Lee's Biography

Lee's l ife was screwed up from the start. He was born June 17, 1964 on Father’s Day, and I think this was the proudest day of my life. He was a big baby, 8 lb. 15 oz. and he was different. From his earliest months he began to show signs of a defiant obstinate nature that developed into a resolute personality who refused to accept control by anyone, or any authority, without his prior agreement. When he was 9 months old he defeated me in our first real clash of wills. On this occasion he was put to bed for the night but he simply would not accept this action. He continually stood up in his crib, grabbed the headboard and shook it violently until his crib had moved across the room. I laid him down, he got right back up, I threw him down, and he got right back up. I spanked him, rapped his knuckles on the end of the crib, tried my damnedest to bend him to my will, but he refused to lie down for the night. In the end I entered the room for a last time in a rage. I have no recollection of what I intended to do to him, but Lee stood at the head of his crib, glaring at me, screaming his defiance at the top of his lungs. I capitulated and retreated from the battle of wills, He had defeated me.

He was an extremely difficult child to deal with at the best of times. Corporal punishment could force him, on occasion, to comply with household rules, but only if his resistance was token and he felt that, perhaps, this time, the request was reasonable and not simply an exercise of our parental authority. Reasoning with him might work today, but not tomorrow. The same uncertainty held for almost every other form of approach to get him to behave and act in what we considered a proper fashion. An example of this reluctance to submit to authority was demonstrated by a conflict between us when he was only three years old. At this time of his life, he discovered he could really get under our skins when he got mad at us if he simply spat on the floor. No amount of reason affected this behavior, nor did any form of punishment, physical or psychological. Promises of rewards were ignored, and the withdrawal of privileges was met by an almost fatalistic acceptance of the loss. Nothing we tried could make him stop this extremely irritating expression of opposition to any number of situations that did not meet with his full approval. The end of this extremely irritating habit only came when, one day when he spit on the floor, I thought, "Well, it works with dogs.", grabbed him by the back of the neck and wiped his nose and face through the puddle of spittle. He never again spat on the floor. This time I defeated him.

When he was about ten years of age he began to show the first signs of an artistic bent. We encouraged him in his artwork, and Lee responded. Our appreciation of his ability to draw seemed to strike a responding chord somewhere in his psyche and he blossomed in front of our eyes. He finally seemed to find a sense of self worth and value in his life and his behavioral change was amazing. He seemed to mature almost overnight. He decided he was destined to become an artist, to create things of beauty, and he spent nearly all his free time with a pencil and paper drawing everything that caught his fancy.

By the time he was twelve, he showed signs of a prodigious talent. With no formal training he could take up a pencil and within minutes create on paper a likeness of a person’s face that was accurate, recognizable, and most remarkable. Not only was it an accurate portrait but he was able to capture expression, emotion, and feelings and somehow show something of his subjects soul in his finished sketches. As parents with virtually no talent, we were at a loss as to how to deal with this sudden prodigy. After a great deal of searching for resources to foster his talent we were finally referred to C.W. Jeffries High School in Downsview. As we had been told to, we advised Lee not to get his hopes up. Entry requirements were exceedingly tough and very few applicants were accepted. To get accepted you had to present your portfolio, be interviewed, and demonstrate to the school that you were a worthy candidate for admission.

Lee’s response to all this cautionary advice was a simple "Is that all?". He took matters into his own hands, visited the school to see what they had to offer, decided he wanted what they had, and within three months assembled his portfolio, had us arrange an appointment with the admissions office and was accepted into their Fine Arts Program. For the next three years he and his talent thrived in an environment that demanded excellence, that encouraged him to commit his soul to paper, and that provided him with an excellent training in many media to assist him in meeting and exceeding their demands. Lee was happy and contented for the first time in his life and then I ruined everything for him.

In the latter part of 1979, acting with my usual combination of high principles and inflated sense of self worth, I indulged in an act of extreme stupidity and told the President of my company the truth as I saw it about his management of the firm. Unfortunately, principles and worth can never adequately compensate for terminal stupidity, and the decision that my services were no longer required following our heated discussion had disastrous consequences for Lee.

