We Sing to Keep From Crying : The Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles Gives Its Members the Courage and Love to Conquer Their Fear

As they snap on headlights in the deepening dusk, how many people driving home on Wilshire ponder the fact that they’re dying?

We sing, to keep from crying . . .

The music spills into the parking lot of the United Methodist Church, but a half-dozen Cub Scouts in new blue uniforms don’t listen; they chase each other whooping and laughing outside. Is even one wondering how many more warm evenings he’ll be alive?

We sing, instead of screaming . . .

Now follow the music. Look through the gritty glass where 150 voices harmonize, resonating from the church’s vaulted ceiling:

We sing to keep from crying . . .

Over and over, they intone the same lines, working on pitch, projection, enunciation.

From the intensity on their faces, you’d think this commissioned cantata, “Hidden Legacies,” is their sacred calling.

You’d think their upcoming concerts in Denver are a matter of life and death.

In another context, Willie Nelson’s “You Were Always on My Mind” might not be so moving. But here, sung by the Windy City Chorus, the words sucker-punch Albert Smith.

A baritone with the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, Smith is in Colorado for Gala IV, a six-day summer festival that has flooded downtown Denver with more than 3,500 singers from 65 far-flung gay and lesbian groups.

In the decade since Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome first infiltrated the gay community, 26 members of the Windy City Chorus have died of AIDS. The Los Angeles chorus’s toll stands at 76.

For those who have survived, even old saws-- Little things I could have said and done, but I never took the time --assume new meaning.

Spotting a tuxedo-clad Windy City singer in the throng, Smith claps a hand on his shoulder: “Thank you,” Smith says. The two melt into a teary hug.

Six years ago, Smith learned he is HIV positive, carrying the virus believed to trigger AIDS.

“I figured, I’m going to die. I might as well dance till I drop,” he says. So he partied, caroused and ripped into life with frantic abandon.

Then it struck him: All anyone has is time, no one knows how much. And he hadn’t been using his particularly well.

Smith earns his living as a gemologist and antique jewelry dealer. But that’s never been his passion.

“I started thinking,” he recalls. “It’s important to do the things I love to do, not just the things I’m supposed to do. I need to follow my heart.”

It led him to the chorus.

Many members describe the chorus as a sort of comfortable transition between the encompassing heterosexual world and the gay subculture. Those openly gay find solace in the focused creativity; others have used the group to edge “out”--to themselves and others.

The latter doesn’t always work.

A few years ago, one man invited his mother, who didn’t know he was gay, to fly in from the Midwest to hear him sing at the chorus’s annual Christmas show.

She did. Then she disowned him.

In 1988, the respected director of a Lutheran college choir in Orange County appeared with the chorus on television. A shy man of 55, he had joined the gay chorus as a first, tentative attempt to confront his sexuality.

The next day, however, one of his students told the school’s dean what he’d seen on TV.

The choir director explained that he was gay in orientation, but celibate his entire life; the university fired him anyway.

Albert Smith had never quite fit in as a kid. He wasn’t great at sports, and the other kids in his Philadelphia neighborhood--particularly, he says, the other black kids--never let him forget it.

When Smith passed his chorus audition, he called his father, a prominent attorney, and told him he’d finally found a place where he felt at peace, where he could do what he loved without fear.

His father wrote back: “Your participation in the chorus is a source of great embarrassment to me. . . . “

At 2 a.m., Smith sat in his West Hollywood apartment and composed a reply: “I’m sorry that it hurts you. But this is not for you. I know you’d prefer I not be open about this. But that would be the same as if I were light-skinned and tried to pass as white.”

As for his father’s belief that sexual orientation is a matter of choice, a moral decision, Smith wrote: “Why would I choose, why would anyone choose, to be part of another hated minority?”

John Cox, 70, is tone deaf. But he listens intently while sitting in the empty Denver concert hall as the chorus does a sound check.

He’s been through this routine hundreds of times since his lover of two decades was accepted to sing bass at the chorus’s inaugural audition in 1978. Cox signed on to help with the group’s boggling logistics, and has become an informal counselor to its members.

In the early days, Cox recalls, the chorus was mainly a social group, just another pickup stop for some of its newly liberated members.

By the early ‘80s, though, it had evolved into a respected musical organization, with song, rather than sex, as its raison d’etre.

Then rumors of a deadly new disease swept the gay community.

The first member got sick around 1981, Cox remembers. Now some estimate that 50% to 65% of the group harbors the HIV believed to cause the immune system breakdown that allows opportunistic diseases to invade.

In 1987, members pushed Jerry Carlson, the group’s second director, onto the stage of a Methodist church in his wheelchair to hear one last concert before he died.

