Project Rebirth (14 page)

In April 1988, Larry received a job offer in New York City that he could not refuse, as a bookkeeper for Banca IMI, an investment bank. He and Gene decided that, though neither of them had ever even been to New York City before, they would embark on the adventure together. They were head over heels in love and couldn't imagine being apart. Within eight months they lived in Times Square and began exploring the “city of dreams” from its luminescent, twenty-four-hour center. “Gene came even more alive,” Larry reflects. “He was made for this city.”

Gene's personality mirrored the city's: performative, nonstop, and endlessly creative. He loved to go to Broadway shows, squeezing Larry's hand as the dancers wound their way across the stage in perfect formation. As the audience spilled out into the streets of the Theater District afterward, Gene looked as if he was lit up from the inside, so inspired by the talent that he'd just seen onstage. They'd make their way back to their apartment, both buzzing with the high of witnessing an inspired performance.

Gene himself worked in office jobs—first in publishing, then in the insurance industry—but he was a huge artistic talent. Larry often quipped, “He could dance like Tina Turner and he had better legs!” By the time he came to New York, he was no longer performing but had long taught dance lessons and performed in various small productions.

Their shared life in the Big Apple was accompanied by a Broadway soundtrack. They loved to buy recordings of their favorite musicals on CD and belt them out as they spent time in their apartment. Gene had a beautiful voice. He drew inspiration from his extensive LP collection—Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, and others—and his favorite Broadway shows,
Dreamgirls
and
Les Misérables.

When they weren't singing and dancing, Larry and Gene were among friends. They loved to have long brunches at their favorite diner, the Viceroy, in Greenwich Village, where Larry would order French toast and Gene would order eggs Benedict, or vice versa. When the pride parade rolled around each June, they got a big group of friends together and marched in honor of their hardearned liberation. It was wild fun, with people dressed up in costumes, elaborate floats, and, yet again, great music.

Being able to be public as a gay man represented a profound shift for Larry. He was in love and he was living openly, no longer worried about what other people might think. Larry slowly but surely introduced his kids to his new city, new identity, and new partner. Once his eldest son got his driver's license, the kids would all drive up to New York to see Larry and Gene. They took it all in stride, so much so that when Larry sat them down to have the official talk, one son responded with the “well, duh” reaction so familiar to parents who work themselves up to break the news about something delicate with their savvy kids: “Well, yeah, we kind of figured that, Dad.”

All three kids immediately took to Gene and appreciated his generous attention. Not long after meeting them, he bought them each magazine subscriptions based on their unique interests. “They called him the fun stepmother,” Larry remembers, laughing.

Larry was even ready to come out to his parents and siblings. In 1990, he sat at the table in his parents' mobile home and told them that Gene was not his roommate, as they'd been led to believe, but his partner. At first, his family was a bit chilly, shocked with the news, confused by his past and all the unanswered questions, but through the process of talking, they came to realize that he was still the same Larry. “It wasn't an easy discussion with my very traditional, down-home family,” Larry explains, “but by the end we were all hugging and laughing.”

Eventually, all but one brother in his conservative, working-class family would wholeheartedly embrace Larry and Gene. That said, he hadn't yet told them that Gene was African American. When Larry brought Gene to a large family reunion in Oregon shortly thereafter, they were still nervous. It was one thing for Larry's family to accept their love in theory, but to be confronted with it in person, along with Gene's race, might be another story.

“Leave it to Gene to set everyone at ease,” Larry remembers. Gene headed straight toward one of Larry's sisters and gave her a big bear hug, exclaiming, “You must be Tootie!” A smile stretched across her face. That's all it took.

From moments like these, Larry knew that he'd found the person who brought out the best in him, helped him loosen up and reach out to others, helped him infuse each and every day with joy and humor. His God, he had always truly believed, didn't care about sexual orientation. His God was more concerned with one's capacity to be transformed by love and love people well. By those standards, Larry knew he was so blessed. As philosopher Ralph Waldo Trine wrote, “A miracle is nothing more or less than this. Anyone who had come into knowledge of his true identity.”

On September 11, 2001, Larry and Gene woke up a bit earlier than usual. It was primary day in New York City, and Gene wanted to make sure he avoided lines at the polls. They drank their coffee in the living room downstairs, and then Gene kissed Larry good-bye. They were looking forward to a home-cooked Southern dinner that night—fried chicken and fried cabbage.

Larry had prepared the meal the night before under Gene's watchful guidance. Though Gene's family moved from North Carolina to Washington, D.C., shortly after he was born, his mother instilled a deep love of Southern food in her boy. A typical Thanksgiving at Gene's house consisted of black-eyed peas, chitlins, collard greens, and headcheese. Larry never could abide by the chitlins or the headcheese but loved to try his hand at other Southern delicacies with Gene's patient help.

