The Piano Bar

The old man who lay dying in the last episode of “Nurse Jackie” was alone, and to make up for it several of the staff were at his bedside.  Thor, the gay ward aide, noted that he recognized the old fellow from nights at a gay piano bar at which he had been one of the amateur singers.  Then Thor, visibly crying, cleared his throat, and told the old man what an inspiration he was to Thor.  That he had lived through the years of his youth in the humiliation of the closet, and constant fear of exposure, that he had been part of the crowd who stormed the police outside of the Stonewall Bar, that he had suffered and cried as he watched so many of his cohort die of AIDS.  That he had been brave, strong, and gracious, never surrendering to the hate and ignominy that the greater world might want to dump on him.  It was a very moving speech, and of course it had to remind the viewer with any sense of history how different the world was now for Thor and his younger friends, contemplating dating as teens, marriage as a normative goal, children perhaps, certainly a life of friendships as a public phenomenon.  I could not help but think of how the fateful decision I made at twenty one to marry, not as cover under which to hide my gayness, but openly to a knowing woman whom I cared for, removed me from the life of a gay male.  And I mean “gay” the piano bar, the AIDS, the Stonewall raids, the affinities and friendships forged in Fire Island and Provincetown and the Castro.  No, I was home sitting in a big chair balancing a martini in one hand and reading Good Night, Moon to a phalanx of yawning tots.  Thor’s pean of praise, as they say, made me feel sad and wanting.  I wasn’t there when it counted, I wasn’t manning the barricades.  When critics say that my memoir “is not gay enough” whatever that is supposed to mean, I guess it means I wasn’t there when it mattered.  I was too young to serve in the Second World War, and excused for medical reasons for the wars that followed.  So I wasn’t there with all the guys at the landing at Salerno, Normandy, and, yes, thank god, and yes, most told me they wished they hadn’t been there, but when the crowd stands around the piano and sings and the memories of day of yore flood the atmosphere, I am not there.