That, Cox says, began the end of the group’s denial. But singing “Hidden Legacies” for the first time earlier this year marked the first collective reckoning.

Everyone knew that the Denver audiences, comprised almost entirely of gay and lesbian singers, would be warmly supportive--and acutely critical.

So the 120 members of the L.A. chorus able to make the trip arrived in Denver with an artistic purpose that bordered on missionary zeal.

Until he joined the gay chorus, tenor Rob Briner never suspected that homosexuals embraced such a spectrum of attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.

In Denver he finds himself immersed in what seems like a whole city gone gay. For six days, Denver’s two large concert halls boast concerts from morning till night. Hotels near the performing arts center brim with men and women wearing name tags and T-shirts advertising every corner of the country.

California alone is represented by choruses from Long Beach, San Diego, San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Then there is the Atlanta Feminist Women’s Chorus, the Detroit Together Men’s Chorus, the Gay Men’s Chorus of South Florida, the Indianapolis Men’ Chorus, the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, the Portland Lesbian Choir . . .

The groups perform virtually nonstop, covering everything from “The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat” and “It’s Raining Men” to commissioned works and South African freedom medleys. When they aren’t singing or listening, chorus members jam public spaces around the center and pour through the streets, partying hardier than Shriners on a full-blown fez fest.

On one hotel elevator, singers pack in elbow-to-elbow, looking at maps and making plans to head for the Denver Rodeo or Boulder or the Rockies.

“I’m thinking of going out to the Air Force Academy,” says one man sotto voce. “I hear the scenery’s just wonderful.”

GALA stores sell tapes and CDs by the many critically acclaimed choruses, as well as the inevitable pins and buttons. One bumper sticker reads: “Hate is not a family value.”

Just past midnight, the morning before the L. A. chorus’s afternoon performance, Bob Cross sits at the counter in a 24-hour coffee shop, waiting patiently as a frazzled waiter runs burgers and pancakes to an overflow crowd of singers.

Bringing “Hidden Legacies” to gay audiences is important, says Cross, whose lover of 35 years is also in the chorus.

“But I’d also like to do it in a more hostile environment,” he says. Adjusting his snappy motoring cap, he chuckles: “We should do it at what’s-his-name’s church in Orange County--at the Crystal Cathedral.”

The fourth movement of “Hidden Legacies” is a twanging country-Western salute to people who have cared for AIDS patients, and a lament by those who see their friends vanishing.

As the song progresses at the first Denver concert, a dozen chorus members pair off and dance a graceful Texas two-step.

And what of those people we don’t even know ?

Who give of themselves and try not to show

How short the time is when it’s your time to go

And they’re just left behind . . .

At their Christmas performances, and at spring concerts where they offer lighthearted show tunes and pop songs, the chorus usually wears tuxedos.

For “Legacies,” members don whatever they feel expresses their identities within a color scheme of white, black and gray.

The attire, sort of an expanded Village People vision, ranges from leather and chains to business suits, a naval officer’s uniform and cowboy duds.

The work itself is similarly eclectic. A cantata in seven movements--for chorus, four synthesizers, bass and percussion--the work whipsaws from popish melody to driving dissonance to sweet church-choir harmonics as it tracks gay life from the innocent, hedonistic pre-AIDS era, through the terrifying early days of the tragedy, to acceptance of a new reality.

When the chorus performed “Legacies” recently for a mixed audience in Dallas, a woman backstage had been shocked by the sight of men dancing.

“My mom’s in that audience,” she had squealed, “and the blue hair is rising.”

But nary an eyebrow goes up in Denver when the men, one in tight leather pants, another the spitting image of a genuine high plains goat-roper in his 10-gallon hat, sashay across the floor and do-si-do.

By the time “Legacies” dissolves into a lullaby, a gentle, personal plea for death, the audience is under the chorus’ spell.

. . . Dream, journey’s end . I say farewell my finest friend.

Turn inward now and try to find,

Your spirit journey now defined.

As the chorus pours into the labyrinth of offstage corridors after the concert, a singer with the Boston Chorus approaches director Jon Bailey.

He intends a simple “thanks,” but his head falls onto Bailey’s shoulder, his arms encircle his neck.

Minutes later the words finally come: “That was the most religious experience of my life.”

“Ahhh!”

It’s 3 a.m. and Tad Montgomery awakes screaming.

The peripheral neuropathy that makes his feet burn has bullied past the medicine again. Montgomery pops a pill and settles back, waiting for it to knock down the flash fire moving from his toes.

Later, he sits in a chair in the corner of the hotel room, rallying the energy to get ready for the evening performance.

A Donald Duck Band-Aid covers a tiny mark on Montgomery’s right arm where his IV tube pulled out.

