150 Years Ago Today

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

You were wrong, Abe. We have long remembered your words. Alas, we have mostly ignored them.

Why am I alive?

As we come up on the fiftieth anniversary of that horrible day in Dallas, I have been watching a lot of the Kennedy specials on TV. The Zapruder film still makes me cringe, John-John’s salute makes me moan in sadness and seeing Jackie kiss the flag-draped coffin feels as painful today as it was a half-century ago.

It has become a cliché, but like most Americans my age I remember where I was when I heard the news and I remember almost everything of those four dark days in November. Hell, there was really only one thing to remember: sitting in front of the television in our national living room. Before that though, there was the eerie stillness that was downtown Atlanta on November 22, 1963. Cars had pulled over to the curb, with crowds of people gathering around the radio to listen to the bulletins. Women, and not a few men, were sobbing in public. The long bus ride out to my suburban home was sad and somber.

My friend Don asked yesterday why we are so caught up with this, fifty years later. I think a lot of answers can be found in Alessandra Stanley’s excellent piece in the November 14, 2013, New York Times, “We interrupt this generation…” Click here to read it.

As fate would have it -- cruel bitch that she is -- I learned today of the death of a vibrant young man I knew in the 70s. We met at the third Gay Academic Union conference in New York City in another November, 1975. Like me, David was involved in the gay student group at his university (Maine) and had come to New York to learn and network. Like me, he couldn’t resist an attractive man and so we ended up together, though only after a lot of “no, this is NOT why I’m here” back and forth.

David visited me twice in Richmond and though we were in contact for over ten years, we never became a couple. We eventually lost touch and I cannot even tell you how or when he died.

Like John Kennedy though, David’s was a life unfulfilled.

As the leafless November winds blow I look out the window and note the five graves on our property, the markers of five beloved dogs that have graced our lives. Some of them were like John and David, taken before their time; some lived long, fulfilled lives. I miss them all.

I think too of past boyfriends and though I have no idea what happened to a couple, I do know that five have died, four from AIDS. Death of course comes for us all, but my generation of gay men answered his call in far too great numbers, far too soon. Just as did John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

And I wonder, why am I alive?