“Charlie, I love you very much.” A man from Moravia never met the murdered gay young man, yet he sends him a rose every year
Charlie Howard was born in 1961 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA. He was gentle, outspoken, openly queer and, according to those around him, made no effort to fit into a world that often failed to understand him. In July 1984, in Bangor, Maine, three young men pushed him off a bridge into the Kenduskeag River during a homophobic attack. Charlie could not swim, suffered from asthma and drowned. He was twenty-three years old.
For Petr Kysa from Šlapanice near Brno, however, Charlie Howard is not just a name from the history of the American LGBT community. His story has taken such deep root in him that he speaks of him as someone close to him, an ‘LGBT brother’ whom he never met, but whom he has welcomed into his life. He carries a photograph of him in his wallet, buys a white rose for him at home, and tries to keep his name alive.
In this interview, Petr Kysa talks about why Charlie’s fate affected him so deeply, how it resonated with his own childhood, bullying and a longing for acceptance – and why, in his view, the story of a murdered young gay man remains relevant even today, when queer people still have to ask themselves whether they can truly be themselves in public.
When did you first hear the name Charlie Howard, and what exactly did that story trigger in you?
I first came across Charlie Howard’s story on Facebook, and it made me feel that surely it couldn’t have ended like that. An incredibly brave young gay man, one of the very few who wasn’t afraid to live his truth openly, was gone. His killers are getting on with their lives, have their families and their jobs, whilst everyone who loved Charlie – or who is moved by this story – feels immense pain. Yes, I felt physical pain, a tightness in my chest, and it woke me from my sleep at night. I also felt that this might have been prevented if he’d known how to swim. Yes, he didn’t like sport, he didn’t want to do sport, but I think it was a huge mistake not to know how to swim. Perhaps it was down to the fact that he had asthma, or perhaps it was the bullying he experienced from his peers? Certainly, and James Baines himself later admitted as much: when he begged them for his life, saying he couldn’t swim, he seemed to them an even more inferior, even weaker and more ridiculous little creature.
Do you remember the first moment when you realised that this wasn’t just a historical event for you, but something personal?
Yes, I do remember it. It was practically as soon as I’d read the story. I’d already heard similar stories. Who in our community wouldn’t know about Matthew Shepard, for example? I knew about Fred Martinez, a Two-Spirit Navajo, but it never affected me as much as Charlie’s story did.
In your letter, you write that you never met Charlie, and yet he became one of the most important people in your life. How would you describe that relationship to someone who might see it as unusual from the outside?
I took him into my heart because I’d always missed having a lad like Charlie in my life. I grew up in a huge house with a garden in a small town near Brno. I was born in 1979, at a time when Charlie was still alive, amidst the grey days of Communist ‘normalisation’. I longed for a friend like Charlie – gentle, tender, yet brave. A boy I could get on with, but instead I experienced nothing but bullying and a lack of understanding.
I’d been different since I was little. I loved rings and lipstick, and I played with dolls, but I was also interested in military equipment, for example; I shot an air rifle and rode a bike. I was a chubby child with no friends, and yet what I longed for most of all was someone like Charlie. And so my heart probably adopted him as someone I should have had but never did.
I’ve also nearly drowned. I know what it’s like. I know what Charlie must have been going through. When I was seven, I slipped out of my green swimming ring and thought it was all over. And although my parents didn’t pay much attention to it, I decided I’d learn to swim the following year. And I did.
What struck you most about Charlie – the sheer brutality of his death, or rather the way he lived before it?
Both struck me, but above all his courage. You know, in my life I’ve met many gay and bisexual men who, even today, hide who they are or criticise Pride and similar events. Charlie was a pioneer. He wasn’t afraid; he didn’t try to curry favour with mainstream society at the cost of denying who he was. And you know what I think? Anyone who doesn’t accept Pride doesn’t accept us LGBT people either, no matter what they say or how they try to justify it. He never cared what anyone thought of him, and he lived the way he felt.
In what way do you think Charlie’s story transcends the 1980s and America?
In what way does it transcend 1980s America? Honestly, in my view, not that much has changed since then. We still don’t have – and, to be honest, probably never will have – the same rights and the same standing in society. Look, I was at the Pride event in Kutná Hora on Sunday 5 July. And do you know how much online hate it sparked, and how many police officers were there to keep an eye on the event – even though, in the end, nothing happened, and perhaps precisely because of those measures?
