Love is Love (Sean)

[Joshua Bernstein]

6/12/2016

MASSIVE TRIGGER WARNING FOR VIOLENCE AND HOMOPHOBIA

---

Josh had always known people wanted to kill him.

This knowledge had been background radiation as a child, when he had first asked his father why he didn't know his grandparents. Why was the other elderly couple he sometimes visited not Jewish? They clearly weren't related to his father, and yet somehow they were important.

He had known since the parents and grandparents of his friends talked about their own families, oftentimes in whispers when they thought the children were occupied with play.

He had known since lessons on the Holocaust at school, where he had learned details his father would never share.

When he was 13 there was a fire, arson, at a gay bar. Thirty-two people died, and most of the country erased the victims. But Josh read enough, and he knew, and he learned that people wanted him dead for more than one reason.

When he was 18 Harvey Milk was assassinated; when he was 19 playwright Tennessee Williams was attacked -- part of a spate of anti-gay beatings that year.

Charlie Howard, Rebecca Wright, Scott Amedure, Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill, Fred Mangione, Matthew Shepard...

Each new victim reminded him that he wasn't welcome. Even as the laws slowly changed across the states, and his community celebrated victories, the messages of unwelcome and hostility became more frequent and more brutal.

Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder taught him that some of the people who hated him for being Jewish also hated him for being gay.

And on and on and on. Homophobic rhetoric from politicians was followed by violence from their constituents, but society pretended to be surprised. Lone nuts, mental illness, extremism, but never the fault of those who used words like abomination or unnatural or perverted to describe his relationships.

It was pride month.

Last year this time they had been celebrating marriage equality.

This year they mourned.

He was glued to the news and to social media. The news because that was what he had grown up with; social media because that was where people first began to pay attention to the full scope of the tragedy. The mainstream news had, at first, not reported that this was a gay club.

Social media had spread this far and wide. Not only gay, but Latinx night. A special intersection there. Josh wasn't Latino, but he could understand people wanting you dead for more than one of your identities.

It was important.

Even after admitting that the club was a gay club, the media still tried to ignore this to the best of their abilities.

We're all Americans

Don't make false divisions

It would be sad no matter who it was because we're all humans

Ignore the homophobia that sparked the massacre, latch onto the murderer's religion. Or was he religious? It was Ramadan, and his family said he wasn't participating, he wasn't religious, but he hated gay men.

He pledged allegiance to ISIS, the media said.

The outpouring of support that didn't mention homophobia, the politician statements against Islamic Extremism.

Ignore the man arrested on the way to LA Pride, ignore the victims, erase them so there's only Innocent Americans (even though you said they shouldn't have protections and you said they shouldn't be married and you palled around with that pastor who said they should all be killed.) A simple narrative, one that allows you to be enraged and channel your righteous fury into Islamophobia while ignoring that you're complicit in these deaths.

Josh watched the news, and scoured social media, and he felt rage well up within him. Every reminder that people wanted him dead brought with it rage. If he allowed anything else he might break down, might recall too much the woods and broken ribs.

Rage allowed him to continue on.

Rage kept him from breaking down into tears with each heartbreaking detail released: The mother who received a son's last frightened text, the endless ringing of the phones of the dead while their families tried to reach them, the woman who had left the club minutes before the massacre who was desperate to find those she had left behind, the man who had intended to come but had been distracted by a different event who felt guilt that his friend was dead. If I had been there, I could have done something.

Over one hundred people shot. Half dead, and Josh's heart was heavy with the knowledge not all who were injured would survive.

As soon as a reliable donation site had begun passing around he had donated, but he felt antsy. He needed to do something.

"If this doesn't get Sanders to back stricter gun control...." His voice shook with the effort of not sobbing. Over one hundred people. He supported Sanders full-throatedly, but they had never agreed on gun control policy. Vermont was liberal in many ways, but guns was not one of them. "I should write him a letter."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean had woken early that Sunday morning, as he always did. June brought with it a morass of conflicting and equally entangled events and obligations. The school year at Hammel slowly wound down, with final exams, his own assessment paperwork, and training sessions all working towards graduation at the end of the month. Then the students and staff would take a month-long recess, and the graduating students would go off to begin the next chapter of their lives.

