Don, I remember that night at the bar,
You were bearded and blue-jeaned and tall.
Shocking blue eyes, how they magnitized me,
I was drawn from my place at the wall.
Whirling and turning 'til well after three,
'Til we knew our connection could start.
Funny how lovers and friends can grow out of
A dream in a gay man's heart.
You were the youth that I'd wasted away,
And I offered the comfort you craved.
We knew just where both our challenges lay
And what forces we both had to brave.
You had to find faithful love from a man
Who could nurture your sensitive part.
Such are the mysteries of falling in love with
A man with a gay man's heart.
And how bittersweet to find you
I in the arms of a Carbondale guy,
And know that it had to be this way
And all we could both do was cry.
You came to call in my depths of dispair,
And in darkness you cradled my head.
"Jim, I can never stop treasuring you,
Be my friend for a lifetime," you said.
Suddenly summer had faded to fall
Like a piece of impressionist art.
Such are the memories and verse number one of
A song from a gay man's heart,
A song from a gay man's heart.
II.
You moved from town to be pretty boy wife
To a coal miner in Illinois.
Though we both knew you were driven to do it
And it brought you more pain than joy.
Beer drinking studs may be hot in the bar
But they're not much on music or art.
Things that you need if your going to live out
Your life with a gay man's heart.
I in St. Louis and you in Chicago
Connect as the years melt away.
You with your leather adventures involved
While I live out my activist days.
Playing your Baldwin piano by day
While you worked every night at K-Mart.
Working and longing for what you can't have
Is the curse of a gay man's heart.
And how terrifying
When you found lumps under your arm.
And even the prospect of dying
Could not put a chink in your charm.
You just kept on living day after day,
And you never gave up on your dreams.
Somehow I know you were glad to be gay
Though your life fell apart at the seams.
Hospital stays had become the routine
And had weakened your spirited heart.
Then you were gone, but your living here still in
This song from a gay man's heart.
A song from a gay man's heart.