Does anyone really think it’s pleasant to go and enjoy yourself at an event under police supervision? When there’s an event organised by the majority of society – such as a commemoration of the Battle of Austerlitz or the Majáles festival – there’s certainly no need for riot police to be present, and the haters certainly won’t send you to the gas chambers or at least to a psychiatric ward, as they do when you go to a queer event.
Do you feel that a similar vulnerability is still evident for queer people today, albeit in a different form?
Yes, I feel that discrimination persists. After all, why else would so many queer people still not have found the courage to hold hands and kiss their partner in public, or to come out at work, to their neighbours, or to their doctor, parish or congregation?
There is a great deal of pain in your writing, but also tenderness. Why did you choose to write not just about hatred, but above all about your love for Charlie?
Because Charlie deserved tenderness. He was tenderness itself. I’d like him to feel loved, if his soul can somehow perceive it now, or perhaps at the end of my life, or of the world, or the universe. And even if there were nothing left, I’d want everyone to see that he was worthy of tenderness and love. That is the holiest victory over those who beat him and kicked his angelically beautiful face, and who, knowing he couldn’t swim, took his life in a matter of minutes by throwing him into the icy water.
You write that you would have defended him on that bridge with your own body. Is that for you more a picture of powerlessness, or a need to at least symbolically right something that can no longer be righted?
Yes, I would have defended him, and I mean that sincerely. I truly believe I would have done so if I’d been there. You see, for some people, their homeland is worth fighting for; others would lay down their lives for their faith; but for me, those are abstract concepts, whereas Charlie was the embodiment of everything I’d loved and longed for since childhood: to have a friend like him, and also to be like him. To be visibly queer, to wear it as a badge of honour, as something I’m proud of, not as something to be ashamed of, which is where so many try to push us.
I would defend him, even if it meant dying with him. Better to die with honour than to live as someone who denies themselves. After all, that’s what Charlie’s favourite song, *I Am What I Am*, is all about: ‘Life’s not worth living until you can say: I am who I am.’
Do you think that LGBT people today sometimes forget how dearly the right to be seen was paid for?
Yes, unfortunately they do. Some even criticise Pride, criticise the people who sacrifice their free time for them and who face hatred so that they can live in peace and enjoy their rights. They feel that being positive and fitting into mainstream society means conforming and coming to terms with things, even at the cost of forgetting the sacrifices made. But if it weren’t for people like Charlie Howard, they would have nothing.
It was his death that led to the founding of what is now Equality Maine in the state of Maine. And believe me, if people hadn’t organised themselves back then, there would never have been any rights at all. Don’t expect society to accept you or for progress to happen of its own accord. The rights the community enjoys today were hard-won, and the fight isn’t over. We need to defend those rights. Just look at what’s happening in America today under Donald Trump.
Do you have your own way of remembering Charlie?
Yes, I do. You see, I always carry a photograph of Charlie with me in my wallet, and I have another large photograph on my bedside table. On the very day of his death, in accordance with the wish expressed at the time by his mother, Mrs Mary Patience Berounsky – that a white rose be thrown into those merciless waters in his memory – I buy a white rose and put it in a vase.
And that ritual, in which people throw white roses into the River Kenduskeag, still takes place to this day, every year. I asked some kind people in Bangor, and they threw a rose into the river for me, in Charlie’s memory.
I also try to write or speak to someone about him every day. And so he remains present in the world and can help others. He was a very caring young man who always tried to help others.
If you could say something to Charlie today, what would it be?
I’d definitely say to him: ‘Charlie, I love you very much. And if you felt inferior to those three lads on the bridge, then please believe that to me, you are of infinite value.’
Which current manifestations of hatred towards LGBT people strike you as the most alarming when reading Charlie’s story?
I certainly find it alarming that our opponents want to demonise LGBT people. You see, AIDS had just emerged when Charlie died, and many linked it to LGBT people and blamed them for it. And today, once again, they claim we want to indoctrinate children in schools and so on. They simply want people to hate us, and they’re portraying us as some sort of imaginary threat.
It’s also a way for certain unnamed political parties to win votes by portraying us as the enemy of the traditional family, God and who knows what else. They’re simply turning us into a threat.
