DEATH AMONG FRIENDS
By Moses Levi
First published in Devil’s Advocate Magazine, July 1996
“It was a masterstroke only made possible by a certain kind of genius. His was a mind of uncommon integrity, rarely found in organized criminality.”[1]
………………………….
This is an eulogy for my dear friend, Douglas Hartford, who was more of a “man” than those “men” who presume otherwise. May he rest in peace.
It was obvious by his presentation and affectation that he was a gay man, but he was my partner, my best friend. We had no resentments between each other. He was a lovely person. He was my brother. I loved him. That was all anyone ever asks for.
His queerness was not hidden. It was linear. It was analog. It was the singular detail that you did not need to know in order to respect or appreciate him. I understand that. If you are a hetero person with religious inclinations which demand that you hide such substance from your own human experience, you are what you are – but that is anyone else’s burden to carry. God has no place forgiving you for your inclinations, and neither do I. You are as you are. I can understand confused sentiments, since some god-fearing faith monger has earned the respect of those less resolute – their tendency is to greenlight hate, fear, twisting the ideals of an ancient messiah in order to hide their own shame. I get it. I don’t absolve you of the persnickety wiliness of it all. That shame is hard earned by faithless hypocrisy. It’s never an easy bed to lay in[2].
My friend was no sinner. He was no simpleton. He was not a creep looking to wank your boy children. He was a man who loved men. Perhaps that’s God’s mistake. As far as I am concerned, there was nothing of the sort. He loved me. It took a very long time to appreciate that he was more passionate about my work than even I was. In fact, I was rather apathetic. That is all that need be said about it. He wasn’t looking for anything but love. Isn’t that what your god preached? Love? Above all? He earned it.
We’re all motivated by the same things. Its simple to understand. Its not beyond Maslow’s basics, you know, water, food, shelter, sleep, safety, and whiskey. The natural extension of this is as obvious as our transition from infancy to childhood, the needs of stability and security, protection, freedom from fear, structure, order, lawfulness, love, and sex -- within the reasonable limitations of dangerous activity. One might say, “Don’t let your kids shit in the drinking water, but if one does, scoop it out.” Maybe put up a warning sign. Maybe teach them not to do that.
Social needs are as important as those basics for survival, the scientifically minded amongst our kin have discovered that family, community, connection and, such icky realities as love, fucking, kindness, and whatever joy that can be found between two or more sentient beings is all that really gives anyone purpose and meaning in their lives. Some might call that happiness.
We all want acceptance. We all want attention. We all want appreciation. We all want to know how we fit into the lives of others, our communities. Being of service[3] is the greatest of human achievements, so say the enlightened, as self actualization as a human being transcends the need for public recognition – fulfillment lays beyond established hierarchies and accolades. We all need to know how we belong, and if the normative conditions of belonging no longer suit our own personal experiences, then perhaps how we differentiate another’s needs from our own with respect that another’s sense of intimacy is different from our own ought to be considered. Just as we might extend a hand of friendship to a tribe whose laws and attitudes differ from what we have been conditioned to call "moral", the wiser amongst us may attempt instead to appreciate a context in which others enjoy freedom and sovereignty in their own way, and maybe we could broaden our own conditions of understanding to accommodate an appreciation for diversity. The old heathen religions understood this well, “An it harm none, do what thou will.”
Doug was a drug dealer. Doug was a criminal. As far as the straight normative world was concerned, he was a fag and a criminal. He was a shameless sodomite, and a disgusting drug peddler, besides.
“Doug, are you sure? This is the kind of thing that, if’n you get nabbed, you’re fucked beyond fuck. Smart one’s keep their heads low, they don’t shine a spotlight on their own situation. The big guys got boys on the street for this shit. Why put yourself out there?”
‘Fuck, Micky, just let me do this thing without squabbling about it. No one needs to care about where it comes from. They only care that its decent, and not going to fuck anyone up. You’ve got connections, sure, but those boys on the street ain’t gonna deal kindly with queers and dolly’s looking for a good time. They’re going to cut their stuff with garbage, maybe even strychnine, just to get a giggle out of the news. You know how it is. You KNOW!”
“Dougie, I know. I do know. I don’t want to see you get in over your head. There's no honor amongst junkies.”
“Honey, my neighbor just OD’d yesterday. Doc said it was poison. A hot shot. Not a bad batch, targeted. She might as well have been jumped by Nazis, Mick. If we don’t do something, more and more people are going to die out there. I gotta do something. Give the ladies a clean source. No one else cares! We’re all dirty cunts to them.”
“I care about you. You care about them. I just don’t want to see you getting into something you can’t handle. Fuck, I know that I couldn’t handle that kind of heat. They’ll fuck you up, inside and out. Are you sure you’re sure?”
“Everyone’s asking for it. Clean. They’re not going to stop using. The best we can do is give them a clean fix that’s not going to poison them. They’re good people on the dose, even if they're on the dose. They’re going to hit from any source they get. Random people are going to die. All of them are going to die, Mick!”
“If you get snitched, can you keep quiet? If you get pinched, can you handle the beatings? Deep fryer grease ain't the same as virgin olive oil.”
