One of the first people I met when I moved to Philadelphia in 1980 was Jim Mason.
By that I mean I met him within the first couple of months that I was living here, at least as best as I can recall.
He and I hit it off pretty quickly, though in retrospect I’m not really sure why, but we did.
We found enough common ground, I guess.
In short order, we were going to the gay bars together and calling each other up on Sunday afternoons to help finish the Sunday Times crossword puzzle. We both enjoyed doing the puzzle but neither one of us could usually finish it on our own.
Jim was Black, by the way, and had grown up in Oklahoma, though he had no trace of an accent as far as I could tell. Presumably he had rid himself of it in the same way I had ditched my Pennsylvania Dutch accent.
I’d go to visit him at his apartment on Green Street from time to time, and he’d tell me about the latest adventure of his friend and landlord, Jeep, who lived on the first floor of the building. Jeep became one of those elusive characters, much spoken of but never seen, at least by me.
Every time I’d make an assumption about Jeep, Jim would correct me. One time Jim related a dispute Jeep had gotten into with a cab driver, and I said something silly like I guess a lot of Blacks had problems with cab drivers. Then Jim told me that Jeep was white. Oh. Another time I made some assumption about Jeep’s background and I was told that Jeep was British. Well, how was I to know? I never did find out Jeep’s real name, assuming he had one.
Jim used to complain about the drug dealers in his neighborhood, but I only stopped by his place during the day or early evening and I never noticed them; apparently they mainly flourished during the late night hours.
[Many years later a former high school classmate of mine, Maryann, was telling me that her son had just moved to Philadelphia and when she gave me the address, I realized it was right across the street from where Jim had lived. I laughed and told her about the drug dealers who inhabited that neighborhood back in the 80s, but assured her that they had long since been ejected from that area.]
Over the years Jim and I went to movies and concerts and plays. We didn’t always agree but I appreciated Jim’s witty comments and point of view. Most of the time, anyway.
Jim worked for the city in the area that prepared and administered the entrance exams for potential city employees such as police officers. I was intrigued by the idea and asked what one had to do to take the police qualifying exam. Jim gave me the instructions on how to sign up for it when it became available; he said he’d have to disclose that he knew me to keep things above board. In the end, I decided not to take the test as I didn’t really want to become a police officer anyway, though Jim was certain that I would have aced it.
Sometime in 1987 I called Jim’s number and his cousin Frank Scott answered the phone. I had met Frank at least once previously at a party, so we knew each other.
It turned out that Jim had had a nervous breakdown and was in the hospital; Frank was at his apartment just to pick up a few things and make sure everything was all right.
This turned out to be a major turning point in in each of our lives, Jim’s, Frank’s, and mine.
It was the beginning of the friendship for Frank and me, which I’ve talked about previously, but sadly, from this point on it was all downhill for Jim.
You see, in addition to being Black and gay, he was Catholic.
While gay Catholics either figure out how to reconcile their incompatible Catholicism with their sexual identity (the more gullible or delusional ones) or take the more sensible route and renounce their religion altogether (the rational ones), Jim wasn’t able to do either.
The rest of his life was spent in an ever spiraling downward circle of depression. Seemingly overnight his weight nearly doubled, he dropped most of his friends, and he became a recluse.
I tried to stay in touch with him, but he didn’t make it easy. As even his cousin Frank said, just talking to Jim was a downer.
I did occasionally coax him to go to a play or out to dinner and there were sometimes flashes of the old sparkle and wit that I remembered so well, but only flashes, merely moments, nothing more.
Somewhere around this time, Jeep was diagnosed with HIV, and as he had no family, at least none in this country, Jim became his caregiver. When Jeep died, he left the apartment building to Jim. I only heard about this from Frank.
When his cousin Frank died in 1996, I called Jim to find out what the funeral arrangements were, and Jim hadn’t even known that Frank had been ill. That’s how out of touch he had been.
He did manage to get himself together to go to the funeral, and I went along with him, and I got to meet his mother and his elusive brother (the one who appeared and disappeared mysteriously in the night, but that’s another story).
Although we both promised to keep in touch, it was a promise that was soon broken after a couple phone calls, those calls mostly having to do with a memorial for Frank.
A few years ago when I moved back to Center City I decided to try to check on Jim and perhaps try to get back in touch with him, but I quickly learned that he had died just a couple years previously. A little more checking revealed he had sold the apartment building back in October of 1996, just months after Frank died. The purchase price was only $65,000, which was far less than it was worth even then, so presumably it needed more work than he was willing to put into it.
As an atheist, I have many reasons for my opposition to organized religions. I have many more reasons to hold up the Catholic Church in particular for special opprobrium.
But perhaps you’ll understand that in addition to the well known litany of problems that many people can cite for holding the Catholic Church up for criticism, I have a very personal reason for believing: