Love Wins

by David C. Dawson

  I was nervous, but he touched my shoulder again and smiled, and I knew it was love. I know it sounds stupid, but this guy… this was destiny. “C’mon, help me,” he said.

  I’ve never been brave, but when he surged forward, I came with him. He was the first one to try to knock over the car. We weren’t going to let them take our Stonewall.

  Patrick’s eyebrows hit his hairline. Uncle Marty had been at the Stonewall riots? He flipped it over, looking for a date. The entry had been written June 28, 1969. His uncle had been thirty.

  With so many of us, it was easy. We flipped the car, and I’ll never forget the feeling of the metal moving under my hands, of the man next to me, who would become my beautiful lover, smiling, pride in his eyes. We had put up with their shit for way too long, Todd and me. Raiding our bars, coming on to our street—our street, someone called it!—and pushing us around. It was long past the time we gave some of their shit back to them. I helped flip their damn police car, and then Todd and I ran. Afterward I kissed him in the alley, his lips hot, and I could hear them—our people—yelling in the background, taking back our place.

  It ended there, and Patrick set the stack down, looking for more pages. He didn’t see any—whatever journal it had been from, it was scattered.

  His uncle had been gay. He’d had a lover, Todd, who he had met during the riots. The realization stunned Patrick, who sat in the basement, paper in hand, suddenly wishing he had known his uncle better. Where was Todd now? Why had his uncle died alone?

  Patrick made it a new goal to find out.

  “PROFESSOR LEVINE?”

  Patrick looked up at the boy in the doorway to his office, trying to remember who he was. Ryan, from American History 101. This was probably about the test he had failed.

  An hour later, after defending his grading decisions and listening to Ryan complain about how “unfair” it was that he hadn’t given full marks for a one-sentence answer about how the cause of the Civil War was “state’s rights,” he leaned back in his chair. He couldn’t stop thinking about his uncle’s journal.

  Stonewall riots. Todd. Why hadn’t his father told him his uncle was gay? Or maybe he hadn’t known. Patrick wasn’t out to his family either, and only a few friends in grad school and his postdoctoral assignment had known. It was just easier to stay closeted. Especially in academia. It wasn’t like he had time for a boyfriend anyway.

  Just as he thought it, a familiar sight popped into his office. “Hello, fellow professor,” Timothy said with a grin. “I saw you at the gym yesterday.”

  Patrick swallowed hard. Had he seen him staring? He suddenly wished their offices weren’t so close.

  “Hello,” he managed. “I was just dealing with a student.”

  “I figured,” Timothy said, leaning against the doorframe. His well-muscled arms threatened to rip his polo shirt, or maybe that was just Patrick’s imagination. “He was in my office two hours ago, complaining about how totally unfair it is that animals don’t use photosynthesis.” Patrick didn’t quite understand the joke, but he could at least figure it was yet another thing the student had gotten wrong on a test. He chuckled.

  “So, office hours up yet? Let’s grab coffee before more of the brats show up.” Patrick’s heart pounded. Coffee. Could it be…? “I think Lila’s coming along too.”

  Of course not. It was just a coffee run. Typical office chatter.

  “Sure thing,” Patrick said. “Lead on.”

  Lila joined them in the hall, and talk turned to grading and departmental politics as they headed out along the campus toward the student-run Starbucks. “I hope they don’t ruin the macchiatos again,” Timothy joked. Patrick always found it amusing that Timothy acted like he was so far removed from the students when he was just thirty, less than ten years from graduating himself.

  As they walked, bright colors caught Patrick’s eye. Letters spelled out Pride in a student’s dorm window.

  He wished he could be so open, like that student. Or his uncle, free and proud enough to knock over a cop car.

  Timothy caught his gaze, and he snapped it away from the window. “In a daze, there?” he asked, the sun shining off his blond hair. “Lila asked you about how you history buffs get your funding. It’s not like you can ask the NIH for money.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Um, proposing projects to the university. They mostly just pay salary, but they can offer resources for some research—like asking for archive access or interviewing people.” Timothy tilted his head.

