We Are Lost and Found

by Helene Dunbar

He’s wearing this long, black, wool coat with tiny anchors etched onto the silver buttons that might make anyone walking by think he had military leanings, but the sharp architectural cut of his white-blond hair and the gray slash of his eye shadow would set them straight.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has read my books that I'm not a visual writer. I'm more concerned with how my characters feel and act than how they look. That being said, a photo on Pinterest absolutely nailed the vision of James that I had in my head and for some reason, whenever I was unsure of how he would feel or act, simply looking at that photo gave me my answer.

throat. I forget sometimes. Forget that I’m not transparent. Forget that if I just stay silent, no one will know this piece of me. Forget that, unlike James, I can hide in plain sight and let them assume what they want. If I take Becky’s hand, they’ll think we’re together. That I’m one of them. And that makes me feel sicker. James twists a ring and takes a drink. It’s hard to know where he ends and the actor begins. He’s heard this all and worse before, of course, but his face is impassive. Perhaps he’s used to it. Perhaps he’s able to tune it out. Perhaps he has his own way of hiding.

This is one of three sections that came directly from conversations with writer/activist Ron Goldberg, who wrote the first of WE ARE LOST AND FOUND's afterwards. I'd already written the houseboat scene and he made an offhand comment about how a sense of guilt can come along with being able to "pass". I actually love this passage because it says a lot about the friendship between Michael and James, that Michael was able to realize this.

In truth, Connor wouldn’t need me to walk his dog, he’d probably have friends lining up to do it. Connor has a knack for collecting people. He meets them at clubs, and in stores, at parties and shows. He strikes up conversations with bartenders and librarians, taxi drivers and street performers. Connor lives his life out loud, but until that night at graduation, I hadn’t really noticed how loud, and even though it’s been four years, the reverb is deafening. You have to take control of your life and run with it, Connor tells me. Don’t let anyone hold you back. There’s a world waiting for you. It’s big and flashy and exciting, and you need to put yourself out there and grab it. Or let it grab you, you know, whatever you’re into. And while he talks, I can picture it. This community, this family he’s replaced us with. These people who can dance all night fueled by rhythm and freedom, drugs and each other. These people who have grabbed their lives away from everyone who has told them they’re wrong and they can’t and they’re damaged. These people who have made themselves into who they want to be, even if it’s just for one night. These people who are not me. Not yet, anyhow.

Ah, Connor. In early draft, Michael was pretty embarrassed by his out-and-proud older brother. But I always felt like that was a surface reaction and at some point I realized the issue wasn't that Michael was embarrassed, it was that he missed his brother desperately. This realization also necessitated some massaging of Connor's character. I'd recently watched the amazing movie SING STREET and the song "Drive it Like You Stole it" really captured the "new" Connor for me.

Connor gave me a fake ID last year for my birthday. I only wanted it so I could get into this club, The Echo. Regardless of what the ID says, I won’t be legal to drink for three years, but that’s beside the point anyhow, because I wanted to go there to dance, not to get drunk. Even before then, the bouncer, Freddy, had to know I was underage, but New York is sticky hot in summer, and really, what did he care if one more I’m-queer-but-nobody-really-knows-it kid added his sweat to the already wet brick walls of the basement club?

The Echo is a mix of three clubs near and dear to my heart: The Underground and The Bank in NYC and NEO in Chicago. There is something about losing yourself in the fog of a dry ice machine and the flash of lights and the music you love, that is unlike anything else I know. My working title for the book - at the very beginning - was Underground. It sold as BLOOD MAKES NOISE which I still love beyond everything else.

Hey! You two want this? A guy in his twenties, wearing a suit and tie and carrying a fridge door stops near Broadway. The door is clean. Gleaming white as if he’d just ripped it off a floor model at the Appliance Warehouse out on Long Island. I feel for the five bucks stuffed into the front pocket of my jeans. Mug Money, my mother calls it. Something to give a thief so they don’t get your wallet, or your watch, or whatever else you have that’s actually worth something. I’ve never had to use the fiver and wonder if we’re really going to get mugged or if this guy is simply hopped-up on drugs. I mean, why else would he be walking down 17th carrying a fridge door?

The idea from this came from a forum where people were leaving their memories of NYC in the 70's and 80's. I used to work near Union Square (which was also where The Underground was located), so I could picture this clearly. Also, I love NYC covered in snow.

