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Baby
I first met Harry when I arrived on Fire Island in 1993 to begin my summer job as a front desk employee for the Cherry Grove Beach Club. Harry was Puerto Rican, standing tall in a 6'1" and the lustful desire of most hotel guests and staff. His body was the color of cocoa left in the golden sun to darken to a sweet intensity, and perfectly toned with his muscular physiology. Harry could soothe any soul with his sinfully smooth voice, and always said baby like honey mead coating the throat. Harry and I were roommates for the duration of summer, sharing a room in the hotel for employees that consisted of a small refrigerator and two sets of bunk beds. Harry loved his Mary Jane and would smoke it with aplomb in our room. Harry told me often of his lover Timmy, a make-up artist from Pittsburgh but who spoke with a British accent. I forget how the two met, but Harry’s favorite story was of Timmy laying as low to the floor of the limo as possible whilst Annie Lennox sang her heart strong for the video “Love Is A Stranger”. Harry and Timmy loved one another, and Timmy’s blond beauty was a perfect match to Harry’s Puerto Rican heart.
Temptation is ever present on Fire Island, and I would see countless couples arrive for a weekend stay and leave broken-hearted and broken up. There were always so many men who would find one another attractive and have a fling. It was not uncommon to hear of a guest walking into a situation where his lover would be intertwined with another man in the bed. I would tell my gay friends to come to the island only if they were not in a relationship, because the forbidden fruits were too strong a pull not to taste. It is better to enjoy yourself on Fire Island as a single gay man, because even the couples looking for a third and a little adventure in their sex lives would part before their stay had ended. There were always the couples who didn’t tell one another of their indiscretions with random men encountered on the beach or in the forest commonly known as “The Meat Rack”, and it always surprised me when the sins were confessed and the relationship remained. Was it the power of love that forgave and held the cheating hearts together as one, or was it the fear of never finding someone like this again that provided the mortar for the relationship? The forgiveness of an indiscretion was a seldom occurrence, one that always took me by surprise.
I wasn’t surprised when Harry told me that he had a brief fling with another man on the island; I was shocked. I knew the man, he was a local from Long Island that would come to the island looking for a little summertime fun every now and then. This man pursued Harry with a thirst, and finally the hunt had ended. Harry told me that the two of them only played around with each other, and that was it. I don’t know if Timmy ever knew, but Harry made it clear that he never intended to do that again. I had no other choice but to believe him, and it was impossible not to believe otherwise when he spoke to me with his velvet tongue. True to Harry’s word, he never fell from the grace of his relationship for the remainder of the summer.
The end of summer was approaching, and soon it would be time for me to return to school in Brooklyn. I was standing in the room with Harry and noticed something on his face, a small blemish on his left cheek. The blemish seemed to grow larger as the days passed, and I told Harry that he should see a doctor soon—it didn’t look right at all. Harry assured me that he would be fine, and that he would see his doctor when he left the island and went back to live with Timmy.
People will always say that they want to keep in touch whenever something ends, but that so rarely happens with the hectic pace of life and forgetfulness of the mind. I didn’t keep in touch with Harry and Timmy, but I knew that the next summer of employment would bring us together again. Sure enough, 1994 came around and I was already making plans for my return to Cherry Grove as the front desk manager. I spoke with my boss Isaac on the phone about fellow employees and asking what they were up to. I asked about Harry and Isaac’s voice grew somber. Isaac told me that Harry was sick, that he had AIDS.
Harry did indeed see his doctor about the blemish, and he was given some prescription for his skin. The prescription triggered the heart of the beast, and the blemish quickly spread over his body. Harry never had a blemish, he has Karposi’s Sarcoma, commonly known as the “fisherman’s cancer” but now associated as a common infection for people with AIDS.
I returned to Fire Island and worked the summer without Harry, always thinking of him and missing him dearly when I sat in my room in the hotel. Harry didn’t return to the island, he was too sick to leave his apartment in the city, and rarely left his bed because of his health. August came too quickly, but Harry finally came back to the island to stay at a friend’s condo for a weekend. I was told that Harry wanted to see me, and I was beyond elation to see him again. I quickly walked to the condo and saw Harry, a former shadow of himself, and I tried so hard to hold back the tears already streaming down my cheeks.
Harry was already a thin man, but now he was emaciated. He smoked marijuana like cigarettes, because the THC was the only thing giving him an appetite. His skin – once a smoky caramel – was covered with the lesions of KS, and he sat in a chair wearing a bathrobe that gave the appearance that his body had weight. Harry wore a hat to cover the loss of hair that the AIDS medications took away from him, and he wore a pair of black-frame glasses to help him see. This is what AIDS does: it blisters the skin and sends daggers throughout the body.
But AIDS cannot, will not, undo the soul.
I hugged Harry without hesitation or fear, and I smiled as the tears continued to cascade down my face. Harry smiled and called me baby, assuring me that he was all right. Harry told me that his one fling from last summer was the silent punch, and whatever interaction he had with the man from Long Island was enough to give him this disease. I didn’t ask or say anything, I let Harry do all the talking when it didn’t hurt or tire him to continue. Harry and Timmy were still together, and Timmy was more caretaker than partner. Harry didn’t know what happened to the other guy, and no one had seen him around all summer, but he was sure that the one time, this only time, was the inception of this disease. Harry never once stopped smiling, and I could see his soul through all of these physical layers that were slowly decaying from the disease and the medications. I still saw Harry, the man who loved to dance and smoke and sing and drink and love and laugh and live with every ounce of passion that he possessed. AIDS had done nothing more than give him the strength he needed to prove that he made a difference in this world and in the hearts of men and women, regardless of how quickly he would leave this earth.
Harry died shortly after his visit to Fire Island. He is forever loved.
Sunday, 2002 December 01