At the same time, it was also Pride Month. Having lived in the Village from the middle 1970s-through much of the AIDS Crisis, Pride Month meant a lot to the telepath on an individual basis, even if he didn’t involve himself in the parades as they grew more mainstream and corporate. Having a month to discuss history and focus on issues meant a lot to him, even when the specifics left something to be desired in many places. At least Vermont was relatively LGBT-friendly and ahead of the curve in many ways.

After donning his robe over his pajamas and going downstairs to begin breakfast, he had turned on the news as he did every weekend morning.

Then he had seen reports about the biggest massacre in U.S. history, he had frowned, watched CNN for a couple of minutes but found it lacking details, switched to MSNBC, found it also light on information, and then he dug out Josh’s laptop, which his partner had left in the living room. It took a moment to boot up, but, within moments, the blogs that they read together had provided him with greater, far more disturbing details.

Afterward, stone-faced, he had returned upstairs to their bedroom, woke his partner, and delivered him the few, horrifying details he had learned. That there had been another mass shooting, this time at a gay club in Orlando on Latinx night, and that dozens were dead with a rising death count.

They sat together on the bed in silence for several minutes, holding hands. Sean didn’t bother to shield, since they were home, and, regardless, he knew where Josh’s thoughts went. The telepath’s own traversed a similar, albeit not identical route. Josh was Jewish and his father had escaped Nazi Germany but lost his entire family in the Holocaust. By contrast, Sean was a white gentile, but his thoughts turned towards PUSE and the few attacks of vandalism that had started this month. So far, all of the establishments were meta-owned and operated, and more than one person had been part of the LGBT community, although that had been considered incidental rather than the target. Still, he knew how quickly hatred and fear turned to violence.

The psychiatrist had brought the laptop up to Josh should he want to use it, he had set the remote by his partner’s side so he could watch the bedroom television, and he had brought up coffee and a simpler breakfast of toast and fruit, since Sean had lost his appetite and he was sure that Josh had as well; he knew that his partner reacted that way to stress, grief, and anger.

After forcing down a couple of slices of toast and a cup of coffee, Sean had disappeared into the bathroom to shower, then he dressed and announced that he was going to the blood bank to donate.

After every crisis, Sean went to the blood bank to donate. Even though most blood was taken from the immediate area of a crisis, blood on hand from surrounding areas was shipped if needed, and, in turn, those blood banks required replenishing. To donate blood was to take a small, tangible step to help others.

More than that, the telepath had been born O-negative; he was the universal donor. He had never suffered from anemia. He had never had a problem with his heart or lungs. He never engaged in anonymous sex and had never used needles for recreational drugs; he took no recreational drugs at all, the pot from his college years and the accidental brownie ingestion from this past winter notwithstanding. He had never traveled to a nation with a blood ban and had not spent anywhere near enough cumulative time in Europe to create a problem. He had no tattoos and hadn’t had a fresh piercing in forty years.

Despite all of that, Sean had not successfully donated blood in thirty years. He was a bisexual man in the United States who had been sexually active with other men. Even with the revised policy, the telepath had not been celibate; in fact, the last time he’d had sex with another man had been yesterday morning.

Still, each and every time, he went down to complete the profile to show what a fit donor he was, to show that he had O-negative blood, and to force them to turn him away on the basis of being a bisexual man.

Unfortunately, today had been no different.

After being turned away, he sat in his car for several minutes, resting his forehead on the steering wheel and trying to compose himself. So much of this was difficult to process for the sheer enormity.

By the time he returned home, he found Josh online and watching television. The psychiatrist poured himself some tea and a cup for his partner as well, should Josh want some. Then he returned to the other man’s side and settled beside him to continue watching news feeds.

Eventually, the news stations specified that this had been a gay club, apparently a historic one in Orlando. This was only a week after Gay Days at Disney, and so as staggering as the death toll had been, it might have been worse had this occurred a week before.

