Howard

Howard, in the middle with Kevin to the right and Ken on the left

I've written about Howard Arthur Faye on many occasions and how he intersected my life at a critical juncture, but I want to put it into a single piece for the AIDS Memorial on Instagram/Facebook. Howard was one of the most brilliant people I've ever met and I have met many, many brilliant people over the years. He was about a year older than me being born in 1959. We met online on the gay Usenet newsgroup soc.motss (motss == Member of the Same Sex) which was the first gay newsgroup on the fledgling internet created in 1983. I started posting to it in 1991 way before anybody knew about the internet and Howard was there. We met in person in LA probably the next year or maybe a bit later and became friends. I had never met anybody even remotely like him. Howard always handled me with kid gloves which was funny because I was hardly a shrinking violet. 

Howard was mercurial and lived in the moment because that was all he had. He had a depth of knowledge of food and wine that was ridiculously deep. A group of us started calling ourselves the Cabal Noir with Howard as the unofficial head. Howard raved about a Chateauneuf du Pape wine, Domaine du Vieux Telegraphe, so that became our official wine. Howard could get very animated and was convinced taking away his foie gras and veal would spark revolution. He ate lustily and greedily but for all of this he wasn't a food snob. He was just as happy having a greasy burger in San Leandro as he was eating quail stuffed with foie gras in a huckleberry reduction. 

Howard lived in Hollywood and was the first person that I had really interacted with who was obviously sick. I had some interactions with Bobby Pyron (written about many times on the AIDS Memorial page, aka Lee Ryder) but those were mostly in passing. In Howard I saw upfront how devastating living with HIV was. I had moved in 1994 to San Francisco and Howard had always loved his North Beach boys so he came to visit when he could. I remember helping him infuse himself with his stent which made it all very real for me. But he was always very upbeat and enthusiastic about the next project or find.

One time he came up and I decided to throw a big party for him -- the HAF Bash -- with about 30 or 40 people for dinner with all kinds of fabulousness. I had just met a really cute guy, Aric my now husband, who I was majorly in lust with who I invited. Aric had told me that he was poz which was a little weird for me but in reality I had probably had sex with dozens of poz people over the years and just didn't know it. Aric was completely convinced that I would dump him because he was poz because that is what happened to poz people and that he'd be alone when he died. On my back patio, Aric poured his heart out to Howard. Howard responded by saying that I was not like that. I responded by not being like that.

I was a big Burgundophile at that time and pretty much a snob about it. Howard and I would go wine shopping together all of the time when he was up. Howard decided that I needed to appreciate Bordeaux more so we arranged a trip up to Rutherford Hill in Napa for a fabulous Lite Lunch (tm) at Auberge du Soleil. After, as we were driving to Gueneville to shoot some pool at a gay bar, Howard asked how I had liked Napa's best. This started a huge row but not between me and Howard, instead between Howard and his lover Ken. I'm not quite certain how that came to be but it was hilarious to me because of how much deference he gave me that he gave absolutely nobody else.

Howard wanted to go to Barcelona one last time because that is where he made love to the love of his life, Kevin, who had recently passed. He was convinced that he was skinny enough to throw himself out of the spires of the Sagrada Familia to die in a suitably dramatic fashion. He wrote about his aspirations in a post on soc.motss soon after Greg Louganis disclosed he was positive. We took the trip in March of 1995 but Howard was not among us because he was too sick to make the trip. When we went to the Sagrada Familia, Aric stood in for Howard to squeeze out of the spire windows with Ken holding his legs so he didn't go overboard. I was in abject horror.

We called Howard from the Barri Gotic telling him about all of our adventures including going to a restaurant he was raving about in Perpignon called Le Chapon Fin and stopping by the Dali Museum in Figueres. Aric and I on our way back to Paris stopped at Vieux Telegraphe in Chateaunef du Pape to the mild astonishment of the proprietor with our Vieux Telegraphe t-shirts on. "OH Kermit Lynch!" referring to the negociant in Berkeley where Howard had discovered it.

Howard's Memorial in Paso Robles

Howard died in June of 1995. He had figuratively passed the torch to Aric who survived but wouldn't become undetectable until 2003 due to resistance. Who knows whether protease inhibitors would have helped Howard. I had the honor of writing and delivering his eulogy at Forest Lawn. It was by far the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life. For somebody I only knew a relatively short amount of time he had a huge impact on my -- and hundreds of others' -- lives.

In closing, at gatherings after he passed we would always open our dinners with a simple salute: "To Howard".

Epilogue

In retrospect it's pretty clear to me that I was falling in love with Howard. When I met him he was essentially asexual so it never occurred to me to think of him that way. And of course he was sick and I was very new to knowing somebody who was dying of AIDS. But thinking back, he was just my type: a wee cute bottom boy with a reported big 'ol flopper who I would have cuddled and loved and furiously made love to. It would have been wonderful and amazing and everything good. And terrible. There is no possible way it could have worked. We were way too bullheaded: A-personalities and both of us with huge tempers. He could have only have treated me with kid gloves for so long before that veneer wore off. Which would have been fine since who doesn't like a good donnybrook? We would have probably tried and failed miserably and had huge belly laughs after the fact -- yes, of course we would have continued to be friends. Gay guys have a huge capacity to be like "what *were* we thinking?!". Well, it's thinking with our dicks which is great while it lasts. And then funny in retrospect. Would that I had that chance.