all my life. I feel enormous good fortune; but I know he has inoperable cancer and that, at some point, he will leave. We wait to see what his PSA will do, knowing that it will continue to go up. We wait to see how his hip pain will evolve, grateful for days that he is pain-free. We wait to see how he will feel tomorrow, or the next day, or next week, or next month, or in three months. We wait. But we live each day and cherish the love that we have in and for each other.

Michael Tolliver Lives ... and Loves

I suppose Maupin chose the title for this book because Michael Tolliver lived: he didn't contract AIDS, he didn't die. He grew older. In this book, he is in his early 50's. A younger man, Ben, has become his love and his husband. 

But this novel, although it explores the relationship between these two men, is primarily concerned with Michael's relationship with his family of origin back in Florida. His father is dead and his mother is dying. He journeys to Florida with Ben to visit his declining mother and his brother's family. Against this backdrop, below are some of the passages I highlighted as I was reading this book.

"[L]ove is always on loan, never the nest egg we want it to be." 

Michael has realized that love is not something we can cling to. We must hold it, gently, as a butterfly in our hand that may fly away at any moment.

"'The thing is,' [Michael] said, 'Thack did me a favor by leaving. I might never have noticed how little [love] I was getting if he hadn't taken it away.'"

Michael had learned his lesson. So have I. So have others. Sometimes, we cling to a love because it's all we know. We invest ourselves in it, thinking it's all we deserve. Or we want it so badly to be real and authentic and nurturing. But it's not. And we only find that out until after the relationship has ended.

"My folks still love me alright, but they saw that love as cause for forgiveness, not acceptance ... My life had been conveniently reduced to a 'lifestyle' by then, something easily separable from me, that they could abhor to their hearts' content without fear of being perceived as unchristian."

In this short passage, Michael gives voice to what so much of us feel but can't quite express. We know in our hearts that "love the sinner, hate the sin" is deeply hateful ... of the person, not the sin. We sense that what we are offered is not real love, but "compassion," i.e., tolerance tinged with a bit of forgiveness.

Michael's older brother is everything Michael is not. He is a real estate wheeler dealer, lives in a monster house somewhere in the Orlando area and is a deacon in his church. Many of us have relatives like that whose lives appear - on the surface - so charmed, so perfect, so "right." After visiting for a few days in Florida, Michael says of his brother and his life (as well as his own):

"[I] realized that I envied nothing about my brother's [conservative, 'Christian'* and straight] life ... none of the the things I once worried I might be missing if I committed fully to a life of homosexuality. That life hasn't been perfect, but it has been my life, tailored to my dreams and safely beyond the reach of God's terrible swift sword. My brother can't say that. Never could."

Isn't that what so many LGBT people have had to face at some point on their journey: that if they were true to who they are, they thought they would be missing out on what our culture overwhelmingly values? How many people, on the other hand, can say that their life - with all its imperfections - "is MY life, tailored to MY dreams?" [*Am I the only one who is sick of conservative evangelical Christians claiming for themselves the label of 'Christian' - as if mainline Protestants and Catholics aren't really "Christian?"]

Michael had a difficult relationship with his mother. I could relate very strongly to their relationship. When "Mama" was near death in a nursing home, Michael had a choice to make. As he and Ben were waiting for their flight to Florida, they received word that the woman whom Michael viewed as his "true" mother, Anna Madrigal, was in a life-threatening situation. He chose to stay in San Francisco to be with Anna (who often quipped that she and all her "children" - none of whom were related by blood - were a "natural family" rather than a biological family. When my mother passed, I was faced with a similar decision: I was needed at home. I had said my goodbyes already.

Of his decision, Michael explains:

"People always say, 'Of course you love her, you have to, she's your mother,' but that kind of love can die as easily as any of the others. It has to be fed by something ... I let her go a long time ago. I've done my mourning already."

I could have said the same thing.

Thank you, Armistead Maupin, for creating Michael Tolliver.

Fall, the Wasatch and Labels

This past weekend, I took my four younger children for a ride up Big Cottonwood Canyon and over Guardsman Pass down into Park City. It was a gloriously beautiful day.

As we drove, I was wishing I was on my bicycle. One of the things I love about cycling is being out in the midst of scenery such as this ... to be able to hear the streams rushing by, to see vistas that are unobstructed by a windshield and the roof of my car.

Neverless, I wanted my children to see this fairyland that exists within 20 miles of our home. I would have taken them for a hike, but I knew I would meet with strong resistance - at least with some of them. The thing about taking four kids out who are between 7 to 11 years of age is that they're never all going to agree on anything. So, I do the best I can. For example, as I stopped to take the pictures in this post, one of the boys said, "Um, Dad, are you going to be taking more pictures?"

I was never, in my previous life, much of an outdoorsman. My dad's idea of camping was the Holiday Inn. I went to college at the University of Illinois in the midst of cornfields. Later, once I was married and the children started coming - and coming - there was never the time nor the funds to spend much time in the great outdoors. 

But just because one never had the opportunity, for various reasons, to develop a love for the outdoors doesn't necessarily mean that one is "not an outdoorsy person." (That label was attached to me, and it was just easier to believe it, even though I resented the label.) If presented with the opportunity to appreciate being in nature, that love - like other loves - can develop later in life. For we always have the capacity to develop or expand new loves.

Coming down from Guardsman Pass

Labels are so destructive, whether placed upon us by others or by ourselves. Many of them are preceded by the word "not": "You're not an outdoors person." "You're not a dog person." "You're not an athlete." "You're not a social person." "You're not very spiritual." "You're not very good at [insesrt]." And these labels are usually attached by others who think they ARE these things.  

Some people have the ability to deflect attempts to label them. Others are not so fortunate, and they accept these labels for various reasons. Eventually, they can become so ingrained in us that they become part of who we are - or who we perceive ourselves to be. This certainly happened to me.

But! - I have had the great good fortune, later in life, to confront, challenge and throw off some of the labels that have been attached to me by others and by myself. I have discovered - though I am still very much working on this - that I am not the person other people convinced me I am. 

Looking down into Heber Valley

I have also had the great good fortune to have positive attributes pointed out to be me that I could never see in myself. "You're a natural athlete." "You're a sensitive person." "You're a loving person." "You are handsome." "You're a good father." Sometimes, it takes another person or persons to hold up different mirrors to oneself which allow us to move forward on the road to self-love and self-acceptance. 

Cruising the Greek Islands: Surrendering

I have struggled a bit with how to start blogging about our cruise through some of the Greek islands. We sailed for seven days with 39 other passengers on a small ship through the Cyclades Islands in the Aegean Sea. In some ways, it was a life-changing experience because of the people we met, the places we saw, and the activities we engaged in. 

Some of what I experienced during that magical week will be easy to describe in subsequent posts. But there were themes that developed during the course of the cruise, some of which I have found to be very difficult to articulate. The one I'm writing about in this post is "surrendering." 

The first thing I need to say  - and this is difficult for me - is that I am a recovering controlist. (I just made that word up. I don't like the phrase, "control freak." I think most people are controlists to one extent or another; the key is recognizing it in oneself.) At first, I was annoyed that I couldn’t get Wi-Fi on my computer while on the ship; but then I surrendered and allowed myself to just live the experience instead of worrying about chronicling it “live” on my blog. This was a needed lesson for me.

I surrendered to not being instantaneously connected to e-mail, Facebook and world news. I soaked up the moments without putting pressure on myself to “get our money’s worth” by seeing and doing all we possibly could as we traveled from island to island. 

I surrendered the feeling that I had to actively *seek out* daily experiences and instead gave myself permission to trust that they would seek *me* out or, in other words, go with the flow of life instead of trying to control it.

I surrendered to just sitting on the sun deck and reading a book while at sea. I realized I didn’t have to go, go, go and do, do, do. I gave myself permission to simply sit and read a book, soaking up sunshine and the sea air while occasionally gazing out onto the bluest water I have ever seen.

I surrendered the practice that I needed to learn as much as possible beforehand about places we would see on our travels, a practice that had been born partly out of a desire to better appreciate what I would see and partly out of a desire to “get our money’s worth.” I realized that this practice, carried to extreme, narrowed my vision of what I was seeing and learning, particularly in Rome and Greece. I was trying, in a way, to control instead of flow.

Instead, I embraced the obverse of this practice, i.e., I allowed my mind to be broadened so that I could *then* go home and engage in learning about what I had seen. I also surrendered the thought that I needed to learn as much as possible while there in order to “get my money’s worth.” Instead, I accepted that there was only so much I could absorb, and in consequence, I was able to better enjoy what I was seeing.

Lastly, I surrendered a bit more to self-love. I learned that the inner voices of condemnation and criticism are still active within me; but I also took the time to analyze and confront those voices and, to some extent, disarm them.

Perhaps the concept of “surrendering” oneself to self-love may sound strange to some. But I think anyone who has spent a lifetime judging themselves will know what I mean.

Next post: Ios and Santorini

Being Myself in a Foreign Land

Kaysville, Utah is hardly Beijing. But, to paraphrase L. P. Hartley, a lot of places along the Wasatch Front are foreign countries; they do things differently there.

It started when I stopped at Smiths Marketplace in Bountiful on Friday to get myself and the kids some drinks as we headed up to Cherry Hill, a water park in Kaysville. As I checked out, I noticed the cashier was repeatedly looking at my wrists. I have gotten to the point where I am not the least self-conscious about my bracelets; I basically forget that they are there. They are part of me.

So as I checked out, I reminded myself that there are undoubtedly very few men in Davis County who wear bracelets. I didn't feel self-conscious, but I was aware.

Then we got to Cherry Hill. It was packed with moms with young children, a few dads and a number of grandparents. I noticed the same thing here: as I walked past people, I stopped counting the number of times that I noticed people's gaze shift downward to my wrists. I didn't feel judgment, however, although I'm sure there was some of that. Mostly, I just sensed curiosity or a vague level of discomfort with something that was different than the norm.

There was a time when I felt, after coming out and separating from my former wife, extremely self-conscious driving in Bountiful - my former home - or neighboring Centerville or other communities in southern Davis County. I had lived in these heavily-Mormon communities for 15 years after moving to Utah from Canada. I didn't feel comfortable there. I felt very self-conscious. Sort of like an expression I heard used in Southern Illinois where I am from. To paraphrase, I "felt as nervous as a whore in church with red heels on." In other words, I stuck out. Or I felt like I did.

On Friday, however, I felt totally confident in my own skin in the heart of a heavily Mormon area. I did not wear board shorts. I sat out in the sun, accepting of my body, unconcerned about what others may or may not have thought or suspected of me. In other words, I was myself - perhaps the only openly gay man there, and certainly the only gay man with children. It was a wonderful feeling. I have come a long way.

BTW, the lead photo is of my son Levi sitting at the end of my chaise lounge. I was happy to see a few other boys there with hair as long as his. Two of them were wearing necklaces. It was amusing when, later, as I mentioned to my daughter Rachel (who had accompanied us) that I thought Levi and Aaron would look good with necklaces, I noticed out of the corner of my eye the head of the woman sitting near us whip around and look at us. Smile.