Pod Insights Personally Resurrection, Episode 2: Four Christmases About this episode Daryl and Dan were in love, until something happened that changed everything. This is the story of the evolution of Daryl and Dan's relationship; a queer love story set against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis.
The creation of this podcast was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Conseildes arts de Montréal, le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Hi, I just had to tell you that I think your podcast has changed my life.
0:06 Speaker 01 Season one of Sold a Story hit a nerve. It was about teaching kids to read. We have gotten this wrong in New York and all across the nation. Now we're back with a new season. This time, we go beyond reading.
0:19 Speaker 00 I've literally been told by my district that I should not be teaching math. I should be facilitating math.
0:26 Speaker 01 I'm Emily Hanford. Go to your podcast app and follow Sold a Story.
0:31 Speaker 02 This is a CBC Podcast.
0:34 Speaker 03 Hello, this is episode two of Resurrection. If you haven't heard the first episode yet, go back and start there. And just a note on content, this episode contains descriptions of sex, so maybe not the best to listen with kids around.
0:49 Speaker 03 Welcome back to Resurrection. I'm Dane Stewart, and in this podcast, I uncover the life of Daryl Allen, a bisexual man and an amateur playwright. I do this by reading the letters he sent to his lover, Dan Wiley, through the 1970s and 80s. As we learn about the progression of their relationship, we also learn about the progression of the AIDS crisis in the US and Canada.
1:12 Speaker 04 January 21st, 1981. Dear Danny, I'm starting this letter and I'm not even certain it will ever be mailed. I have a lot of anger deep inside me. It will be a long time before it will go away, if it does. When I look back on the time we've known each other, I really wonder what the fuck were we doing?
1:32 Speaker 03 On Christmas Eve, 1980, Dan and Daryl's relationship came crashing to a halt.
1:38 Speaker 04 I question whether you ever really loved me in a physical, sexual way.
1:43 Speaker 03 Dan did something that hurt Daryl deeply, something that humiliated him, something that I think many of us have done in one form or another.
1:52 Speaker 04 If all you wanted all this time was an older friend who was great at listening to your problems, why in the hell didn't you go for that at the beginning?
1:59 Speaker 03 Relationships are complicated, full of pain and sometimes humiliation. But for queer people, we deal with those feelings all the time. Hurt and humiliation are central parts of the queer experience. And as shitty as that is, sometimes learning to deal with those feelings can help us transform ourselves and our relationships into something new.
2:21 Speaker 04 Of course, I still love you, but I'm not certain, at least for the moment, whether I like you.
2:27 Speaker 03 I'm gonna tell you what happened that night. But first, to answer Daryl's question, did he still like Dan? Let's jump ahead. 10 years. Exactly 10 years. To Christmas Eve, 1990. Dan is living in Toronto with a new partner, Richard. They've been together since the early 80s. And Daryl, well, Daryl found love with a man named Jonathan, who ended up supporting him through one of the hardest experiences of both their lives.
2:54 Speaker 05 He came Christmas before he came to spend it with us and...
2:59 Speaker 03 Daryl came to visit Dan, the Christmas before he died.
3:04 Speaker 05 You could tell he was sick. You could tell it might be the last time we get to see him. And he was brave. He was brave. He was happy to be there, happy to share the time with us. He was able to know that Jonathan wouldn't be left completely alone, that we would be there as long as Jonathan wanted us to be there. I just remember Christmas dinner and him saying, you know, how much he loved being around everybody. And, you know, Richard and I were living in Toronto at the time. And he just felt very comfortable and very, very loved and very...
3:48 Speaker 05 He would get tired. He had lymphoma. So he would get tired at times. And we'd just go in the room with him and let him sleep while we were there. And then he'd wake up and share more good times with us.
4:04 Speaker 03 And so you see, whatever anger Daryl held for Dan from that fight 10 years earlier, however big that anger was, Daryl did still like him. I thought for a long time about how to tell this part of the story. And then I listened to these anecdotes and it occurred to me. Take one day of the year.
