Under normal circumstances, we might not have met, Allen and I. But one day, I was talking to the chief executive officer of a not-for-profit I’m involved with, and I was telling her about the extraordinarily beautiful people I had recently been meeting and photographing. “Oh,” she immediately insisted, “you have to meet Allen. He works for us, and his story is amazing. Promise me you’ll talk to him. Promise.” And so I gave her my word.
This is how I found myself sitting in a café attached to a large, organic supermarket — I’d arrived early to enjoy a cappuccino and to make the day’s to-do list in my journal — when a tall, burly, good-looking man walked up to me.
“Are you Karen?” His eyes sparkled and his smile was warm as he extended his hand toward me. I stood and took it; he clasped my hand in both of his.
“I am!” I said, returning his kind gaze. “Please, sit,” gesturing to the remaining café chair.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” I began, as we both got comfortable in our seats. “Kelly speaks highly of you.”
“Oh, I adore Kelly,” he said. “She’s been such a wonderful supporter of mine. I’d do anything for her.”
“Well, I’m thrilled you agreed to share your story with me. She tells me it’s an amazing one.”
“I’m happy to share it.”
“So, tell me everything! You’re from Texas, right?”
“Born in Galveston,” he smiled. “I’m half-Mexican, half-white. The story goes that my dad was in the military, and he was hitchhiking from New Orleans to Missouri. One day, he stopped at the Mexican restaurant where my mom was working, and he thought my mom was so beautiful, he paid one of the other waitresses to introduce him to her. He says he knew that very day that he was going to marry her, and sure enough. Eventually they had my three brothers, my sister and me.”
“Did you have a happy childhood?”
“Not exactly — it was pretty traumatic. My dad was an alcoholic,” Allen answered, matter-of-factly. “I remember I was twelve when I started being his bartender. ‘Fix me a drink, boy, and make it a double!’”
The memory brought a wistful, half-smile to his face.
“That must have been tough.”
He nodded. “It wasn’t easy. In fact, that’s when I started sneaking drinks for myself as well.”
“Oh,” I said. And then, hesitantly: “I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand — and excuse me for asking such a blunt question, but — you saw your dad drinking and saw what it was doing to him and you started drinking, as well?”
“I know. On one hand, it doesn’t seem to make any sense, does it?” he admitted. “But back then I thought that alcohol was a really great way to escape. So I started sneaking drinks, and I started smoking cigarettes, which eventually led to marijuana. And then, I became a total juvenile delinquent. I was finally thrown out of school at age sixteen.”
“‘Finally’? What was the last straw?”
“I was drunk at school, and I hit a kid,” he said, rolling his eyes. “My parents finally had enough, so they shipped me off to live with extended family in Oklahoma.”
As Allen was speaking, I grew more and more surprised at his story. The man sitting before me wasn’t anyone I would’ve ever suspected has having a tumultuous life or a violent past. He was soft-spoken, with kind eyes and a quick smile. That’s some metamorphosis, I thought to myself.
“Did you end up straightening up after you moved to Oklahoma?”
“Nah. It didn’t take long to figure out who the bad kids were and where the drugs were. In fact, there was this one girl, Snaky-Poo …”
“I’m sorry, did you just say Snaky-Poo?”
Allen laughed. “Yes. She was this really beautiful girl, and she and I became friends. We’d get drunk together, smoke together, getting in and out of trouble … you know, as I think of it, I’m not sure I remember her real name, but we always called her ‘Snaky-Poo.’”
“Did you … and Snaky-Poo … end up getting thrown out of school in Oklahoma as well?”
“No, this time I actually managed to graduate. I finished in 1981 and moved back to Texas — Santa Fe, you know where that is? And then I got a job as a butcher.”
“You’re kidding. A butcher? Why a butcher?”
“The opportunity just presented itself. So I became a butcher at a local supermarket. It was a good job, and I was good at it. But I kept using — sometimes at work — and also, on the side, I started dealing.”
“Oh, God.” The thought of Allen using those huge blades while he had been high was terrifying.
“Yeah, it wasn’t good,” he said grimly. “The worst was that during this time I was borrowing my mother’s car, and eventually the cops showed up at my parents’ house. Unknown to me, the car had been under surveillance. Thank goodness the police knew my dad and knew that my mom couldn’t possibly have been dealing. But it was still a big mess. I’d been on the delayed entry program to join the Navy, so I was really relieved when it all blew over and I was able to enlist.”
“I bet! Kelly mentioned you’d been in the military. Tell me about the Navy.”
“I loved it. I started boot camp — thirteen weeks — and it was the best time of my life. I got clean, I was in great shape. I went to school and became a machinist. Then after boot camp, I was stationed in Hawaii.”
“Awesome.”
