Whenever I sit down to write an article or in the book, I have to stop for a bit and remember some of the reasons I feel bound to put these memories onto paper. I am writing for the love of all of my friends, however it is especially for the ones lost. I think we all look back and say things like "if I only knew then what I know now" or "sure I would do it again, I would have even more fun the second time around". I too often look back and remember good times and good friends. Sometimes they feel so close to me that I could reach out and touch them, hug them again.   It would be nice to see their faces again, but as long as I am alive, they too stay alive with me.   It seems the 80's and 90's were filled with as much sadness and hopelessness as they were filled with joy and light.   The "Gay community" was a lesson in solidarity in so many ways. I began attending funerals for friends and acquaintances by the time I was 26 and they have not stopped yet. They are thankfully slowed. As a 49 year old, I don't think it is right to have seen almost 100 friends and loved ones pass from AIDS. I also have friends who have died of other causes, we all do, but AIDS has been hard on all of us; straight, Gay, black, white, all colors, all religions and all orientations.

There are times when these stories get going and they bring additional memories and I have to remind myself that I also live in the present.   I am a survivor. I have been HIV positive since around 1980. I have medical records of a strange pneumonia in December of 1980 and additional opportunistic infections; some mild and some serious, since then. I began testing for HIV in 1986 with some tests being negative all the way to the present. I have an offshoot HIV strain, one not as common, but pretty nasty in any case. I don't know where I got it. I had 4 units of blood in 1979 and 1980, but since I am Gay, that is often looked to as the transmission cause. It took a while to get information, but the virus is uncommon and has mutated many times. I have had my CD4 go up and down, and due to lack of insurance and lack of assistance from programs, it was not until 2000 that I began meds. Oh, I tried AZT and other treatments, but it wasn't until I came close to death and with a CD4 of 88 that a full-blown AIDS diagnosis and meds finally came. I have been on three different cocktails so far and have had good luck, as I am still alive. I also have a good outlook and a desire to keep writing the book. I think that I have often had to be the strength for others; I know I have been at the bedside for far too many passings, including the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Perhaps that strength is helping to keep me going. All I know is that I have work to do and I should stay on top of it.

I have to stop here, it is because in the course of writing that "life turns on a dime" as Timmy used to say. This article is mostly about Timmy, my wonderful friend, He was my partner Buddy's best friend in Portland for the four years that Buddy was alive there, and Timmy and I became best friends after Buddy died and remained very close.

I will continue the article and pull from the book and add as needed to illustrate about this wonderful man. He was a strength to many and a helper as well, He lost his partner of 26 years in 2001 and after 4 years met a new man who he had been living with for a little over a year. I didn't know the man (Jeff) but I knew he was a mean drunk and Timmy had told me he and Jeff had quit drinking. I didn't know that Jeff was also abusive and hurt Timmy. In July, Jeff beat Timmy to unconsciousness and then strangled him; he took Timmy's body and put it into a bathtub and covered it with frozen food. For 5 days he lived with the corpse until he was discovered and arrested. Timmy did not deserve this; he would have never hurt anyone. I heard from Timmy's brother after the fact and I will be in shock for a while. I believe in a happy spiritual after and know that Buddy, Loosee, Ronnie (Tim's late partner) and many others are there and have welcomed him to the party. I will not continue in a sad frame, this is about Timmy's humor, his laughter and the joy he brings!

Buddy and I sold our homes in Atlanta and North Georgia and bought a house outright in Portland Oregon. We thought it was a good idea to buy an old house and fix it up. As Timmy once said, "You can't put perfume over stink and hope everything is fine". Actually the house turned out great and Timmy and other friends came there for many a party and dinner.

We met Timmy through a string of new friends. Seems the new kids in town were passed around a bit, one friend would introduce us to the next and so on. Finally we met Loosee and he introduced us to Timmy. Timmy was a waiter in the restaurant side of a neighborhood gay bar called Starkey's. We had seen Timmy there on several occasions, everyone seemed to like him and he was very funny and very, very flamboyant. He was about a step above psych-drag, but much more entertaining than full drag. He enjoyed tight jeans and T-shirts. Simple sayings like "QUEER" adorned the fronts. He was fun at Gay Pride in roller skates, a mardi-gras   mask and silver wand with his "Fairy" T-shirt and high pitched giggle. Both Buddy and I enjoyed him, but thought this wasn't someone to take camping or skiing, which we did often. We were wrong; Timmy could rough it up with the best of them and was a good skier and fun on many trips to the mountains and the beach.

The 4 of us became quick friends; Loosee, Timmy, Buddy and myself. We often got together on weekends to party and Timmy became a good source of pot for us later. Loosee and I used to enjoy trying to give Buddy and Timmy what was then called the "Loosee slip", we would all be walking to a preferred gay bar in oldtown Portland and Timmy and Buddy would be giggling and being silly in front of us and we would let them get far ahead and finally slip in any old bar and see if they would figure out where we were. It was something we were able to do a few times and then Timmy began looking back every couple on minutes and yelling at us so loud we had to catch up to shut him us. Nothing like a 'WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU TWO MARY'S GOING NOW' or 'DON'T LEAVE ME MARY!' It was enough to keep us all together especially in parts of Oldtown or Chinatown.