4:24 Speaker 03 Christmas. And look at two men and how they come together over a decade. If you look at just one day, what can you learn? About them? About their relationship? About a virus that ravaged a community? And about yourself? This is Daryl and Dan told through four Christmases. This is Resurrection, a podcast that tells the stories of ordinary queer people who were lost to HIV. Let's go back to that fight. Christmas 1980, the first Christmas. Dan does something to humiliate Daryl. And honestly, I have mixed feelings about putting this story, this very private story, into this very public space.
5:06 Speaker 03 But I think that if you understand Dan, and if you understand the dynamic he shared with Daryl, that you'll understand why he did this. Because you might have done similar things when you were young and struggling to sort through the prickly parts of sex and love and vulnerability. So stick with me for a moment, and let's learn a bit more about Dan.
5:27 Speaker 05 I didn't come out, I was forced out. I had this little love affair with an older, not an older, he was one or two years older than me, but he was like a bike rider, motorcycle rider. He taught me a lot, but after six months, he basically broke it off. And I was heartbroken, I was crying for three days. My mother couldn't understand what was going on. So she rifled through my drawers and found a letter that I had written to him, which I never delivered. So she basically just turned around and said, "Get your act together. You're gonna have a hard life if you choose to do this." And we didn't speak much about it after that.
6:12 Speaker 03 I relate hard with Dan's sentiments here. We didn't speak much about it. Families who aren't angry or upset, but they simply don't want to talk about it. Makes the darkness inside me squirm in my belly.
6:26 Speaker 06 Were they supportive?
6:28 Speaker 05 It wasn't talked about. I moved out shortly after that. And then I started dating another man who ended up physically abusing me. We were in an extremely abusive relationship. I remember one time I called my father. He was willing to come over and try and beat this guy up. I put an end to it, but it took me, it took me a long time. I remember what it felt like to be powerless in that situation.
6:58 Speaker 03 There's a cost to all this. A cost to having a man hurt you intentionally. A cost to not being able to process these things with your family. There's a cost to every heartbreak, and Dan paid a lot. But then he met Daryl.
7:12 Speaker 06 In a lot of relationships, I know some people describe one person being more of the pursuer and one person being more of the pursued. Would you say that was the case for your relationship with Daryl?
7:26 Speaker 05 I would say it was more like daddy boy, where the daddy was in control and the boy was still learning about life and what was that, that life was going to give to him. He was definitely the pursuer, I would say. But I looked at it on more as, as a daddy boy type thing.
7:51 Speaker 03 If you are outside the BDSM and kink and leather scenes, the term daddy boy might rub you the wrong way. But as a proud kinkster, I'm here to tell you that the term actually has a long history. First off, let's be clear that a daddy boy dynamic involves two consenting adults. A boy in the kink scene doesn't refer to age. It refers to a kind of personality or a role a person takes on. A boy is often more submissive, seeking care and affection and giving back through service. A daddy, then, becomes the person providing care and guidance.
8:30 Speaker 05 But we were very much in love.
8:31 Speaker 03 In the kink world, I sometimes see daddy boy relationships emerge between a person who's newly out, new to the scene, who needs some help feeling out what their queerness is, and a person who's been around for a while, someone who's willing to provide that relation that's so crucial in figuring out who we are. And what do they each get out of it? There's something special about the exchange of power.
8:53 Speaker 06 So it was very much reciprocal.
8:56 Speaker 05 Oh, yeah. I mean, it was fairy tale for me.
9:00 Speaker 03 Every relationship you have in your life has a power dynamic. Kingsters just know how to harness it for pleasure, but also for empathy and for connection.
9:10 Speaker 05 Here I had this intelligent, handsome daddy who wanted me and made me feel great and was extremely caring.
9:23 Speaker 06 Yeah, I ask that because I, his language, he, the frequency with which he says, "I love you", is almost overwhelming. So for me, not having the other side of the letters, not being able to see how you were responding, I wondered if that was at all stifling.
9:43 Speaker 05 Not in the beginning.
