Just short of 63...
In this COVID-tainted age, I have probably as good a motivation as I'll ever have to get back to posting on LiveJournal - taking advantage of this "longer-form" medium, as opposed to the briefer thumbnails of Facebook or the slivers of Twitter.
My last post, from 2014, talked a little bit about Tyler Hayes, the lover who was with me for a short time - not even quite four years - a long time ago, but who changed my life in so many significant ways. It is because of our relationship that I was able to leave Utah (something I really needed to do after coming out as a gay man), and it was because of his death in 1993 that I became a homeowner, since he left me his condo in Palm Springs, California. There is a lot more to say about our relationship, how we met, how our age difference informed our lives, and how AIDS eventually claimed him. But right now I'm just going to observe to significant anniversaries.
The first is the 30th anniversary of the first time I came to Palm Springs to visit Tyler. We had met when we were both working on a cruise ship (which is a long story, perhaps for another time), and when his tour of duty ended a couple of months before mine, we agreed that I would come visit him right away. So it was that, right after Easter 1990, I flew to Palm Springs for an extended visit with Tyler.
I had suspected when we parted company on the ship that we would wind up as a couple. Our visit confirmed that; before long we started making plans for me to empty out my storage unit in Salt Lake and move in with him. That spring I met several of Tyler's friends, got acquainted with Palm Springs and its gay community, and generally acclimated to desert life. That was the beginning of our life together, though we had no idea at the time how short it would be. That was 1990, thirty years ago.
When Tyler died, he was a month and a half short of his 63rd birthday. (I was all of 36 by then). I had been touring in the orchestra of Les Misérables for a couple of years already, and Tyler had been in and out of Desert Hospital dealing with various ailments related to AIDS. At the time of his death, I was actually asleep in a hotel room in Knoxville, Tennessee; the next day the company rode a charter bus to Columbus, Ohio for the next week's performances. I found out after we arrived at the hotel, where a message had been left for me. To my surprise and relief, the company manager insisted I fly home the next day so I could take care of things; touring management, it turns out, are familiar with the necessity of adjusting and covering quickly when a company member has a death in the family.
I mention this because in mid-May I will be the same age that Tyler was when he died. He was by no means an old man, but he was certainly a whole lot older than I at the time, and - you'll understand this, I think - I just don't think of myself now as being that old. But here I am, within a couple of months of 63 years old!
If I'm still on LJ in December, I'll observe what would have been Tyler's 90th birthday. Blows me away to think of it. It would blow him away, too, to see what all has come to pass in the last 26 years since he left us...