I went to see Gary just before Christmas. This was not my first visit to Gary – and to Lucy, his effervescent little blond spaniel, freckle-faced and always love at first sight. The best of friends, they lived in a tiny, modest house, or rather inside a kaleidoscope of chatchkies – including his big collection of clowns – all shapes, sizes and colors. It was natural for me to call Lucy “sweetheart”, but then I called a lot of people sweetheart – just something left over from England, I suppose.

Gary had been very ill at various times and still his neuropathy made it hard to walk. His future was uncertain but, with his nutty enthusiasm and Texas accent, he always made me laugh. It was no accident that he collected clowns – he, of course, was the clown leader. Often he entertained me with another seizure story. He was prone to them – the seizures and the stories.  One blackout made him fall against his “entertainment center” which collapsed on top of him. He says that, when he came to, he crawled out from under the debris and his first thought was “wouldn’t you just know it, the entertainment center nearly did me in before the damned AIDS did”.

He was more or less homebound and much of his time was occupied with making very elaborate, glitzy red AIDS ribbons, involving assorted rhinestones, bugle beads and anything else that glittered. He pasted all this together with a strong epoxy glue – and therein lies another seizure tale. He was working away in his kitchen, when suddenly – blackout. When he came to he was flat on his back on the kitchen floor. But waking up did not mean getting up. He couldn’t. He had fallen on a tube of epoxy and was glued to the floor. He struggled and yelled and thought he was going to die alone right there – of starvation and dehydration. But eventually his cries were heard and the neighbors finally came. It took two of them to prize him off the floor.

This Christmas his house took on the look of Santa’s workshop, a riot of over-the-top color. Lucy was wearing a much-too-big red bow. My visit was a fairly long one, with cups of cheer and tales of Christmas past, but eventually I had to leave. He had a present for me, a clown doll, about a foot high, dressed in brightly colored silks and with a floppy pointed hat atop a round, wistful face. I thanked him and hugged them both. “Goodbye sweetheart, you too Lucy. Take care of each other, and Merry Christmas.”

As I walked n my car I sat the clown on the dash and sorted my papers for my next visit. Suddenly I noticed a key in the clown’s back. I wound it and watched. Very slowly the wistful, smiling face rolled back and forth and round in a gentle circle. And the music began, a tinkling, music-box version of – Let Me Call You Sweetheart. I stared at the clown, looked back at the window and thought of Gary, Lucy and their Christmas. And, of course, and the tears flowed.