The arm had become a problem in one of those stupifying, innocuous moments so familiar to the AIDS-infected. Back in April, Montgomery’s mother had visited from El Cajon. They went to buy plants at a nursery and as they browsed, a thorn nailed his thumb.

He barely felt it. But bacteria swaggered past his broken immune system and by the next day, infection had swelled the arm to twice its size.

Boom. He found himself stretched in a hospital bed, tubes poking all over the place, morphine easing him through a dreamy two weeks during which his temperature soared, dehydration drained the vitality from his flesh and another 10 pounds dropped from his 6-foot-6 frame.

Montgomery had pretty much come out as gay by the end of high school. The gap between family and friends never opened, as it did for some in the chorus. But another canyon appeared with the disease’s first signs.

When his lifelong best friend got married, the friend ignored family protests and included his gay comrade in the wedding party. Years later, Montgomery told his buddy he had AIDS.

“He bailed on me,” he remembers, a trace of bitterness infecting his uniformly upbeat demeanor.

Montgomery is determined to hang on until medicine learns how to fend off the opportunistic diseases that hound him. He’s certain that his attitude will carry him. In the meantime, his priorities have changed.

Last January, Montgomery quit his job at Fred Sands Realtors: “I decided I’m not going to die trying to get someone’s mortgage to close,” he says.

He’s also cut back on other taxing things. But not the chorus.

“Have you eaten anything today, Tad?” asks Steve Smith, editorial director at KNX radio and Montgomery’s GALA roommate, as he runs a brush through his friend’s hair. Montgomery nods, glancing in the direction of a box of Lorna Doones on the night stand between their unmade beds.

Last summer, Montgomery had stayed behind while the chorus toured Eastern Europe. “I didn’t want to be in Budapest and get travelers’ flu,” he says.

But with the chorus gone, he realized how integral it had become. After the arm infection, his doctor said Montgomery couldn’t travel.

But Montgomery was equally firm: “I’m going to Denver.”

So in late June, he packed the gadgetry for his intravenous drip, stuffed an Igloo cooler with 15 types of expensive medicines, and dragged it onto a plane.

Director Bailey has offered to let Montgomery sit during the Denver performances, but the singer wants none of that.

As the chorus sings a “Hidden Legacies” song called “The Nightmare” during the second performance, a jagged silhouette of singers stands out against a red backdrop like the Rockies at sunset. Montgomery’s neatly coiffed hair is the highest peak.

Bailey’s baton flails and the chorus booms:

A bottomless canyon between sick and well

The chasm is fear and no man can tell

What courage it takes, what personal hell to . . . cross over.

Bailey’s fingers comb the air, coaxing well-rehearsed meaning from a haunting stage scream:

Aaaaa-aaa-AAAA-aaaah! Aaaaa-aaa-AAAA-ah!

Ah! Ah! Ah! Wake up!

At this performance, as at the last, people reflexively reach over seats to hold other hands. As the lullaby ends, crying punctuates the silence.

Word of L.A.’s moving piece has spread; the audience at the second performance is heavy with repeat customers who have brought friends.

If we could sing you health,

If we could sing you time . . .

Throughout the auditorium, those withered by sadness perk up as the chorus pours itself into its testimonial to the power of song.

We sing to keep from crying.

Our song can’t stop the dying, but focused in song

United and strong you can hear . . .

We conquer fear with . . . LOVE.

“Hidden Legacies” is a success. The final lines-- If our songs can change us, could they change you? --have hit home.

Other choruses will perform it, spreading a gospel of life in the face of death.

The penultimate night of the festival features a multi-chorus AIDS memorial concert.

The final piece, a movement of John Corigliano’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Of Rage and Remembrance,” completes the week-long catharsis.

It ends with the New York, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle choruses calling out the names of the composer’s friends who have died of AIDS.

The audience is invited to join.

As musicians somberly stroll the aisles ringing chimes, people open up in the darkness.

“John Gringler,” someone in a balcony barely whispers.

“My 3-year-old son!” shouts a voice choked with emotion.

From the shadows where the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles sits, dozens of names escape like fleeing ghosts.

Mark Ashland!

Dennis Dauth!

Gerry Ramminger!

Paul Rios!

Jim Holman!

Afterward, people silently move down the lobby stairs, their tear-streaked faces an overwhelming mosaic of grief.

Inside, in a dark corner, an L. A. chorus member cradles a singer from Boston, whose deep, hollow sobs fill the empty, cathedral-like hall.

Outside, though, the sorrow slowly lifts.

Thoughts of death dissipate in air scrubbed clean by thunderstorms. Peals of soft laughter echo from the buildings and the voices of a women’s chorus rise up in an impromptu protest song.