Why He Started His Dumb Blog

I was this guy.

So, a few years ago I dropped out of polite society. I had been living in Washington, DC for three decades, having moved there right out of high school. Over the course of that time, I wore many hats: computer programmer, writer/editor, media relations, public affairs, advertising, brand management, speechwriting, advocacy, and a lot more. It was a good run. I learned a lot, had some fun along the way and even managed to put a few bucks into a 401k. 

But I was also seriously burned out. DC had been good to me, but thirty years was enough. When a company buy-out came along, I took  the money and ran. Drew (short for Andrew), my partner of 38 years, was a lifelong DC native. It turns out he's also fourteen years older than I. He was ready to retire and move someplace warm, with palm trees and sandy beaches. We sold the house, packed everything up and moved to Florida. 

I bummed around the beaches for awhile, found odd jobs here and there. After a couple of years wandering in that wilderness, I eventually found another nice, white-collar desk job, the kind with employee benefits, like health insurance and paid time off. 

Things went well until Covid hit and a lot of unforeseen things happened; key staff suddenly left and weren’t replaced; parts of the program were unexpectedly shut down; onerous new oversight requirements were put in place by the state grant managers. And, while all this was going on, a tragedy was unfolding in my family.   

I was this guy, too.

Taking this job had seemed like a sensible move. But what should have been an easy transition into the familiar emails and spreadsheets soon turned into a slow moving train wreck.

*    *    *

I’m trying not to let it feel like a colossal failure. There was a time I would have taken these workplace challenges in stride, fought my battles, and slayed everyone left standing in the arena.

 

And this guy...

But… I find my priorities have changed. I just don’t have the fire in my belly for the conquest anymore. I don’t have the focus, the energy, the wanting that drove so much of my career in the past. And if forty years working in the trenches have left me not rich, neither have they left me destitute. Job or no job, if I’m careful, I’ll have a roof over my head and food on my table. I have more options than I’ve ever had before.

I liked working.  But somewhere along the way I realized something: For the first time in my life, I am not beholden to an employer. 

I resigned last week. 

* * *

Covid broke me. I realize how preposterous that sounds from someone whom (as of this writing) has never had the virus. I’m no longer a nursing assistant, I don’t work directly with clients. I’m not an EMT or an ER nurse, or delivery driver, or a caregiver. I am not essential staff, not a first responder, not one of the countless heroes on the front lines of the war against Covid. 

But I’m a witness to these times. Covid wasn’t my first global pandemic. As a young gay man in the 1980s, I had a front row seat to the AIDS crisis as it unfolded in real time: the fear as people begin to fall ill and die, the deliberate lies and misinformation put forward by the GOP, the refusal to acknowledge facts and change behaviors in order to save lives. 

I’m gobsmacked by the vilification of Dr. Anthony Fauci by today’s GOP. Fauci, whose clear, unwavering, factual information about AIDS saved my life in the 80s — that Dr. Fauci, showing the same courage and commitment today in combatting Covid. He’s a national fucking hero who has saved countless lives over the course of his carer, and yet there are lunatics on Fox News and in Congress calling for his prosecution, his imprisonment, his execution. 

In the Fall of 2021, both of my parents died of Covid. They died just days apart, alone, in separate rooms. They had contracted the Delta variant at a church potluck where few, if any of the congregation were vaccinated or even willing to wear masks. In all, 5 people at this single event would die from that exposure, and in the ensuing days I listened to Sean Hannity and Donald Trump and Florida’s Governor Ron Desantis all declare that Covid was a hoax, and the vaccine was dangerous. I heard the then-president of the United States advise Americans to take a horse dewormer, Ivermectin, and speculate that bleach killed the virus. My parents were dead, but the entire GOP was pretending that this virus would just magically go away, that the scientists were exaggerating, that it wasn’t that bad.

