“Oh, I’m sorry. This must be a hard day for you.” His eyes are full of empathy.
I shrug. “He’s been gone a long time, so it’s familiar, at least. But some years are harder than others.”
He nods before reaching out to grab my hand, giving it a gentle, comforting squeeze.
“Grief isn’t a linear process,” he says. “I know getting over a divorce isn’t the same kind of grief as losing someone you love, but I know about the good days and the bad days.”
I shoot him a grateful smile. We continue along for a few more minutes before he says in a quiet voice, “Does it help to talk about him? I’d love to know more about Richard.”
I raise my brows in surprise. “You would?”
“Absolutely. Anyone you loved that much must have been special.” Jesse smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling up, reminding me a little of Richard’s, and it suddenly occurs to me Jesse is about the same age as Richard was when he died. I don’t know what that means, or if it’s contributing to my mixed-up feelings around Jesse, but I can't worry about it right now.
I allow myself to relax as memories of my funny, charming, brilliant partner wash over me. “Richard was a force of nature. He was a lawyer. A fierce one. But he was great fun as well. Always knew how to make me laugh, and he made everyone around him comfortable. He was from Montreal, part of a big, tight-knit, French Canadian family.” I let out a soft laugh, remembering the fun we used to have on our visits to Quebec. “His twin sister, Celeste, still lives there. I rang her earlier to wish her happy birthday.”
“Oh, that’s great. How did you two meet?” he asks.
“He was one of the first Americans I ever met—or at least, I thought he was American at the time.” I chuckle. “I was twenty, freshly arrived from Ireland. I got the boot when I came out tomy family at eighteen, so after a couple of years kicking around Dublin, I took a chance and made my way to America.”
Some of the color drains out of Jesse’s face, and he swallows hard. “Oh, Martin, I didn’t realize your family had kicked you out. I’m so sorry.”
I shrug. “It was so long ago it’s almost like it happened to someone else. Coming to America was the best decision I ever made.”
He nods in response.
“Anyway, I started volunteering at a queer community center right after I got to New York. He volunteered there too, providing pro bono legal advice and services to the community.”
It’s been a long time since I’ve allowed myself to play with my memories from those early days in New York. They’ve taken on an almost antique feeling in my head. Like old photos that have turned yellow with age.
“Oh, right! And there was a movie about you two, right? That’s how Penn found you?”
I chuckle. “That sounds a lot more glamorous than it was. But yes, a few years ago, a young, queer filmmaker made a documentary about us. Penn caught it on TV one day, and that’s how I ended up atThe Open Door.”
“That’s amazing.” Jesse shakes his head. “You two did so much good work together.”
“I learned so much from him. There was a big age gap between us, almost seventeen years, but we were soul mates in every way I know of.”
“How long were you together?”
“I had him almost nine years. We lost him in 1998. He was quite sick for that last year though. By then, we had moved to Philadelphia to start a gay-friendly shelter and community center there.”
“Oh, yes, Penn told me that.” He pauses for a moment, chewing on his lip before he speaks again. “Do you… Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Of course. Anything,” I answer.
“Richard passed away from AIDS, right?”
“I nod. Yes. It was actually an AIDS-related form of pneumonia called PCP.”
Jesse nods, still chewing on his lip. “So, can I ask… how did you avoid getting the virus?”
“Well, like I said, Richard had a few years on me. Obviously, we’d both been with other people before we met, but he’d been out there longer. He was a young, gorgeous, relatively wealthy gay man living in Greenwich Village in the ’70s and ’80s. He was popular and lived his life to the fullest. When we met, because we were both volunteering at the Center, we knew things were risky, and we decided from the start that we were going to always practice safe sex. We were careful from the very beginning.”
“Oh, wow. Even though you were exclusive?” he asks.
“We decided to be exclusive pretty quickly after we got together. We figure he probably contracted it sometime in the late 1980s. But he didn’t show any symptoms until about 1995. He was officially diagnosed in 1996.”
“So the fact that you decided to use condoms all the time…”
