Reflections

Reflections

Following are three poems I had written about Bobby during my trips to San Francisco, during those last days of 1992, and completed after Bobby left San Francisco for the last time. I have never personally observed such an abundance of quiet courage as I did observing Bobby holding on to life. His efforts were inspirational to his friends in San Francisco as they were to me. Other poems were started and not finished because it was too painful.

Bobby lived in four apartments in and around the Castro section during his years in San Francisco, three of which I visited. The first poem, Your Room, was about his room in a lovely Victorian home in a second floor apartment, just one block off of Market Street and a short few blocks to walk to Castro Street. He shared the apartment with another young man who I never met and that Bobby did not like. With the apartment came a large cat that would Velcro himself to Bobby’s lap for as long as he was permitted. Bobby loved the cat and would spend quiet time stroking him, while sitting in the kitchen or on the small porch in the rear.

The rear porch provided a broad vista of San Francisco. Looking toward the back of the apartment-- the Mission Dolores steeple centered the western view. Bobby had his second challenging bout with AIDS and I went to visit him a few days before he was released from Dealy Medical facility. Dealy sits on top of a hill with a pleasant park defining one side. Each time he was hospitalized, it was at Dealy that he stayed. The quiet dedication of the nurses and doctors and their sincere desire to provide comfort was always apparent. They had seen a lot of AIDS and would continue to see more during the coming years. Bobby looked tired and much too thin during this visit. It was cool in San Francisco and he always wore a large button up sweater that filled out his thin figure, and the cat always found comfort sitting in his lap and snuggling into the sweater.

Bobby, in this apartment, as in all of his other apartments, had a style of occupying a room and a bed with a large support system. He also demonstrated this each time he visited me and when he stayed at my home in Mt. Kisco. He would literally surround himself within an arms length, or possibly two, his immediate and impetuous needs including, but not limited to cigarettes, books, radio, tapes, newspapers, his current journal, munchies, and various other support systems. Unfortunately, one of these needs was his cigarettes and a large ashtray, which he took some pleasure in filling up and not wanting to empty it. He had his pleasant idiosyncrasies.

There came a time when Bobby could not work at the San Francisco Travel Bureau. He was the specialist that greeted the many German tourists. They had other language specialists for the many international visitors that flood San Francisco all year long. On occasions the tourists were friends from his days in Munich who were introduced to the delights of San Francisco with Bobby providing personal participation. However now, his energy was limited and the medication was more than a little debilitating. He once referred to himself as a PWA and for a moment I was curious what it meant until he explained that it was a Person With Aids. I had never heard the expression before, and it was painful to know it applied to him.

Mission Dolores is an old church not many blocks from Castro Street and not many blocks from the last apartment that Bobby lived in. The priest at the Mission provided care for the patients at Dealyy Medical Center and assisted many of the AIDS patients in their many challenges, and all too often in their final challenges to hold on to the last breath of life. Father Kaylor comforted Bobby on his periodic visits to Dealy and provided the final comfort. He came twice during those last few days to give Bobby a blessing. His second blessing was final.

Bobby always lived in the area around Castro Street in San Francisco. One apartment was half way up a steep hill several blocks from Market street; another just one block off of Castro; and a third a few blocks off of Market Street, and a fourth apartment he shared for a short time. His last place was the intersection of Clipper Street and Castro. It was a rather big and pleasantly cool apartment with soft muted light coming from the street. His books played a prominent part in a large living room. The kitchen was small but with great utility. I slept at this apartment on what turned out to be my last visit with Bobby in San Francisco.

The night of the day that we lost Bobby, I returned to his apartment and had a restless night. I had slept about an hour or so in the depths of the last two nights by Bobby’s bed at Dealy. In the morning I spent hours going through Bobby’s personal belongings. I rumbled through his books and papers and collected all of his writings into several boxes. Jack Walder came to the apartment and helped. Jack’s calm and pleasant temperament and sincere affection for Bobby, always had a very beneficial impact on Bobby. He supported Bobby through some challenging times and was there through the end. Jack helped me arrange to ship Bobby’s personal things back to New York. I left that same day for New York and weeks later all of the boxes arrived neatly packed. Jack arranged for all of Bobby’s furniture to be donated to a local group. For some short period of time the apartment at Clipper Street lay quiet.

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Poem: Your Room

Your golden gated city owns you
And you own it
You are both lover and loved.