The sudden unemployment that followed my rash action, and the dim prospects of the Toronto job market at that time resulted in a relocation of our family to the armpit of the western world, Cincinnati, Ohio. Our daughter elected to remain behind to finish her schooling in Toronto, but Lee was forced to accompany us, and for him this was a journey to the end of the world. Even though he was immediately accepted at the Cincinnati School for Creative and Performing Arts, he felt let down, both by us and the "System" in general. The Fine Arts Program at the school was not nearly as intensive and demanding as that in Toronto. His teachers, though well intended, were simply not of the same caliber as those he had left behind, and Lee soon had them assessed as "a bunch of God-damned amateurs" who knew less than he did about many of the fundamentals of artistic creation. He resented having to spend the majority of his class time learning "Bullshit American Propaganda", and within a matter of months, he was in an ever increasing spiral of conflict with the school. He nevertheless managed to finish and pass his school year, but he refused to go back for the following year.

We were at a loss as to how to handle the situation. We knew Lee well enough to know there was no way we could force him to do something to which he was opposed, but we were able to convince him not to drop out of school entirely, but to try to finish his high school and graduate. Lee, accordingly, opted to transfer into the Cincinnati Public School system and he was enrolled at and attended classes at Hughes High School.

Lee’s time at Hughes was a complete disaster. The majority of the students at Hughes were black. Not only were they black, they were by and large a motley collection of urban, underprivileged, street-wise, drug hustling virtually illiterate niggers. Lee was a literate, artsy-fartsy, smart, privileged, totally naive, white boy who couldn’t play basketball worth shit, and who, in addition to all these other sins, talked funny, even if it was English. The culture shock was too much for Lee to handle. He did try, but there was no way for him to win acceptance from his peers and he soon began to skip school because the punishment he could expect from me was trivial compared to that handed out to him daily by his classmates. It was a no win situation that went on for months until we finally agreed that Lee drop out of school and find some sort of work. He honestly did try to find a job, but there was nothing available. His job search gradually lost steam and eventually became only cursory in order to placate me and get me off his back.

One evening as Patti and I sat at home watching TV, the phone rang and the Desk Sergeant at the local Cincinnati Police Station advised us that our presence was requested at the Station as our son was now there in custody. It seemed that one of the local patrols, while on their rounds checking out the local Park which closed to the public at 9 o’clock, had discovered Lee and an older dancing partner indulging in what only can only be described as a moonlight frolic. The fact that neither of these individuals was wearing any clothes at the time of apprehension didn’t help matters at all. Just bloody great. What next?

We bailed Lee out and accompanied him to his court appearance where he was given probation, and we were advised to get him some sort of counseling. We arranged for him to see a psychologist who, over the course of several months of exorbitant fees, did help Lee to adjust and deal with his new sexuality. The same can not be said of the Juvenile Probation Officer to who whom he had to report on a weekly basis. At his first meeting with Lee he questioned him about his sexual experience and stated, " Boy, don’t you hand me any of that bisexual bullshit. You’re gay. Accept it and deal with it". Lee did, I couldn’t.

My ego took it almost as a direct insult. I asked myself questions for which there were no answers. "How had I failed him as a role model so badly that he had chosen his mother’s sex over mine?". "Was homosexuality genetically originated?". "Had I contributed to this by paying too much attention to my work and not enough to Lee?".

Patti was much more accepting and reasonable in her approach to the matter, and with her help I came to understand that for Lee it was not a matter of choice, he was born as he was. He had been different all of his life and we were aware he was different. Hundreds of previously inexplicable incidents of his sensitivity and different behavior suddenly began to make a whole lot more sense. We came to terms with Lee’s sexuality but I finally ran out of patience with his fruitless efforts to find a job and told him, "Go to school, get a job, or get the hell out!!" and meant it. At this time Lee and I had what was probably our only in depth discussion of his homosexuality. He had taken to announcing not that he was homosexual or gay, but rather that he was "gifted", and I challenged him on looking on his differences from "normal" as being a gift. I explained to him that rather than a gift, it seemed to me to be a rather heavy burden. Whether he was gay or straight, I loved him. Whatever sexual practices he indulged in were none of my business. I would never inquire as to their nature for this was a matter that was in the realm of "personal privacy" and I would never intrude. What did concern me was his seeming lack of awareness as to what he was facing in his new life; the bigotry and discrimination that he was bound to encounter from the religious right, from employers, from the government, from any variety of sources. What concerned me the most, however, was the transitory and temporary nature of homosexual relationships. I was very worried that he would go through life and never experience the permanence and sense of security, trust, and love that I had found from my long relationship with his mother. Lee heard me out, told me he was already aware of many of my concerns, and told me not to worry, he could take care of himself. Lee moved back to Toronto in 1982 and Patti and I packed up, bought a $350 travel trailer and moved to Florida.

