"He tried; He did his best"
what a life of authenticity can teach us about impact
When you meet Harry Breaux, one of the first things you notice is the accent.
It's Southern, but the specific location feels just out of reach. It's not Mississippian, and not Texan either, but there's a distinct draw that's just subtle enough that if you know what you're looking for, you pick up on it.
"That river would go right through Morgan City," Breaux said, with that distinct yet indescribable draw. "It's trying to break through and come back that way again. And the Corps of Engineers is trying to keep it from doing that. If it ever does (pronounced 'eva'), it would completely flood out of Morgan City.
The river he's referring to is the Atchafalaya, and the city it would cut right through is Morgan City, Louisiana, the place that gave Breaux that distinct accent.
Many people recognize Harry Breaux from his participation in the San Francisco Chronicle's "Last Man Standing," a 2016 project that focused on men in San Francisco who were surviving with HIV. He was diagnosed in the 1980s, and has been a seemingly permanent fixture in San Francisco's HIV positive community.
"That was kind of my claim to fame," Breaux said.
There's a lot more to Breaux – not instead of his HIV diagnosis, but alongside it.
The Family
The Breaux lineage goes back generations in Morgan City. His grandfather owned a sawmill that cut cypress trees to make ammunition boxes during various US wars. With ample wealth, he and his partner opened up a bank in the city.
After his grandfather’s partner died, he took over the bank himself, with Breaux’s father running the mill operation until it closed. After the mill’s closure, Breaux’s father went to work for the bank.
“So I grew up white, wealthy and privileged,” Breaux recalled. “Wealthy in the sense of Morgan City wealth, not like the Gettys.”
Breaux admitted that he, too, was primed to take over the family banking business, if not for one detail:
“I had that little glitch. The homosexual glitch.”
That “glitch,” from Breaux’s perspective, is a little important.
“In my memoirs and my story and stuff, people say, ‘well what’s the thread that runs through the whole story and all,’ and the thread is homosexuality.”
When many of us talk about our sexualities, we refer to getting a boner in class or having a wet dream at summer camp. Sexual exploration played out differently for Breaux, who remembers trying to give a guy a blowjob at the local school in the sixth grade.
As Breaux’s sexuality became more and more public at his school, the bullying started. One fight got the principal involved, and a subsequent call to his mom revealed Breaux’s interactions with local boys. His parents sent him to Lebanon, TN, a town just outside of Nashville to attend military school. While his father had attended Catholic School, that wasn’t an option for Breaux.
“I think my father was clear enough in life not to send me to Catholic school,” Breaux said. “Cute little queer boy? To priests? Not a good idea.”
Breaux repressed his sexual desires throughout military school, dating various girls throughout his time at Castle Heights Military Academy. Though he was dating girls, Breaux knew that wasn’t the life he wanted to live long-term.
“I have an acting degree and I still call that my best acting job.”
When Breaux was a junior in high school, his father died of a heart attack, and he was expected to take over the family banking business. The expectations took him to Tulane, where he majored in Business Administration.
It didn’t stick.
He had a sister who loved business, but, being a woman in 1950s Louisiana, she was not entrusted with the bank.
Next, he switched to engineering. The plan was to become a civil engineer, start a company working with the oil industry, “blah blah blah.”
It didn’t stick.
Breaux’s next option was to follow in the steps of his high school experience and join the military. Unfortunately, Breaux had a blood condition called Renal Glycosuria, which disqualified him from everything but the draft, meaning he would never become an Officer, which is a position all-but-guaranteed to people with his experience.
“There’s a form I filled out in that room, and I asked the recruiter if he’d slide it back over to me,” Breaux said. “It was all true/false, and one of them said something like ‘do you have homosexual tendencies?’ I had put no because I knew if I put yes I’d never be able to go into the military, but in that room I changed it to yes. The recruiter’s jaw dropped.”
This incident marked a turning point in Breaux’s life. Afterward, he returned home, came out to his mother and went back to school, this time as a theater major, moving to Utah to attend university on March 19, 1966.
After graduating in 1969, Breaux moved back to New Orleans to take care of his mother, who was sick. Soon after, she died of cancer, leaving $150,000 to him through an inheritance.
After his mom died, he gave away everything he owned in New Orleans and established a commune with some friends in Oregon, where he lived for six years, before selling it and moving to San Francisco.
“I needed to find a place that I could openly express being a homosexual as openly and as forcefully as I could, and San Francisco is that place,” Breaux said.
The City
Breaux settled in the Castro neighborhood. He worked various jobs throughout his life in San Francisco, but it wasn’t his work that marks his time in San Francisco.
When he considers his decades in San Francisco, Breaux remembers his first time visiting a bathhouse.
“I remember, there were all these gorgeous men in towels and I was just flabbergasted by it,” Breaux said.
He also vividly remembers San Francisco’s hippie movement.
“It felt like we were part of the new leading edge. We were going to change the world, that was the whole philosophy of the Castro.”
The Castro District, also known as San Francisco’s “Gay Village,” is situated in the Eureka Valley in San Francisco.
During World War II, gay servicemen were dishonorably discharged from the Service into the Bay Area. During that time, the Castro’s community of gay men skyrocketed and it became a place where gay men could live out, proud lives.
