Prayers for Bobby - Leroy Aarons [75]
At one time the parade had exuberantly celebrated the healthy, muscular, and randy entitlements of gay freedom. Now among the hale were to be seen prematurely aged young men limping by or being pushed in wheelchairs. At this point, more than twenty-one thousand Americans had died from the disease (a tenfold increase in the four years since the time of Bobby’s suicide). Tens of thousands of San Franciscans were HIV-positive.
The P-FLAG contingent kicked off and the crowd cheered. It cheered louder and longer for them than for any other contingent. Mary was astonished at the reception. She had no idea the presence of parents would mean this much.
Yet with each burst of applause, Mary felt more uneasy. The old familiar pattern of guilt and sadness came rushing back. All around her, parents marched with their children. There were sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, even pets. The glow of love and pride shone in their eyes.
She could have been there with Bobby. She imagined him beside her, tall and grinning, proud and confident. How could she have been so wrong? “I don’t deserve to be here,” she thought. “I’m not what they think I am.”
On the sidelines, tens of thousands of spectators shouted their encouragement as the P-FLAG contingent passed. In contrast to the dark subtext of much of that year’s parade, the parents’ presence radiated hope and optimism. Mary took in the vast procession of faces in the crowd, of all ages and hues, eager and smiling, almost childlike. Some were openly crying! It occurred to her that every gay person must see in the P-FLAG contingent the reflection of his or her own parents. Projected on these marchers were tens of thousands of child-parent dramas: love, pain, rejection, joy, denial, fear, remorse—the entire palette of emotions. The marchers were parent surrogates upon whom each observer could project the longing for reconciliation, the yearning to relive the experience of unconditional acceptance.
Mary spotted a man in his late thirties standing on the sidewalk at the edge of the curb. As she approached, she could see that he was quietly crying. Something impelled her toward him. She came near and embraced him. He hugged her back. They held each other tight, saying nothing. But Mary felt as if, in that moment, years of misunderstanding had been bridged.
She returned to the line of march, greatly moved. That was the embrace she wished she had been able to give her own son. But there were tens of thousands still living who longed for such acknowledgment, many of them in suicidal despair. She now understood why she was there. She was there for all the Bobbys still living. There was no longer time to indulge feelings of guilt and remorse. There was work to be done.
She quickened her step to catch up with her Diablo chapter as it made the descent down Market Street just before the parade reached the civic center. From this vantage point Mary could see virtually the full length of the parade, both ahead and behind. Her heart leapt as she felt herself in concert with this great wave of humanity winding its way in the direction of San Francisco Bay as it turned onto Van Ness Avenue for the final leg. Mary noticed that the sun had pierced the morning fog to reveal its midday brilliance.
TWELVE
On the Road
MARY, 1987–1992
The next months and years were to be exciting ones. Shedding the protective shackles that had kept her spirit in check for fifty years, Mary was poised to experience the world with the newness and wonder of a person for whom everything is possible. She would make new relationships and modify old ones. She would challenge habits of fear and inferiority, passivity and hopelessness. It would take courage.
Mary had come to understand her mission. A wrong had been done and a life lost as a result. She was determined to right the injustice and save lives. She wanted to buy some time for other youngsters so they could survive the shaky adolescent years—hard enough without being lesbian or gay—and make it to adulthood. If she could affect just one person’s life, it would be