A friend of my ex died this last week. I had known him as
well as he had worked with her at an adolescent treatment facility in the
seventies. My younger son posted about him this week too, talking about how he
had been helpful when my son was in his teens.
I liked B. He was amusing and witty and quite smart. My real
first trip out of the country (not Canada or Mexico) was because he offered
friends of his family as host in London. We had a great time. He had a pilot
license and once took me up with him. That we nearly flipped porpoising on
landing didn’t diminish the experience. In fact it probably made it more
memorable.
After my wife and I divorced, he became part of her close
support network. I never thought much of it because by that time I was pretty
sure that B was gay. I’d never known him to date. I’d never known him to be in
any romantic relationship.
That got confirmed in the mid eighties when B showed up on
local television news as a spokesperson for NAMBLA, the North American Man Boy
Love Association. I was both shocked and somehow not surprised. It did prompt
me to say something to him the next time I happened to see him to the effect
that “If I find out that you have acted improperly with my sons, I will come
after you.” Not a threat I could have carried out, but I was pretty concerned.
In my late teens on my own in Boston I had been the target
of grooming efforts by older men that sometimes proved difficult to fend off,
and I viewed and still view NAMBLA as justifying that kind of predatory
behavior. And I know my cultural history and am aware that such “mentoring’ was
a common feature of elite Athenian society, among other places.
I supposed that my wife would not have found B acceptable if
he had been inappropriate with either my sons or the patients at the treatment
facility, but seeing him on the evening news jolted me.
I moved away, married and divorced again, and then settled
down where I am now with a lovely partner, friend, spouse. My connection with
my sons is somewhat attenuated by the miles, and certainly that with my ex.
News about B showed up on Facebook where I stay in touch with old and new
friends and my sons and their children. B was living in Thailand.
I never asked my ex about it but I had my suspicions about
why he was living there, and it raised all my hackles again.
Sometime during this last year my ex posted something about
B having cancer and coming back to the states for treatment. He had been
treated then returned to Bankok and not very long ago was readmitted to a
hospital and then to a hospice where he died earlier this week. I called my
ex-wife to offer condolences and then read a post from my son that talked about
B encouraging “a shy teenager to come out of his shell,” or something to that
effect.
My son is married with a son of his own. My other son is
married with two daughters. I don’t have much question about them knowing who
they are and living the lives they want to live.
As for B, I’m ambivalent. I think he was a good person. I’m
pretty sure he behaved appropriately and responsibly with my sons, and I’m not
about to ask them about it at this point. If there is something to tell, they
will if they want to. The ex had said something about B “having his quirks, but
don’t we all,” and I understood her, though I think of older men pursuing
relationships with under age boys as off the appropriate scale.
I understand the aspect of mentoring in that kind of
relationship. I think I actually may have benefited. I had a teacher who took
me in so I could finish my third year of high school without being disrupted by
a move to another city. I didn’t think so at the time, but now I am pretty sure
he was gay. He lived with his elderly mother and worked two jobs to provide for
her in case something should happen to him. His closest colleague at the school
where he taught was a flaming queen. He also appears to have known my father in
other contexts. My father was living with a younger man and had worked part
time as a waiter in a gay bar. My teacher was never inappropriate and was very
helpful in providing some useful life lessons.
So I wonder why B was living in Bankok, and I wonder about
his relationship with my sons. I’m pretty sure he was responsible about his
orientation, but there is the smallest doubt that nags a bit. Most adults do
manage themselves responsibly in this area, and most, as my ex suggested, are
probably not in a place to cast stones.
Yet despite my doubts about him, I still feel like a small
piece of me has passed on. Rest in Peace.
