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The year was 1982. AIDS was still in its infancy. Jim and I were living in New York City in the artist's loft near City Hall. It was the year of our big breakup after nine long monogamous years together. Jim had just given me my first diary for Christmas. I remember that seemed odd. Jim must have known I'd need it. In February I went to Venice solo. Jim left me on the night I returned, for a disco twinkie half his age. That was the beginning of my journey. For four months I went wild, making up for lost time. It was rough, ups and downs, mostly miserable, but beautiful when I gave up control. I bought my black leather motorcycle jacket, but I never owned a motorcycle. Abbey was my salvation. He and my therapist Terrence. I discovered my real family, my community, with new inner growth and maturation. By year's end my diary was full and I was on a new journey founded on love. I had arrived safely.
About the author
Miles Cigolle grew up in a classic adobe house near Albuquerque's historic Old Town with his parents and three siblings. His mother Terry was a ceramicist and a fine arts painter. His father Edward was a local grocer catering equally to the local Native Americans, Hispanics and Anglos with his two brothers. Miles studied architecture at Cornell University and went on to practice architecture for twenty-five years with distinguished New York City firms. He met his future husband Abbey in June on Memorial Day in 1982 in a leather bar in New York's Meat Packing District. Abbey was a Stonewall baby. The couple returned to quiet Ithaca, New York in 2000. Miles worked on local higher education projects while Abbey joined the Finger Lakes Land Trust. They retired to New Mexico in 2016. Miles's first memoir, Miles's World, was published by Secord Books in 2021. Three subsequent memoirs, Reckoning, Upon Arrival, and Places and Faces were published by Sunstone Press.
