TIME, THE MOST PRECIOUS RESOURCE.

Those of us who are from The Paper Age sometimes try to digitize our lives from stuff we've tucked away in the recesses of file cabinets. It started for me today when I discovered a cache of old credit cards. I sliced and diced. Then I came across a pile of old nursing licenses. Before slicing and dicing these, I scanned them into a file after a quick cut-and-paste to get them on standard printable 8.5" x 11" format. Then came the old driver's licenses. Same process. PDF's made and stored.

I had forgotten I had already scanned the local newspaper article which contained the picture above from 1993. I came across it in a digital folder. It was actually an upbeat moment for me. The driver's licenses had covered the years 1998-2014. Two happened to have been renewed shortly after two brutal periods in my life. One was shortly after recovering from my near-death from AIDS-related pneumonia in the mid-1990's. The other license photo was taken one month after I was discharged from the hospital after my kidneys failed due to radiation treatments and chemo for cancer. 

The 43-year-old me in this picture was administering an 18-bed AIDS hospice as a day job. My domestic partner at the time, the man on my right, was an art professor at a local college and had been a successful gallery artist in NYC. In 1993, we co-rented a shop on Boston's Charles Street, a fashionable street with brick sidewalks at the base of historic Beacon Hill. Our third partner in the business also worked at the hospice as an aide, as well as maintaining an ongoing antiques business. 

I now marvel at the whole enterprise. Nights and weekends were spent renovating the shop which had fallen into disrepair due to the landlord's total disregard for what he had. He was a man whose immigrant family had invested in the street back when it had been blighted in the early 20th century. The family owned property and businesses up and down Charles Street. For the three of us, this was an elevated pursuit. Our third partner had, like me, been in the antiques business on the side for years. But having a shop on Charles Street among vendors of fine art and very expensive antiques was a dream come true. Or so we thought at the beginning.

The business was very demanding. Running a shop seven days a week means being there seven days a week. We agreed to man it in pairs as much as possible to alleviate boredom and prevent that horrible fear of missing a sale because the shop had be be closed for an errand or an emergency. That meant 140 clerk-hours per week had to be covered. Our third partner left his job at the hospice. He was able to work a large block of weekday hours. But we seldom had a full day off. This made finding new inventory nearly impossible. I worked evenings after my day job and on weekends. My domestic partner had little time to paint new work for the shop. 

The long and short of it is simple: My domestic partner and I eventually sold out our shares of the shop to another dealer who came along and expressed interest. We more or less broke even. That was that. It was a milestone for me. I decided after that experience to focus my energy outside my nursing career on securing equity by buying a place to live. I had been a renter up to that point. And, within a year, I had bought my first tiny house in Cambridge, MA. Since then, buying and selling my six subsequent homes has satisfied my entrepreneurial drive.

The memory of all this has made me realize once again the resilience of so many of my gay male peers. This process of maintaining a relationship at home, working cooperatively at a business, delivering a vital medical service and being in touch with the capitalist demands of changing urban life of my times was not drudgery. It was invigorating, despite having to fight my own battle with a deadly virus. Perhaps that is as much a key to my survival as pharmaceuticals, good diet and exercise. 

When I see some young men getting caught up in the culture of complaining entitlement which has infected our gay male society, despite all the advantages available to them today, I am once again reminded that our history is so easily lost. Not just our individual histories, but the real-life history of our gay male society. And I say society, because we do not share one culture or encapsulated community. What we share is our fluid society, being together, often due to sexual attraction, despite many possible cultural or racial barriers. 

Perhaps I am writing this to encourage any young reader to get out there and make a life by working hard and seeking partners in that work. Take the risks. Use your energy for your own sense of purpose and well being while it abounds in you. It will not be abundant forever. Nothing is ultimately a waste of your time except consciously not doing what you know you have the interest and potential to do.