Lee had a pretty rough time of it in Toronto, but he stuck it out. He tapped into the Welfare System, got a series of short lived temporary or part time jobs, and survived. He was too obstinate to do anything else. You do whatever it takes to get the job done. He also collected a circle of friends and acquaintances within the young Toronto Art scene. He spent money for food on art supplies and beer, and he painted in a frenzy everything he saw. None of this work survives him. He gave it all away. Once he had a thought down on paper, he lost interest in it and moved onto the next creation of something beautiful that he saw. His diary from this period is filled with creative ideas that are unique in his view of his world.

" So, let’s say I go down to the Sally Anne Thrift Store

and get an old doll with a busted head and an old bird

cage and I’ll stick the doll inside and I’ll hang a label

around its’ neck that says, BORN INTO SOCIETY and

I’ll sell it for fifty bucks. Neat, huh?"

Patti and I had an understanding with Lee that he could always phone us "Collect" and Lee really used the privilege. He had severe bouts of depression, and he called us on a frequent basis, usually drunk, crying and incoherent, sometimes talking of suicide. I also found from reading his diary that at times he was so desperate for funds that he had to resort to selling his blood. He never once asked for assistance.

In 1984, my brother Larry, and his wife, Janet, rescued Lee from his destitute circumstances in Toronto. He was transported from downtown Toronto, with all of its stimuli to the intellect, to Mulhurst, Alberta. pop. 50?. In exchange for his services as a companion and helper for Janet in taking care of his cousins, Cindy and Tony, and for assisting with the management of the small herd of Pomeranians that Janet bred for Show, Lee was adopted into their family and for a time seemed happy. I think they initially thought that a steady diet of home cooked meals and a large dose of mothering would "cure" Lee. They were wrong, but the move was good for Lee. He was included in the center of a "family" . He had responsibilities caring for the "Herd", He had two younger cousins who came to be his friends, and he had Janet as a sort of personal confidant to whom he could talk. He had lots of free time, really worked at his art, and he did some great stuff while he stayed with them. He got a job as a waiter at a local cafe and things seemed to be going smoothly until one day he said, "Screw you! I’m moving into Edmonton and live with David." and that was the end of that.

During this time we paid for Lee to come down to Florida for a two week visit and I think this visit with him was a turning point in our relationship. We really began to know Lee for the strange and wonderful son that he became. He was polite, he was caring, he remembered unimportant things that when recalled, regained the lost importance of the time. Every gift Lee ever gave showed thought and care and consideration as to its suitability. We sat and talked, drank beer and laughed and smoked some reefer and laughed some more. We enjoyed our time together and then he flew back to Alberta.

In 1986 when we again saw Lee, he appeared to have settled down. We went to visit him in Edmonton while on vacation and again we had good time. Lee had broken up with David and at this time was attached to no one. He shared a nice apartment with his friend James who both Patti and I immediately liked. Lee had steady employment as a waiter at Tony Roma’s Steak House and was working at his artwork with a passion. One night while we were there, Lee and James, backed up by several other friends, a reasonable number of beer and a couple of joints, all ganged up on Patti and me and convinced us to accompany them to an evening out at Boots and Saddles, a gay bar somewhere way out on Jasper Ave.

