A lovely, twisted and broken memory.

Every time around this time of year, I feel a bit sad.  It's the kind of sadness that you get when you are given an object that brings with it memories, but you remember it wasn't what you wanted.  You try and remember how it went together, and if you figure that out, then you can glue it back together and make it all better.  But it isn't all better, because the object is still broken.  And will always be broken.

It was in July 1984 that I met Michael Gedling.  And he is my broken memory.

First all, in 1984, I had been out for a year and a half. I was a newly minted baby gay (out at 20) and I was naive.  One of the things that gay boys and lesbians didn't get back then was the practice of dating and advice on how to handle crushes and breakups.  You couldn't go to your parents in those days.  It was strictly OGT (On Gay Training) in real-time.  So we all acted a bit like children in figuring how things were supposed to work, but without any role models to look at and work toward.

So, 22, out of the closet and desperately wanting someone who wanted me, I fell in love.  Actually "I fell in love" is an understatement.  Everything around me stopped.  He was handsome, smart and funny.  I felt like I had found "the one".  Other than his worship of Prince's music - Purple Rain had just come out - he was perfect in bed, and in life.

Mike Gedling was everything I dreamed about.

But I got out too far in front in the dream of happiness.  He could be the rest of my life, I fantasized.  He could be the rest of my life.

And save but for a twist of fate, he could have also ended it.

But, as so many of us find out the hard way, sometimes the one simply isn't who or what we think they are.

The first chink in the armor was was when we were talking one night I got brave enough to tell him that my father sexually molested me when I was in grade school.  What I thought of as sympathy soon got very weird and he invited me to act out what my father did.  Sex should be fun, but this was creepy, especially when I felt coerced by his statement  that "if we can act it out, there is no shame in reliving your abuse."

Sex became his weapon, and this turned him on.  I kept trying to steer him back to just having great sex, but in the middle of it, ask me to call him daddy and my dick would go limp.

Here we had a good thing and it just started to go to Hell.  It was like carrying that object if was starting to get our your hands, but you hope that you can save it.  A normal weekend became the odd weekend, and then the whole thing went sour. 

Within two months, he had not only used me but humiliated me in the rawest, most hateful way possible.  The breakup?  It came in the form of a note that read "I can't do this anymore."  Not "I'm sorry for using your abuse as a turn on."  Not "I'm the one with the problem." 

Just five words and his name on a piece of paper, "I can't do this anymore."

I was devastated.  I cried for years, quite literally.  He took that secret of mine and used it on me, and I allowed that happen.

Making the matter worse was that he and his roommate had taken a place literally around the corner from where I lived.  That meant that I saw him and his new boyfriend "Joe" all the time.  And the salt was ground into the wound all over again.

Michael Gedling sent me into an emotional tailspin, and it wasn't until years later that I discovered what he had sparred me from.  And that tailspin - that was all mine as well.

I moved in 1985, to Clintonville, I got on with life, and assumed he got on with his.  I also got a shrink because I was not going through this again.

What the shrink taught me is not to accept damaged goods as part of the package.  He taught me to think better of myself.  He taught me to not tolerate a drunk.  He taught me not to tolerate a sex addict.  And he taught me that if the guy was adopted, he had better be at peace with it, or at least working on it.   I had my own host of horrors to contend with, and the shrink taught me that "needy" love would cure neither of me or the other guy.

Yes, I would make some of those mistakes with the next guy I was with.  And yes, it took me nine years, eleven months and two weeks to figure that one out, but I did it on my own.   

I may not be the sharpest knife in the block, but eventually, I cut through the smoke and mirrors.   But I am getting ahead of myself.   Because...

In the fall of 1992, Michael tried to worm his way back into my life.

I had come home from work one day and found him on my front porch.  "I bumped into Bill and he told me you were still in town.  So I looked you up.  How have you been?"

