Love Makes A Family - Part 1

Love Makes A Family
(Part I)

I moved to LA in May, 1978, when I was 28. After spending 4 years working at Timberlawn Psychiatric Hospital in Dallas, I was not ready to just jump into another high pressure, high responsibility job. I wanted to explore the megalopolis and enjoy the natural wonders and exciting night life available in SoCal. I intended to get a job for a while as a bus boy so I didn’t have to think; just work, sweat, and make enough scratch to pay rent and buy enough gas to get to the beach.

I was a little disappointed when after only one shift as a bus boy I got “promoted” to server. Apparently, a couple of the servers quit the day before I started. So much for totally mindless hard labor; now I had to actually think and be organized. It all worked out for the better because by agreeing to take over some shifts immediately, I got to pick my schedule, plus the money was better. I worked Thursday, Friday, and Saturday dinners, and Sunday brunch. I would drive to Laguna Beach on Sunday after brunch, and stay with my friend Andy (also a Timberlawn ex-employee) till Thursday morning and then return to LA to go back to work. It was a really wonderful, carefree, dark-tanned life I was leading. It only lasted 3 months.

I met Michael in August that same summer when he walked into the restaurant and stood at the opposite end of the bar from the waiter’s station. Dean, the bartender walked over to me and handed me a note with a phone number. It was Mike’s. Believe it or not, I used to get a lot of unsolicited phone numbers handed to me. I hardly ever dialed any of them. I had a method to see if the person had more than one night intentions. I walked over to him and handed the note back to him and told him if he was serious to come back in two weeks. I would still be working there and if he was truly interested, he’d come back. To his credit, he came back after one week, but didn’t approach me; he just watched me work. Then he came back the second week, and as they say, the rest is history.

To give you a historical perspective, this was around the time that word about some new kind of gay cancer was just beginning to circulate. It wasn’t for a couple of more years that our understanding of what it was, evolved into what we now know as AIDS. We had no idea how devastating HIV and AIDS would be to our circle of friends. Our early years together were blissful, carefree, and somewhat reckless. We had both been in one other failed “LTR” and knew what we weren’t looking for. In the long list of things we did want, we agreed that we had an inner need to raise and nurture something, and ferns and ficus trees would not suffice.


(In 1981 as President of WHOM (West Hollywood Organization of Men), a loose association of gay sports leagues, Michael got the idea to organize a bowling tournament to raise money to support AIDS research and assist AIDS victims. The Strike Out AIDS bowling tournament was born, and as an annual event, it has raised over $150,000 since then.)

After about 7 years together, Mike was running his own small lighting design business with his sister Betty, and I was working at UCLA in the Neuro-Psychiatric Institute & Hospital as a Mental Health Practitioner with inpatient adolescents. We were both pretty busy with other activities as well, but that urge to nurture had slowly grown more intense. We were just beginning to explore our options, but in 1985 it wasn't like today.

Did we want to actually impregnate a surrogate and raise an infant, or should we try to take on a child who was already in the world? Should we go for a foster care license? Maybe we could try this program for mentoring a gay identified adolescent. If we did decide to adopt an adolescent, what about their sexual preference; should we care? We decided we didn’t care about the sexual preference if we were to adopt. We had both felt the sting of discrimination and did not want to perpetrate that on someone in need.

At this time I was 35 and Mike was 39, so we weren’t worried about how old we would be if we raised a newborn to adulthood. But, we also realized that if we took on an infant, we would be a little older than we really wanted to be by the time grandkids might possibly appear on the scene.

We just needed to make a decision. Were we going to fulfill our need to be parents by being a halfway house for kids in transition, with limited time to attach and influence them. Or, did we want a lifelong commitment and kids we could truly call ours. We wanted to really be sure we were doing the right thing either way, but we didn’t want to ruminate until we got too old. Meanwhile, two other lives were developing their own needs and wants.

Anna was born in 1969, Cari in 1970. Their mom was a budding actress whose career in the movies had only just started. Their father was recently home from Viet Nam, a decorated veteran. Their mother’s family had moved from Connecticut to Newport Beach in the 60’s because the matriarch of the family had asthma and was somewhat frail and her husband thought California's moderate climate would be better for her health. But, after settling there, she felt it was too hot in Newport, so they moved after a year to Santa Barbara.

The girls were happy babies and precocious toddlers. Unfortunately, their mother became ill, and her health rapidly declined. Anna was 4 and Cari was 3 the last time she gave them a hug and a parting kiss. Toddlers make simplistic sense of loss of a parent. "Mommy went to Heaven and I will see her again one day." At least they had their father....but only for a few months. The story the girls were told about their father’s demise was sordid and grisly, and only recently evidence has surfaced that he might still be with us. But, there they were; orphans at such a tender age.

The family history at this point is sketchy, but for some reason, no one in the extended family took custody of the girls. The girls were taken into the foster care system, and while their blood relatives dithered, they were left there for three years. They were in over 15 foster homes during that time. Finally, their great uncle in Santa Barbara decided that one of his three unmarried daughters should take them in. The middle daughter had just completed her residency as a neonatologist and while she really wanted to have children of her own, she reluctantly declined. The youngest sister was working on her Master's thesis and while she adored them she didn't think she could take them on. That left the eldest sister. She a reserve officer in the military, and the other sisters pledged to help with caring for their little nieces during times when the eldest sister had to go on maneuvers.

The eldest sister had a condition known as neurofibromatosis; elephant man disease. Luckily, it was controlled and she only had mild disfiguring lumps on one side of her face and on her forearms. Children will see past physical characteristics in order to bond with caregivers who truly care about them. Unfortunately, the eldest sister’s mental condition was of grave concern and it was a closely protected family secret. This was to be the caretaker for Anna and Cari as they reached age 9 and 8 respectively.

Of course, after the unimaginable instability they endured in the foster care system, their behavior was not perfect. Asking someone with a thinking disorder and limited mental sophistication to try to handle two rather wild little girls was probably not the best decision their great uncle had ever made.

In a perfect world it would have made great material for a situation comedy. In the real world, it became a house of horrors. Over the next few years, while Anna’s response to the environment was to become overly compliant and dependent, Cari became a problem child; sneaking out, doing drugs and acting out sexually. I won’t go into the details of the emotional, physical and, yes, sexual abuses that the girls suffered at the hands of their deranged aunt, but to give you an idea, when the girls were unceremoniously dumped at UCLA’s NPI and H, Cari, by now 13, was tied up with a rope.

(End of part I)