ABOUT MAURICE OUELLETTE

Photo, Self-portrait, Final  Note, by Maurice Oullette, 1986-1987.

Maurice Oullette died of AIDS in 1987. He was in his mid 30's. He was a professional photographer in San Francisco where he had one-man shows in the late 1970's and early 1980's. His work was exquisitely abstract. His photographs were tiny pieces of a larger aspect. Intricate detail missed by most eyes. His work required technical and manual skill, because it was done before digital photography turned the process into mouse grabs and clicks. 

As he told it to me, his life as a child in Western Canada was harsh. He was one of many children born to a poor woman with various mates. They were dirt poor. Maurice ran away to San Francisco at fourteen. He was precocious and looked older than his years. He graduated from hustling the streets  and washing dishes in dives to becoming the devoted partner of a wealthy S.F. native, a fellow artist with a trust fund. They lived an elevated urban life among the cream of West Coast gay society. It was the high age of the Castro Clone and Harvey Milk's ascendance. Lots of partying. Lots of drugs. Lots of travel. 

When Maurice's partner, whom he described to me as the love of his life, died of AIDS early in the epidemic, Maurice's life in S.F. evaporated. He met a wealthy patron from Boston. Maurice returned to Boston with this man, who gave Maurice a space in his home. 

Maurice had to work to support himself and returned to a job he had done in S.F.. He became a bouncer at a Boston gay bar. When we met at that bar on his night off from guarding the door, I laughed when he told me he was a bouncer. I had seen him before at the doors of two clubs, but had thought he was a friend of a hulking bouncer. Just hanging out. He was 5'9" tall. Despite his mesmerizing and somewhat intimidating stare, he seemed rather slight for the dangerous work of breaking up bar fights. I was wrong.

Maurice saved me from a drunken local gay celebrity, a TV news anchor, who had asked me to dance. He was making overt sexual passes in front of his admiring fans. It was making me uncomfortable.  Maurice cut in, told me to stay away from "that guy", and we carried on dancing together.  Maurice had the sinuous strength of a cat. We danced through the night until closing. His agility and acrobatic ability were on full display. I was stunned. This was before break dancing became commonplace in Boston. Maurice had it down naturally. When he stripped off his shirt, the whole bar stared. He was the personification of sweaty, athletic masculinity.

We clicked. It wasn't just the easy sexuality we had together. I understood his unshakable working-class manner and liked it. He found my self-educated references to art and philosophy in conversation interesting. He asked questions. I often think he would have left a considerable legacy in the digitally archived art world. He never had the chance.

We both worked odd shifts during nights and evenings. We spent weeks getting together during the day. I showed him some of my drawings. He slowly divulged his own amazing skills and talent with brushes, paint, pen, pencils and inks. We started drawing together, usually at his place. He would take out a huge piece of fine drawing paper and lay it on the floor of his living room. We spent hours talking and filling the paper with images, some relating to one another and others just random. I cherish the memory of those hours still. This time was of a quality and intensity that is very rare between friends and lovers.

Maurice's patron didn't like me. He was an effete A-gay with a blonde perm, whom Maurice had rejected sexually after moving to Boston three years earlier. He allowed Maurice to stay at his home because he saw him as an exquisite acquisition. An acquisition which also opened doors to the wilder side of Boston's gay night life. Maurice was a celebrity in that world.

My life was busy then. I had an antiques business and clerking job by day in my landlord's shop at the base of our brownstone. By night, I was working at a private mental institution in the suburbs. Maurice had been in touch about getting together regularly at first, and I depended on hearing from him. His  absolute independence was always an unspoken boundary. He dropped out of touch for a couple of weeks without my noticing. When I did notice, I called him. He asked me to come by the following day. 

"I'm leaving Boston," he said stiffly after a long silence when I arrived. We sat in his living room in silence for a while. Something in how he announced his departure had stunned me. I wasn't surprised whenever a gay man I liked picked up and moved to another city. It was a common occurrence. But this ... this was different. 

Eventually I asked why. "I have to leave Boston. I have to go back to San Francisco. I just have to." Maurice's steely calm was melting as he spoke. I knew he was upset, but I also knew he was a hard master of his personal boundaries. "OK," I said, "I'm just glad you aren't just disappearing. I care about you. I love you, Maurice. When are you leaving?" 