Dad

Water under the bridge, as they say. And, while it was one of the darkest periods of my life to date, it also uncovered a trove secrets that had shaped my early life in ways I’d never understood, and answered questions I’d never even known to ask. I said goodbye to the redacted history I had known, and discovered a family I never knew existed.   

* * *

Mom

There was a joke I used to tell back in the day, long before anyone actually thought gay people would ever be allowed to marry. Ward and I had been together for about a decade, long enough to know the joys and aggravations of a long-term relationship. Many of our friends were also coupled for many years, though of course none of us with the benefit of legal marriage. In those days we made do with a patchwork of legal contracts designed to simulate the rights and responsibilities of a legal marriage that never quite measured up.    

“I wish they would let us get married,” I’d quip, “so we could finally get a divorce!” 

It was good for a laugh, but in truth it was just sour grapes. By reducing legal marriage to nothing more than an agent of legal divorce, I was easing the sting of deep cultural bigotry. None of us, in those days, ever really expected gay marriage to become a thing, not in our lifetiemes anyway. It was safe to joke about it. 

When I met Ward in 1983, he was living in my then-boyfriend’s basement. He’d been a sergeant in the Air Force during Viet Nam, got an honorable discharge, took a job as a psych tech at Sibley Hospital, and stayed there for 30 years. He didn’t earn much, but then, I wasn’t interested in him for his money. I didn’t need his money, I had a job, an income of my own. Ward appealed to me for other reasons. 

For one thing, he was a bit of a mystery. He lived in my boyfriends house, hung out in the same gay orbit, and occasioned the same gay bars. And he was prolific. If my friends could be believed, everyone at the party had had their dance with Ward. Everyone but me. Further complicating things was the fact that he was engaged at the time to a woman.  

Divorce was funnier then.

There was a scandal when we announced. This was two years later, long after he had called off the wedding and I'd left the boyfriend, Jon. Jon was livid at the news Ward and I had moved in together. He forbade any of our friends from having anything to do with us, and as a result we weren’t invited to brunch for at least three whole weeks. I’ll never forget his parting words to Ward, just before he slammed out of our lives forever 

“He’s NOTHING!” Jon shouted, pointing at me. “He only wants you for your BIG DICK and your MOTHER'S MONEY!”

Fine, so he may have been half right. But in all honesty, that moment was my first indication that Ward had anything. He drove a beat up old Volkswagen. He lived in a fucking basement, for gods sake. And anyway I had a job, made decent money. What would I need with anyone else’s?

Srsly, I had no idea he was rich. 

It was only much later, after 38 years together, after Ward had come into his money, and after I had walked away from a six figure income to follow him to Florida — it was only after all of this that I would be made to understand we are not married, never had been, never will be, not now and not ever.

I think about that silly old joke now, the one about marriage and divorce. I think about it a lot.

*    *    *

In 2010 my brother died after a brief but valiant struggle with a terminal illness. Pancreatic cancer is always unexpected and unfair, but it struck me as particularly true in Chris’s case. I had never once seen him use a drug, take a drink, or smoke a cigarette. It still seems horrifically unjust that I have habitually done all of these things. It’s a scandal to me that he should be dead while I am here to write these words.

Chris and I grew up in the same household, but we were oddly estranged through most of our lives. For one thing, he was five years older than me, and physically imposing. For another, we had radically different personalities. We didn’t look the same. We didn’t think the same way about anything. We fought constantly. We didn’t speak or relate in any meaningful way for 50 years. 

But we had reconciled in the years just before his cancer diagnosis. We had begun to share our stories and heal old wounds. We had finally started the long and sometimes arduous process of trying to become actual brothers to one another. Which I guess is why it was so excruciating to watch him die. 

I didn’t get to say goodbye to him. I was living in DC when he was diagnosed and I was struggling with an illness of my own. Over the years I had developed “a troubling relationship with alcohol” (my therapist’s words). There was an unfortunate DUI, a night in jail, thousands of dollars in lawyer fees, enrollment in an outpatient rehab clinic. Oh, and a revoked driver’s license that postponed my visit home to visit Chris. It was two weeks later, when I’d finally gotten my license back, that I finally made the long drive to Michigan where we grew up. 