I have never had so much fun in my whole life. There must have been 100 gays and lesbians in the place and these young people really knew how to party. There were drag queens who were absolutely bloody beautiful and so outrageously bitchy it was hilarious. Damned good music, dancing, hustling, and just plain having a good time, Lee and his friends gave us a memorable welcome to Edmonton. I will never forget that night and the way Lee reacted to our acceptance of his friends, and to their acceptance of us as his parents. Lee never forgot either.

In 1987 we returned to Canada and stopped in Kelowna . This move was ill advised for after arrival I found virtually no market for my talents and in 1988 we moved to Sundre, Alberta to live with my mother. In 1989 we moved into Red Deer where, with a view to a future six months North and six months South, I completed an Apprenticeship as a Recreational Vehicle Mechanic in 1991. During this period we could have frequent visits with Lee, and he and I had a chance to really talk to each other. Much of the time I spent with him was like that of two strangers trying to find out who the other person really was. I found that he had spent much of his time well since dropping out of school. He had read prodigiously and had developed a keen and inquiring intellect that pondered immense questions related to the meaning of existence. The relative merits of various belief structures was of great interest to him and he could quote at length from sources as diverse as the I Ching, the Koran, and Buddha, ad infinitum. His favorite author was Anais Nin, his favorite photographer was Man Rey, and his favorite artist was Egon Schiel. I knew none of them and Lee introduced me to a totally different perception of life and reality by challenging me to argue with him. A conversation with him was mental exercise just trying to follow his reasoning through the maze of convoluted logic that had bits and snippets of all these strange influences, all mixed up but somehow reconciled in his own head. Weird and wonderful conversations that I truly enjoyed.

His talent had truly flowered. Watching him as he worked, I was continually amazed at the truly awesome eye and hand coordination that made his creation of things on paper seem so effortless. A flower, seen in a flash glance, was a dictionary of minute details that flowed out of the ends of his drawing instruments like a series of programmed instructions banked in a computer memory. Never a hesitation was evident when he worked. The ease with which he created things of beauty, and the way in which he saw the world around him were in sharp contradiction to my pedestrian habits and methodology, and my somewhat jaded and disillusioned view of reality. I grew to respect him as a person. I had always loved him as my son, even during our worst times, but now I found that I truly, truly, liked the boy. His visits were welcome interruptions of our otherwise boring and pedantic life that consisted of eating, sleeping, and working to keep a step ahead of the wolf.

In 1988, Patti and I paid for Lee to relocate to Calgary where he was going to pursue further Art instruction. He made the move, found an apartment he liked, and got a job as a waiter at the Cheesecake Cafe in Calgary. He had a lot of young fellow waiters and waitresses with whom he could drink and party and talk outrageously. He was surviving fairly well and seemed to have an eye on a future.

In early 1989 this bubble burst. Lee went for dental treatment of his wisdom teeth. The visit resulted in a refusal to treat him, a referral, a test, and a diagnosis of HIV positive. Somehow we survived the "Doomsday" paranoia that sets in immediately and life continued on. Lee kept his medical appointments, had a positive attitude or front, and stayed relatively healthy. He had on and off bouts with thrush, and dental problems but his life had not changed all that much. Doomsday somehow got pushed to the back of our minds and life went on for close to two years.

In 1991 in May I went to work at the RV Dealership I worked for in Red Deer, and discovered that all the locks had been changed by order of the Receiver. This resulted in very short order move to Surrey, B.C. for I had managed to find a decent paying job and you go where the money is. Things went well for about 5 months and then we found out that Lee was no longer able to work, and was living on Welfare in Calgary. He had developed Peripheral Neuropathy in his extremities and he simply could not stand on his feet for a shift as a waiter, the pain was just too much. At the end of November, 1991 I hitched up to my utility trailer and drove to Calgary, loaded up Lee and all his possessions and brought him back to Vancouver to live with us.

To understand what Lee was going through at this time, imagine that you’re sitting with your legs crossed and one of your feet has gone to sleep. You get a severe case of pins and needles and when you try to step you can’t really feel the floor and it hurts. You get up and stumble around and the blood gets running and eventually the pain and the pins and needles go away. With Lee these never went away. On several occasions in the first months that he lived with us, we found Lee, in the middle of the night, sitting on the edge of the tub, crying, while he ran cold water over his legs from the knees down, trying to make the pain stop. He eventually managed to get over this but never again did he move with his usual grace and balance.