Your room is like some ancient crevice
And has the feel of a warm secret cave
Safe from the world
Surrounded by cold morning air
With its high green textured ceilings
Its solitary angled window
Searching the shaft of muted light between buildings,
A few fresh cut flowers kneel at the window ledge
As if praying for larger doses of sunshine.

There is the array
Of small tapestries from Iran and Turkey
And China that you so cherish,
Asymmetrically hung on the walls
As portholes to distant places.

Cluttered book cases
Provide footprints of your interests
In Germany and art and poetry
The dark minded Herman Hesse
That you read in both German and English
Write-ups on Theater and your cherished letters
That you read and save
Your bed is a magnet for scattered
Tissues, magazines, stained coffee cups
Unidentifiable half uneaten fruit
Half smoked cigarettes
Among these pieces of your life is
An orderliness to this quiet and peaceful disarray.

We spoke of life and ancient feelings
And childhood competitions
And disappointments in adults
And some unachieved
Or maybe unachievable family expectations
Too deep and distant to pass our lips in significant detail
And other feelings struggling for definition.
Some distant anger is
On the tip of your lips
But you swallow it
And push the thought away
Without appeal.

We spoke of the pain and suffering
Dealt to all mortals
To live and to die with dignity
And how precious life is
But the subject is uncomfortable
And we mutually dismiss it.
Enclosed by the muted green walls
Slightly needing a painting
Your room is powerful.

You can view and touch the galaxies
Explore the ancient Euphrates
Sail the invincible Nile
Break bread with caliphs and kings and cobblers
Or in a palazzo by a piazza in Pisa
Paint your tongue with new wine
Born in the dark September morning dew.

Your single Cycloptic window
Can let the entire world enter at a whim
Or at your concurrence hold the world
At arms length as you re-invent
The life you have earned de jure
I search your words and your face
To be certain
Your will to live is vibrant and certain
You sail your bed
Just as a few days ago you sailed a hospital bed
Wired for survival
Searching for calm seas and a safe harbor.

From your room you search for sunrises
Query your mind for truth
Explore fantasies
Dwell on large doses of quiet FM’d jazz
From your implacable little black radio.
You play slightly dog eared video tapes
And many of black and white films.
Your favorite “Lawrence of Arabia”
Depicting Lawrence jousting across the sands
Confronting and containing armies
With his steely blue eyes
You take naps with your honey eyed cat
Read Hemingway’s long many comma’d sentences
Scan Dickinson simplistic and perfect poems
Crafted as if carved out of a single piece
Of Carrara marble.

You room is in methodical disarray
With everything precisely where you want it
There will be a better day
And you will traverse the thin stairway
Past the glass etched door
To the sidewalk
Your yellow brick road will deliver you
To Dorothy or the Green Witch.
You are seeking myriad places and devices
To soften the edges of your pain
Trying to move your distress to a backburner
And expand boundaries of your dreams
Now locked in the silent catacombs of your mind.

How many of us would share a vital organ
A silent prayer
Bargain recklessly with the devil
Explore the fabled Genie’s offer of a wish
Offer a piece of our lives
Do a thousand thousand penances
Walk the hot sands of the outback
That you were now abiding
Comfortable and content
In the kingdom of your room.

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Poem: Bobby PWA

I recall the first time you referred to
Yourself as a PWA
A Person With Aids
Coming from your mouth
As easily as saying
You were a Yankee fan
Or a Republican
Or an environmentalist.

PWA institutionalizes
An unpleasant piece of reality
Like POW or MIA
Surrounded by hopelessness
We all had hope
Running out of time
We counted the days
And finally the hours
And now you have
Journeyed beyond our reach
And left us with your silence
And long years to treasure your life.

You—you my less than perfect son—
Were perfect
In your courage and dignity
In those final days and final hours
And struggling with AIDS
You battled an alphabet soup of diseases
Like PCP and CMS and KS
And with loving care
Doctors persevered
As relentlessly as gravity
Matched by your determination
With AZT and DDI.

We search your life for some profound truth
Some rationalization with careful speculation
Of the deeds undone
Poems and journals unwritten
The journeys not taken
The unrealized dreams pursued
And those dreams not yet born.

Possibly it is all said
In the profound simplicity
And final words of the song
“To love and be loved in return”
was your relentless pursuit.
Your life is a plea for hope and humanity
And blessings for every PWA.