It was 8:55 a.m. when Larry arrived at his office on Park Avenue in midtown, walking distance from his apartment. The red message light already blinked incessantly on his office phone. Larry called his voice mail and was greeted with Gene's calm cadence: “Don't worry. The plane hit the other building. We're evacuating and we're okay.” Larry had no idea what his beloved was talking about.

That was when Larry noticed his co-workers heading down to the trading floor. A co-worker broke the news: “A plane hit the north World Trade Tower.” When Larry pressed her for more details, she admitted that she didn't know much else.

The trading floor monitors were, as usual, blasting a variety of network news broadcasts. Though the forty workers at Banca IMI often huddled around the TVs together, they'd always done so with calculating minds, not concerned hearts. Today was different.

Suddenly, a plane hit the second tower. “Oh my God!” they gasped in unison.

Larry's supervisor came over and gently told him to go back to his desk. “I don't think you need to watch this,” she said. Larry was touched that she was concerned, but he was reassured by Gene's message. Gene was okay. He had evacuated early on. He was probably headed home to their apartment at that very moment. Larry called home from his office phone and left a message for Gene directing him to call back when he got home and to let him know that he was okay.

It seemed as if everyone at the office knew people at the World Trade Center. The CEO ordered pizza, feeling compelled to do something, anything, in the face of such shock and confusion. Stricken souls, stunned with the news of the towers collapsing, drew little comfort from numbly eating, roaming around with blank, frightened looks on their faces, calling cell phones of loved ones and friends to no avail.

Wall Street shut down. The tunnels to New Jersey and Long Island were closed. Larry told several co-workers, “If you can't get home, come to my place. Gene and I will make up the sofa bed or put blankets on the floor.”

Larry's boss, Melanie, walked home with him. When they arrived at the apartment, they both fully expected Gene to be sitting there, glued to the news like everyone else, but he was not. Everything in the apartment was just as Larry had left it. There was no sign of Gene anywhere.

Larry was surprised and shaky, but far from hopeless. Evelyn, a dear friend, showed up. Melanie, Evelyn, and Larry tried to brainstorm where Gene might be and how they could get in touch with him. As the hours passed with no word from Gene, Larry started to panic. He called the emergency rooms and anyone else he could think of who might know where Gene was.

The night became morning. The next day became the next. Still no word from Gene. The days seemed endless as Larry waited, in vain, for news. Gene's company, Aon, a large insurance company located on the 102nd floor of the South Tower, organized a search party for all of its missing workers, but Gene was not found.

One of Gene's co-workers called to ask if he'd come home. She told Larry that she had seen him helping people onto the elevator and assumed he got out right after that. Larry pictured his dear partner reaching that graceful hand out to help frightened co-workers and friends into the elevator, generous and optimistic as always. “That was just the way he was, other people before him,” Larry explains.

After about ten days had gone by, Larry's best friend, Ollie, convinced him to go to the armory to file a missing persons report. Initially, Larry was in total denial and could not admit to himself that Gene might be gone. Plus, he wondered whether the emergency workers would allow him to file a report on behalf of his gay partner or if they would restrict such reports to only heterosexual couples. Larry rarely experienced overt discrimination now that he'd moved to one of the most cosmopolitan cities on earth, but he felt too fragile to contend with any now. He just wanted his Gene to come home. He didn't want to have to explain himself.

The armory was filled with a sea of people and an unmistakable climate of desperation. Larry looked around at the vacant faces and the bodies, stooped with the weight of ready grief. The walls were covered with posters of the missing and tributes to loved ones. Stuffed animals and trinkets were left there, symbols of stubborn hope and impassioned prayer for the return of loved ones.

Larry went up to the first man in official uniform that he found and requested to file a missing persons report. The detective led him to a private table where Larry spoke quietly but honestly about the nature of his relationship with Gene. He broke down in tears as he listened to himself describe his dear love as lost, as if he were watching the whole scene play out from above. The detective immediately responded with kindness and professional assurance that Gene's name and description would become part of the official record. Larry couldn't remember ever being so grateful for someone's kindness.

About four days later, two weeks after the towers first fell, Larry finally accepted that his beloved Gene was really gone. He spoke to several people at Gene's company, all of whom corroborated the first story he'd heard about Gene's last moments—that he'd been helping others into the elevator. No one had seen him after that point. Larry explains, “I had to accept that he was dead. I knew he wasn't coming home. I just gave up hope. That's when I began to grieve.”