9:44 Speaker 03 Dan tells me about one night early in their relationship when he visits Daryl in New York. This would have been in 1980, months before the angry letter from that first Christmas. Daryl takes Dan to a club called The Mine Shaft.
9:58 Speaker 06 And how did you get into The Mine Shaft?
10:02 Speaker 05 We walked in and there was sort of like
10:05 Speaker 05 an entry booth in the sense of they looked you over, made sure that you conformed to their dress code, which was no shirt, at least. And if you had stuff that you had to take off, there was no sneakers, you had boots. Jeans were acceptable, or underwear or jockstrap. Once you got past that and you paid your entrance fee, then you walked over to basically, like it's in an old warehouse.
10:33 Speaker 06 Okay.
10:33 Speaker 05 So you basically walked over to a hole in the ground and you climbed down a ladder, an old wooden ladder, and you just climbed down there. And I remember getting off the ladder and looking around and it was like huge, empty space with all these bathtubs around. And I had never experienced water sports before, but...
11:04 Speaker 06 I'm gonna leave, well, just a little bit to the imagination here.
11:09 Speaker 06 And what was it like being there with Daryl?
11:12 Speaker 05 He was my protector. Okay? Again, I was a starry eyed young man who had no real world experience of any of this stuff. So I just felt very protected. And he just laughed. He just laughed because he knew I was a little apprehensive.
11:32 Speaker 06 The first times that I've been to parties like that or clubs like that, it's gonna be a stressful experience.
11:38 Speaker 05 But that that was the daddy in him that came. I felt protected. Again, it was just another magical night. We just laughed. I mean, we didn't play with anybody. It was just enjoying the experience of watching everybody else around us doing their thing.
11:55 Speaker 03 If you're not a gangster, you might find this hard to understand, maybe even a little off putting. But if this isn't your kind of sex, I challenge you to look beyond the sex. Look deeper at Dan and Daryl's relationship. It can be really hard to be emotionally intimate. And sometimes for queer people, it can even be dangerous. I can see in stories like this trip to the mineshaft that Daryl gave Dan the space and the care to open up. And slowly, Dan was letting Daryl past his walls. But it's tough, too, with a relationship as intimate as this one, to overcome one huge barrier between the two, the distance. You can only open up and be yourself on the occasions when you're together.
12:40 Speaker 03 This is from one of Daryl's letters.
12:43 Speaker 04 I love you.
12:45 Speaker 04 It's been about a week since I left you. I miss you. I hope everything is going well with you. Hope the depressions haven't hit. Or if they have, that they aren't so bad this time.
12:55 Speaker 06 Do you remember what depressions he was referring to?
13:00 Speaker 05 It was the fact that he was gone. I was left alone, emotionally vulnerable when he wasn't around. When he said depressions, it also alluded to the fact that, you know, I would treat my loneliness via alcohol. I would go to the bars and drink. So that was, that was hard on me.
13:20 Speaker 03 Two S LGBTQ plus people, when compared to the general population, face higher rates of depression, anxiety, suicide, and a disproportionate number of queers struggle with alcohol abuse.
13:31 Speaker 05 Yes, it's great when you're together, but, you know, to always feel, I wouldn't say miserable when you're not together, but when you're not together, it's painful.
13:42 Speaker 03 And that brings us back to Christmas 1980, the first Christmas.
13:47 Speaker 06 One of the challenges for me, like, looking back at this, is that I only get the parts of the story between the times when you're together. And I don't know what happened at Christmas of 1980, but something happened. And afterwards, he sends you the angriest letter that is in the entire collection that I've received.
14:16 Speaker 05 I basically broke it off.
14:18 Speaker 03 Imagine this, you're in a relationship, a pretty new one, with someone who lives in another place. There's no Zoom, no Instagram, nothing aside from letters and the occasional phone call. After months apart, you finally get to travel to see the person you love. You arrive at their apartment, ready to share time. After your initial hello and greeting, you go to bed together. You strip down and you're ready to get intimate and then...
14:44 Speaker 05 And I broke it off while we were being intimate.
14:47 Speaker 04 The way you waited when I arrived there.