  “Sounds like a good start, at least,” Lila said. “What sort of thing are you planning?”

  “I have a few ideas, but nothing concrete yet,” Patrick said. Timothy gave him a strange smile. “I just have to come up with a proposal I think the university will fund.”

  “Hopefully soon,” Timothy said. He patted Patrick on the back, his touch sending goose bumps down his back. “Academia is a scary place.”

  Timothy laughed, but Patrick just nodded. That was certainly the truth.

  IT TOOK digging, but he found another few pages of the journal that night as he moved another stack of paper. This one, though, was less positive.

  They killed him. I can’t believe it. This is the worst day for us. He meant so much.

  Patrick’s heart seized, and for a moment he thought his uncle meant Todd. But when he saw the date, it clicked—November 27, 1978. His uncle had lived in San Francisco before moving here. He meant Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay politicians.

  He was our politician, and a good man. I never met him, and neither did Todd. But he meant a lot. I hope they hang the bastard who did it. You can’t just assassinate someone. Especially not the mayor of Castro Street.

  Patrick sighed. He knew enough history to predict what he would find next, and sure enough, he found it on a page stapled to the first, dated May 22, 1979.

  We stood up for ourselves again. Once again not taking this shit, me or Todd, not from that Twinkie-eating murderer. It was a travesty. But we said our piece. We were too old to be flipping cars, but we were with them, marching down the avenue. We all knew it wasn’t fair—you don’t just let off a man who murdered a politician. Manslaughter? Only a few years in prison? He murdered him. They only let him off with such a light sentence because Harvey was gay, like us. We don’t stand for it. We didn’t stand for it.

  The cops were nastier this time, though. It’s like the more we fight, the worse things get. People were setting off explosives—or maybe it was just they were setting things on fire, and the fuel tanks were exploding. But either way, the cops got in our faces. They started threatening, and I know they used tear gas because we saw people running.

  One cop got a kid really good—we saw him running away, blind and bruised. Some pig had hit him, and he was bleeding. Todd caught him before he ran into something. The guy couldn’t have been more than twenty-five—younger than we were at Stonewall.

  He said his name was Timothy, and he was fighting for gay pride.

  A shiver went through Patrick at the name.

  He was a good fighter, a fine young man, but he was hurt. Todd and I took him into a store and got him an ice pack and some antibiotic ointment for his eye. He was grateful. He said he had to keep going—that we couldn’t let them push us around anymore.

  We had leaders and rights and everything now.

  He was right, of course. Todd and I are getting older—it’s hard to keep up the fight, hard to see riots and violence against us. But they have to take us seriously. And we have to stick together. After the riots, there wasn’t any punishment. Everyone knows we have to work together. We just have to keep on going.

  The page ended there. Patrick dug through more papers, setting aside old bills and letters. There had to be more. This was a glimpse into a life he wished he had known better. This was his history, one he had never had a chance to know. Why hadn’t his uncle kept it all in one place? Of course, it was all old—it was fascinating to Patrick, but to Uncle Marty, it had probably just b
een old memories.

  And it didn’t answer the question of where Todd was. Patrick had never heard of him. Together for over ten years. Patrick was thirty and hadn’t been in a relationship for longer than one. Part of it was fear, of course, fear of coming out and fear of it interfering with work.

  He sat back on the basement floor, wondering what Uncle Marty and Todd would think of him, especially compared to Timothy, the gay pride fighter. They probably wouldn’t be all that impressed.

  THE THOUGHTS of his uncle’s life distracted him at work the next day, and all he really wanted to do was dig through more papers. But he had to keep up the gym routine. Maybe he’d even see Timothy.

  The attractive professor wasn’t there when Patrick arrived, and he did his usual half hour of jogging before heading down to the machines. He fell into the routine of lifting and of avoiding eye contact with anyone who didn’t look friendly.