“You’re not kidding. I was on a fast frigate — there were 360 men on board. And spending all this time on the ship, with all the men, that’s when I started becoming confident that I was gay.”
“Wow. Had there been no signs before?”
“Oh, of course, I had had some experiences before,” he said frankly. “And I had incredible shame about them, as well. You see, you just weren’t gay in my family. It just wasn’t acceptable. So I kept it all a secret. It was awful.”
I couldn’t even imagine. Though my own life was nothing like Allen’s, I thought about things I’d hidden from my own family over the years — artistic interests that I didn’t believe my analytically inclined family would understand — and how I always suspected that my dreams of living a more creative life would be dismissed as impractical and therefore never have been taken seriously. The result was a dull, nagging feeling at the back of my mind as I followed a career path in more analytical, logical fields —jobs that, while I was capable of doing them, never felt fully authentic. If simply choosing to do a job different from what I wanted to do could cause me discomfort, I can’t imagine what it must have felt like for Allen to choose to be someone other than who he authentically was.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Well, I made this one friend, Tim. He was also in the Navy, and he was straight. We used to hang out together all the time — going to bars, getting drunk, flirting with women. Over time, however, I began to realize I was falling in love with him.”
“Did you tell him?”
“I did.”
“Oh. My. So … how did that go over?”
“Not well,” Allen said grimly. “He kept telling me not to say those things. And he tried to ignore me. Well, back then, I was still prone to beatin’ up folks, so when he didn’t listen to me and he didn’t understand, naturally I beat him up. It landed me in the mental-health ward of the base. I told the psychiatrist everything and was diagnosed as ‘depressed, with homosexual tendencies.’ I was in for ten days.”
He smiled wryly at the memory. “I remember at one point, I was lying in bed with headphones on, listening to, of all things, Barry Manilow. This older nurse walked up to me and said, ‘Child, you are depressed. Stop listening to that depressing music.’”
He laughed.
“So what happened when you got out?”
“Wait … you beat Tim up again?”
“Yup. I tried to talk with him about it again, and he couldn’t deal with it again, so obviously I beat him up again. And landed right back in the mental-health ward.” He shook his head. “This time they decided perhaps it was best for the Navy and me to part ways. They offered me an honorable discharge but required that I give up all my benefits.”
“An honorable discharge?” I was confused. “But I thought …”
“Well, because I’d never been caught engaging in any homosexual activity, they didn’t dishonorably discharge me. I happily accepted their offer. I’ll never say anything bad about the military — they always knew exactly what was going on with me, and through it all, my peers and my superiors were never anything but kind to me.
“So anyway, while I was waiting for my discharge papers, I was moved to desk duty. It was during this time that I met Mark. He wasn’t in the Navy — he was a professional ballet dancer, and he was so great. He was my first love, my first real relationship. Since I hadn’t actually been discharged yet, we had to keep our relationship secret — so I started telling friends and family that I was dating ‘Marlene.’ I was particularly worried about what my John Wayne like father would say, so I kept it secret. Once my discharge papers finally came through, I moved in with Mark. I remember I told my family, ‘Marlene and I broke up, and she moved out, so I’m staying with her roommate, Mark.’ It was the easiest way for me to start transitioning to the truth. And eventually I came out to my friends and family.”
“How did that go?”
“Surprisingly well. At one point, since I was still living in Hawaii, I came back to Texas to visit my family. And I remember one evening, my dad grabbed me by the shoulders and said, ‘Allen, I do not agree with your lifestyle. But you are my son. And you will always be my son.’ That was the beginning of the healing of our relationship.”
As Allen spoke, I saw relief wash across his face at the memory, and I smiled in recognition. In my experience, nothing is more freeing than being as authentic as possible with the people who love you — and realizing that they love you all the more as a result of it.
Then he continued, his expression darkening.
“Anyway, about two months into dating Mark, I noticed that he was acting strangely, that something was wrong. When I pushed him to tell me, he said, ‘I tested positive. You should go get tested, too.’ I immediately went to get tested and discovered I was positive as well. I was devastated — remember, back then, in the ’80s, an HIV-positive diagnosis was a death sentence. I ended up confiding in a mutual friend, and I remember him shaking his head. ‘God, I knew this would happen one day,’ he said, ‘ever since we found out two years ago that Mark was positive.’”
“Wait …”
“Yeah …” Allen interrupted, watching me process what I just heard.
“So wait, Mark knew he was positive, and he never told you, and gave you HIV?”
“Yeah.”
“Dude, I’d kill him! You must have been livid!”
“Oh, I was,” he said. “I raged for quite some time. But then, eventually, I calmed down. Back then, we were all struggling with this new disease, this AIDS thing. Ultimately I understood that Mark really loved me and was dealing with the diagnosis and how to tell me the truth the best way he could. So I came back, and I took care of him. For two years. I was with him until the end.”