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Poem: The Blessing

It was April
And spring provided a warm embrace
To the flowers and busy streets
In the Castro hills
The Priest came from Mission Dolores
Leaving his very old church
To bless another very young man
Who once had sat with new wine and cigarettes
On his back porch
To view the distant Mission steeple
Peeking across the rooftops
Balancing on the horizon on his finger.

Two sunsets and sunrises
And cool evenings and warm days passed
As he lay quiet and warm
Not wired for heroics
Immune to pain
I alternately held his large strong hands.

His lovely broad nose
His brown eyes like his mother’s
Finely chiseled cheek bones
Dark wiry hair much like his mother’s father
Long lanky legs
That once searched narrow streets
In many cities of Europe
He was tall thin and straight
He was beautiful.

In one crashing moment his eyes revealed
His last soft silent breath was no more
The air was still and silent
The Priest returned with the blessing
He administered two days before
He brought his blessing
But neither God nor man
Could conceive the miracle of life
We desperately sought.

He received his final blessing
And in turn he leaves us a blessing
It is the imprint of his life
On our memory
Within our humanity
He is forever a part of our lives
And in quiet solitary recollections
The soft breath of his spirit
Abides eternally within us.

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Poem: Heidelberg

It was early fall in Stuttgart and the villagers on the outskirts of town measured the vineyards with a careful eye to select the precise moment for picking grapes. I was not aware that Stuttgart was famous for its wines, but was told by business colleagues that the local people are astute enough to drink all of the excellent wines, particularly white wines, rather than export them. The region sacrificed potential fame as an international wine growing region, with the local self satisfaction of the pleasant benefit of drinking their own great wines.

Bobby was living in Munich and joined me at the end of my business trip in Stuttgart. He came to the hotel and he was tan and happy, and spoke German when circumstances required in our travels and stops at restaurants. We ate in the hotel restaurant and discussed how we would share the few days we would spend together. The original idea was to both return to Munich. I had visited him in Munich before and he was an excellent guide exploring the city he knew so well, and his words and behavior revealed his love for Munich.

Over coffee and breakfast cakes we came upon the alternative agenda of renting a car and spending a few days driving around, searching the German country side, with our ultimate destination being Heidelberg. We spent a day driving along the Neckersun River, which is carpeted with numerous small towns, each with central a plaza and a large gothic church and wonderful bakeries. We spent a few days in Heidelberg; Bobby ordered fine German food and excellent wines in his precise German. He had been there before and was a wonderful guide. He and Wolf Kern had been there before and many years later Wolf told me of a commitment they had made to each other in a cathedral in Heidelberg. This was before Bobby had decided to return to New York in the summer of 1986.

Bobby and I climbed the hill to the castle and looked across the city to the Neckersum cutting a path through green valleys. He was good company and an excellent guide and after a few days we retraced our tracks back to Stuttgart. I wrote this poem after returning to the United States. One of my favorite pictures of Bobby is he sitting in the meticulously clean railroad station in Stuttgart, ready to return to Munich after our returning from Heidelberg. He wore a baseball shirt that was well worn from constant use. The frayed and well worn shirt was his way of not growing up. I liked that about him.

This photograph was taken a few days after our visit to Heidelberg

Heidelberg

People en masse
Move escalator-like
Through thin cobbled streets
The streets are crocheted
In uncertain patterns
Promenading everywhere and nowhere
Impervious to compass bearings
And more rational pedestrian inclinations
Defining the fabric of the city.

The old city is a kaleidoscope
Of cafes and Hong Kong’ed souvenirs
Kodak signs and stores and kiosks spilling out into the streets
And aging but ageless houses
That were first imagined and built
By now silent and ancient
With labored hands and keen eyes
Many centuries before.

The new part of the city
Like some bastard child
Claims the old city’s name
As it wears its coat of blacktop
Veneered walls of glass and steel
New and old uncomfortably sharing name and space
As stressed symbiotic neighbors.

The Castle glares down
Above treetops and rooftops
Like a platformed scholar
Peering at the tops of heads
Its towers and buttresses
Jutting chin-like as if to demonstrate
Its now latent power and dominion
Holding an omnipotent eye over the city below

The castle and chambered walls once echoed
With dreams and joys
The disappointments and agonies
Of kings and cobblers and artisans
We must wonder:
When the castle stones once so carefully
Plumbed and laid
To satisfy the desire of kings
First fell in disarray
Did king or cobbler cry the loudest?

