Each of the five great romantic loves of my life, Rosarita, Gianni, Teri, Les and Jed has imbued my life with so much richness. Each in their own way fashioning something new of my soft clay and sculpting at will. It has always been me, willingly giving myself over to each of these sculptor/lovers because I needed to be loved by them, to be held by them and to know myself through their eyes. They only did with me what I allowed them to do, so it is without any regret that I look back to each of them with fondness.
Rosarita was the first of my loves and 40 years after that first warm sunny day when we played together on a hill outside of Rome, she is still very much in my life; truly one of the most interesting, gifted, complex and beautiful women I know. One wonders what it is that keeps two people so tightly knit through so many years of lives lived thousands of miles apart. Our friendship could have just faded with time as most do when spouses and lovers come along - but it didn't - it grew stronger, more interesting and more delightful. Whatever it was that we found so attractive in each other as children has stayed with us through the years and continues to draw us together. Not all childhood loves and friendships survive the changing orbs of time and maturity as beautifully as ours has, and for that I feel really blessed.
When I was working in Rome awhile back, Rosarita, who's a concert pianist, was going through a rough patch in both her personal and professional lives. I arrived one night to find her curled up on her bed unable to do anything but cry. I crawled up onto the bed with her and held her in my arms and gently stroked her forehead while pulling her long dark hair from her eyes. There was nothing to say because after nearly a lifetime of loving each other, it was all understood.
Gianni and I were barely 21 when we met on the Adriatic Coast of Italy. I was a Mormon missionary and he was an architecture student and passionate communist. I guess love just jumped all the hurdles and went straight for our hearts. Our favorite saying over the years has always been, "A bird may love a fish but where will they build a home together?" After nearly thirty years of friendship, love, passion and sex, we still haven't found a way to have a home together but have come to the realization that we're happy with things just as they are.
I remember the night we first kissed; we were sitting on the steps outside the apartment where my missionary companions slept soundly inside, unaware of what was going on just outside the door. I had never kissed a man before and as I pulled back from that first sweet taste of Gianni's mouth, I thought to myself, "Where on earth have I been all my life, that only now am I getting to this?" It changed everything, as did the night we first crawled into a bunk together on a ship in the middle of the Mediteranean where I surrendered my virginity to him.
Teri and I were very much in love when we married in our mid-twenties after a yearlong courtship; both of us uncertain about everything except our love for each other. Like all three of my other great loves, Teri was an artist and as beautifully complex and fascinating as any of them had been. I knew as I had known with all the others, moments after meeting her, that our being together was a foregone conclusion. One of the first questions people ask me when they find out I was married to a woman is, "Did she know you were gay?" I don't know how Teri could have known because I didn't. Sort of. I think both of us thought that because we were in love, everything that had come before would just kind of disappear, including my homosexuality. It didn't, but we had a wonderful time together anyway.
Teri and I conceived and gave birth to our daughter Aurelia in a place of love and great happiness. For ten wonderful years we journeyed through a dizzying wonderland of challenges and adventures, arriving finally to the quiet realization that our time together was over and that both of us needed to be free to move on. Though our lives have moved forward in very different directions, my heart still holds her fondly in that place that's always been hers. We grew up together, raised a daughter together, laughed and cried and learned about the realities of life together. And today when I hear her voice, it's familiar and warm and reminds me that even though love can change, it rarely goes away.
Les took me to places nobody had ever taken me to before. Perhaps it was because I finally surrendered so completely to being who I was that he was able to lift the magic carpet up beneath the both of us and get us flying. Our time together reshaped who I am and everything I think and feel. It was an exciting ride and though I've held on tightly in the years since his passing, I'm finally letting go. Not because I have to, but because I can. I think I finally know that Les will never really be gone. He lives on in all the big and small parts of me, in all of the inward and outward folds of this fabric that is my life.
The life that Les and I shared on our little ranch in Arizona was my Camelot where for one brief shining moment, love lived strong and sure in the hearts of two guys who had waited a long time to find each other. We found each other on a crowded dance floor and held each other tightly for as long as we could, dancing as fast as our feet would carry us until the music finally stopped.