They sat in silence for a long while, watching the news, Josh online and Sean occasionally reading over his shoulder. When a donation page went up, Sean asked his partner to donate double and then left him to decide the amount himself.

When Josh broke the silence again and his voice broke, the telepath wrapped his arm around the other man to draw him closer. “We can write him letters.” It was some small amount that they could do. “Write letters, sign petitions. The Youth Center will have increased counseling this week so I’ll be busy there after work.”

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh turned slightly so that he could bury his face in Sean's shoulder. At least he wasn't alone; he had Sean to mourn with, and friends. They might want to check in with their other LGBT friends, make sure that everyone was coping.

This would be difficult news for everyone in the community.

"The kids need you," He agreed in a whisper. More, perhaps, than most of their friends would; their friends were out, and had one another. So many of the students were only out at the center, couldn't turn to their family for comfort.

Some, he knew, would have to hide their pain while family insinuated the victims deserved death. Punishment for defying the will of God.

Texas's Lieutenant Governor had already tweeted something to that effect; passive aggressive though it was the message was loud and clear.

He wouldn't be the only one.

With the knowledge that the shooter was Muslim there were enough people tying themselves in knots to condemn the attack while also implying the victims had it coming.

"I may keep the offices open later, in case..."

In case any anti-Muslim (or anti-LGBT) attacks occurred in the wake of this. Vermont may have been more liberal than many places in the United States, but this had been the state that had a notorious recent article in the New York Times about students protesting their trans peers by wearing Straight Pride shirts.

Even liberal Vermont wasn't immune to bigotry and hate. And it was so white.

"And...I might....call Sanjay."

He hadn't been in touch with his ex-boyfriend in years, even though they'd broken up on good terms. But with the fever pitch of Islamophobia, and a certain Presidential Candidate's desire to round up Muslims....

perhaps it was time to reach out.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean tightened his arm around his partner’s shoulders, guiding him to rest as comfortably as he could and to use the telepath’s neck as both a pillow and a tissue if need be. Through their closeness, he could hear the intense sadness and pain the other man felt, and in many ways it echoed Sean’s own thoughts and emotions.

“We’ll do what we can for them,” he promised. He and the other volunteers would do what they could to provide the students with support. As it was, tomorrow at Hammel he would pull the files of any students who came from Florida or who might have family down there, to make sure that they were safe and emotionally stable as could be expected.

Their community would feel the echoes of this tragedy for a long time.

When Josh proposed his own course of action, Sean nodded in agreement. “I think both of those are good ideas.” He hoped that there would be no reactionary violence, but given the anti-meta backlash that had occurred, the telepath had little reason to believe they could avoid this altogether, even in a town as liberal and diverse as Pilot Ridge.

“I hope Sanjay and his family are safe,” he added. The psychiatrist had never met Sanjay, since Josh had only dated the other man for a relatively brief period of time. However, he had known from Josh that he was a good man, and that he was a gay Muslim and an immigrant. Those would converge in potentially disastrous ways in their current social and political climate.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh swallowed back tears, fingers grasping at the fabric of Sean's shirt. "He has to be fine. What if he isn't? And I haven't talked to him in years, and...."

Would it be his fault? No, but he would still feel guilt regardless.

"He deserves to be okay."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean reached up to run his fingers through Josh’s hair; he did so unconsciously at this point, never making the conscious decision to touch his partner this way. He simply did because he found the gesture soothing himself. “It won’t be your fault,” he assured the younger man. For the sake of both Sanjay and his family, the telepath hoped that he was safe and well and that his family was safe and well. However, if he wasn’t, it wouldn’t become Josh’s fault for not having contact in a decade and a half.

People fell out of contact all the time, and it didn’t transmute bad deeds by others or the cruel hand of the universe into the individual responsibility of a person for falling out of contact. He believed this as a man who worked hard to remain in contact with his ex-girlfriends and ex-boyfriends.

Leaning forward, he pressed a gentle kiss to the top of his partner’s head. “We’ll call him whenever you want,” he promised. They could call together if Josh wanted, or Sean could hold his hand the entire time. “We’ll call everyone you want to call to check in with them.”

