Nine-thirty Wednesday morning my boyfriend calls with the most effective distraction yet for having stayed out all night without having called me. "Scott Grove was killed last night," he says. "What?!" Hot tears begin to well up and wash away my plans of a pious toned, cool reprimand for my boyfriend's consistent lack of basic respect. "What are you talking about? He was killed?," I ask in disbelief. "They were talking about it in the bar. He was on the West side last night and I guess these guys robbed him and killed him." "Jesus," is all I can say. It seems odd to invoke the name of a savior whose followers generally agree would have rejected queers, had he addressed them at all. Nevertheless, my roots dictate this as my immediate response to anything remotely disturbing...

     A flood of memories wash over me, it's waters now tainted with the deep tar colored hue of oxygenated blood.I catch my breath in preparation of yet another tidal wave of grief. Forgetting for a moment that it was a queer that was killed, a queer that was killed on Dayton, Ohio's West side where people of color are only slightly less disposable than queers, I stupidly ask if the police have caught anyone or if they have any suspects. "Patrick, I don't know. Are you all right? I didn't know if I should tell you or not." "Yeah, I guess I'm all right," I say through my tears. "What do you mean you didn't know if you should tell me or not?" "Well I knew you'd be upset," he says remarkably. "Of course I'm fucking upset. My friend is dead. My friend was killed. That doesn't mean you don't tell me." For sharing by southern Bible belt roots, my boyfriend's reasoning is wholly Catholic: ignore a thing and it will go away. "I'm getting off the phone now. I'm going for a newspaper. I have to know what happened. I'll call you back before you leave for work." I walk to the store, my clenched teeth forming a TMJ inducing dam against open sobbing. Sitting on the curb I comb the paper for the story behind Scotty's murder. There is nothing, it hasn't made the papers yet. I call my boyfriend back and let him know. "You know it occurred to me a moment ago that I'm glad you had the good sense to call me with this news instead of telling me in person. I just had a very clear visual of me taking you by the forearms and shaking you like the men use to shake hysterical women in old black and white movies. This situation would be a very valid reason why I want you to call me to let me know what you're plans are; whether or not you're coming home. This shit happens. I don't care if you go out. I do care that you make it to where you're going and back home safely."

     Grief redirects my energy from the futile pursuit of making my partner understand the value of even basic communication and I excuse myself from the phone. It occurs to me that the local television stations might have whatever facts are available. I call a local t.v. newsroom, explain what little I know, and ask if they have any information to confirm what I've heard. When I'm taken off hold the voice on the other end of the phone confirms that the police were called to Western Manor Apartments at approximately 10:00 p.m. last night where they found Scott Grove, age 43, dead on the sidewalk. He was the victim of an apparent robbery and beaten to death with a golf club. The voice says that's all they know at the moment, but they would have more information on their afternoon newscast. With the facts confirmed and the added information of the brutality of his death my quivering tears become a quake of sobbing. I move from room to room leaving grief tracks on the mattress, the bathroom hand towels, and finally the sofa cushions where I sink, dehydrated and depleted, to watch the twelve o' clock news. Scotty's murder is the lead story on each of the local newscasts. They report live from the apartment complex where neighborhood children had found Scotty's beaten, bloody body on the sidewalk. A black and white photograph of Scotty flashes across the television screen as a police detective describes how especially brutal his murder was. The reporter says that Scotty and a friend had stopped in the parking lot to switch drivers when they were approached by four or five men who demanded their money. When his friend ran for help the robbers gave Scott no time to comply with their demand before they began beating him mercilessly. The newscast plays snippets of the 911 calls; one from Scotty's panicked friend who fled, the other from a woman who lives in the apartment complex. She sounds not so much panicked as she does annoyed. "These guys have beat this man down on the sidewalk. You better get someone out here to get him." She sounded as if bulk trash pick up had again left her unwanted couch sitting on the curb. It was Western Manor apartments on the West side, so to her, as to the police, it was just another body. The news coverage ends and I moan in sorrow for Scotty, for his family, for the West side, and for the knowledge that the buzz around this tragedy will be replaced by the routine buzz of another murder tomorrow. I moan until the trail of my tears opens upon a bright clearing of rage.

     I envision a protest, a rally, a candle light vigil in front of the apartment complex where he was killed or at least downtown in Courthouse Square, so I frantically begin to make phone calls. I call friends, acquaintances, bartenders, the Dayton Lesbian and Gay Center, and anyone remotely involved with the skeletal remains of local activism. Because of the location of the murder I begin to hear over and over again the response that I expected, but nevertheless find infuriating: "Well, what was he doing over there?" The implication of this constant refrain, and probably the fact of the matter, was that Scotty was "over there" to buy drugs. I understand that in blaming the victim the observers get to feel safer, but under the weight of so much blame, under so many layers of psychological self-protection and plain old-fashioned denial, the fact that there was a victim can become completely lost. By mid-afternoon, with the upteenth initial response to the news of Scotty's murder of "Well what was he doing over there?", I lose it. "I don't why he was over there," I snap, "maybe he was over there to visit a friend, maybe he was making French bread pizzas with sewer possums, maybe he was buying drugs. We could ask him, but he was killed! Did you catch that? Murdered by people I think it's safe to assume who didn't interview him as to why he was there before they killed him!" I apologize and because it allows the listener the opportunity to feel both, safer than the dead fag and superior to this emotional one, I'm forgiven. "John" at the local gay center responds, "Well, I've known Scotty for a lot of years. There's just a lot of unanswered questions." What this means, of course, is we might not want to be too surprised or get too worked up over this because Scott did drugs. "Was there any indication that it was a hate crime?", he asks. "Yes," I say, "they killed him." John feels the need to explain. "I mean did they kill him because he was gay? Were there witnesses that might have heard his attackers use anti-gay slurs?" I remind him of the obvious fact that I wasn't there. I can't possibly confirm that. At this point John loses interest and begins talking about other projects the center is involved in such as anti-discrimination ordinances and a suicide prevention hotline. "A suicide hotline?", echoes my reeling mind. "I'm calling to tell you about the murder last night of someone we've both known for years, someone who dj'd in most of the tri-state area bars, someone who helped organize your gay pride parades and worked on the floats, and you're talking to me about a suicide hotline?!" I realize the depths to which I'm not being heard and quickly end the call.