"Saturday," he said. It was already midweek. I reeled a bit in my mind. I was starting to feel how deep this loss was going to be for me. "Short notice, " I said with a grin to lighten the mood. He then told me he could only afford to take the bus across the country. This boggled my mind. I knew Maurice, like myself, was HIV positive. "No. I'll buy your plane ticket. I'll get you to the airport. First class if need be on such short notice. Please don't take the bus." 

Maurice couldn't be moved. He seemed dejected as we kissed and hugged that last time. He never explained why he was leaving. I did not ask. I respected him for the maverick he had always been. My own considerable pain at losing him was mine to handle. I extracted a promise from him to call me from San Francisco or write to me so I could know he was OK. That was the last time we touched. The last time I looked into his bottomless stare. The last time I felt the steel of his body against mine. The last time his distinctive smell, which was akin to Tibetan incense, lingered around me. I insisted he take $100, which I tucked in his shirt pocket despite his protest. "Make sure you eat," I said. 

Months went by before I got his first letter. He had enjoyed the ride back. He was living in a boarding house in North Beach. He explained that he had been given a short prognosis by his doctor in Boston. Kaposi's sarcoma, a skin cancer of a depressed immune system, was spreading through his lungs and on his skin rapidly. He was working in restaurants, washing dishes and cleaning tables. It was all fine. I cried as I read this disclosure. I suspected this was why he had left. He had gone back to San Francisco to die where he had been happiest. 

The letters became regular for some time. Each one, written in Maurice's exaggerated script,  was on the back of an exquisite drawing of one of his fantastical creatures. Each one a gift. Each one brought tears to my eyes as I read his minimal summary of a destitute and painful life. The letters always contained his assurance that there was nothing I could do for him. This made me feel he understood my care-giving nature and was also trying to protect me from the inevitable. I felt physical pain from the frustration of not being able to do more for him.

I moved from Boston to Provincetown on Cape Cod. Maurice and I kept in touch for a while. Then the letters stopped. I would talk to Maurice in my mind while I walked alone in the dunes at Herring Cove or in the Beech Forest. I would tell him that he wasn't alone no matter what he was going through. I would beg him to call me or write something. It was my way of grieving. 

It was the middle of my first winter in Provincetown when I eventually heard from Maurice again. The phone rang late at night. At first, there was just breathing. I almost hung up. "Paul?" The voice was shallow and weak, strangled by congestion, but I recognized it. Our brief conversation was our final goodbye. He told me he had pneumonia, and was struggling to stay in his rented room by working as a dishwasher. I begged him to let me come out to help him. I offered to bring him back with me to Provincetown. He told me he wanted to die where he was, where he had been happiest with his partner of some years. He wouldn't give me his latest address. 

I cannot explain in written words just how painful this was. As a hospice nurse, I have been no stranger to death. As a son, I have been with both my parents as they died. The first great love of my life died of AIDS as well. But this was different. Maurice and I had shared something ephemeral and, by its nature, irreplaceable. From that cold night in Provincetown to this day, I have not stopped regularly thinking of Maurice, keeping him alive within my mind.

About six months after that call, I received a call from Maurice's sister in Canada. She was rather curt. She explained that Maurice had died shortly after he had called me. She had gone to San Francisco to attend to his cremation and to pick up his belongings. She called me to ascertain that I was where Maurice had said I would be in a letter he had left for her. He wanted me to have something. She said she would be mailing it.

I received the envelop months later. There were several simple line drawings, atypical of Maurice's exquisitely complex work. One mostly white piece of paper had a small line drawing of a cartoon-like Maurice. Under it, the caption read "Until the next time Paul". There was also an older picture of Maurice, which looked like the photos taken in old photo booths in bus stations. But I realized it had been cut from a larger photo with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. 

I mounted the photo in a frame in the corner of a drawing Maurice gave me the day he said he was leaving for San Francisco. It is a self-portrait, clearly identifiable by the green triangular tattoo, a replica of the one Maurice had at the base of his spine, a reference to the intimacy of our friendship. Under the drawing, I have placed Maurice's final words to me. I have carried this with me for over 30 years and always will. 

HIV hasn't killed me yet. I have come to accept it for what it is, a viral happenstance of human life. Cancer nearly killed me, but I have made my peace with that as well. Maurice, the memory of the man and our deep connection, has helped me through everything that has challenged me over the three decades since he died. This has been perhaps the most profound gift ever given to me by another person, a loving person, who asked nothing from me during the greatest and final struggle of his difficult life.