Still Basking in Easter's Glow

My computer was hit with an awful illness that left me without Internet access and I missed posting this for Easter. I wanted to write about faith because I am full of it.

Once, a woman wearing a pixie kanekalon sat in front of me in a classroom in Harlem. She turned to me and said, “There will be a rapture, and you and your people will not be invited.”

I wanted to pull the wig off her head, but what I really wanted was invisibility. I was wearing a simple black t-shirt and old navy jeans and doing my best to blend in with a new and unfamiliar culture, but it wasn’t working. The old me, the strong me, the loud and in-living-color me, would have always been visible: A punch to my heart could not stop my shine.

It is because of faith that I am still standing. I believe in the beauty of this world and, as Macy Gray says, “Shake your booty, boys and girls.” When I was a young man in my first year of nursing that was all I wanted to do, shake it to the left and then shake it to the right. At times I even got down to the floor. On good days I could wave my hands in the air, and yes, even spin (up until I started spinning in my own head). Everything feels right when young hearts run free, and in those days "funky" was a good thing.

Feeling funky was the “feeling groovy” of the late 70’s. I was renting a small house in Waikiki and my sister Lydia came to live with me. She turned 18 and had run away from an abusive grandmother who made her kneel for hours on uncooked rice in front of religious statues. My grandmother, who lived on a different island, had been in the witness protection program but gave up on it after living in Ohio for many years. She said, “Fuck ‘em. Let 'em find me and kill me.”

Lydia, and my friend Artrella Artrolla, took in every wayward gay living on the streets and we somehow ended up living in a house of 16 people. I made many rules and one of them was, “No turning tricks in the bathroom.” I could handle many things but I still wanted to protect my sister from the cruel life of the streets.

Lydia collected change from everyone and made a pot of beef stew and rice every night for dinner as long as I can remember. Sometimes she changed it up with a Hawaiian specialty, spaghetti filled with hot dogs. Lydia worked at an ice cream stand on the beach and would serve Japanese tourists peppermint ice cream all day. It didn’t matter what they really wanted, Lydia would take the scooper and give them peppermint all day long, and no one would dare complain. One strong look from my sister could turn a tourist to stone.

Lydia, Artrella, and I were strong-willed people with big hearts and every Easter I think of those wonderful times. I lived in a house full of laughter and flooded with tears. Everyone who came to our home entered with a broken heart.

We attended service on Sundays in a beautiful old church on famous Kalakaua Avenue and sometimes Artrella wore heels, even though he was a very handsome man. In 1978 gays were taking to the streets in butch clothing and high heels, it was a courageous act that required boxing lessons and heavy bleeding. Artrella didn’t care and showed me that the freedom to live out loud was more important than living a lie. We were the best of friends in a time of innocence in the early sunrise of the AIDS epidemic.

One evening, the entire med-surg unit in which I worked came to our house to celebrate a young RN’s upcoming wedding. Our house gave her a shower she would remember the rest of her life. Drag queens strummed ukuleles and danced the hula. Guests lip-synced Melba Moore and Stephanie Mills, and finally all the young nurses pinned Woolworth panties on the Bride to Be instead of “dollahs.” There were many cultures represented that day; Japanese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Chinese, Black and the “Gay,” with every one getting along fantastically. It was about the celebration of life and the perseverance of faith, or as the Hawaiians say it, “Fate.”

Artrella called me from San Francisco a few years later when he became ill and I left Hawaii to be with him so that he would not die alone. That is how I ended up in the City of Fog. Lydia had left the Waikiki house after falling in love with a big Samoan man. He once broke the big living room window and when I asked Faa-Faa why he did this, he replied, "Because the door was locked." That's when I realized that my sister did not know her worth, but in the days of our youth, who did?

I stayed with Artrella in the hospital on Divisadero Street where he was on an AIDS ward that was recently set up to combat this new illness. There were no miracle drugs at the time and dying was a normal thing for young men who who had once been the life of the party. Nurses were constantly walking in and out of his room.

One day, through his congestion and sedation, Artrella opened his eyes and looked towards me, almost looking beyond me. “I never knew what you really did for a living, until now,” he said, gently tugging on his keofeed tube.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“These nurses have the warmest hearts. You can feel their hearts when they enter a room.” And then he said, “Thank Lydia for all that stew. She had nothing but gave everything...just like her brother.”

He was right, having nothing but giving everything is a way of life for my people…and the vast majority of nurses.

One day, after the feeding tube had been pulled, Artrella asked for some french fries. He put a few in his mouth and didn't chew; “just for the taste.” I reminded him of the peppermint ice cream we used to eat in front of Lydia’s stand, and how the warm ocean waves would curl under our feet as the sun dropped in front of us, exploding in the rapture of a Hawaiian sunset.

Artrella Artrolla was cremated and carried across the Pacific inside his favorite possession, a Gucci cabin bag. His fate all wrapped up in his faith. To this day I wonder if my best friend showed up in heaven wearing rubber slippers or high heels. I may not be certain of his footwear but my faith tells me this, when he knocked on heaven’s door, an angel let him in.