Their friends in Vermont, their friends back in New York, friends and family elsewhere. For good measure, Sean would call Orion and Alex later as well.

[Joshua Bernstein]

"I need to call everyone. My family, too."

In fact, Josh was surprised that none of them had called yet; perhaps they hadn't yet gotten the news that this was an attack on LGBT Americans, only that it was at a nightclub. His mother might not even have turned on the news yet, which was perhaps for the best. Otherwise she might try to drive here from Burlington, and she hadn't been the best of drivers even when she'd had better vision.

"And the parade this year...it's almost all planned already, isn't it? But we'll have to do something to honor the victims."

He was sure that everyone else would feel the same; this was an attack on their community, and that needed to be acknowledged.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“We can call everyone,” Sean assured them. They had nowhere else to be today, since it was Sunday and the psychiatrist had already been turned down for blood donation. They could spend the rest of the afternoon and evening on the phone if Josh wanted, calling their family, friends, and ex-partners to make sure that everyone was safe. Just as they did after other major attacks, either on the LGBT community or on other communities or areas where they had friends and family.

For his own part, the psychiatrist would want to call Ryan to check in with him. He doubted that Kathleen would call, since it wouldn’t occur to her that this might affect him; after all, it was a nightclub in Florida, and, misguided impressions of him aside, he was about twice the age of those who went to those types of clubs on a regular basis.

No matter. He would assure his nephew that he was safe.

Sean tightened his arm around his partner again. “I’m sure the organizers will include a memorial service.” Although the parade and other events were already planned, surely they could work in a memorial theme. Unfortunately, this wasn’t so uncommon for their community to lack a procedure for such an event.

Would that this was unheard of.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh sighed deeply, closing his eyes. His heart hurt, his head hurt, his stomach felt queasy. He knew he should eat today, but he wasn't sure that he could. He had barely even touched water all day.

"They probably will. And how many more memorials will we have before things change?"

He tried to keep optimistic, to look at the strides society had taken, but on days like today that was difficult.

"We should call people now. Or write letters. Something. If we keep sitting here I'm going to cry."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean continued to stroke Josh’s hair softly, offering what comfort could be found through the touch. Later, he would make something light for his partner to eat, since Josh needed to eat something, even if it wouldn’t qualify as a full meal by any stretch of the imagination. “This country is impervious to gun violence,” he remarked. He had shared this sentiment many times before. The mass shooting at the Holocaust Memorial had changed nothing. The Charleston Church shooting had changed nothing. Columbine had changed nothing. Shooting an elementary school had changed nothing. The thin ray of hope was that Scalia had passed away, leaving a divided court and with hope of a liberal appointment on the horizon. If such appointment wasn’t blocked by Congress.

There was no shame in crying. Someday, Sean hoped that his partner could internalize that, but today was not the day to make the point. Josh often felt worse after crying, between the guilt and his self-recrimination, and today the telepath would not encourage him to learn healthier coping methods.

Instead, he leaned forward again to press a second kiss to the top of the younger man’s head. “We’ll keep busy. Do you want to call first? Or do you want to write first?” He would fetch either the telephone or two pads and pens depending on Josh’s preferences.

[Joshua Bernstein]

"Calling first, I think," Josh decided, pulling away from Sean's embrace in order to glance at the cell phone lying on the side table. "It's important to check in with people. The letters can wait. They're important, but...."

He heaved another sigh.

"I feel like I've been writing the same letters for decades."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean let his partner slip from his embrace, allowing the other man freedom of movement. However, when Josh didn’t rise from the bed, the telepath took the initiative instead, grabbing both his partner’s cell phone and the landline off their respective end tables and setting them down between their spaces in bed.

“We have been,” he acknowledged quietly. In some ways, both men had written the same letters to their Senators, Congressmen, their President, their governors and mayors and local officials. The people to whom they wrote might change depending on location, party affiliation, and election results, but the positions and lack of progress remained constant. They wrote about tax policy. They wrote about bigotry. They wrote about gun violence. Sean wrote about mental health parity. Josh wrote about legal matters with the sophistication of a professional.

