Our Queer Life Was Not a Travelogue
Love and ashes, spirits soaring to the sea
Lenny, as I start to figure out what to do with Dad’s ashes, I flash back to the moment when I poured yours out into the steel-grey Hudson, just where sweet water churns into the brack of New York Harbor. Part of your spirit fled with mine that day to take one final journey.
Most of the globe is water, isn’t that right?
Where I live now, it’s all fresh. Rivers, streams, marshes, and ponds everywhere. That’s what Dad loved, the Great Lakes waiting in every direction we might choose to drive. So different from how you and I experienced the world.
Odd that you never learned to drive. Dad didn’t understand that.
It’s not so odd for a native New Yorker, but how you loved it when I got my NY license and we could rent a car for the weekend. Bodies of saltwater always beckoned. Is that usual, driving to the water?
You and I took it for granted.
Something about us compelled us to seek the sea. Fire Island, the Hamptons, Provincetown, the Jersey Shore. It wasn’t just the boys in speedos, was it? It wasn’t just tea dances and tipsy antiquing in fabulous shops run by faded old men with silver hair and lavender voices.
Ocean called to us.
Waves marching in on relentless tide whispered to us of horizons, dreams, and impossible distances. Making love, the rhythm of endless surf filled us with saline magic.
Remember when we first met, and I told you I’d always wanted to live on the water? That I yearned for Ocean? You took me by the hand and walked me over to the Hudson, back when 23rd Street was still dangerous, and the High Line was haunted by junkies and hustlers.
You pointed downriver and said, “Look! You can almost see it.”
Our life together was so much more than a travelogue, but how we answered the call of that distant surf! You, who had rarely stepped foot outside the borough where you were born, decided near the end of your life that you had to see what lay beyond the vanishing point of those marching waves.
How happy I was to be your guide!
Our life was not a travelogue, but it might almost be a recounting of bodies of water. The Atlantic, the Pacific, the North Sea, and the Mediterranean. It wasn’t idyllic. I’ll never forget those horrible hours when you tried and failed to soothe me as a storm tossed our ferry like a toy in the English Channel. I didn’t know how agonizing seasick could be until that day. I’ll never forget our bickering as we breathed in the tang of the San Francisco Bay. Our first serious argument.
Remember the day we arrived in Brest and all I wanted to do was seek out the best seafood and Muscadet? You laughed and made me read you the raciest passages from an ancient copy of Querelle de Brest you’d picked up at an outdoor book stall. I’d never heard of Jean Genet’s novel of murder and seaport anal sex, but you’d seen Fassbinder’s film and wanted to know how Genet’s prose held up.
We never did figure it out since my French was horrible then, but the story reminded us of the Hudson and the terminus of Christopher Street where we were gay bashed.
“Ah those knock-out body fluids: blood, sperm, tears!” For Genet, that famous line refers to murder most foul, sexual opprobrium, scandal, and despair.
For us? The night we fought those Jersey street toughs transformed into a story. A mere story. Our fear and pain, our shaking bodies, our outrage morphed into heroics for our friends, entertainment at dinner parties. I still tell that story, you know. I’ve even written about it, published words setting sand into stone. I think you’d enjoy reading it, recognizing the truth but knowing liquid truth is impossible to pour.
Sitting in that shabby cafe in Brest not so long after, smelling the rot of the port, we knew the truth you and I, without needing to talk about it.
Days later, trilling our fingers through the cool waters of the salty canals of Bruge, we forgot all about Genet’s darkness. Bellies full of mussels and the crispest of white wine, we let the sun lull us to sleep in a boat full of gay men on holiday.
Remember the boat we took down the Rhein to Cologne? We guzzled sour sweet riesling and dreamed of Lorelei, of the grotesquery of false love and deadly romance. I read to you from Poe, Annabel Lee.
It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride,¹
I don’t know why I associated that poem of doomed love, of cruel denial and death, with the ancient tales of the Lorelei mermaid luring sailors to their doom. But as the scent of the Rhein filled our nostrils and the spires of that famous cathedral rose before our eyes, I whispered the last verse to myself.
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling — my darling — my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea — In her tomb by the sounding sea. ¹
I already knew I would lose you too soon, that I’d still be young when you left. I didn’t want any sepulchres to haunt me, to curse me with Poe’s own melancholy and despair.
So one fine day, after I’d clutched your ashes quite long enough, I opened the urn and let them fly free in the wind. They scattered over the Hudson, into the harbor, swirling and rushing on that current so much faster and more powerful than it looks.
I watched until I knew parts of you had joined the sea. I soared with you back to Dover, Ostende, Nice, and Marseille. I joined you on Alcatraz, the cliffs of Big Sur, the Seine, and St. Tropez.
I heard your laughter, basked in your gaze and gloried in the knowing that you had rejoined the stardust from which you were born. Our life was not a travelogue, but it was filled with wonder and journey, love of Ocean and sea.
Today, as I plan for a ceremony fitting for Dad’s last remains, the beauty of that final moment with you gives me strength. He didn’t love the sea, but the sweet inland waterways of North America.
He spent much of his life fishing, which you didn’t understand. You didn’t know that for him, fishing wasn’t about the fish. He never kept them. It was about being on or in the water, unifying with nature and the universe.
He never left North America, never yearned to like you and I did. So I’ll put him back his way, in marshes, streams, rivers, and ponds, just a little at a time.
As I do, I’ll remember you both, join with you both, soar with you both, love with you both.
In a life that is so much more than a travelogue.
James Finn is a former Air Force intelligence analyst, long-time LGBTQ activist, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, an essayist occasionally published in queer news outlets, and an “agented” novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].
This story is a response to Prism & Pen’s writing prompt Bodies of Water.
Other stories so far —
¹ From Annabel Lee by EdgarAllan Poe