14:49 Speaker 03 This is from Daryl's angry letter, January 21st, 1981.
14:54 Speaker 04 And didn't tell me you wanted to not have sex until we were in bed with me having an erection is one of the most embarrassing moments of my life.
15:01 Speaker 05 If I could, I would take it all back because I didn't handle it well.
15:06 Speaker 04 In fact, you've only been upstaged by Janet in that category.
15:10 Speaker 03 Just a reminder, Janet's Daryl's ex-wife.
15:13 Speaker 04 The only way I'll be able to get by that one is to put it into a play someday and try to make it funny.
15:19 Speaker 05 It's all a blur. All I know is I hurt him terribly. I'm ashamed of how I treated him.
15:31 Speaker 05 I mean, he basically got dressed, got up and left immediately.
15:37 Speaker 03 In my relationships, especially the relationships I had just after coming out, I know I hurt people the same way Dan hurt Daryl. It's so hard trying to navigate your own sexual identity, your own sense of self-worth, your own inner darkness. It's easier sometimes just to slam those boxes shut.
15:56 Speaker 04 Of course, I still love you, but I am not certain, at least for the moment, whether I like you.
16:03 Speaker 03 As we know, Daryl did still like Dan. After this break, we're going to find out how the relationship got repaired, which may or may not involve a threesome. See you on the other side.
16:19 Speaker 00 Hi, I just had to tell you that I think your podcast has changed my life.
16:25 Speaker 01 Season one of Sold a Story hit a nerve. It was about teaching kids to read. We have gotten this wrong in New York and all across the nation. Now we're back with a new season. This time, we go beyond reading.
16:38 Speaker 00 I've literally been told by my district that I should not be teaching math. I should be facilitating math.
16:45 Speaker 01 I'm Emily Hanford. Go to your podcast app and follow Sold a Story.
16:50 Speaker 03 Many of us are taught through our childhoods about what a relationship is supposed to be like. It's the cookie cutter template for a good life. Get the job, get the wife, get the kids, the house, the dog. And when you're 15 and you realize you're queer and that you don't want that life, or worse, that you can't have it, that's when the darkness burns a hole in your stomach. It's painful to realize that you can't just be what society expects you to be. But there's a flip side to this pain. There's a positive side. There's a magic that comes when you learn to push past those expectations and create your own, a queer magic. You see, while a breakup like Dan and Daryl's might be the end for most people, in the
17:35 Speaker 03 queer world, you get to make your own rules as to what your relationships will look like. And while Dan and Daryl may not have succeeded pulling off the classic coupling we're all used to, this wasn't the end of their relationship. It was just the beginning of a new iteration. But it didn't happen immediately. I see it emerge slowly in the letters Daryl sends through 1981.
17:56 Speaker 04 February 2nd, 1981.
17:59 Speaker 04 Danny, no, you are not a bad person.
18:05 Speaker 04 In fact, you are a very good person. It's just I feel we aren't good for each other right now. Our relationship hasn't shown much growth for quite a while. I love you. Daryl.
18:18 Speaker 03 After a gap in the letters, Dan and Daryl's communication slowly starts to resume.
18:23 Speaker 04 April 6th, 1981. Danny, thanks for your letter. It was good to have you sounding so upbeat and very, very busy. I knew you'd be better off out from under me.
18:34 Speaker 03 And they begin sharing details about their new relationships. Daryl falls for a few men over the coming years, each time jumping in with both feet.
18:42 Speaker 04 The reason I have stayed so long in Albuquerque this time is named Raymond Flores, a 27-year-old Chicano. Needless to say, Bill is more than gun-shy and not ready for a commitment. I know you won't believe this, Danny, but I've played it cool.
19:00 Speaker 03 And Dan falls for a man named Richard. The two would spend more than 10 years together.
19:05 Speaker 04 Danny, it is so wonderful to call you and have you sound so happy. I really believe the relationship with Richard is very good for you. That's fabulous.
