L.A. Affairs: I’m a queer man living with HIV. I found love again — with a woman
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Hello again! Maybe you remember my L.A. Affairs essay from 2022 that described my relationship with Ruben. We married in Mexico in 2019 when I was 74 — my first marriage. But COVID-19 and pneumonia brought him down in November 2021, and I was widowed at 76.
I’m truly at my best when I’m coupled. So it wasn’t long before my yearning for partnership again started kicking in. I exchanged contact information with a number of guys, but without any serious follow-through. At my age and living with HIV, I guess I wasn’t what most gay men looked to as a potential romantic candidate. I had just about resigned myself to a lonely end of life.
Then I went to see and write a review of a remarkable Haitian artist’s show at UCLA’s Fowler Museum on March 25, 2023 — the night of Myrlande Constant’s opening — and I was waiting in line for the preopening lecture. I got to talking with the petite woman standing ahead of me. She was there with Olga and Tanya, two friends from her condo building who had gone off to the ladies’ room. When they returned to join the line, they saw how Lori and I were engaged in animated conversation. When the line started moving, Olga said, “You’ll sit with us, won’t you?” And I did.
Despite changes in my life, I always took comfort from Eaton Canyon. Now that it has burned, I have to remind myself that nature’s gift in hard times is to remind us of its perpetual cycles.
After the lecture, Lori and I ambled through the galleries together, commenting on the spectacular beaded and sequined art and opening up to each other. She was about eight years past her divorce and had two kids, one of them with two kids of her own. We promised to stay in touch.
I invited her to the theater shortly afterward, and in turn, she asked me to her brother and sister-in-law’s house for a spring dinner as a sort of secular nod to Passover. She told her brother and copied me on the message. She thought he would really enjoy meeting me — but not like this was a “date” or anything.
Afterward, I wrote to thank her for the evening and added, “But you know what? Actually I would like to date you.” And so we started. It took a while to negotiate the HIV part, which turned out to be less complicated than either of us had imagined. I had to be reminded that U=U, or Undetectable = Untransmittable. One of Lori’s children is nonbinary, and they were thrilled to learn their mother was now dating a queer man!
Lori and I consider ourselves “apartners,” a word we learned about a year into the relationship to signify a couple committed to each other but still retaining their separate households. I’m over at Lori’s generally Thursday through Sunday nights and return home weekdays to continue my writing. She could stay at my place, but I have three housemates and no private bathroom, so it can be a little awkward. My favorite moment of the week is Thursday night when I tuck myself into her bed as I look forward to a long weekend together.
My date was eight years my junior. He was handsome, quiet and polite, with an endearing Oklahoma twang. But he also had a big red flag in his family: his father.
Lori is my first girlfriend in 52 years. My last was in 1971, just before I came out as a gay man. I’ve had a number of loving relationships with men. Being a romantic partner is not strange to me — just now, again, with someone of a different gender. I would never claim to have “gone straight” or that my love life with a woman is morally or, in any other way, better. I’m neither converting nor proselytizing. It’s not a term I’d often used for myself in the past, but I think “queer” suits me just fine now.
Curiously, I learned that my three siblings some years back had speculated about what might become of me, and they laughed in disbelief when my brother said he saw me eventually settling down with a “frizzy-haired communist woman.” Well, Lori is no communist, but we are certainly on the same page when it comes to politics.
An old friend of mine reacted this way: “Remember the Kinsey scale? Zero being exclusively heterosexual and 6 exclusively homosexual. Well, I’m a total 6, but most people are somewhere in between. And it seems that includes you.”
On the 25th of each month, Lori and I celebrate another month together with flowers or a nice dinner out. On our first anniversary, we exchanged “apartnership” rings: Lori selected one from my jewelry box (given to me by a rabbi lover of mine over 50 years ago), and I chose one from hers (given to her in Mexico by a fellow she met on the street one day who just happened to find her enchanting).
We’re now approaching two years of being a couple. We’ve met each other’s families. It turns out we knew a lot of people in common, and both of us worked at the same nonprofit at different times. Our paths had crossed so many times though we’d never met. We’ve traveled domestically and abroad and survived the rigors of 24/7 togetherness. We celebrated Lori’s 70th with a family getaway last April, and we just feted my 80th with a play reading and dinner for 40 of our friends in L.A.
Before he left, my ex told me I was bad in the kitchen and in the bedroom. Would I find my passion again after a night at a strip club?
When I first came out in 1971, I believed that in a masculine-dominated culture like ours, an egalitarian heterosexual relationship was near impossible and that if you sought a partnership of equals, your better chance was with someone of the same gender. There may be some truth to that, but I’ve come to realize how everything is always so much more complicated.
As Lori and I go about our evolving lives, shopping, doing food preparation, washing dishes, event planning, making love, playing Rummikub or Spelling Bee, I see that gender is rarely the determinative factor. We love each other irrespective of our personal equipment.
We know the days are getting shorter but hope they never end. And thank you to Haiti’s Myrlande Constant for introducing Lori and me.
The author is cultural editor for peoplesworld.org, a biographer and translator. He can be found on Facebook at facebook.com/eric.a.gordon.585.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