This was the beginning of Lee’s individual walk through the mine field of the AIDS related problems that led eventually to his death. He stayed with us for about 8 months, moved out to a shared apartment in Vancouver’s West End, then moved to his own place on Main and 12th., In November of 1995 he again moved back in with us and he stayed until June of 1996, when, despite our misgivings, he moved out to an apartment at 6th and Main. The only constant thing in this whole period was Lee’s Tuesday morning appointment with Dr. De Wet who treated him for if not one, then two, of any of the following, in any order, at any given time:

Venereal Warts- Anal and Penile

Hairy Leukoplakia

Candida and Thrush

Night sweats

Acute Psoriasis

Insomnia

Erratic Sleep patterns

Floaters in his vision

Nasty painful itchy shingle attacks

Recurrent neuropathy

Wasting away- severe weight loss

A total loss of self image.

Depression

During all of these episodes of aggravating problems, Lee just kept on trucking., but he began to hate his existence. He was plagued by recurrent bouts of venereal flat warts on both his penis and anal areas. This was treated by applications of Pedophilin, a caustic compound that left him in great discomfort for at least a week after each application. What started as a mild case of psoriasis developed to a point where whole areas of his face and body were encrusted with a crazy quilt of small diamond shaped plaques of dead skin surrounded by sore red borders. Lee was always very conscious of his appearance to others, and he fought a long and hard battle with this ugly disease. The only treatment to which his psoriasis responded was Dovanex. It was messy to apply with the consistency of axle grease but it did help. It removed the dead white plaques but left in its place reddened blotchy bare shiny spots. The results were better but messy. Lee was intensely aware of his impact on others and he hated what he had physically become. He was always a sun worshipper, but shame about his body deprived him of the pleasure of sunbathing, or of even wearing short sleeved shirts.

During the course of his last stay with us, Lee began to withdraw. Patti's best friend, Erna, an elderly Danish lady, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and Lee watched his mother care for her friend, and then be crushed by her death. Our conversations shortened and then almost ceased. The floaters in his right eye refused to dissipate and he developed a severe squint. Eventually he could read with only the greatest difficulty and another of his favorite pastimes was lost to him. More and more he retreated to his room and avoided contact with us. He came to feel that he could spare us the further pain of witnessing his continuing deterioration, and in June of 1995, against our advice, he moved out to an apartment in the Downtown area that he loved.

He visited us in Surrey on weekends and sometimes in between for the first several weeks, but then his visits slowed to once every two weeks. He seemed to be doing well, but reading his diary has led me to discover otherwise. He actually was going through a very rough time. The days were spent in acute depressed spells when he contemplated suicide. He could not sleep for the night sweats and his sleep patterns were all screwed up. Lee felt he could control both to a degree by consuming alcohol, but life on Welfare did not supply the funds. Then fate struck in late July in the form of a cheque for nearly $5000 in retroactive benefits from his Canada Pension Disability which was finally approved. Lee stashed the money in his bank and then went on with his routine, but now he had money and this in itself gave him a new set of problems. The B.C. Government with its usual attempts to save money by picking on those least able to protest, had adopted a policy of reducing the payments of Welfare recipients by the amount received from Canada Pension Disability. This was particularly hard on the AIDS infected population of the province. Their increased need for additional nutrition to maintain a level of health and stay out of hospital was totally ignored by the NDP. Any identified recipient of a Pension found their Welfare payments reduced by the total amount of the pension received. This condemned all these unfortunates to life at the poverty level. Lee became paranoid they would discover his additional income and this aggravated both his depression and his inability to sleep.

Now having money at his disposal but plagued with his depression and erratic sleep pattern, he began to experiment with his alcohol treatment. He found that if you drank a six pack before you went to bed you just might get a decent nights sleep and not wake up in puddles of perspiration. Even more wonderful, he found that if you had a couple of shots of brandy with your morning coffee it does help keep the depression in the background. His alcohol consumption increased almost daily throughout August and September. Eventually Lee simply holed up in his room, laid in a supply of booze and tried to drink himself to death.

XXX