19:15 Speaker 03 And as much as time slowed down, nearly standing still, during that fight in 1980, it picks back up again and pushes forward. It's relentless. Days and weeks transformed to months. Hurt and humiliation transformed to friendship and second chances. And suddenly, just as I had two years earlier, time slows itself once more as Dan and Daryl meet once again, exactly two years after their breakup. Christmas 1982, the second Christmas.
19:45 Speaker 04 And I feel blessed that he forgave me. We became family.
19:50 Speaker 05 We cared about each other. When I met Richard, he came into our lives together.
19:55 Speaker 03 In December 1982, Daryl heads back to Montreal to be with Dan and Dan's new partner, Richard. Two years earlier, Dan rejected Daryl's intimacy. He was afraid of prolonging the pain of their long-distance relationship. But this time around...
20:10 Speaker 05 And I'll tell you a little story about that on the very first time that Daryl came to stay with us.
20:16 Speaker 03 This time around, there were no expectations getting in the way of intimacy and the feelings of attraction.
20:21 Speaker 05 The three of us started to play together.
20:23 Speaker 03 And honestly, what better closure is there than a threesome with your ex and your new partner?
20:30 Speaker 05 It was almost like a mad fuck that he did with Richard. I mean, it was powerful and strong, and I don't know if he was fucking his anger out into Richard. I mean, Richard enjoyed it terribly. It was an extremely erotic evening, and we had fun and everything like that. It's just, that was my impression. I have a picture somewhere, I couldn't find it when I gave you the pictures, of the aftermath. The clothes all over the kitchen, splattered everywhere, because that's where we made out was in the kitchen, it was there. That was the only time the three of us ever, ever did that. But in a way, in the back of my head, I've always thought that that was part and parcel of Daryl working his anger through with me.
21:15 Speaker 03 On both sides, for both Dan and Daryl, the Christmas of 1982 marked a shift in their relationship. Call it what you will, closure, forgiveness, repentance, but from this moment on, all the animosity was gone. Walls were down, boxes were open, lovers were now friends. Or maybe a better term for it...
21:34 Speaker 05 They were part of my extended family. You know, as we gays say, okay, we choose our family. And Daryl was certainly part of my family.
21:43 Speaker 03 And Daryl felt the same way. This is from a letter Daryl wrote a few weeks after the threesome.
21:48 Speaker 04 January 19, 1983. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. What a fabulous, wonderful time I had in Montreal. You guys are super. You may never know how much I appreciate all of what you did for me. I think you guys are great. It's super to see a gay relationship that's working. Gives me more faith in this old world. And for Richard to accept me as a friend so readily really has made me feel good. I love you two. Don't ever forget it.
22:17 Speaker 03 And this is how the relationship was set to continue. This is how it should have continued for decades to come. Parallel lives, lived in different cities with occasional comings together. Pun intended. In the years that follow, these sort of trips do happen. Daryl even invites Dan and Richard to visit his family in small-town Kansas for a massive Allen family reunion. But as much as their relationship had healed and transformed and was on route for happiness, and as much as Dan was able to share his most vulnerable parts, history had other plans. And history has a way of rewriting the past. Taking memories of happiness, reconciliation, memories like that threesome on Christmas 1982, and giving them a cruel new frame.
23:02 Speaker 03 Because for Dan and Daryl, and for tens of thousands of queers, history had started writing a dark chapter. Gay men were already being diagnosed with a new illness called GRID, gay-related immune deficiency. An illness you and I know as AIDS.
23:19 Speaker 05 I never asked him if he knew when he came up that first time and we played. But I think that's when Richard got infected. It was through Daryl.
23:33 Speaker 03 Dan has told me repeatedly that he and his community never blamed anyone for infections. It just wasn't in their DNA. They wondered, but they never blamed each other.
23:44 Speaker 05 We found out that Richard was HIV-positive in 86. Because he was, he was going through another medical treatment and, and the doctor, again, in those days, doctors were terrified of HIV. So they would go behind your back and test you without your approval and/or knowledge, which is illegal. And because Richard was going in for an operation, the doctor turned around and said, you know, "You're HIV-positive, and we're gonna have to do this differently."
