hi guys, this morning in answering an email, i realized maybe i should post it to all of you. several of you have written me wanting to know more about Harry Bush, and i've said a little but not much. But i know a lot about Harry, maybe as much as anyone because we wrote each other
tons of correspondence. Harry wrote others long letters, but i think I was the last link in his chain of confidants. and as such my documentation' might be the most complete. from the attachment you can see he was as good as it gets artwise. i can't praise it enough. this morning for some reason, i was in the mood to say a little about the man, mainly as a reply to a nice email from a canadian guy. hope my canadian friend won't mind me sharing his my reply to his mail with all of you.-----------------------

june, 2001

the drawing attached is just to tease, and maybe to verify i'm not just making up a story here. but even so, i'm a little uncomfortable sending it out, and it's hard to explain why. for sure i'm a little overly protective. i know how deeply Harry really resented a lot of things. 1) that nobody who was publishing his art really respected it. i'm not sure that was true, but it's how he perceived it, because the printed image was often very different from the original he gave the publishers. part of it of course was the technology of the times, and maybe the magazines could have tried harder, but harry wanted us to see his art as he intended, and resented being labeled 'temperamental' and 'hard to deal with' even 'bitchy old queen' by those he had to work with. 2) he loathed' the california gay scene and his role as irrelevant outsider on a personal level. those in the business loved his art but disliked or 'tolerated' his person, he felt. he was a little older by then, arguably overly sensitive, and a bit old-fashioned in his thinking, and always affected by the straight morality of the time, having retired from a military career. then too he had become maybe not so physically attractive, although in his pics during his service years (stationed in England) he surprised me in being so very cute, and i especially liked a gap-toothed smiling photo he shared, although, he said, as a youth his teeth had made him very self-concious. anyway, the younger california crowd ignored him, and their "jaded" "indulgent" lifestyles left him feeling disdain. he said everybody was always trying to get something for nothing. nothing new in that, except after years it broke his spirit. the gay world as he knew it, to put it bluntly, disgusted him. but you can miss that looking at the drawings to begin with, but then when it's pointed out you get a hint of the darkness behind the humor. for himself, the humor wore thin, and the darkness took over. knowing how i loved and respected his art he told me he'd burn it all rather than be ripped off one final time. i don't think he was referring to me when he wrote that in a letter, but it sort of stung anyway. he had already expressed this bent to others as well, and one of the biggest insults was when one of the few individuals he trusted was loaned his sketchbook and it came back altered just enough that Harry was sure everything had been photographed or copied without his consent. so the hole just got deeper darker and wider. no family, no friends. just one remaining sister who he looked after, and who was, he said, the only person left "to bury me". then she died unexpectedly. it was our final marker. not long afterwards he stopped writing to me. he was plagued with emphesyma and life was just one insurmountable effort. i wondered how long he would last, and only now know he went on for 5 more years. all of it probably downhill, til his death in '94. so it's a depressing scenario, and so opposed to those robust playful drawings left behind for us to enjoy. but how could we enjoy them except thru the publishers he grew to hate. that he could not feel part of the family, forgive and forget, was his downfall. but there's no way to change this personal bent in someone. he liked 'mentoring' me, and i said all the nice things i knew to say, and when he said he picked up the pencil for the first time in years to illustrate some points to help my development, i felt really good, like we would make each other's life more fun. but it bubbled up and then boiled down. and in the end i was just another thing he closed off. and so in a way i've closed him off too. it's just so depressing to realize life can do that to anyone of us. or that we can and will do it to ourselves. if someone doesn't want your friendship, what can you do? i'd rather just look at the drawings and forget about the rest, and that's why i'm not sure i even want his story told. maybe it's better not knowing it, just look at a drawing that "life" created, not having to realize that "life" also takes away.

so maybe you can understand why it makes me uncom-fortable to share the stuff he did just for me. would Harry see me as just one more person posthumously ripping him off? maybe. but in our own way each of us are/were extremely 'open'. my advantage is an enormous one the world didn't offer him- Harry didn't have the internet, but i do.
best wishes to all of you,
tom