Ryan

Pen introduced me to Ryan at a Gay Men’s Chorus event to raise money for aids victims in Washington D.C. He wasn’t a flamboyant man, even in the company of gays, but he definitely had a flare. His smile brightened any mood. His dark brown eyes twinkled with mischief. Ryan could turn a tense moment into a belly laugh. He could hold the hand of a horrifyingly emaciated friend and talk of the future then cry loudly and openly when that friend died.

 

Ryan was born in 1947 and was raised in Silver Springs, Maryland (a suburb of DC). He adored his mother who died when he was nineteen and despised his father who regretfully is still alive to this day. 

 

You have to get Ryan pretty drunk for him to talk about his childhood, but when he does, he recounts nothing but joyous moments with his mom and her parents. They would go to the beach and get sick from sunburn and laughter. They would have tea parties and let Ryan dress up in anything he wanted. When he would get into a fight with a neighborhood kid, his mother always assumed it was the other kid’s fault. When his teachers complained about bad grades, she always assumed it was the teacher’s inability to address his unique talents.

 

Ryan’s father, on the other hand, was abusive. 

 

“Every time he walked into the house, a menacing cloud came with him,” Ryan once told me. “You could smell his meanness like you can smell rain coming.”  As soon as his mother heard his father open the front door, she would stiffen and freeze, like a deer at the sound of a twig breaking.

 

His father is why Ryan signed up with the Navy during the Vietnam War. He wanted to be trained to eliminate an enemy. He wanted to fight. He wanted to hit back. He did everything he could to become a warrior. Fortunately (my take not his), Ryan had a beautiful baritone voice which his commanding officer noticed and quickly transferred Ryan to Guam where he trained to be a Sea Chanters, the official Navy Chorus.

 

After the aids epidemic became less intense with the introduction of an antiviral regime, both Pen and I lost touch with Ryan. By then (early 90s) most of his friends had died and those that hadn’t were so scarred by the indifference and brutality of employers and doctors and landlords that he went into hiding. 

 

Today, he tells us that he spent the 90s and 2000s on a roller coaster of extreme guilt (I did everything they did. Why didn’t I get it?) and extreme anger. He became monastic. He had a hard time holding down a job. What I have noticed since he joined our little community is those once sparkly brown eyes are now fierce and at times scary. He is still a very kind man. He still can make me laugh. But there is a storm brewing behind his easy smile. And there is danger.

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