I was floored.  Why was he here?  What did he want?  We talked, and he asked if I could make him a cup of coffee.  I was, older and wiser.  I did not unlock my house, and he didn't get a cup of coffee.

Instead, we sat on the porch and I asked how Joe was - "Oh, that blew up..." and what he was doing in town.  He was "just visiting," having moved to Chicago.  He made his move, and I recoiled.  Nine years before I would have been putty in his hands, but I told him he should go.  He apologized by saying "Oh, I didn't mean to ruin anything or upset you."

And I responded that he didn't ruin anything, but that I was not going to let myself ruin anything for me.

He drove off and it was the last time I saw him.

Fast forward to 2007, the husband and I just celebrated our ten year anniversary. And I bumped into a mutual acquaintance who knew Michael and a few other people.  We played the game "whatever happened to..." and Michael's name came up.

"Oh, honey," my friend said, "haven't you heard?  He died of a massive heart attack in 1993.  He moved home from Chicago when he was diagnosed with HIV.  He died at work - he was terribly sick.

There is a moment when one's blood goes cold.  It was that moment when I realized that he could have taken me down as well.

What happened?  Some detective work and some calls got me what I needed to know to put this behind me. Michael seroconverted and in typical Michael fashion, decided that if he was going down from HIV, he would go down in flames.  He got involved with the raw leather community, had all manner of unsafe, unprotected sex, booze, and drugs.   For Michael, sex with strangers was a way for them to accept him on the most intimate terms.  By making it anonymous sex, he didn't have to accept them, or himself and he could walk away without guilt, without remorse, and without guilt.

That visit he had paid to me? Most likely he was POZ when he was at my house, and would have infected me given the chance.

Was he vindictive?  No.  I think he was angry and hurt. In some ways, he was more childlike than I had been. He wanted everyone around him to be in the pain he had been in.  He was angry at being placed for adoption, he was angry at being adopted, he was angry at anyone who loved him and he was angry at himself and this was a way out.   Thus his interest in my sexual assault as a child.  His parents betrayed him and it excited him when he could play out the role of my father betraying me.

But what he did was to others was criminal.  And I hope to God that the lives he jeopardized made it through the eye of the needle. Those were the years when the "Cocktail" was showing amazing gains in helping people.  Maybe they didn't get dragged down with him.  Maybe, right?

Anyway, I pulled myself together, and being rather logical about it, I ordered his death certificate, found where he was buried, and drove to the cemetery where his grave was, and took a moment.

Then I went to the car, got a trowel and bag from School Kids Records, and dug a hole at the base of the gravestone, and dropped in a copy of Prince's Purple Rain in the hole and buried it.

This is why I love my husband so. We are here, we are happy and we are healthy.  No games, no secrets, no damages that are hidden from sight for either of us.  Love is best when it is given and accepted.  And it takes someone special to accept what you can offer.  I could have ruined it all had I not gotten help, not grown-up, and not got smart.

Still every year, around this time, I get a bit sad.  Hurting me like he did was most likely his way of saying that I was too good for his type.  The pain, the self-exploration, and the strength to say no to him years afterward saved my life.  There is no way I could have saved him.   But I often think of Joe, the guy he dumped me for, and hope he is well.  I think about his roommate Ed, and have no curiosity for him at all. Now, Ed's old boyfriend Tom.  I would like to hear from him because he was honey.  The best of the lot.

So what am I getting at?

You can have a lovely teapot, and have it, and use it.  But if it breaks and you try and mend it, it's still a broken teapot.  It may or may not leak, or the handle won't always be trustworthy.  But if you keep using it, pretending nothing is wrong, one day the mend, the seal, the fidelity of the whole will come apart.  You can be burned in an instant, and you'll have scars for the rest of your life.

I know some would say throw the whole memory out, be done with it.  But then there is nothing to be learned, nothing to be reminded of, nothing of us when there was so little at all.  So, up it goes and on the high shelf, it goes for another year, to dust off next year at this time.