They rarely received acknowledgment. Rarely were the issues they considered important taken up by their leaders at all.

It could feel futile, but Sean never gave up. If they stopped writing, then it provided a pretense for the inaction – the idea that people didn’t care as evidenced by the lack of letters.

However, he agreed that letters could wait until after they called friends and family. To that end, he handed the cell phone to his partner and then reached for the landline receiver. “I’ll start with Ryan.”

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh managed a small smile when Sean mentioned his nephew. "Good, he'll want to hear from you. I'll start with Talia, so she won't have to bother Tomer about me."

He leaned against Sean as he made his first call. Yes, she'd seen the news. She knew the pain of seeing your community under attack, she was glad he was holding up. David wanted to talk to him, and then his nieces wanted to tell him they loved him.

"And Uncle Sean, too," Abby had added.

Then he had called Matt and Michelle. That was a shorter phone call, but no less heartfelt. They were thinking of coming up to Vermont to see Mama and Papa B over the summer, so they'd drop in on Josh and Sean while they were there.

He called his friends from the City, almost everyone he could think of. Former coworkers, the old woman who had owned the laundromat he stopped by after work, the bartenders he had known so well.

Then Sanjay.

He wasn't sure if the other man would even pick up. He might not recognize the number, or he might be working; taxis didn't have Sundays off. But Sanjay's familiar voice answered "Hello, Sanjay Balachander, how may I help you?"

"Ahh, Sanjay, this is Joshua Bernstein! I just wanted to check in, you know, it's been such a long time..."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

While Josh called his family, Sean began with Ryan. That call was two-fold: First to check in with his nephew to let him know that he and Josh were holding up to the best of their ability. Second to make sure that Shiya and her family were safe; there would be Islamaphobic backlash, and it didn’t matter that her family had been in the U.S. for as long as they had, or that they were all upstanding citizens who abhorred violence and supported strict gun control measures. They were Muslims.

Ryan answered quickly, apparently both he and Shiya had headed to the blood bank with the same reasoning Sean had had. Ryan expressed outrage, but not surprise, that the telepath had been turned away, since he always was; apparently there had been some rumors floating around of the ban being lifted under the circumstances, but that had been false. Shiya’s family was safe for now but they all checked in with each other as they always did after these types of attacks. Her mosque had put out a press release condemning the violence.

Afterward, Sean called both Ryan and Orion to check in with them, as well as everyone he worked with at the Center, his friends from Hammel and around Pilot Ridge, Greg and Daphne, and Felicity. In the middle of his rounds, Sam called, and so he assured her that he and Josh were safe and coping as best they could. Everyone but the MSM who was eligible planned to give blood; everyone with the funds planned to, or already had, donated money.

He had just finished with Sam when he heard Josh mentioned Sanjay’s name. The telepath squeezed his partner’s free hand, leaning in should Josh require greater support for this call.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Sanjay was happy to talk, although he didn't want to dwell much on the massacre. Instead he wanted to catch up. He'd managed to put himself through college, finally, despite his abysmal track record with money saving. When Josh mentioned that Sanjay admitted that he'd begun dating a more serious boyfriend, who had helped him managing his finances. They'd met at their local Mosque and sparked a friendship based on a mutual love of philosophy and Muslim history.

"You started attending services again?" Josh asked, somewhat surprised; Sanjay hadn't been especially devout when they'd dated.

Islamophobia had returned him to his childhood religion; he had begun seeking solace among those who would understand, and thus turned back towards Islam. And now he was teaching world history to high school students.

He liked this better than driving taxis; he had enjoyed conversing with people well enough, but whether he'd find a decent customer or someone who recoiled and called him a terrorist was beginning to be more of a gamble than he liked.

And he wanted to know everything Josh was up to, and where he was now. Back with Sean? No surprise there, although Sanjay was sorry he'd never met Sean. Perhaps over summer break he and his boyfriend would come up to Vermont to officially meet Sean, and to congratulate them.

And then he apologized, because his boyfriend needed his help putting together some new furniture they'd bought for their apartment.

Josh leaned against Sean as he hung up.

"Well, we may have a busy summer this year."