Michael was a party boy, artistic in nature and abilities, sweet, sensitive, considerate. He grew up in poverty as a Native American in southwest Michigan and the U.P. At 9 his mother would pass him a joint and give him a beer when he wanted one. The mother’s husband/boyfriend of the moment decided that Michael made a good punching bag when he was about 12.
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So Michael walked away, put out his thumb on I-75 and hitched to Detroit. Got his own apartment and a job bussing tables – did a little hustling on the side to survive. At 12. To this day I cannot wrap my mind around this. By the age of 13 he had been held up at gunpoint once and been kept by at least two adult men. By 18 he had been an alcoholic for half his life. And by 23 he had lost the first love of his life to AIDS – another throw away lost boy who never saw his 30th birthday and that Michael never stopped grieving.
By contrast, at 12 I was a pimpled, overweight kid at Lincoln Junior High School in an upper middle class suburb of Chicago. My lifestyle resembled "Leave it to Beaver" but more wholesome and white. While my parents later divorced and the wholesome thing collapsed a bit I was still basically a naïve 31 year old suburban guy when I met the 25 year old Michael in a sleazy Chicago bar on Pride Sunday, 1993. I spotted him across the bar - short, slim with dark brown hair and a slightly exotic look about him that I couldn’t quite place. He was also rather drunk and a bit incoherent. Not my type at all – but somehow I was drawn to him and we ended up going home together that night. While Michael was a free spirit, a survivor, the life of the party and had been in numerous relationships; I was reserved, quiet, drank very little and rarely dated. He was incapable of making a living but lived large anyway – I made a good living and yet lived very little. On paper we could not have been more wrong for each other.
It didn’t seem to matter though – after I spent two weeks thinking of almost nothing but him we moved in together and celebrated our anniversary on Pride Sunday for the next eleven years. I don’t think I will ever again love someone so much or be loved so much in return. Michael taught me to live more for the moment, brought me out of my shell and introduced fun and interesting people to our lives that I would never have met or interacted with. I gave him stability, unconditional love, pulled him back a bit from some of his more self-destructive tendencies and gave him a reason to fight for his survival when he was battling the lows of the many family and health setbacks that kept relentlessly creaming him. He was the considerate one in our relationship – the one that remembered the little old lady’s birthday across the street and brought her flowers and baked goods. The one that nursed me through several rather nasty back injuries. The one that insisted on the sprig of parsley on the plate and the interesting centerpiece on the table at the dinner party. The one that could pull a piece of discarded junk out of an alley and turn it into art. I was the one that made sure the electric bill and the rent got paid and that the sprig of parsley was in the refrigerator prior to the party.
Michael’s passion was his art – especially his beadwork. He created spectacular necklaces, earrings and dream catchers. Early in our relationship I remember a pow-wow/arts/craft show being held at Truman College in Chicago – just a short bus ride away. Michael packed up three duffel bags of his jewelry and the furs, candle sticks, cases and other items he used to showcase it. And off we went on the bus. We walked into the gym where the pow-wow was being held and I thought just how out of his league Michael would be as a vendor. Other people had brought vans worth of items, expensive booths that took hours to set up, cash registers – all the makings for a real business on the move. But I thought wrong - Michael didn’t bat an eye – he just walked over to his small folding table, started opening duffel bags and setting up his display. And in five minutes time he had the most impressive display in the room. The other vendors literally stopped what they were doing to come over and see what he had done. It was as if Sitting Bull had done a display window at Bloomingdales. His cut glass and porcupine quill earrings glittered atop white rabbit fur he had found for pennies at a resale shop. Tall brass candlesticks held rich red candles that blazed at the corner of the table. The other vendors saw traditional and non traditional materials put together in ways they had never seen before. He held court for the rest of the day – didn’t sell much since his stuff was priced too high for the average "trinket buyer" that showed up. But it didn’t matter, he was in his element and happy and I was happy for him.
Despite the up moments like that pow-wow it wasn’t an easy 11 years. Our differences were large and hard for both of us to deal with. I hope I never again fall in love at first sight – or that someone falls for me that way. If our pairing had happened to someone else I would have said it was insane – completely irresponsible and illogical. We were too different, and he was too damaged. The trouble is that love isn’t responsible and it sure isn’t logical. And as tough as it could be I think we would still be together now if it weren’t for the booze.
I had never spent any time around an alcoholic before I met Michael. And when we met neither of us was thinking about the long term – in 1993 a gay urban man did not exactly have a long life expectancy. I tried many times to get him to stop drinking, to go into treatment. But he liked drinking and didn’t want to be talked out of it. He learned to be a semi-functional drunk – and not to be overly sloshed when he was around me. He toned down the partying – I loosened up. We fought about it and made up. And life and love went on.
