This memory goes back a long time, or what seems far away, when AIDS was a new and terrifying phenomenon. And my friend Charles, a successful hairstylist in DC’s Georgetown was just diagnosed. It would be the last time I saw him. He was weak and open for good byes.

I greeted him, took his hand, looked into his eyes. There wasn’t much left to say, except to get the love I had for him across, expressed through the silent language of the eyes.

We grasp, it seems, at what is shallow, our likes or dislikes, such as what we think of Trump or how deep imagined conspiracies run.

Charles was dying. I needed to let him know I loved him. I hope I succeeded.

I started with Home Shopping Network. They were selling ladies fashions , but I was hardly paying attention. There was a quick peek at baseball, then You Tube and I watched Gutfeld. That was funny and also confirmed that both political parties are playing their second string. Both parties also have an insane fascination with war, that they are the next generation to save the world from insensate evil.

TV has the task of impressing upon us the need to save the world from ourselves. We have had an eighty four year struggle with war, fighting monsters both awesome and petty.

Each edition of the comic book titled Us vs. The Mega Monster, features an enemy lurking out there, ready to loot our Costcos and ravage our maidens, (Relax. They’re using contraception).

I’m jaded.We’re all jaded.

I married this woman on 4 October 1980. The Feast Day of St Francis Of Assisi. That was a Saturday. Alcohol was a major factor in the failure of our marriage.

In November of 2015, she died. At her memorial service , the presiding minister instructed me not to say anything about EAC, per her request. I should direct a statement about my feelings for her in a letter to her siblings. So I was welcome, but unlike all the other attendees, I was to remain silent. So I left.

I never wrote her siblings, nor have I seen them since that day. There is no reason to write or see them.

Now, after nearly ten years, I can say that I have nothing to say to them. Something in me died, when she died.

I may go visit where her ashes are interred, at Mt Auburn Cemetery if I ever go to Boston again. Then again, maybe not.

As ghosts go, EAC is a failure.

Sad, really.

Every time I look at your picture, another piece of my heart breaks away.

It wasn’t just ball players and playwrights who loved you, but this eleven year old boy, who saw into your heart.

You deserved better.