“You know me. You’ve known me since we were showering in the same locker room at the YMCA. Come on. I know that you’re not into my kinda scene. You know that I wouldn’t push my vices on you. Besides, if I get nabbed, I’ll be a five bit in the stall, and everyone knows that straight boys on ice want a warm wet hole to get off in. Besides, they're more of my kind inside than there are yours. I'd be in good company."
……………...
That’s how Douglas and I got into it. We grew up together out East. He was the tall, good looking Catholic altar boy, fucking tight little spinners this way and that, and all the while playing pride with the Chorus Boys after Mass. But, once out in the real world, he sowed his wild oats in less fertile fields, brother against brother, armed against a blind eye and a hate filled supply of closeted uniforms and dirty ass bandits.
He became the dude in the finely tailored jacket, slicked back hair and a sacred heart tattoo on his bicep, just looking for a sense of freedom in a country that pretended that freedom mattered. He served his country when called upon to do so, two tours in a foreign country, in a war which made no sense, for a country which never cared about freedom for Pony Boys.
He got into this game knowing homosexuality was a degenerate disease. Everywhere it was stigmatized, perverted, dirty, and corrupt. But it’s been around as long as humanity. Socrates was a notorious ass monger. So, too was King David of the Israelites. I’m not one to judge a Priest-King’s union with an Angel’s Son. It's not my place. Achilles loved Patroclus. King Edward the Second mourned for his lover Piers Gaveston as David had mourned for Jonathan. Philip The Second Augustus was one. King of France loved Richard the Lionheart as his own soul. Both Donatello and Michaelangelo were openly homosexual, as were their renditions of David equally so. DaVinci had his moments of indiscretion. Plato. Some have even called Jesus’ and John’s intimate relationship into question. The most outspoken outspoken hellfire and damnation preachers are notorious pedarasts.
My love for Douglas was equally a lifelong connectedness, deeply and soulfully felt, though never expressed physically, or sexually. But I loved him more than a brother, more than a friend, more than anyone I have ever known, and yet, less. I comprehend the connection that spirit makes, and I understand the need for a love more wonderful than that of a physical sort. But to insist upon a platonic interpretation of love is to forget that Plato himself was a rampant pederast, whose lustful inclinations were as self-effacing as those of Roman priests seeking worldly comfort in the hearts of kind-arseholed altar boys.[4]
I don’t want to make light of the virus and its effects on any community, especially those whose proclivities made them easy targets for media brutalization, but at the end of the day, drug use and unprotected sexual activity provided the perfect storm for the spread of HIV, and thus AIDS, and made junkies and queers easy targets for religious and political talking heads to twist their proclivities into propaganda and wage a campaign of fear mongering upon an already anxious world.
Stigmatization ran rampant from the early ‘80s on to now, and especially targeting homosexuals and drug addicts. Rock Hudson may have sensationalized HIV in ’84, but it was John Holmes that drove it home for middle class straight swingers in 1988. At some point, it became an imperative for educational systems to begin openly informing children of the dangers of intravenous drug use and unprotected sex, feeding minds already infiltrated by overwhelming fears of nuclear war and terrorism, saturating each and every child with disasters the kind of which were both outside of their control, and within grasp of communal appreciation, if not communal horror.
The final chapter of any story is as sure as Sherlock Holmes explaining the meaning and context of the mystery -- no easy narrative, since you couldn’t appreciate the details which were shared with you from beginning to finish.
Douglas Hartford was a celebrated homosexual and drug addict, but advocated for safer drugs and safer sex. His was a cause which had, unfortunately had never reached the interest of the media, must now be publicized in respect to his legacy. He ensured that those he provided drugs to were given only the purest and safest, pharmaceutically clean product available, and insisted that his customers be provided clean needles, proper instruction on hygiene, and helped hundreds of junkies find their way to kicking the habit when the time came for them to give it up. Doug was known to have paid for rehab for many of his clients, and supported their break from addiction. He may have profited from illicit drugs, but he was moral in his methods. He did not “live life large”, as so many underground personalities have become known for, and much of his earnings were privately donated to charities and organizations towards finding a cure for HIV and AIDS, as well as sex education, human rights, and the social normalization of gays and lesbians in American media. His activism was, and remains as his legacy, a message of love and acceptance. A message which was never going to be appreciated by Nancy Reagan's war on drugs.
No one has ever heard of Douglas Hartford, unless they have been directly influenced by him, but his hand has reached the world, and it is my hope to give this secret humanitarian the honor that he deserves, since, without my testimony, he may only be remembered as just another “junky queer”.
[1] A quote lifted from the short story “Little Bones”, by Moses Levi. It was this line which kindled a friendship that lasted a lifetime, and overcame dangers which will remain unspoken of. The dead tell no tales, and the living dare not summon angry ghosts by revealing the stories they have taken with them to the grave. And those graves are abundant enough to keep secrets for all of those spirits, guilty and not so much.
[2] Just ask James Bakker, fraudster and closeted pervert.
[3] That is, our usefulness, or utility to the whole of our influence, as a gift by which we may improve the lives of anyone and everyone we can. One could call it a gift to humanity, our species as a whole, to give the next generation a proverbial “leg up”. Calling it a “gift” is not to say that we offer it for free, necessarily, as competition and profit are two elements which motivate progress and improvement (refinement).
[4] “In the arseholes of kind hearted altar boys”, or so a friend of the cloth recently related to me.