As I was driving, alone, somewhere in southern Indiana, I suddenly heard my brother’s voice, crystal clear, as if he were sitting in the passenger seat. He said my name. Just that, very clearly: “Tony.” I am not given to belief in spooky things, and I don’t hallucinate. But I heard him very clearly. I glanced around my car to see if he was somehow in the back seat, I was that certain I had heard him in the car. There was no one there of course, I was alone. I was still shaking my head at the strangeness of it when my phone rang. 

It was my nephew Zach, his son. Chris was gone. 

Because of the DUI, my revoked license, the two week delay, I never got to see Chris that one last time. It was something important that I robbed us of. But that day, alone in my car, I believe my brother said goodbye to me. 

* * *

The DUI was a wake up call. Since then, I’ve struggled to quit alcohol for good, and I’m happy and proud to say I’m stable again. But life comes at you fast, and I’ve been down this path enough to know that while you can learn to manage the behavior of addiction, the condition doesn’t go away. With therapy and education and hard work, I’ve gotten a lot better at managing the conidtion of it as well. I’m not naive. I know that addiction isn’t something you cure for good. It’s something you get better at managing, or it kills you.  

So I got a DUI. Who hasn't? 

I remained with the outpatient clinic until we left DC. One of the conditions of the clinic was that all the patients had to agree to be on Antabuse. So I did, I went on the medication, went to group therapy, went to AA, did all the right things and actually made progress. But after we moved to Florida, my resolve started to go wobbly. No longer working, I didn’t have any particular structure to my day, didn’t have the clinic's support group, and eventually didn’t have have the medication. 

Antabuse suddenly became hard to find around 2018, the manufacturers had suddenly stopped making for some reason. It wasn’t available anywhere. Without my last medical crutch I soon found opportunity to drink again, and the whole nightmare started over. There was a stint in residential rehab here in Florida, more therapy, more AA, more intervention — and yes, more progress. I got better! I had another full year sober! YAY! And then…

Well, then Covid hit, and the world shut down, and my parents died, and my job went to hell, and my relationship ended. One night, after a year of hard-fought sobriety, as I sat alone, watching my parents die through an iPad, I relapsed and the machinery of my addiction started all over again. More interventions, more therapy, new tools and techniques, another commitment to sobriety made. As of this writing, I am more than another year sober, and another year stronger in it. My thinking is clear again. My hands don’t shake anymore. I am not having cravings. 

I am back from the brink. I’ve learned new skills, found new tools. I feel like the necessary components of sobriety have begun to coalesce into something sustainable and stable. It's not lost on my that I’ve been at this point more than once, and that I’ve said this before: 

It feels different this time. 

* * *

I guess it all leaves me a little breathless. In the last three years of my life, everything has completely changed. I’ve discovered that everything I thought I knew — about my family, about my relationships, about myself — were illusions. That’s not a bad thing, to finally wake up and see things clearly. But it’s sobering, too. I mean, what if it’s our illusions that have carried us this far? 

Anyway. People have been after me for awhile to write a book. Fine, I'll write the damn book. “His Dumb Blog” is the jumping off point for his dumb book. For now, its working title is “The Book With No Title Yet.” Here is where I’ll be exploring some of these topics, digging up old memories, and trying to make sense of it all as I stare into a blank screen. The material I post here may, or may not make the final cut in “The Book With No Title Yet.” 

There won't be any spoilers. There will be much more in the longer telling that won't appear here, and plenty here that won't be retold in the book. To be honest, I'm just not ready to put it all out here yet. I may never be ready. But I have a story to tell, and I am going to tell it.  

This blog is about all the things I must not say, and why I need to say them. 

Someone had to say it