An Encomium to Alex

My partner Scott and I are honored and comforted to be among those who knew Alex best, those who admired him and adored him.  Alex’s unique and marvelous character instantly touched us, and our love for him blossomed brightly and deeply, seemingly overnight—we feel as though we had a lifetime with Alex, even as we struggle with the painful irony that we were given almost no time together at all. So let me say a few words, and in doing so I imagine that I am sitting next to him in a scene right out of Plato’s Symposium; we are flush with cocktails (as was often the case) and surrounded by beautiful young men (less often than we would have liked!), and I raise my cup to offer an encomium to love, which is just another way of speaking of Alex . . .

Alex was Vintage: singular, as if born in a rare and brilliant season, and exquisitely aged despite his young years. Alex was vintage because of his formidable and inquisitive mind, his searching and empathic soul, his handsomeness, his irresistible charm, his naughtiness (he got us into such delicious trouble), his joie de vivre, his style (I secretly admired how good watches looked on Alex, and was moved by the handkerchiefs he wore to memorialize his father), his defiant and unyielding politics, his tender heart.  Alex was vintage because he cherished longtime friends, and because in his presence new acquaintances felt like longtime friends.  Alex was vintage: one could not help but to savor him.

Alex was also Queer: He delighted in sexuality, and its abandon; he kissed boys, and held their hands, publicly; like Whitman, he “dreamed a dream that he saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth. He dreamed that it was a new city of friends”; for that dream Alex became a warrior, and brought the warrior out of many of his friends; Alex courageously battled against homophobia, and for gay love, on the street and in the State House and on campus, in seminar and in his writing; Alex was an activist who believed Jesus was already out, and whose theology was found in the love letters among men across centuries. Alex and Scott and I daydreamed and researched the Order of Chaeronea, a late 19^th century secret society dedicated to the “Cause” of ending sexual oppression and named for the battle of 338 BC at which 150 pairs of lovers, known as the Sacred Band of Thebes, perished side by side in the name of love and loyalty. The symbol for the Order, which we three unsuccessful schemed to possess as tattoos, was a wreath of calamus and laurel: like the wreath of Chaeronea , Alex embodied queer comradeship and love.

I close today with another boy of Cambridge past, Lord Byron, whose portrait Alex and I admired during a wonderful afternoon together during a reunion in the UK in May 2004, and whose words express well how Alex makes me feel—surely makes all his friends feel—about his loving embrace.

There is a mystic thread of life
So dearly wreath’d with mine alone
That destiny’s relentless knife
At once must sever both, or none.

There is a Form on which these eyes
Have fondly gaz’d with such delight—
By day, that Form their joy supplies,
And dreams restore it through the night.

There is a voice whose tones inspire
Such soften’d feelings in my breast,
I would not hear a seraph choir,
Unless that voice could join the rest.

There is a face whose blushes tell
Affection’s tale upon the cheek,
But pallid at our fond farewell,
Proclaims more love than words can speak.

There is a lip which mine has prest,
But none had ever prest before;
It vowed to make me sweetly blest,
That mine alone should press it more.

There is a bosom all my own,
Has pillow’d oft this aching head,
A mouth which smiles on me alone,
An eye, whose tears with mine are shed.

There are two hearts whose movement thrill
In unison so closely sweet,
That pulse to pulse responsive still,
They both must heave, or cease to beat.

There are two souls whose equal flow
In gentle stream so calmly run,
That when they part—they part?—ah no!
They cannot part—those souls are one.

So long for now, Alex. Meet us on the other shore, where we’ll have much to dish, and a new adventure to begin together. We love you very much.