24:23 Speaker 03 Once again, I have mixed feelings about including this part of the story. Honoring Dan's philosophy, I don't want to point any fingers or place any blame on these men. The terrible way society's treated people living with HIV and the onus to seek blame after diagnosis isn't something I want to reinforce. But HIV is a part of the story. And it's a part of the history of the queer community, and it's a part of the present day queer community, and it will be a part of the future of the queer community because... and I'm about to get angry just for a minute. Because HIV, which was a virus that used to have a 100% death rate for everyone who got it, not a 1% death rate.
25:05 Speaker 03 HIV didn't shut society down in its first months on the scene and get governments around the world to band together and fast-track the development of a vaccine like we did for COVID. HIV was a brand-new virus for humans. But no, in the United States, this is the response HIV got. A senior advisor to President Ronald Reagan, Patrick Buchanan, wrote in the early 1980s that homosexuals, quote, "have declared war upon nature and now nature is exacting an awful retribution." And it took years of die-ins and protests and political actions from groups like ACT UP and Queer Nation to get anyone to care.
25:48 Speaker 03 And still today, still there's no vaccine. Still medications for treatment and prevention are expensive and inaccessible to many. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world still die from AIDS-related causes every year. It's still here. And Daryl, and Richard, and many others are not. So I'm gonna talk about the virus, and I'm gonna talk about sex, and I'm gonna talk about death, and if you're looking for someone to blame, don't look at the queers whose governments left them to die for years.
26:22 Speaker 06 How do you think he would feel knowing about this project and about having his status and his intimacies discussed so openly?
26:35 Speaker 05 I think he'd be okay with it. He was okay with it in the sense that, you know, he was living it every day. He was living with being, you know, on chemo. He was living with, you know, being sick. It was in your face because he was so visibly ill and he didn't give a shit. All he cared about was being around and being with the people he cared about.
27:02 Speaker 06 You've had a lot of challenging experiences. Is there a way that you practice resilience?
27:10 Speaker 05 Richard passed in the 11th year of our relationship from AIDS and I fell into a really big depression and also attempted suicide. So it's not always been easy to pick yourself up, but I've been able to manage so far. I'm still here. You know, I've gotten gray, so I'm still here.
27:37 Speaker 03 And by the time the virus really started impacting Daryl, he was with a man named Jonathan, a man who'd stay by his side until Daryl's death. And the Christmases that could have been, Christmases of time spent together, were replaced by the Christmases that had to be, Christmases of time left. Many of Daryl's goals and aspirations would never come to reach their full potential. Things like his play, Mustang 001, which he continued to work on. There's a passage I encountered in Mustang in one of the earlier drafts he shared with Dan before HIV became public knowledge. In the passage, one of the protagonists, one of the two men who fall in love, reflect on the deaths, the mass deaths produced by World War II.
28:24 Speaker 04 In the Philippines, in Manila, there's a cemetery with many of our World War II dead, American dead.
28:35 Speaker 04 And at the center of the cemetery, there's a chapel. And in a circle surrounding this chapel are large marble slabs spaced about four feet apart. On both sides of each large slab are chiseled the names and ranks of all the American dead in the Pacific. Each name fills such a small space and there are so many. Terrifies. As I walked around, I wanted to scream. What if they had lived?
29:09 Speaker 04 Where would we be then?
29:11 Speaker 03 He goes on to ask, who's going to chisel his own name in one of the boxes if he dies? I'm struck by how Daryl wrote about the dead from the Second World War, but the sentiment could have just as easily referred to the people lost in the AIDS crisis.
29:26 Speaker 04 What if they had lived? Where would we be then?
29:31 Speaker 03 I'm struck by how well Daryl captures the impossible nature of comprehending the staggering number of lives lost, lives of ordinary people, each recognized simply by a name filling a small space.
29:44 Speaker 03 And I'll remind you that this is the story of the man behind just one such small space. And I'm struck by how Daryl could experience not one, but two crises, two events of mass death in his lifetime, and still keep that attitude he held on the Christmas of 1990.
