One Tuesday in Sydney

The Salt Lake Men’s Choir was in Sydney for the International Gay Games as part of their cultural festival. It was October and spring was on its way. The jacaranda were breathtaking and the locals were beginning to mill about in shirtsleeves,

We were scheduled to do a little performance at a train station. None of us were too crazy about singing to a handful of people with all the background noise and hubbub, but we did our best to sing over the din of the masses. We sang show tunes, folk tunes, and spirituals. The performance was just so-so since we could barely hear ourselves. The crowd could barely hear us either. They just hurried by and paid no attention to our music. They had better places to be.

But the mood changed when a woman came up to us afterward. She had been sitting on a bench a few feet away from us listening the whole time. She thanked us for the music and told us that “Climb Every Mountain” was one of her brother’s favorite songs. A month prior, he had announced to the family that he was gay and it didn’t go well. He committed suicide. As she sat on the bench and listened to us sing, she was overcome with the feeling for the first time that her brother was at peace. We all cried together. She missed her train and that was okay.

On the way back to the hotel, Kim and I stopped to do some shopping and ended up at a pub across the street where a bunch of the choir guys were having drinks. As we sat there, two girls walked by with the medals around their necks they had just won. For swimming, if memory serves me correctly. We asked where they were from and they answered “Australia!” Silver medals didn’t gain the acclaim for them that gold would have so we decided to honor them ourselves. We stood them on a chair and belted out the Aussie National Anthem with all our might in tribute. The crowd went wild—except for an Italian gent who brooded that we hadn’t sung anything in Italian. We treated him to an a cappella version of “Va Pensiero.” He cried. So did the rest of the crowd.

That Tuesday in Sydney was one of the best days of my life—good friends, great music and lots of hugs. Funny, after all these years, that an afternoon spent making people cry can bring such a smile to my face.