     Furious, but determined, I call another local organization and speak to someone named Bruce. I want to imagine the vital social services being provided by this caseworker: food pantry vouchers for homeless or underemployed gays and counseling service referrals for those with chemical dependency issues. Instead, with his lisp and fey demeanor I picture a gay male version of Lily Tomlin's switchboard operator, Ernestine. Initially Bruce Ernestine sounds interested. But, as I find myself wondering how he can test the limit of any word to hold a dozen s's while chewing gum, the scenario I just encountered with John is repeated. When I make it clear that I have no evidence, or even rumor for that matter, that his assailants called Scotty a fag before they killed him, Bruce also loses interest. My frustration with the so called gay "community" reaches a new level as I begin to realize not only how expendable we are to the straight population, but, apparently, how expendable we are to each other. I call yet another gay man named John after Bruce lisps his "thempasies" and hangs up. As John #2 answers the phone it occurs to me that every fag in Dayton, Ohio must share one of these two first names and how convenient that must actually be. If the phone number hastily written on a cocktail napkin for a rendezvous is missing a name, hey you still have a fifty-fifty chance of guessing your trick's name correctly. John #2 is horrified at the news of Scotty's murder, but unlike me is not so surprised by the lack of community response. Suddenly and without warning I realize that someone is listening to me and actually hearing what I'm saying. Initially, my mind wants to question John #2's orientation. "If he can actually hear another person's concerns in an empathetic way over an internal disco beat, can he really be gay?", I wonder, before remembering that John has had a male life partner for several years. John #2 and I commiserate about the self inflicted trials of the male gay community and decide that a more shocking headline than "Backwater Bible Belt States Embrace Gay Marriage and Offer Free Honeymoon Packages" would be the headline, "Gay Man Dies Of Natural Causes." But no one wants to talk about the rather republican sounding notion of personal responsibility. Our community has more cigarette smokers, alcoholics, drug users, and denial per capita than a "Different Strokes" cast reunion, but you can be sure that if we think about it at all, it's not our fault. Without a doubt, our addictions have saved countless gay bashers the time and trouble. Nothing short of shouting "last call!" or the immediate threat of our dicks literally dropping lifeless from our loins seems capable of motivating most gay men from chronic apathy. In old Hollywood movies like "The Children's Hour" if a character was even hinted at being gay you could be sure of that character's eminent demise. The character would be punished for the unspoken sin of their unspeakable love. The current climate of the community seems to have reverted back to the "love that damns you to death" morality of the nineteen forties. Punishment, whether at the hands of merciless physical bashing, the systematic legislated denial of our basic human rights, or through our own self destructive addictions: our preference for ecstasy over intimacy, for passion over compassion, for cock over community, for "me" over "we", punishment is what we expect, agree to, and participate in. I apologize to John #2 for my ranting and thank him for hearing me out. He asks me to let him know when Scotty's funeral is and to keep him posted if I hear anymore details about the murder or news of any possible suspects.

     The afternoon of Scott's funeral I walk into the back of the funeral home chapel and my mourning is again delayed by anger. Where the fuck is everyone? I thought the place would be packed. There are maybe thirty people in attendance, seven or eight of us that are not family members. Okay, so it was impossible to drum up the interest or courage or energy to hold a rally or a vigil for Scott but surely, I thought, people would show up for his funeral. I was simply wrong again. The lack of gay men in attendance attested to the fact that clearly no one had thought ahead to have and advertise an open bar. After the brief service I complained to Scott's best friend Peter about what I found to be the shockingly low number of people that turned out. Peter was not so surprised. "Scotty didn't have a lot of friends," Peter explained. "He wasn't the kind of person that let people in. Hell, we knew each other for twenty years and he never really let me in." In retrospect I guess Peter was right. Most everyone knew of Scotty, but no one actually knew Scotty. It was all about head for Scott; acquiring it and escaping his own through sexual conquests and drug scores. While his ego must have softened to a plush velveteen feel from all the stroking, the walls that surrounded anything beneath it were as hard as his gym bunny biceps. His pat response when any one would ask, "How are you?" was always, "I'm fabulous! Haven't you heard?" Sadly, if he ever convinced anyone else, he never convinced himself. Scott hadn't responded to the community in anything more than a superficial way and now the community couldn't be bothered to respond to him in even a superficial way. The local community center, it seems, is more concerned with legislation banning discrimination and offering domestic partnership benefits. These are worthy causes. But, it is unlikely that these distractions that are given top priority will become a reality for a community whose collective heart remains smaller than its liquor-swollen liver. The community "leaders" appear to have adopted the thinly veiled contempt gussied up as "compassionate conservatism" advocated by the current federal terrorist administration. Such a community risks being as exclusionary and self-serving as the self-appointed president we so frequently criticize. We have assimilated to the point of becoming that which we profess to loathe: an exclusive group of self-righteous cock suckers. To "pay ones' respect" necessarily implies that you have respect to pay. Apparently, the community could muster none. Ever mindful of an image of assimilation, except during pride parades when we march in leather and drag, the community needed a clean, clear hate crime; no drugs, no viruses involved. Our passion for justice seems to stop short if we can't include the injustice on our stat sheets.

Patrick Sebastian
07/01/04