There’s a boy in black watching me. We’re all in black, but there’s something darker about him, something even more than a typical Goth. He sways off tempo, like he can’t quite find the beat, his red eyes ringed with kohl against a drug-pale face that would be impossible to imagine breaking into a smile. I try not to stare back. Try and fail. He’s captivating in the same way as a gun, in the same way as the stained knife that Andy found last month on patrol. The boy is wearing a crop top under a wool coat far too warm to dance in. His emaciated ribs jut out every time he moves. He comes over and stands too close. Head cocked at an odd angle, the dark centers of his eyes, planet-like. I wonder what he’s on. You should come home with me, he says, under his breath, under the music.

Some people have read this as an AIDS reference, but it wasn't intended that way. This actually happened to me at a club - I was invited to join a vampire coven in Brooklyn. Like Michael, I said no, LOL! For what it's worth, most of the odd things that happen at The Echo are from personal experience....

The article is bylined “Larry Kramer” and it’s filled with numbers and fear. Just the kind of things James collects. 1,112. The current number of AIDS cases. 418. The number of dead already this year. And it’s only March. 47.6. The percentage of infected cases who live in New York. 3 years. Life expectancy.

You can't write about the AIDS crisis and not include Larry Kramer's article from The New York Native. Almost forty years later, it still gives me chills and I'm very grateful to Larry for allowing me to include it. If you haven't read the entire thing, google it.

His name is Gabriel. And all I can think of is the angel.

Gabriel's name WAS Angel until very late drafts. I named him after someone I knew in the 80's, but too many people thought I was referencing Rent, so I changed it. Connor's joke about Gabriel, later in the book, is Ron Goldberg's. He was shocked that I included it, but it was too perfect to leave out.

Are you trying to drown your sorrows? I ask James. I think mine have flotation devices, he responds, and shakes water out of his long hair.

Subtle U2 lyric reference.

I lean against the speaker. Bauhaus is droning out “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” and I can feel the scream of the bats in the treble, the dripping of fangs in the bass.

This might be the best line I've ever written. I used to be a drama critic and I learned quickly that it's much harder to write about something you love, than something that doesn't work. I remember the first time I heard this song and this sums up exactly how it made me feel.

The whole idea of walking into a Broadway theater without a ticket, following the paying ticket-holders back from intermission, and grabbing an open seat, scares the heck out of me. But James was sneaky and Xeroxed the first act of Torch Song Trilogy for us to read. We have to see the rest of the actual show if we want to know what happens next. And I have to know what happens next.

I *might* have done this a few times and have the program autographed by Harvey Fierstein to prove it.

He says, It isn’t you. I’m just… He waves his hands. Lost, he says. I don’t know where I’m going. The light on the corner changes to red. It reflects off James’s pouty lips and stupidly, I’m drawn in. Desperate and helpless, I do what I’ve never had the guts to do sober, I kiss him. Quick. One kiss to stop the hemorrhaging. James freezes. Pales. Takes a step back. Oh, shit, I say. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. The whiskey threatens to come out with my words. No, Michael, he says, eyes still wide. You don’t understand. This has nothing to do with you. I just can’t…

I deliberately kept James's sexuality fluid. But I think it's natural that he and Michael would flirt with things. (and each other) Falling for your best friend is easier than not. Besides, I kind of think everyone is in love with James...

I’m not watching it, James says when I ask him. I just can’t. But you’re welcome to come over here anyhow; I’m sure the boys will have it on. Which is what I do. I sit on the couch (Steven’s couch) with Rob, while Ted leans expressionless against the wall behind us. No one is flirting tonight. We’re barely breathing. The guy being interviewed is twenty-seven. Eleven years older than me. In his “before” photo, he’s someone I might have found myself attracted to. In his interview, he’s dying. Worse than dying, which I never thought could be possible. Distorted. Marked with purple splotches. Terrifying. I’ll never be able to get his face out of my mind.

This 20/20 episode with Kenny Ramsauer was a defining point for many in my group. It made everything very, very real and very, very terrifying.

Frank Sinatra plays in the background,

Easter egg: I always try to put Sinatra somewhere in my books for my dad.

It’s the last day of school. I poke my head into the fear room to find one last post. Someone has written, Love Is… just like the cartoon in the newspaper. But under that is a list in different writing and pen colors, different people filling in the blank. Love is… …all you need …a battlefield …Hell …in the air …evol spelled backward …for losers …the drug …all around …all we have left And I wonder if the answer really matters. And if that last one is true. And if it is, if love is even enough.

I kind of enjoyed writing this vignette too much since most of these are from songs. I wanted music to infuse this book as much as possible since, having not had the internet when we were in high school, it felt as though music was a life force for us in a way it couldn't possibly be now.