About a year before he died I started noticing that he was having cognitive problems – although he was doing his best to hide them from me. His short term memory was going – he went through a period where he couldn’t remember a phone number long enough to dial it. As more time passed he became paranoid and delusional – convinced that people were breaking into our house (we had relocated to Florida) to implant "listening devices" in his legs. I was sure it was the drinking but I couldn’t persuade him to get help and since I had no legal power over him couldn’t force him to do anything. After he was gone and I sought grief counseling I spent some time describing Michael’s various idiosyncrasies – the ups, the downs, the weird sleep patterns, the ability to be friends with half the city and have the other half royally pissed at him at the same time – and the constant, never-ending drinking. Michael would roll out of bed (afternoon? morning? midnight? – didn’t matter) and immediately wander over to the fridge and pop open a beer. Never without one in his hand, but rarely seemed drunk. "Ummmm," the therapist replied, "what you’re describing isn’t alcoholism – that’s bi-polar disorder. He was self-medicating"
But while he lived I had no clue about any underlying mental health issue and I continued to try to get him to accept help to stop the boozing. After many false starts and a move back to Chicago (lost the Florida job) I finally got him into treatment. He had been hospitalized several times by that point and had nearly died twice with esophageal hemorrhaging related to the alcohol. I remember the December day 5 ½ years ago that I "succeeded" incredibly clearly. I had picked him up from his Michigan relatives where he had been staying for a couple of months to "think about" what he wanted to do about the alcohol. I got him to finally get in the car when we heard from a family member that that they were expecting a drug bust in the house at any moment. This type of warning was not out of the ordinary where Michael’s relatives were concerned. We pulled away just as the landlord was pulling into the driveway – I still don’t know if the landlord was there because of the rumored bust but even in his confused state Michael wasn’t interested in seeing the inside of a jail
I was both terrified he would chicken out again about going into treatment and hopeful that this time he would actually accept the help he so desperately needed. When I first saw him that morning I had been shocked at his appearance - he looked old, bloated, defeated. His usually perfectly cut hair – carefully blown dry in an eighties style that somehow he continued to pull off - was now instead oily, stringy and unkempt. He alternately rambled on about nothing, and then faded to quiet. During our three hour car ride he sometimes seemed like the old Michael – the one I had fallen for; but then would quickly dissolve into a place of paranoia and delusions. By the time I dropped him off, told him I was proud of him, told him I loved him; I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I was supposed to be able to see him again in a few days – though the treatment would take at least 30. My last glimpse of him was standing inside the center – on the other side of a small window – rummaging through his pockets for something. He didn’t seem to hear me when I called out goodbye. I left quickly – worried that if I didn’t he would change his mind.
Michael wandered away from the center after a day or two but because of medical privacy rules I wasn’t able to find that out for sure until I learned of his death. He became one of those crazy homeless people - the ones that you pass by and pretend not to see - and he wandered the streets and the homeless shelters for a month and a half. He spent his last Christmas and his last New Year’s alone and apparently not knowing or caring that I was desperately worried about him. And on a bitterly cold morning, one week and five days prior to his 37th birthday, he was found lying dead in the back yard of a north side two-flat. The night before had seen temperatures well below zero. Although he had been reported missing and had ID and contact info for me and for his family on his body none of us learned of his death for another three months.
I cannot begin to adequately describe the emotions I felt during that time – desperate for information, horribly worried, no idea what to do or how to act – and at the same time trying to find a new job while camping out at my mother’s house. At one point I received a call from one of the hospitals he had been in prior to going into treatment – they wanted their money and his Medicaid wasn’t paying. I heard myself telling them that he was "missing, presumed dead". It still seems surreal to have said that - I always thought those words were reserved for TV detectives or the talking heads on the evening news.
I found myself attempting to "network" at various events – I was rapidly running out of money and the job hunt wouldn’t wait. Someone would casually ask if I was married or seeing someone. How could I respond to that question? "Missing, presumed dead" seemed a bit much for an informal business conversation, anything else just felt like a lie. I finally got "the call" from a very kind Chicago police officer who had been helping in the search. I didn’t cry, I didn’t fall apart - I just felt numb. I think I had been grieving the possibility of his death for so long that the reality of it just didn’t hit me right away The irony of his "death due to alcohol treatment" did haunt me. For years friends and family had been lecturing – "if you don’t get him into treatment he will die". That only by being firm and practicing "tough love" could I have hope of saving him. I knew that if pushed he was stubborn enough to walk away – even if that decision was fatal. Now I had been proved right.
I no longer feel the guilt, the "what if" moments have passed. I know that I did the best I could. But in the year after he disappeared those feelings were overwhelming. I constantly worked through different scenarios in my head – what if I had been stronger earlier and been more insistent about treatment? What if I had just refused to buy the beer? What if I had kicked him out? No matter how I performed the exercise the result was always the same – he was still dead and nothing I would have done differently would have made a damn bit of difference – except that maybe he would have died earlier.
On the night of January 15th – the evening I later learned he had died – I dreamed of Michael. He had been missing for a month and a half and I was speaking to him on the phone. I kept asking him where he was, telling him we were worried about him, begging him to let me come get him. But it was as if he wasn’t listening – wouldn’t listen. He just kept talking about the pow-wow he was at. He was so excited and happy sounding - all of his relatives were there! Everyone was dancing! The arts and crafts were perfect – the real stuff, no trinkets! This was the best pow-wow ever! I became impatient, kept trying to interrupt, get him to listen, to focus on what was important, to tell me what I needed to know – I really didn’t care about the damn pow-wow – I just wanted to know where the hell he was! But he just kept telling me how happy he was at the pow-wow. And then I woke up.
The dream was powerful, disturbing, real and upsetting for reasons I couldn’t or wouldn’t identify. My mother the retired preacher grasped it immediately, gently tried to point me in the right direction but without success. I still had hopes that I would somehow find him and that we could have our life back. It was only later, long after I knew his fate, that I understood. Our last conversation had not occurred on that cold, stressful day in December when I delivered him to the treatment facility. And on that even colder night of January 15th when we did speak for the last time it wasn’t Michael who wouldn’t listen.