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?