The Neckar’s waters
Sail between broad banks towards the Rhine
Taking measured care to carve the valleys
To define green contoured hills
And open the womb of the quarries
That gave birth to the stone.

A millennium ago artisans and dreamers
With careful eyes
And aching backs
Shaped and laid the stone one upon the other
And so the architecture that once lived
In the eye of Michelangelo
And the logic once invented
In the Greek sun
Now lives far from its invention.

Armies inspired by the fear of God
And the fear of man
Whether victor or vanquished
Cried with blood and pain and disdain
To complete the imperfect mathematics
Of man’s invented and defined equation
For victory and defeat
And spilled blood to protect
An idea and a piece of geography.

And so we two
Far from the homestead
Where I raised him and he was raised
Shoulder to shoulder walk the ramparts
And search silent bedrooms and chambers
Where heirs were designed
To fulfill the lineage required
And to pass the sword and cross
And kneel to gods of proper political allegiance.

We wondered with some delight
Of the mischief of kings
That wrote the bloody history
That leaves this imperfect gem on the mountain side
With buttresses and aged walls and courts
More glorious in its half death.

And so in Heidelberg you were guide
And I was benefactor
And our journey is a warm memory
Of your broad smile
And your restless energy
That would bring your back one day
Across the ocean you crossed
Searching for your dreams.

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Final Reflections

Following are some of my final and random recollections about Bobby and his life.

In January of l989, Bobby called me in New York from his home in San Francisco, as he often did. He was obviously distressed. He revealed he had not been feeling well for several months, a fact he had not shared with me or anyone in the family. In hilly San Francisco Bobby lived half way up a part of Castro Street, a street that is a roller coaster of hills. He explained to me that among other ailments, he had problems climbing the hill to his apartment at the end of a day, after working at the San Francisco Visitors Center.

He complained of chronic tiredness, night sweats, and requiring an inordinate amount of sleep. He explained he had gone for blood test that day for HIV. Bobby was gay and the fear of HIV and AIDS was a reality. After that phone call, it all happened very fast--- too fast. He called back several days later and said he was HIV positive. Bobby had done what many do when faced with an illness. Deny it, don’t accept it and hope it goes away. Within a few weeks he had full blown AIDS and three years and three months later this very special and very young man was taken by AIDS before he reached his 34th birthday.

Despite everything I learned about AIDS during those brief years that he dealt with his illness; despite statistics about the proliferation of the disease and the death rate; despite the endless hospitalizations and outpatient care; despite all of this--- I had some kind of blind, but certainly not mindless naiveté that a miracle drug or a miracle would save him. I did not think he was invincible, but I believed he would be spared. Some young people were. I convinced myself that some how and someway, my Bobby, our Bobby, would beat the odds. He would be the exception. I was absolutely certain “they”, that mysterious and ubiquitous “they,” would find a cure. Over the years we have all seen friends and loved ones travel this familiar road of optimism that we find in our humanity, to support the hope and prayer and fight to stay alive.

History and experience have exposed all of us to acts of courage, but I have never personally observed a person with such acts of personal courage as my son Bobby. He was not fearless, because I know he dealt with depression and anger and disappointment with the peaks and valleys of his health over the next few years. But he displayed Hemingway’s “grace under fire” strength of character. Seldom, if ever, did he complain. Near the end he suffered much, but complained little.

I recall an evening in San Francisco when he and I were invited to a friend’s home for dinner and musical entertainment. This was one of my many trips to San Francisco. Bobby was exhausted, but throughout the night he was uncomplaining and wore a large smile. He wanted to be there, I knew he was glad I was with him. He had difficulty walking and I supported him as we returned to his apartment. He exhaled a deep breath of exhaustion as he took to his bed. He spoke of how much he enjoyed the evening and then slept immediately and deeply. I’ve seen him countless times display a quiet and intense courage to live, which is the prelude to dying with dignity.

Bobby’s first bout with AIDS resulted into many days in intensive care at the Dealy Medical Center. The care was excellent and the attendants all caring. Bobby was one of many confronting AIDS at Dealy. He had a tube in his throat for several days because he was dealing with PCP or pneumocystic pneumonia. He wrote notes that were hardly legible, one asking “When will the suffering end” and the other “I’m glad you are here.” I still have the notes and they are reminders of the abundance of his courage.