“When was that?”
“January 7, 1990. He died at home. I loved him. He was the person who made it okay for me to be who I was.”
Allen paused for a moment, lost in the memory of that day.
“Anyway,” he resumed abruptly, “after he died, I was still in Hawaii, so I found a job as a butcher again. And then I became the worst drug addict I have ever been. I was doing marijuana and alcohol, of course, but also cocaine. I spiraled completely out of control.”
That’s the thing about heartbreak — it can convince you that not only have you lost control, but that you will never have any control again. It convinces you that there’s no hope, there’s no point trying to live anymore. It can be so hard to make yourself take even one step out of the hopelessness. Given what Allen had endured, I was amazed he was able to do it.
“So what happened?”
“Well, one morning, I woke up, and my pillow was soaked with blood — the result of a cocaine bender. The sight of that pillow was enough to convince me that I couldn’t keep living like this. I kept thinking about something my mom always used to say: stand your ass up and walk forward. So I finally did. My friend Carey convinced me to call a suicide hotline, and eventually Alcoholics Anonymous. I finally attended my first meeting.
“I’ve been sober for coming up on twenty years now,” he added proudly.
“That’s amazing, Allen. Good for you.”
“Thanks. It was hard work, but eventually I kept getting better and better. Then one day I saw an ad in the paper for a substance-abuse counselor for people with HIV. Even though I’d never had any counseling experience, I figured my life experience gave me something to contribute, so I applied anyway. I got the job. It was so great. The people I worked with and the people I helped were all so great.”
“It sounds like life was going really well for you, Allen. You’d clearly completely turned things around. Why did you come back to Texas?”
“Well, my father got cancer. Our relationship had increasingly improved over time. We had sobriety in common by that point — my father had started going to AA — so that helped as well. I knew it was time to go back. I moved back to Houston and began working at the Gulf Coast Center for the Mentally Challenged. And then, on my off time, I spent time with my father and helped him convalesce. By this point, I’d watched so many of my friends die of AIDS — really close friends — I had become very comfortable with death and being around people who were dying. I came back home, and by the end, my father and I were very close — I know I was the closest family member to him. When his time came, I was with him. At the end of the day, my father was the biggest character in my life. I loved him very much, and I’m so glad I was with him in the end.”
“You know, Allen, as I listen to you talk, I’m sort of stunned with your capacity to forgive, and to make peace with some really tough stuff in your life, particularly given your moments of deep anger and sadness. It’s amazing, really. How do you do it?”
“Well, see, Karen, the thing is,” he began, “after everything I’ve been through, when it’s my time to leave the Earth, I want to know that there isn’t any unfinished business. I’ve come to believe that love is the most important thing in life — and if that’s my guidepost, then I have to forgive, I can’t hang on to anger anymore, or hate. Now, even if people have a hard time with me, or how I live, I can’t be angry or hateful. I just embrace those who embrace me, and I pray for the rest.”
“That’s pretty big of you,” I said.
“You think so?” he wondered. “I don’t know — I’ve just realized it’s easier for me to forgive and love. Being angry and hateful just takes so much effort,” he smiled.
“But what about your life now?” I pressed. “You’re HIV positive … or has it progressed to AIDS?”
“Oh, yes, I have full-blown AIDS now.”
“So, how does this not make you angry? Don’t you have any regrets about this at all?”
“Well, obviously, there’s nothing cool about HIV or AIDS,” he began slowly, “but you know what? HIV and AIDS put me on a path of caring. It led to my eventual sobriety. And it teaches me to live every moment, because life is too precious to waste. In a lot of ways, HIV and AIDS are the reason I’m living a good, happy life now.”
I sat there in that supermarket café, looking at Allen’s kind face, his warm eyes and his smile. I realized, with a certain amount of shock, that being in Allen’s presence, even after hearing about all the hardship and heartbreak he’d experienced in his life, the emotion I was feeling was one of great peace. His capacity for reconciliation of the difficulties he’d faced in his life was inspiring. As someone with a tendency to worry and fret when things aren’t going my way, it was a lesson for me to consider a new way of approaching heartbreak. Perhaps times of hardship shouldn’t be viewed as crippling events, but rather as an opportunity to live as my best self, to live my best life. In some ways, the idea seemed ridiculous. Yet, in others, it seems like the only logical way to make it through — to accept the circumstances with peace, and resolve to carry on in strength.
Allen interrupted my thoughts.
“You see, Karen,” he continued, “the way I see it is that yes, I could’ve done without the pain in my life. But you know what?
“If that had happened, then, ultimately, I would’ve missed my dance.”
“I’ve come to believe that love is the most important thing in life — and if that’s my guidepost, then I have to forgive, I can’t hang on to anger or hate.”
Allen