Friday night, Becky comes over to give me an excuse. And to play fashion consultant, apparently. Blue shirt, she says. It makes the green in your eyes stand out. This feels…odd. Why? she asks. I think about the reasons: I don’t know. Is this a date? I mean…it might be, but Gabriel doesn’t seem like the dating type, and do guys even date? Does Connor even know what his last boyfriend looked like in daylight? What I say is, I don’t know how to do this. Michael? Yeah? Shut up and put on the blue shirt.

I adore Becky in a very different way from the way I adore Michael and James and Connor. I share many things with her: being Jewish, being editor of my high school paper, clove cigarettes, being the "go to" person in her friend group. She's harder than I am and more able to pretend to be sure of herself. But I hope that her love of her friends - and mine - shines through.

James glares at me and puts the guitar down gently. Then, in a voice that’s anything but gentle, he says, Normal, everyday people are being fired from their jobs, Michael. Do you know how many funeral homes in the city will bury someone who died from AIDS? Guess. No, wait. I’ll tell you. Precisely one. I heard Steven’s parents wouldn’t even visit the hospital to say goodbye because they were afraid of catching something. And of course they didn’t tell me, so one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, died alone.

This is the one and only time James gets mad in this book and it has nothing to do with anything anyone has done to him personally. He's very much an onion - layer after layer. I loved writing him and am grateful for whatever good fortune brought him my way.

Blood Makes Noise is plastered on the marquee outside the theater, followed by James’s name, the names of two other actors, and that of the director.

Writing this piece of performance art was the hardest part of this book - not emotionally, but technically. I'm definitely not an avant garde theater person.

On the way home, I pass a pay phone and then turn back and pull a quarter out of my pocket. I know you can’t simply call some random number and get advice. It’s like following horoscopes in the newspaper. Everyone in the world born in the same month doesn’t have the same life. And everyone who calls Dial-a-Daze doesn’t either. And I don’t even have one specific question I need answered;

When I was in high school, we used to call a line like this. I remember wanting answers so badly and while it was fun, it was a kind of a rite of passage to realize that we were all on our own. I found the guy who ran the line on Twitter, while I was writing WALAF he told me he barely remembers doing it given the "compromised" state he'd been in for much of the 80's.

He dances us over to the bed and looks into my eyes. I think he’s going to say something about how much he wants me, how good he feels or something. Instead, he says, I hope you don’t mind if we use condoms. I’ve been with a lot of guys, and I want to keep you safe.

I love Gabriel and Michael together. But they're definitely in that category of first loves: you fall for eyes, a scent, a comment, an expression. Then you struggle to figure out the rest. I wanted Michael to have someone who truly cared about him and Gabriel does. But I wanted a complication to come into play and it does. It's pretty fair to say that sex positivity wasn't a thing in my high school and that wasn't a gender issue. If you had casual sex with multiple partners, you were shunned to some extent. As AIDS became more of an issue, this became something else. In a time where we didn't know how the disease could be shared, we didn't even know it was a virus, you had to worry that everything could be a death sentence.

A big smile creeps across his face and he repeats, Well, that designer, Maurice, came into the store last month, and we started talking about fashion trends and you know, other stuff, and then we kinda started spending time together. He’s into clean living and all of that. Not even pot, just a glass of wine on occasion. How wild is that? Anyhow, his designs are doing really well, and my friend Brandon is coming back to New York and needs me out of his apartment, so I had to find something anyhow, and we decided it last night. I’m moving in. With Maurice the shoe guy? Yeah.

Where Michael and Gabriel are new and untried, Connor and Maurice are the real thing. I know a lot about their story: How deep their love goes, how they live, and about the kind of man that Connor grows into. Being the kind of writer who feels protective of my characters, I was beyond happy to give this relationship to Connor.

I get in to see James for ten minutes before he’s released. His arm is in a sling. His face is a mass of bruises. Stitches crisscross his swollen lips. I wonder what the club kids or those newspaper writers who are always talking about his cheekbones would think if they saw him now. If they saw him damaged and discolored.

One of the gay newspapers of the time, probably The Native, published a map of where bashings were taking place. That's how prevalent this was. I didn't want to write this, I didn't want it to happen to James. But I'd committed to telling the truth and too many of my friends have been hurt for me to ignore the ugliness of this type of hate.

I’m tired of staying silent.

Everyone has their own truths and their own lives to lead. Michael's mother stays silence because that's how she stays safe. Michael was always destined to find his voice. He just needed to take the jump into becoming the person he always wanted to be.

Afterword by Ron Goldberg

I love these two afterwards so deeply I can't put it into words. The job is not complete. There is still pain and discrimination, but there are amazing people on the front lines who haven't given up the fight and I'm honored to know some of them. <3