Timmy was a person whom most anyone could go to and he would try to help them if he could. At times others took advantage of his kindness, but usually he was repaid tenfold because his friends wanted to give back to him. He only gave too much. I went to him once in 1988 when Buddy had been at home playing househusband and watching too much Opra Winfrey. I stopped at Starky's one afternoon and sat down with Timmy and talked about Buddy needing to do some part time work for fun. I asked Timmy about working at the restaurant and there was an opening. It was 3 lunch shifts and 2 dinner shifts; he would work with Timmy most of the time. Timmy went to the owners and told them Buddy had experience and they called and talked to Buddy about coming to work there. It was much later that I told Buddy I had talked to Timmy, but he was grateful and really liked the job. Timmy and Buddy grew very close and enjoyed working together.

They were both so corny and did everything from singing the specials to finishing each other's sentences while going over the specials. They were very popular and quite the show. It lasted almost a year for Buddy and then he took more time off. I think he wanted to be available to ski and do things around the house. He didn't need to work and I didn't push it unless he seemed to be getting bored.

Timmy never really got over Buddy leaving the restaurant, but the two of them stayed close and went skiing together with me on my days off. Sometimes the two of them also went skiing on other days without me, which was fun for them. Timmy had a natural ability with skis. We went cross country and enjoyed taking snacks, hot drinks and a few joints. We skied till we were tired and then stopped at the bar on Mt Hood to have a cocktail before going home. There were times while skiing that we would come on igloos built by others on the mountain. There were always groups who did survival training up there. I remember once coming across a group of igloos connected by tunnels. Haven gotten high, I was feeling silly and tried to slip down to another igloo. I got stuck and so Timmy dared me to do it naked and get a slick ride. Of course, I couldn't resist, but once I got down to the other igloo, I couldn't get back up. The two guys tried to throw my clothes to me, but that didn't work. Buddy had to break into the igloo from above. Talk about blue balls. It was a first and last for me. Wish I could say the same for Timmy. He tried to slide with his and some of my clothes in hand and the ride was so fast he came down minus most of the clothes. Luckily we had a T-shirt and socks to stand on, the feet got cold down there. I was surprised that the inside didn't get as cold as we both stood there and giggled till we were rescued. Timmy did it on other occasions when it wasn't such a long shoot to other igloos, but not me.

Timmy and I enjoyed the big hills for fast skiing, but we never ventured into alpine skiing. We continued to ski together after Buddy's death and the only thing that increased for us was the number of joints we took as we went for more and more time.

Timmy and I found out that we both loved martinis, so we often met after work to have martinis at a bar close to his house called the Brite-Spot/Spaceroom. There a favorite bartender, Karen, made one martini that filled 2 plus glasses and we partook. The place was not a gay bar, but, as other patrons told me later, wasn't straight either. More of a strange bar than anything else. We got to know other patrons and workers there and after a time, went there to visit rather than local gay bars. We enjoyed a bar tender, Loosee, saying over the loud speaker "Ladies and gentlemen, if you are feeling single and seeing double, please DO NOT come up to the bar at this time" - this kind of thing happened often there.

Timmy, Loosee, Buddy and I were all in on the famous 'shopping cart incident' which was a silly time when Buddy and Timmy got into the top of a cart. I squeezed on the bottom and Loosee pushed us into the Hospital pub for beer and pinball and we hit a curb and all went flying into the street. It was not pretty and very stupid considering we were all over 30 at the time. We had the tendency to excel in dumb tricks back thenŠWe were, however, very good at pinball; especially Loosee who had a way of bumping the machine with his hips and never tilting the game. Timmy was the old school kind of player; everything by the rules and he was very good at the games as well. He could usually do all the sound effects, and regardless of where we might be, Timmy would begin the sound effects of one of the games. It was better to just get him to the game than to try to fight the behavior.

Timmy was a great person to take on trips; he enjoyed anything that was fun to the hilt. We went on whale watching trips and coastal hikes, hikes into the waterfall district of the Columbia River gorge, skiing and excursions looking for the perfect oyster. Timmy had a flair for architecture and knew the history of many of the buildings in Portland. Hiking was always fun with Timmy and we often went the whole day looking for waterfalls or at plants and could cover as much as 15 miles in one hike.

Timmy was the person who I could come to after Buddy passed away and he comforted me often and knew how to help me let go of the pain and get back to living again. He had a way of allowing the tears and then replacing them with laughter as needed. I will always be grateful for him.

There will never come another friend whom I can call or see and do the dialog from 'Martin Short Goes Hollywood', or 'John Paragon's Special', or even Dr Smith from Lost in Spaces' famous 'oh no'. Timmy and I could play any part in those comedy routines, as well as several John Waters films, and we got into our own little world when we did. Little did others know that between all the dialogs we were also talking about other things, usually anyone and everyone else.

Timmy will be missed by many people, seems he was the kind of person others naturally gravitated to for fun. Timmy and I referred to each other as 'sisters' a very gay camp thing to do. Reality is we were family and very close and when he was killed, a piece of me was also killed and I will grieve for him as a brother. I can get through death issues, it is not easy, but natural death is something we all do. A life taken is something very different. It hurts more bitterly, it cannot be corrected or dealt with in the present or future because it is never 'for the best'. I hope Timmy's killer will one day come to terms with the loss he created for so many. This life was not his to take. I do not believe in a life for a life, but I do hope that he will one day understand the depth of the crime.

Timmy is in a happy place and a happy memory and a special place in so many hearts. He will live there forever and forever be laughing.