  “Hello.”

  He nearly dropped the weight at the familiar voice. Timothy had arrived and was talking to him. He wore a sleeveless shirt, and Patrick had to work not to stare.

  “I see you here a lot. What sort of reps do you do?”

  “Um… just a typical round on the machines.” He swallowed hard. There were a thousand reasons Timothy could be talking to him, and very few of them were because he was also gay and interested. He could just ask. He should just ask.

  “Do you want to spot me?” Timothy asked with a gorgeous smile.

  “Um. Sure.” He was more eloquent than this when teaching classes, he knew. Get it together. It was just helping out another guy at the gym, that was all. “Do you think I’m strong enough?”

  “I’ve watched you. I’m sure you are.” Timothy grinned, and Patrick hoped his face wasn’t reddening as he followed Timothy to the bench press. He had to get rid of this awkwardness. He knew the stereotypes about nerdy professors who didn’t know how to socialize outside of work, but that was for physicists and mathematicians, not history professors like him.

  At least he knew how to spot. He could focus on that. He told himself to be like his uncle, or Todd—be tough and cool and deal with what came at you. Keep on going. Of course, they probably didn’t mean for it to be used to talk to attractive guys you were interested in. That had likely been easy for them.

  Timothy lay down on the bench, the weights above his head. Seventy on each side—so a hundred forty pounds.

  “Here we go.” Timothy clapped his hands, sending up a small cloud of chalk. He gripped the weight, then lifted it off the bar. Patrick put one hand below it and one hand above, leaning over the other man to make sure he would have the weight if something went wrong, but Timothy didn’t falter. He put the weight on his chest, taking a deep breath in. His arm muscles were starkly defined and beautiful. He let out a breath, lifting the weight above his body, and he managed to grin at Patrick while he did. Patrick was sure he blushed again.

  The weight was heavy, so Timothy only did five reps before setting the weight back down. Patrick hadn’t had to do anything—other than watch, of course. And he certainly enjoyed that.

  “Ah, break time.” Timothy sat up, turning so he looked Patrick in the eye. “You want a try?”

  Patrick shrugged, running a hand through his hair. “Um… I don’t usually bench press. I just stick to the machines.”

  “This is a machine! Kind of.” Timothy smacked the seat as he stood. “C’mon, give it a shot. I’ll help you.”

  It wasn’t like he had never wanted to try. It had just seemed overwhelming. But with Timothy here to spot, maybe he could do it. “All right. Let’s try low weight, though. Maybe….” He had no idea what would be good to start with. “A hundred pounds?”

  Timothy chuckled. “I’ve seen you on the machines. Let’s start with one twenty.” With a clang and a rattle, he lifted the weights onto the pole.

  Patrick took a deep breath, and as he did, Timothy leaned over him, blocking out the lights overhead. His smile was radiant, though, and made Patrick’s heart beat faster. “Do you need a liftoff?”

  It took Patrick a moment to figure out what he meant. “No,” he said. “I’ve got it.” He supposed it was time to try. He grabbed the pole, aware of how close his hands were to Timothy’s.

  The weight was heavy, but not as heavy as he expected. His muscles flexed, and he strained, but putting the bar across his chest was easy enough. Timothy was there too, leaning close and ready to catch the weight if something went wrong.

  Then he let out his breath, lifting the weight over his head. “Nice!” Timothy said. “Just five more reps, how about?”

  “Sure,” Patrick managed. He put the weight down, aware of how much weight could lie across his chest if he failed. Then he lifted it again, relishing the pleased smile Timothy gave him when he did.

  For a half hour they switched off, completing their reps on the bench press, growing progressively more tired and more friendly. The awkwardness from before began to fade, just a little. The uncertainty, however, grew.

  Timothy was so friendly. He was kind, and he was attractive, with defined muscles, a strong jaw, and a wave of blond hair. He had the perfect body, in Patrick’s mind. He was the first person to be kind to Patrick when he had gotten here two weeks ago, a new professor who was completely fresh to being anything other than a low-level history researcher in a library. He was sure they would be friends.

  But more than that? He just couldn’t bring himself to ask. He couldn’t bring himself to come out. The consequences could be disastrous. He could lose his only new friend, or even lose his job.

  “So, you thought of that new history research project yet?” Timothy asked after Patrick’s last rep. He sat up, his shirtfront sweaty, and Timothy tossed him a towel. “It’s always better to get started on these things early. The institution always likes that.”

  Patrick would take that advice to heart. But as he got ready to leave, swallowing down any requests to get coffee or see a movie or to tell Timothy how he felt, all he could think about was how he felt like a coward.

  IT TOOK hours of cleaning before he found another page. He wished his granduncle had been more organized. He wanted to read the entire journal, to learn about the lives of those who came before. Gay men and women like him had been fighting for years, and there was still so much inequality, so much violence and fear. He wanted to see the victories.

  But the page he found certainly wasn’t a victory.

  It’s been a year since Todd died.

  Patrick’s heart fell into his shoes. He hadn’t known Todd, but the words hurt. He checked the date—September 21, 1986. Todd had died a year before Patrick was born.

  I didn’t get sick, thankfully, but I’m trying to help others. I moved out here to this Midwestern house to try to help, but no one wants my help. I just couldn’t stay in the city anymore. So many in the city died. It was like walking through a graveyard. The scourge of San Francisco. Old friends and faces, familiar people, old lovers… they all got sick. They call it the gay disease, and I know others have it too, but everyone sees it as more reason to abuse us. All the old fighters are gone.

  He was talking about AIDS. Patrick’s heart thudded dully in his chest. That illness was still a problem, even now. Gay men couldn’t donate blood as easily as everyone else, even when it was needed; doctors encouraged them to take preventative medicines… he had been offered a prescription for PrEP more times than he could count when he had come out to his doctors back in his hometown. As if he needed it, he thought ruefully, being so far in the closet here.

  That’s the hardest part about it, I think. All the old fighters are gone, and now that I’ve left, I’m feeling it more keenly. I figured a small town in the Midwest would give me some room to grieve and find a way to help those who don’t have all the resources we had out in SF, but it’s worse than I thought out here. People ignore me. They don’t even let their kids trick-or-treat at my house! There’s no one else in the whole town who’s out, and I know in a town t
his size there have to be more of us. How am I supposed to help anyone?

  Patrick saw his worst fears laid out on the page. His uncle had been out, and the small Bible Belt town had punished him for it. The same could happen to him.

  But I’ll keep trying. I’ll be out and proud, just like Todd would have wanted. He didn’t let anything, whether it be a police car or even his illness in the end, get in his way. I always remember him from the first time I saw him—flipping over a car, standing up for himself and for all of us.

  I may be alone now, but I don’t regret anything. If I hadn’t been brave and fought for who I am, I would never have been with Todd. And that would have been worse than anything.

  We’ve come far, but we still have a long way to go. I have to keep going, for Todd and for whoever may read this one day. I hope they benefit from all our work and keep working on their own.

  Patrick sat in silence for a moment, the paper in his hands. Somehow, he didn’t think he would find any more pages. He didn’t need to.

  “I HAVE a proposal,” Patrick said. The chair of the history department nodded, not quite looking up from his desk where he took notes. “I think it would be beneficial for both students and faculty.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I want to research the history of LGBT individuals in the area,” Patrick said. This time the man looked up, but the anxiety and fear Patrick thought he would feel didn’t come. This was the right thing to do. “It’s a history often left unexplored and would go a long way toward increasing acceptance and diversity at the university as well.” He thought of the Pride sign in the unknown student’s window. “I can begin by interviewing people, or perhaps by tracking the—”