30:01 Speaker 05 He was always up. You might be down, but he was going to bring you up.
30:06 Speaker 03 The third Christmas.
30:08 Speaker 05 He didn't have time. He knew he didn't have much time left.
30:12 Speaker 05 So he wasn't going to waste his time by you being sad around him.
30:16 Speaker 03 Do you remember like a specific?
30:19 Speaker 05 I just remember Christmas dinner and him saying, you know, how much he loved being around everybody and...
30:27 Speaker 03 In December 1990, 10 years after their fight and that angry letter, Dan and Daryl spend Christmas together again as family. And this time, Daryl brings Jonathan.
30:40 Speaker 05 He was able to know that Jonathan wouldn't be left completely alone, that we would be there as long as Jonathan wanted us to be there.
30:51 Speaker 03 And then, less than a year later, in November 1991.
30:57 Speaker 05 Jonathan called me. I was at work, actually, I remember. And I had to run to the bathroom. Where I worked was a huge, open office space, and the bathrooms were way in the back. It was like forever to go back there.
31:22 Speaker 05 But it wasn't like we were expecting it.
31:28 Speaker 05 But still, when you hear it, it's hard.
31:32 Speaker 03 Daryl was living in Boston at the time of his death.
31:36 Speaker 05 There was a memorial in Boston, and I wasn't able to get there.
31:40 Speaker 05 And I talked to Jonathan, and he was...
31:50 Speaker 05 He was very brave. I mean, he took over. He did all the things you necessarily need to do when somebody passes.
32:00 Speaker 05 And they had a support system there. They didn't necessarily need me to be there.
32:08 Speaker 03 But Dan did send a fax for Daryl's memorial in Boston.
32:12 Speaker 05 Farewell, my friend. We met some 14 years ago in San Francisco. By chance, we found ourselves in the same restaurant. The restaurant was crowded. My table became available, and I invited you to join me. That was a wonderful evening and a wonderful beginning to our relationship.
32:31 Speaker 03 And that brings us to December 1991, Toronto.
32:36 Speaker 05 Jonathan came up for Christmas.
32:38 Speaker 03 The Fourth Christmas. Jonathan, the partner Daryl left behind when he died, travels to Toronto to be with Dan.
32:46 Speaker 05 And he spent Christmas with us. And we had lots of people around. I have photos that I've given you. And he needed that more. Daryl wanted him to have some comfort after he was gone. Because everybody, everybody that's around you, when somebody passes, all of a sudden, you're all alone. And that's when it hits the hardest.
33:14 Speaker 03 But Daryl hadn't left Jonathan alone. In typical Daryl fashion, with all his protective and caring instincts, Daryl made sure Jonathan wouldn't be alone that Christmas. And in one of the photos Dan gave me, I see five men crammed onto a couch together. One man is sitting in another's lap. Dan is looking coyly at the camera, bit of a devious smile crackling under his big beard. And there, in the corner of the photo, squeezed half under someone else, is Jonathan. And he's laughing. He's with family. And sometimes I like to think about this moment, and what's happening outside the frame of the photo.
33:56 Speaker 03 I think about what other madness Dan had going on in his apartment. And I like to think about what was happening in a tiny little town called Iona, my hometown, hundreds of kilometers away on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. Because on that Christmas in 1991, while Dan and Jonathan trudged through a holiday marked by the absence of a loved one, my family was celebrating a Christmas with two new loved ones, only five months old, my twin brother and me. And this brings me back to that passage from Mustang about the stone slabs chiseled with the names of fallen soldiers.
34:34 Speaker 04 Each name fills such a small space, and there are so many.
