Today, for some unknown reason, I started thinking about an old buddy of mine: he was a gay Vietnam veteran that I met way back in the late-80s, shortly after my first ventures into the gay world of San Francisco. I took an immediate liking to him as he was the first “older” man to not instantly hit on me. I was kinda naive then, but I sensed that he was different: always sort of happy and sad. As I got to know him, he told me about his experiences in Vietnam. Since, at the time, I was an incredible movie buff, I endlessly grilled him on the accuracy of various Vietnam War-themed films: “The Green Berets,” “Platoon,” “Full Metal Jacket.” He patiently put up with me. I asked him what was his favorite. His answer surprised me: Francis Ford Coppolla's weird “Apocalypse Now.” I had seen it a few times on video-cassette and found the whole thing completely freaky and over-the-top. But he said that the bizarre reality created in the picture mirrored the strange surrealism of the War. The scene he liked the best: the part where the Playboy Bunnies helicopter into a remote battle zone, dance in front of the salivating GIs, and then the soldiers riot in a frenzy of lust and tear the stage apart. Sounded like a gay sex-party I had just gone to. There, things had gotten quickly out-of-control and I ended-up going further than I wanted. He said, of the movie: “...that's what it was like.”
That conversation always stuck with me, because whenever we met – he always seemed to be the detached and wiser observer: coldly scrutinizing the scenes of animalistic frenzy all around him in the gay existence. I thought: he had seen it all before. But, he loved his gay brothers and enjoyed their company, only he never fully got sucked in. Like the rest of us, he was wounded; though he guarded his deep and bloody lesions. He new that he was damaged, except he didn’t frantically search for the next sexual diversion to cover-up the pain. At the time, I just thought that he was totally shell-shocked; a lovable, but gloomy misfit. Now, I can understand the hurt he hid; of a young boy who got thrown into a war, saw his friends shot to death; and then sought solace in the male-only militarized universe of the Castro – that was forever on the edge of lapsing into insanity. Years later, in the late-90s, I asked around, and learned that he was sick and had retreated to his summer home in Guerneville. Then, I was perverse and selfish - and thought nothing more. In 2001, out of porn and the gay lifestyle, I went to Guerneville to talk with a Catholic priest. Afterward, I drove by my friend's old house. He had always been very fastidious about its appearance and meticulously kept up the gardens. Now, the place was semi-abandoned and the yard overgrown with weeds. I knew he was gone.