Gabe Gelbart

I had heard of the death of a friend, Gabe Gelbart, a few weeks ago. I didn't know until this recent trip to Los Angeles what happened. I first met Gabe at Israeli dancing at UCLA in 1984. I was just turning thirty-five; he was in his early twenties, short, dark and balding. Gabe was from Argentina, but his family left for San Diego when he was young. He identified as Orthodox, and expressed some shock when I told him I was gay.  A few years later, he showed up at Beth Chayim Chadashim, the temple for LGBT people I joined in 1987. We both sang in the choir. Our paths continued to cross. We were in performance art classes taught by Tim Miller, who lost his NEA grant because his gay act was too prurient for certain Southern senators. Gabe's pieces focused on appliances. He would bring in a toaster, or a blender, and then concoct a performance piece. It was brilliant, but I guess you had to be there. We ended up in a writing class for gay men around 2007 that met in Gabe's house, an old Spanish-style house in Pico-Robertson, one of LA's Jewish ghettos. He was working for Disney, creating new theme parks in China.

In 2003, I attended a Jewish genealogy convention in Washington. Earlier that year, at 53, I suffered a heart attack and the death of my mother. I wanted to try something different that summer. I met a cousin at the convention who had traced my father's family back to 1732 in Poland. One branch of the family was named Gelbhard, and had gone to the town in Argentina where Gabe was born. I suggested to Gabe that we might be cousins, but he brushed me off, suggesting that the variant spelling meant we were from different families.

I ran into our mutual friend Richard "Doe" Racklin at Outfest, L.A.'s LGBT film festival,when Joe and I were visiting L.A. It was Doe who posted about Gabe's death on Facebook. He told me that Gabe had married five weeks before his death. He came home from a bike ride (a hobby we shared), told his husband he wasn't feeling well, and went to lie down. Later his husband took him to the hospital.  Gabe died, at 53, of a heart attack.

Gabe wasn't a close friend, although we traveled a similar path in Los Angeles. We looked enough alike and our interests were close enough to make me believe we were related, even if he didn't buy it. We both had heart attacks at fifty-three, very common in my father's family. He died. I'm still here. I can't explain that.