34:40 Speaker 03 Just as Dan had made sure that Jonathan wasn't alone that Christmas, he also made sure that Daryl's story wasn't forgotten, that his name would be chiseled, so to speak. He saved every little bit of Daryl that he could, and he filled boxes, boxes of Daryl. And 25 years later, he let me open these boxes. Now, you might be thinking that this seems like the end of the story. But Dan gave Daryl's archive to me for a reason, and that's because I'm a history nerd. I don't stop researching until I've uncovered everything I can, and this is far from the end of the story. Sure, we've got a pretty good picture of Daryl's relationship with Dan, of those 12
35:23 Speaker 03 years that they knew each other, but what about before? What shaped Daryl into this loving and compassionate and caring human? What drove him to write, to create? And what about his experience in the Vietnam War? There is so much left to uncover. And so, I start searching for my next lead. In the months leading up to Daryl's death, Dan starts receiving letters from Cherryvale, Kansas, from a woman named Bea Allen, a woman who turns out to be Daryl's mom. Here's one of Bea's letters, read by one of my friends.
35:52 Speaker 07 "September 4th, 1991. Dear Danny, I had a call from him, and he was doing quite well, and will have another chemo treatment next week. My big regret is he is so far away, and I cannot possibly come to help him. Your 94-year-old Kansas friend, Bea Allen."
36:16 Speaker 03 After Daryl passes, Bea keeps in touch with Dan, sending him Christmas cards and even the occasional letter. Buried among all the letters and photos and cards, I even find a newspaper clipping about Bea's 100th birthday. Then, one of the last letters in Dan's collection is from someone totally different, someone I haven't heard of before. Here's my friend reading the letter again.
36:39 Speaker 07 "October 29th, 1998."
36:43 Speaker 07 Dear Dan, writing to let you know my mom passed away last night. She was 101 years old. I miss her very much. Daryl's sister, Lillian McDowell.
36:57 Speaker 03 Lillian McDowell. That's a lead. Bea Allen and Lillian McDowell, with two names, suddenly the possibility of tracking down Daryl's family seems more realistic than ever. Cross-referencing their names, I'm able to find Bea's obituary, which lists the names of all nine of her children. That's right, nine children. I go through each one trying to find someone to get in touch with, but I'm either unable to find their contact info or met with yet another obituary. It turns out that Daryl was the youngest of nine. Each of his siblings, if they were still alive, would be in their late 80s or their 90s by now. But history nerds never give up. I start researching the children of Daryl's brothers and sisters to see if I can find someone who still lives in the Cherryvale, Kansas, area.
37:42 Speaker 03 After a lot of searching, I find the email address of a woman named Debbie Eastman, who doesn't live far from Cherryvale, a woman who I believe to be Daryl's niece. I send an email. "July 28, 2019. Hi Debbie, my name is Dane Stewart. I'm a playwright and an oral..." At this point, I feel like I might be sending an email into the void. Or worse, sending an email to a family in conservative America about a relative who died decades earlier from an illness he contracted while having sex with men. This could definitely backfire. "Is it possible that you are Daryl's niece and that you may have known him? If so, I would love to chat with you about this project." And then I wait, for about an hour. I come out of a meeting at work, and I have a missed call,
38:28 Speaker 03 and a voicemail.
38:29 Speaker 08 You have one saved message. Dane, this is Debbie Eastman. And yes, I am Daryl Allen's niece. And I would be happy to talk to you about him.
38:40 Speaker 03 Next time, on Resurrection.
38:43 Speaker 08 We will be departing soon. Before closing the boarding door, federal regulations for..."
38:48 Speaker 03 We go to Kansas.
39:13 Speaker 02 Matthew Rogers is our editor and sound designer and music maker. Davide Kietseze is the voice of Daryl's letters and scripts. Additional letters were voiced by Renee Hodgins. Hannah Sung is our executive producer. Our outro track is called "Easy to Love", written for us by Clara Jones. Fact checking in this episode by me and Katie Hill. Special thanks to Caitlin and Natalie Prest, Michelle Soicher, Isabel Deluse, Katie Hill, Amanda Pilegi, and Roger Galvez. Matthew Carriatamari is the platonic love of my life and my co-producer. Resurrection is written, researched, and hosted by me, Dane Stewart. The creation of this podcast was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Conseil des Arts de Montréal,
39:58 Speaker 02 the Conseil des Arts d'Électe Québec, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Thanks for listening. See you next time.
40:17 Speaker 05 For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.
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