There was a time a few years before when I visited Bobby in San Francisco. He had already been living there for a few years and he loved the city---it was home. He had the same love affair with San Francisco, that he had with Munich and the five years he lived there. We visited the tall Sequoias in Muir Woods; and the museums identifying the fault line for the 1905 monstrous earthquake that leveled and burned the city; we traveled the BART and walked the hills; we ate at the Wharf and maneuvered the crowded streets of Chinatown; and one evening we sat at the top of some building, which I can not recall, and drank wine as we surveyed the Bridge and the skyline. Bobby really considered his chosen city as home. I recall occasions when he would remind me of the anniversary of the day he moved there in 1987, but I don’t recall the date, but do recall his simple joy of recalling and cherishing the event.

Bobby was never a challenge or problems in school. There was never much of an issue about his doing his homework and getting decent grades. I don’t believe he was so much a quick study, as he was diligent about doing his work and getting good grades. He graduated from High School about six months early because he had all his required credits. He already had the itch to travel and his mother and I approved his going to Florida by himself. He stayed several months in Miami and eventually Key West. It may sound irresponsible but it was 1975 and the times and the world were different. He returned to home to graduate with his class. He spent about three semesters in Rider College in Lawrenceville, New Jersey and got his Bachelor of Arts in Literature and Communications nearer to home in Pace College in Westchester County. He had already displayed his interest in writing and traveling and was preparing himself for journey ahead.

When he was in high school there was an opportunity to take him with me on a business trip to Los Angeles. He was sixteen. After the business trip we rented a car and drove down to Mexico through San Diego and down the coast towards Ensenada. In those days that road was a single lane with very few cars or buildings between Tijuana and Ensanada. Ensenada had more dirt roads then black topped roads; and anything that was not built for tourists was very meager and poor. Bobby enjoyed the trip and driving back from Ensenda on the lonely road he asked me for an indulgence. He asked if he could drive the car and smoke a cigarette. I had taught him how to drive, and his smoking was not a well kept secret. Considering we were in the middle of nowhere, I relented and for fifteen minutes or so Bobby drove and smoked. It is a very pleasant memory. He never did stop smoking, and all the years he spent in Munich and San Francisco he never owned a car or did much if any driving.

Bobby was ambitious about working and always had a job. However, he was not ambitious about being a high achiever in terms of earning money. I recall one time when he had an entry level job in Wall Street and was offered a promotion opportunity. He turned the offer down so he could work in a Harper and Row bookstore, because he liked being around books. I am certain if he had the choice or opportunity he would have welcomed the idea to work in some aspect of publishing. In San Francisco he worked at the city Travel Bureau for many years and really enjoyed the work. He had to leave that job during his last year because his health and deteriorated to the point he could not work. He continued to volunteer at a museum.

These reflections about Bobby’s life do not define him or limit or bound the character or substance of the life of this wonderful young man. Additional reflections and memories and recollections and anecdotes could only add to some understanding of who he was and his too short journey through life. But enough has been shared at this time, and it is time to read what he has written.

Bobby is like the masons who built the cathedral in Heidelberg, in the poem describing our journey together in the mid-1980’s to that German town. Though a mason may have only built one wall, he was always focused on the fact that “he was building a cathedral.” Like the mason, Bobby laid one brick at a time and within his allotted time and the wall he built was absolutely perfect and it was the best he could do. Only time and circumstance will test whether his writings and this website will challenge the durability and sustainability of Heidelberg.

Each of his poems and stories and plays are bricks in his writing output and accomplishments. Following are lines from a Country song about Willie Nelson that goes like this:

As much as a writer reveals about the person in their writing, there is as much that remains unknown and a bit a mystery. There is no need to over intellectualize that thought. It is part of our humanity to tell stories in whatever the genre. Equally it part of our humanity to hear stories and make whatever judgments we chose between understanding the story and the storyteller. This is an opportunity to read Bobby’s writings, and possibly discover the need to have collected and shared Bobby’s writings and his life. Writers are observers of life who wish to share their observations, and some insights into the writer slip through the cracks. Like the observation about lyric in the Willie Nelson song, Bobby’s writings reveal something about the man, and the readers must participate and believe as they choose.

Enjoy!

Richard Nannariello | August 19, 2015

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