The opening ceremonies were great, but even greater than the planned and well-executed artistry of the performers were the spontaneous enthusiasm and showmanship of the athletes and the audience. Most remarkable of all was the entrance of the teams from India and Pakistan, who decided to enter the arena together, their national standards linked by a pink ribbon. The audience roared and the athletes lept to their feet, cheering. This is the message we have for the world. Our common bonds supercede any merely national rivalries. 

During the games, I was most impressed by the friendliness of the athletes I came across. I had the impression that young, good-looking gay men would be uninterested in talking to an older, less fit man like myself, yet every one of them that I approached and spoke to was eager to talk and interesting to listen to. I hope to keep some of those contacts going and perhaps develop them into international friendships.

But certainly the most important memory for me is winning the medal in poetry. It was both a sweet and a sad victory. Don Flint, my partner, and I meant to go to these games together, but he died of a brain tumor in 2000. He, too, was a poet. To some extent, I was participating on his behalf. We had courted all through the Amsterdam Gay Games, with me writing him poems on postcards and mailing them back to the States nearly every day. I meant to read one of those postcard poems in the final round of the poetry slam, but the night before I was kept awake by another poem that kept coming to me. It was about how he and I had grown vegetables in our organic garden the summer before he died, and how I scattered his ashes there last year, and how nothing grew there this year. I had to get this poem out, so at one o'clock in the morning, I wrote it down. The next night, I performed it for the first time in the final round of the poetry slam--and won. Afterwards, the judges asked me to do another poem. I asked if I could do someone else's instead, and they agreed. So I read them one of Don's poems. He was with me, you see, all the time.

And we're definitely going to Montreal.

--Lou

P.S. You can read (in your copious free time) all about Don and me on his web site: www.vivekan.org

If you would like email Lou: ceci_lga@yahoo.com