some long lost friends stopped by for a day...

Michael Toliver Lives. He sure fucking does!

The very first time I can remember seeing a gay person on tv in a positive light was when I first watched the miniseries "Tales of the City". The two sequels were just as important to me... and then there were the books. I went into a crown bookstore deep behind the orange curtain of Republican/Christian ideals and proudly bought the books... wondering all the time if they knew what I was buying and what it meant about me.

Armistead Maupin has created a real work of art with his Tales of the City series. The latest book, picking up literally 18 years after the last one, may possibly be the masterstroke that keeps Maupin at the fore front of gay literature for years to come. All these books introduced at least one new character per book... so now all the originals are dying off and fading away in glory... while leaving this rich tapestry of sub-characters that you just don't want to see to go. So Maupin has set himself up to have another fifty books from these people.

Today I read it... yeah, the whole book. I couldn't put it down. When it comes to the people he writes about... you just cant hear enough. It's like running into a really good old friend and him telling you what the old gang is up to... It just gives you that rush of humor, joy and nostalgia all at once. That is what it is like going back to 28 Barbary Lane. This book was a perfect combination of wittiness, humor, tragedy and poetry.

"Some years back, when I was still single, the charm of the city was wearing thin for me. All those imperial dot-commers in their SUV's and Hummers barreling down the middle of Noe St. as if leading an assault on a third world nation. And those freshly minted queens down at Badlands, wreathed in cigarette smoke and attitude, who seemed to believe that political activism meant a subscription to OUT magazine and regular attendance at Queer As Folk night."

Ok... this is kinda coincidental... I just wrote a blog like this... about what I call "Baby-Gays". Naturally anyone that agrees with me I am going to remember their point of view. And use it to further my own!!!

" I wasn't feeling guilty. What I felt was the depletion of my memory bank, a hunger for more memories to hoard. I like remembering Mona... the Mona that stays with me is the late seventies model: loose-limbed and free as a sailor, with coils of lava-red hair radiating from her head. I can even remember the telltale sound of her footsteps (both the manic and depressive varieties) on the boardwalk at Barbary Lane. Mona had a full seven years on me back then, so I'd felt like her little brother. Now that I've passed the age she was when she died it's deeply unnerving to realize that she's becoming my little sister.

The same is true of Jon, my first partner - only more so, of course, since he's now been gone for - Jesus! - almost a quarter of a century. How impossibly young we were then. Jon was a gynecologist (I know, I know) and a lovely guy inside and out, if a little buttoned-down around the edges. Had he not died but simply moved to a distant city, I wonder if we'd recognize each other today were our paths to cross at a B&B in P-town, say, or an RSVP cruise to someplace warm and homophobic. Would there still be something he could love - that I could love, for that matter - or would we just swap email addresses and walk away, preferring to remember the old version of ourselves?

The young version, that is.
The only version I have left of him."

Maupin has a talent for writing in a way that when you read his work it feels like you are reading a letter from a friend. All these people that I have loved for so many years... I finally get to hear the end of their story. And they are joyous, and heartbreaking... and while your favorite of them may not have died in a grand sweeping journey or ended up quite the way you though... they still feel like your friends.

It still feels like these are real people and that is what happens to real people... they go on to live their lives. Not everything is story worthy, not everything goes into building a plot, and you don't end up where you thought you would with anyone... ever. Still they were your friends, and your family and they are still the people that you want to be there at the very end.

Thanks Armistead... You gave us an amazing journey, and friends so real I will miss them forever... Now, time to start a new one with all of our old friends new friends.