Reagan, Image and Freedom

His supporters talk of a larger than life figure that all but single-handedly won the cold war. His detractors paint a picture of a president who was somehow hailed as a hero of the working class while setting policies beneficial to the wealthy and devastating to middle class and poor.

It was 1983 when I moved to Washington DC. Coming out of Indiana in the hope of creating a new life for myself was exciting, terrifying and completely confusing. I had worked my whole life to be that perfect Indiana boy. Now, I realized I had worked all that time to conform to everyone else’s ideal of the perfect Indiana boy. They had wanted me to be that boy and I had almost destroyed myself in the process of trying to live up to those expectations.

Now I was presented with the freedom to create a new identity. No longer would I be asking myself, is this it? Is this who you want me to be? Will I be perfect then? Will you love me? Having a blank slate in front of me – being now a blank slate myself – at times felt liberating. But only seconds later that feeling of freedom was replaced with feelings of loneliness. For it was now my choice. My path. Self-acceptance. Happiness. Authenticity. And I would have to accept the loneliness that might accompany me on that path.

My second day in the city I found myself on the corner of 14^th and F Street, one block from the Treasury Department and less than two blocks from the White House. Standing before me, with its stately limestone façade and restrained classical style, one could feel the carefully cultivated air of plush and sophisticated elegance. And walking through that glistening bronze and glass front door for the first time, I had no way of knowing within a matter of days this would become my second home for the following seven years. The salon, Julius Garfinckel & Co.

 My clientele grew quickly. Many were from Capital Hill and they worked for or directly with President and Nancy Reagan.  I quickly realized just what polarizing figures both the Reagans were. There was so much myth and absurdity around both of them. There was the great love story, the fashion icon, the utterly ridiculous ‘JUST SAY NO’ drug campaign, the failures as parents, and the glamorous friends. How kind he was and how cold she could be. How much they truly adored each other. Everyone who sat in my chair had an opinion. Listening to everyone’s vehemence about the Reagans – pro or con – I found myself feeling guilty for being so detached from politics. I was in Washington, after all. But I knew how to play my assigned role, better than most. Hairdressers were supposed to only have one thing in mind. The client’s hair.

All this was about to change.

There had been muttering about this plague that was killing gay men. Even in Washington DC, mystery, fear and stigma surrounded what was dubbed the ‘Gay Cancer’. Within my first year there, it suddenly seemed like everyone was dying around me. Co-workers and friends. Billy who made my fried egg on whole wheat every morning at the corner deli. Ralph, who ran the drycleaner’s. It seemed as if suddenly they were just gone.

It was devastating and terrifying. The mutterings grew louder. The fear grew more intense, and ultimately angrier. And yet the White House was silent. Ronald and Nancy Reagan – who had worked in Hollywood (as the American public was constantly reminded) – had worked with many gay men in the course of their pre—political life. From art directors to co-stars, they had lived and worked in one of the few cultures in which gay men had thrived. But Regan’s moral majority communications director Pat Buchanan called this spreading death nature’s revenge. And the deaths continued.

I recall the outrage over that first Newsweek cover: never had a mass-market magazine created such a stir. Not as much for it’s AIDS cover story, but because two gay men with AIDS stood together. Out of the shadows. Faces with names and families and friends. Men who were loved by those families and friends.

You never forget that first friend, finally admitting in a hushed whisper “I’m HIV positive”. You recognize that all too familiar look of shame. And you also never forget that late Thursday night, as you left work with him, you wondered what it must take for him to get through a ten-hour day only to face protesters coming from the White House lawn with their ‘God Hates Fags’ signs. Coming out of Indiana to escape, you realize shame is something you can no longer run or hide from. You must look it straight on. Because true shame is denial and denial is death. True shame belonged to those ignoring the suffering, the fear, and the dead.

It was 1987 when President Ronald Reagan finally addressed AIDS. By then 36,058 American’s had died and over 20,000 had been diagnosed with the disease. This was just the beginning. It’s impossible to imagine any social group in America would have to die in those kinds of numbers before a sitting President even acknowledged their plight. Today his supports shrug and say it was a different time. Larry Kramer, playwright, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist believed many gay people fought the wrong way. A bitter critic of the promiscuous 1970s-era sex culture, he advocated a politics that presaged today’s fight for marriage equality. He made a lot of enemies in the community because of his ‘bourgeois conservative’ viewpoint. God knows how many lives he saved.

It took many years for me to attempt to sort out that moment in time. It was a combination of personal growth, extreme loss, and terrifying fear. But despite all the anger that I had felt, years later as Mrs. Reagan stood at the President’s funeral, I felt tears running down my face. In fact, I was sobbing. I watched her grey, grief-stricken face, and fragility. It was a reminder of mortality, and how we all must face it one way or another. Watching Nancy Reagan, I felt all the devastating grief from that time rise up in me. I remembered all the loss that was the result of slow acting government that had refused to acknowledge the urgency of the plague. I remembered all the impotent anger and terror. But I also saw a woman plunged into sorrow. Despite all the public display and sentiment, it was Nancy Reagan’s grief-ravaged face and the way she placed her cheek on her husband’s coffin that unlocked my tears. Perhaps it was because in that moment I could put my personal feelings aside and just recognize and feel the horrible empty loss of love.

Coming out of Indiana, in that moment and time, I would begin to learn not only how images are created. But I also learned the lack of meaning and value they provide. I began to understand the hollowness of an image that is separated from its reality. I began to understand that although we shouldn’t live in the past, we can’t move forward without looking back. Self-discovery for me taught me that a secret life is a sad life. Self-discovery taught me about the tenuous and all-important connection between identity and freedom. Despite all that came before and would come after, without individuality and authenticity, we could never be free. Now I knew.