John Patrick Montgomery Memorial

Elegy for John Patrick Montgomery (1950-1991)

john was many things to me, father, brother, mentor

i miss his face, his smile, and his big furry mustache whenever he had let it grow out

i miss his laugh, and his voice, full of humor and indignation and disgust and tenderness

i miss his hair, his red red hair, especially when it was buzz cut i loved the feel of his buzz cut hair underneath my fingers i miss that fuzzy skull of his

when i first knew john he was living in sherman hill in the apartment that would be mine many years later

to me john was this sweet older guy with a big heart he was the first gay man I could recall ever knowing so everything about him seemed interesting and exotic even though he was just a man like any other

i felt comfortable around him and enjoyed his company i grew to regard him as a friend as i hoped i was to him

john was having problems with a nagging cough he developed over the winter of 87-88

and I soon had my coughs too bronchitis and asthma said one doctor, pneumonia said another, either way I was laid out sick bad

but john was worse, he ended up in the hospital with pneumonia, and it was very bad the doctors decided to test him and he came out hiv positive

i got the word at home, living with my mother, since i was too sick to take care of myself i hung up the phone, and went to bed, no tears ma was homophobic and i was a little scared about my cough

six months passed by, i got better and so did john he moved to cedar rapids, to work out there i didn't see him for those six months i was too scared

scared of what??? of aids? fuck, what was wrong with me then

i lost it and the only thing i could do was stay put in des moines, and try to rebuild my own life after my own illness

word got to me that john thought i was afraid to go see him

hell yes i was, no doubt about that but when it dawned on me that john was feeling this way, it hurt like hell and there was only one way to resolve it

i packed up my bags and left for cedar rapids the first weekend that came i had something to prove to him and myself that i still loved him

i don't quite remember if i apologized to him outright or just covered the corners it didn't matter, he understood

three years came and passed i went and visited john in cedar rapids and then john came back to des moines and i just happened to live in the neighborhood so we saw each other often

john worked with me, and having him around made going to work that much more bearable

quality time with john was always good he was either watching tv or lifting weights, or cooking down hash oil slowly boiling the alcohol away like a chemist in his lab

i didn't hang with john outside of the home too much he was fairly sedentary, depending on how he felt

he had problems with his disease and occasionally would be laid up but was reasonably healthy most of the time

one of the most vivid memories of that time was when i dislocated a toe and i called john to ask his advice he came over and said he could fix it, i backed off afraid of more pain

a few days later he helped cart me around over most of the town to get that damn toe fixed and I as bounced down the aisle on one good leg, pissed and frustrated john told me to slow down or i was going to break the other foot

when john's time came it came slowly he didn't come out of the apartment often he had fevers and was asleep most of time he was losing it

he spent his last three weeks in the hospital i went to visit him three times

the first visit he still had a grasp on real time, the second visit he was pretty much out of it the third visit he was gone, just a shell that hadn't quite died yet i regret that last visit, wished i never went i did him no good, and i was left with this final image of john, of john not being john, not being human, already dead

i forget when the call came, it was andy who called, it was over, finally over thank god for that

i didn't attend the funeral services, it was mostly for his family and i was not close to them they didn't need me there plenty of john's friends took that terrible responsibility

the services and funeral were standard religious fare, john would have hated it, that wasn't his game i was sick at the thought of what they were doing in his name but his family needed their outlet for grief as i had mine i drank

about a month later a tragedy struck which shook many even harder than john's death his youngest son michael, died in a car wreck, out on a joy ride

three years had passed since john's death the quilt took awhile to put together, but bless andy and karen they got it done

i went down to simpson college where parts of the aids quilt were on display and john's quilt was there and so was his daughter, a simpson college student both she and andy said a few words about john and the quilt was accepted

many long years since you passed on brother and i think of you often

i think of going down to your grave often, and making a toast to you with your favorite bourbon, beam's choice

i imagine getting drunk there, passed out drunk slumped on your tombstone i like to think you'd appreciate such a vulgar act, but would give me shit for abusing myself so