Jon-edmond Abraham:  

In the main, I cherish classical music and peace. Increasingly, I'm turning my back on people, choosing instead the closeness and benefits of my 2 feline, pets. They are noble, and I honor them...and my life, non-illuminous as it is these days. NOT depressed, but enormously interested in the goings on in San Francisco. I conduct foot tours of this wondorous place for free. Interestingly, since I get my printed news from "The Examiner," I find many of articles are reprinted from columnists of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. I love the fact of growing up with WQED, and all that enterprise has done to cultivate me, and watch KQED here in SF, CA. PBS is an awsome treasure, and we have 5 PBS outlets here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm now 58 years old and consider myself abundantly blessed having lived so long and in good health, considering my gay identity and remarkable sexual promiscuity. Many stories there! I actually got to sing (in the Chorus) of the Metropolitan Opera and did my first 5 professional working years singing in the Chorus of the New York City Opera, both at Lincoln Center. Christ, I miss Beverly Sills. She was there in the very first weeks of my employment there. I had the privelage of performing in the NYCO chorus in the "3 Queens" she was so acclaimed worldwide for in my first season with that company. I grow very sad when I think of her and Lucianno, and the fact of their absence. Actually, I give myself kudos (noone else will) for the titanic achievement it was in 1974 to practice my artistic skills there, considering my poverty of support and means. I wouldn't call myself happy these days, by any means, but I identify myself as "cheerful." The quote is Ms. Sills, and I truely live by it as well. I wouldn't identify as an optimist either. My achievements were hard-won, and fraught with failure, mistakes, and sacrifices. I almost never made friends easily, an odd duck and a hard-to-fit personality at play. I had so many, many unmet needs. I never hid my homosexuality, but found the identity perplexing at best, but those were the early my early days afterall. The gay movement was still young. In the interim, I identify deeply with the losses experienced by caucasian men and women, primarily in the arts community, and finally with many, many persons here in San Francisco. It is challenging to live in what I call a "culture of death." It is still very difficult challenge to "keep" friends. I posit that challenge beginning in 1954 when at age 3, only a few days after my my mom's long, painful death from cancer, I placed in an Catholic orphanage in Crafton. The place now serves as the Catholic Seminary for the Diocese of Pittsburgh. It's on Noblestown Road, close to the Greentree boundary. They never taught us much more than to be good Catholics. Chapel services were always early and were conducted before an already early breakfast hour. Breakfast disappointments were almost just as universally religious, too. How much puffed rice, puffed wheat and shredded wheat can a kid eat, anyway? The nuns were justified in their pride at supervising the food they'd provided for us. They did't share in the privelage of eating it though. They might have fled the order. There were absolutely no role models or heros. Not ever. But increasingly, I respect those Sisters of Mercy for accepting the incredible challenge I was then, and how little they could really do for me, being who I was. Poor things! But, children like us were the stated mission for their religious order, and they were mostly failures in all but the very basics. While I never learned to actually hate even the most visicious individuals among them, I never found pleasure or comfort or joy from being around so many other boys. I'm still uncomfortable in crowds, large and small. I wanted attention and love and respect then, and got precious little. Precious little love and attention was coming. It just wasn't available. The food was terrible, and they forced us to eat all the slop we were offered. I totally hated participating in sports, because they were always of the contact type, honored by the Irish. Boxing, football, etc. (in the cold Pittsburgh weather) with guys I'd rather not mix with anyway...unless they were sexual with me. But that was warm and comfortable and exciting! I still honor them all. The nuns taught me to read but not to enjoy books. They taught me to write but merely for the penmanship value. I quivered when I was put to connecting words into a short sentence. The environment there mostly resembled a harsh religious prison. Authoritian beatings and punishments both public and private were quite regular as I recall. They kept me in a constant state of humiliation. I was reared in this debilitating environment. Hell, I remember visiting my pathetic family then, and only being able to conjure up a hymn to sing. They liked hearing me sing, but, well, the repitoire was meager. Women in pants and Elvis were simply peed on by the nuns. But I worked with what I had, and became increasingly resourceful and adapted. There was a foster home placement in Penn Hills, and my first disasterous public school experience. I was way over my head experiencially, and was beaten regularly for failure to negotiate the complexity of the corridors and not getting to the correct classroom in time. That was disruptional, see, and vice-principals loved practicing the "art" of being disciplinarians...especially on this guy. I was simply a fish out of water, I now think. My aunt who lived in Mount Lebanon on Questend Avenue strived to present as a caring sister to my mother by visiting me at Sleepy Hollow Camp, as the prison was called, and visited me there when she had the time. She was busy raising her new family and had my sister since our mom's death in 1954. Anyway she'd just learned to drive and told me about Toner Institute. The hellish place was run by the Sisters of Divine Providence and was situated in Dormont, Mt. Lebanon, and Brookline, and the very end of Castlegate Avenue. Aunt Chookie, as she was known to all, recommended the place for its proximity to where she raised my sibling and her new family in Mount Lebanon. Visiting her on Sundays was but a walk along McNeely Rd. to Washington Road where I'd catch the 41A Sunset Bus to within a block or two of her house on Questend Avenue. The nuns there held me back to just the 7th grade, even though I was in the 8th grade by my belief. However, when I showed resentment, the good Sisters conspired and proxied out an initative beating one night in my pajamas in view of the 8th graders to be meated out by one of the female lay staff. Well, that kept me in place for my own good. For, if it wasn't living there, it was another bout with how Allegeny County "took care of" those who were "Dependant/Neglect." This was a terrible time to be growing up, even though it was peacetime, and the Viet Nam War was young. My "family" didn't much care for me then and now. I was so imperfect, way beyond wetting the bed I slept in until I was 15, probably due to the distasteful housing situation forced upon me. I was not really unwelcome on Questend Avenue unless Aunt Chookie found her own situation extremely difficult. I was one day kicked out of Toner Institute during breakfast, and driven by the priest/director of the place to the juvenile jail because they were tired of dealing with me. At least exploring my homosexuality was mostly fun. I was quite open about it then. We use the term "out" these days. I once again lived in anxious limbo until Chookie's brother, my uncle Dan took me in for several months. He lived in Baldwin Township and enrolled me in Baldwin Junior High, where even for the short while I was there, I failed to thrive. When his business failed due to his habit of writing worthless checks, he was sent to the workhouse, and I was yet again incarcerated in the juvenile jail facility in Oakland, just across...Expand for more