Maurice

I don't usually share personal anecdotes in this blog. My aversion to reminiscence increases with age. Nothing more boring than an old fart who rattles on endlessly about 'the good old days'. That's up there on my list of unpleasantries with world charter travelers who subject the unsuspecting to really mediocre photographs of churches, parks and monuments. However...

Letter from Maurice, 1986

This is the twenty-fifth anniversary of meeting a truly influential person in my life. Since I speak to his picture daily as it looks back at me from its perch inside a framed piece of his artwork on my bathroom wall, I am always aware of his effects on my life. I seldom share the details of our friendship.

Maurice, who pronounced his name in the French manner, grew up in a small  town in Western Canada. Slight and scrappy, looking typically French, he had a rough go among the bigger, beefier Anglo peers of his Canadian hometown. He dropped out of high school at 15 and fled to San Francisco.

Maurice survived in San Francisco by selling himself on the streets. He found that he was no longer the ugly duckling. He was a wanted commodity. His clientele improved with his understanding that he could charge higher prices and meet men in better parts of town. Eventually, as Gay Liberation dawned, Maurice met a gorgeous blonde man with a trust fund who became the love of his life.

Maurice and his lover rode the great wave of Gay Lib in The Castro during the Harvey Milk years and thereafter. Milk was one of their friends. The wealthy lover financed Maurice's art education and bought the expensive cameras which eventually took the abstract photographs, displayed and sold at high prices in city galleries. Maurice became a collected artist. Then the 1980s came.

While Reagan was ascending, Gay Lib was flagging, deflated by cocaine and HIV. Maurice and his lover became addicted to cocaine and eventually to heroin as well. The lover, the cornerstone of Maurice's life, died suddenly of AIDS before people really understood what AIDS meant. Maurice knew he would follow. Just a matter of time.

In his grief, Maurice stopped using drugs and sought support in AA. He fled across the continent to Boston in 1983. He left behind his gallery connections and a regular income. His lover's family took all the lover's estate, including the home Maurice had shared for over a decade. They would not communicate with Maurice and addressed him through lawyers. So, Maurice came to Boston with very little.

Now in his thirties, somewhat scarred by his recently dissipated life, Maurice maintained a natural elegance and sexy masculinity which landed him a job in Boston's jumping leather bar, The Eagle, then located in the Fenway neighborhood. (Ironically, The old Eagle's location is now occupied by an apartment complex owned by the Roman Catholic diocese of Boston which houses AIDS patients and elderly residents.) I first saw Maurice at the door of the old Eagle bar. His piercing blue eyes, black hair and huge handlebar moustache were unforgettable.

Two years later, after a wearying evening shift at the psychiatric hospital where I worked then, I went to another gay bar, Chaps, which was located in Copley Square. (This now replaced with a luxury condo complex.) I was asked to dance by a well known Boston news anchor. The TV anchor was plastered and sloppy, but he was tall and handsome, so I was happy to have an excuse to dance.

"You should really get away from him. He's trouble." The husky voice whispered this in my ear as I paid for two beers at the bar. I turned and met Maurice's deep hazel stare and beaming white smile. "Don't worry," I answered with a smile and took the beers over to the TV anchor, who was literally propped against a counter along the wall. I put the anchor's beer on the counter. Then I guided him to a nearby stool where he dozed off. I realized with a cynical chuckle that I was now nursing a drunk, despite my attempt to unwind from a shift of nursing difficult patients.

A hand grabbed my right shoulder. I turned. The same deep-set, hazel eyes and an even wider smile. Maurice said, "I told you."

I said, "What do you expect me to do? I don't want to leave him alone like this." Maurice took my hand and dragged me to the dance floor. I danced half-heartedly until I saw a tall man take the TV anchor gently out of the bar. "That's his boyfriend!" Maurice shouted and laughed at my concerned look. I laughed at myself, and we danced madly for an hour, until the bar closed.

I remember the next three months as a creative rebirth under the wizardry of Maurice. We spent a lot of time together. We became good friends with the inevitable gay benefits. As we spent hours drawing together, walking around the city, lying in bed, I learned more and more of Maurice's story of survival and resilience. The alcoholic and abusive family. The bullying siblings. The equally bullying teachers and priests. Sometimes he wept, and said,"Who the hell are you? I never cry about this stuff." I shared similar stories. Sometimes we just held each other and cried. The healing was deep and mutual.

"I'm taking a bus to San Francisco on Saturday at noon." We had just spent two hours working on pen-and-ink drawings in my living room in the South End. Mine was a floral study in obsessive-compulsive control. His was an amazingly detailed and colorful robot figure, composed of bits and pieces but very much human in its eyes and expression. He had titled it: "Boston X-ray Three Year Scope". I feared it was a self-portrait.

"I've got to go back to be with my lover." He said this flatly, while eyes conveyed deep conflict and emotion. I knew what he was saying. I wanted to ask many questions. I began to argue that he should stay with me in Boston. I could see from the tears in his eyes I was making him feel worse. I stopped.

"What will you do for money? Why don't you fly? A bus will take forever." I wanted to protect him. I wanted to heal him in a way I knew was impossible. I fought my own selfish pain of loss as best I could. In the end, I offered to pay for his bus ticket and give him a little money to get started. He fought me, but he eventually took it, and said, "I probably won't be able to pay this back, but I will be in touch with you. Thanks."

I never saw Maurice again after he left my living room that day in June, 1986. Inspired in part by our friendship, I left Boston and moved to Provincetown, where I had always wanted to live. Maurice wrote regular, wonderful letters with illustrations. We continued to work together through the mail. We decided to put together a children's book with his illustrations and my writing. The drafts passed back and forth in the mail. I often think of the wonders we could have done with today's technology. His drawings became darker. His characters looked more and more distorted and reptilian.

The phone rang on a stormy winter night in January. It was Maurice. It was the first time I heard his voice since the Spring. Tears formed in my eyes. I asked him to tell me what was going on in his life. He told me to stop asking questions. To just listen. "I'm outside the restaurant. Pay phone. I'm washing dishes. Got a shitty room close by. Doesn't matter." I could hear the deep congestion in his lungs over the phone. I felt a weight in my chest. "Left Boston because I found out I'm done for. Kaposi's sarcoma. All over, inside. Surprised I lived this long. Couldn't die anywhere but here. All arranged. Going to be cremated and put next to my lover's ashes. Sorry, Paul. Have to go. I'm OK." The phone went dead.

I grieved long and deeply for Maurice, even though I didn't know if or when he died. Nine months later I received a manila envelope from Canada. It was from Maurice's sister, with whom he had a troubled relationship. A brief and formal note said the contents had been found after his death in his room. It contained a bunch of drawings. But one stood out. It was a self-portrait, simple and naked. His figure was bent in a fetal posture. In his distinctive script underneath he had written, "Until the next time, Paul. Love, Maurice."

That last message is now mounted next to Maurice's smiling image, a photo-booth photograph he sent me from San Francisco shortly after I last saw him. They reside in the frame with his drawing from that last day we spent together. Wherever I have lived over the past twenty-five years, I have found a prominent place for that item. Embracing its meaning in my daily life is part of my daily practice. This is Maurice's tremendous, ongoing gift to my life.