David Fyffe

What would you do if you were a sickly gay boy growing up in Chillicothe, in Southern Ohio in the 1960s? You might become a hairdresser in the big city- Columbus. And if that were not enough? You might move to Los Angeles and become a Jew. Unlikely? That's what my friend David Fyffe did.

When I first met him at Beth Chayim Chadashim, probably in 1986, when I first joined that temple for gay men and lesbians, David introduced himself. He told me I was handsome, and that he was HIV positive. He was blind. "Figures," I thought. Of course the one who can't see me thinks I'm handsome.

He eventually regained some limited vision through a new kind of operation. He walked up to me at the first service he attended after his operation and asked if I had seen the really hot guy in this month's Playgirl. I hadn't. "How did you know I was Barry?" I asked. " I just knew that's what you looked like, even before I could see you."

We couldn't be a couple. I had given up being gay a few years before , from pure terror about AIDS, and was just taking baby steps to come out again. And here was someone HIV positive talking to me. I visited his apartment on Formosa Avenue in West Hollywood, and it was even more chaotic than mine, with everything randomly strewn all over everything. Neither of us would be housekeepers.

In the early 1990s, when I didn't have a car, I would see David on the bus on Santa Monica Boulevard or Fairfax Avenue. We would get into long discussions about the nature of God, the reason for Good and Evil existing in the world, or sometimes just about friends, ex-lovers, and who had died recently. David was modest, but he did brag that he was the last survivor of two different AIDS support groups at temple. The threat of disease and death was hard, but the loss of so many friends in their twenties and thirties was devastating.

We both assuaged our consciences by volunteering to be parachaplains- rabbis without the title who would visit Jewish patients at smaller hospitals that couldn't afford to have a rabbi on staff. I visited Hollywood Community Hospital, just off Vine Street, for several years. They had a dedicated AIDS ward - mostly hospice care, until better meds came out and people stopped dying. David also volunteered at a hospital.

Arlan Wareham showed up at temple in the mid-90s. There's a long, interesting story about how Arlan came to BCC, and eventually decided to be a Jew. He was smart, handsome, funny. I thought we might be a couple, but something held me back. I just couldn't see us together. Then one day David came to me and told me he had a new boyfriend- Arlan. It all fell into place. Arlan and David. Of course!

They had a grand wedding at BCC- not in any way legal in the 1990s, but that didn't stop Rabbi Lisa Edwards from blessing their union, nor did it stop their many friends from celebrating. I remember mostly that they made their own chuppa or wedding canopy.

They settled in San Bernardino County, where Arlan came from, but drove in sixty miles to services every week. I should have apologized for laughing in their face when they told me in 2005 that they were moving to Israel. Arlan admitted that it seemed crazy. It wasn't.

I last saw Arlan and David face-to-face in 2007, when a group of us from BCC toured Israel and visited them at their home in Tzfat, a medieval town in Galilee, where most of the residents were Orthodox. David fit right in with his long unkempt beard, plain white shirt and navy pants. Even the tube for his insulin pump, if you didn't look too closely, could have been tzitzit, the ritual fringes worn by Orthodox men. Arlan and David showed us where a missile from Lebanon had damaged their house.

They decamped for Eilat on the Red Sea, warmer and more resort-like than Tzfat. Arlan kept up a presence on Facebook and a blog. I didn't hear much from David. He was on Facebook, but didn't post much after 2011. This year, Arlan's posts grew more dire. David's mind and body were shutting down.  David Fyffe died this week in a hospital in Beer Sheva, Israel. He was fifty-nine.

I remarked to Arlan a few weeks ago how fortunate they were to live in Israel, where medical care is better than in the United States, and covered by the government. They were blessed in their lives. I do sometimes go off into magical realism, where I attribute good events to God. David did that, too, but he also made good decisions - leaving his family in Ohio, becoming a Jew, falling in with many friends at BCC, finding and keeping Arlan. Despite being HIV positive for thirty years and suffering from periods of crippling depression,  he managed to keep going when others didn't.

David was a holy man, a deep thinker, a crazy wonderful friend. He is survived by his husband Arlan Wareham and members of his biological family in Ohio. People who attended BCC before 2005, and other still remaining AIDS activists from Los Angeles will also mourn his passing.

Arlan Wareham has a blog:  http://www.arlansday.blogspot.co.il