In Memoriam 69: Bob Botterio
I recently turned 69, a prophetic age for me, as three dear friends of mine died at that age. This month, I am posting a memorial to each of them, as they are all still very much alive in my spirit.
I met Bob Botterio on a cold, grey Saturday night in November of 1996, as a Nor’easter lifted off of Provincetown during Single Men’s Weekend. My first solo weekend away as a gay man. The dreary day had been enlivened by all manner of workshops: i.e. opportunities for gay singles to connect. I’d ventured into “Coming Out of a Long Relationship” with trepidation. After all, my long relationship had been with a woman. Yet my circumstances were welcome among a wide array of relationships: disconsolate men whose partners had died of AIDS, guilty men who’d left when their partners contracted the disease; angry men who’d been dumped; bewildered men who’d left their partners but found little solace in independence. The session triggered so much emotion, clusters of us continued conversation over group dinners, and later along misty, puddled streets. About ten p.m., talked out yet still eager to hear every story, I found myself alone with one other stray guy.
Bob Botterio’s partner of eighteen years came home one day, announced them over, and moved out. Like me, Bob was unable to simply cut his losses and move on. In my case, because I was raising two children with my ex-wife. In Bob’s, because he and Tim ran a business together. Revivals was a high-end design and home restoration company in Arlington, the next town over from mine.
Bob and I launched a peculiar relationship. He was handsome, hunky, confident, and funny. Therefore, I was smitten. But he: was angry. I’d arrive at his immaculately restored home dizzy with romantic notions, only to find Alanis Morrisette cranked up to eleven, with Bob pounding around the place yelling:
And I’m here
To remind you
Of the mess you left when you went away
It’s not fair
To deny me
Of the cross I bear that you gave to me
You, you, you
Oughta know
Clearly, we were coming from different places. Eventually, my crush subsided and the possibility of friendship emerged. But it took years to stick. Once, maybe twice a year, one of us would call the other and we would take an afternoon stroll through an historic neighborhood. In between, I might see Bob at a theater or a club, always with some handsome A-lister well beyond my league. Bob lost twenty pounds, maybe more. Became a gym rat. Lived with one long-term boyfriend, then another. Nice guys, but they were never Tim. I understood how that went.
In his late fifties, Bob resigned himself to being single, sold his fabulous house, and moved into a rather ordinary condo building full of old people. Until he gutted, renovated, and made the new place fabulous too. I was always struck by the dichotomy: I was the extensively-trained, competent architect, yet formally untrained Bob’s design sense eclipsed mine. The guy had a gift; everything he touched turned beautiful. Shortly after Bob’s modernist aerie was complete and his life made simple, disaster struck. As if the fates forewarned him of what was in store.
One day, around 2010, Facebook rolled a post across my screen from someone I didn’t know. Lorraine Scalone posted “Bob is recuperating in the hospital.” The infinite wisdom of Facebook’s algorithm made a connection between Bob’s sister and me.
I have a cardinal rule: when someone I know is in the hospital, I visit. I cycled to see Bob in a rehab facility. Bad news. The previous New Year’s Eve, while dancing, Bob felt dizzy. Too dizzy. In short order, doctors discovered a tumor at the base of his skull. An eight-hour operation removed the blockage, but afterwards he got an infection in the brain-blood-barrier. When I arrived, Bob was barely conscious, completely disoriented.
Eventually, he recovered enough to undergo a second operation, to clean out the infectious mess, and survive another round of rehab. Improvement was slow, as was the realization that his life was permanently changed. No more Revivals. No more chairing Arlington’s Historic Commission. Bob still had plenty of life left: his winning smile, his sense of humor, his intimate recall of the past. But he was frustrated by the present: being heavy, alone, confused in the moment.
Bob’s recuperation coincided with my retirement, so I had plenty of time on my hands. We practiced yoga on this rooftop garden. I joined his gym where he needed a workout buddy. We enjoyed simple summer dinners on his balcony, which overlooked glorious sunsets and distant skyline views. We tapped remarkably congruent childhood memories of growing up in metro New York, even as we’d played distinctly different roles in our families. Bob was the eldest grandson of a tight Italian clan, most favored in every respect, whereas I was a tag-along kid, often overlooked. I marveled at one particular T-shirt that Lorraine gave Bob during his convalescence: I AM KIND OF A BIG DEAL. I could never wear such a thing, and yet Bob could — did — without irony.
During the years after Bob’s brain trauma we spent more and more time together. Many folks thought we were a couple; Bob wanted us to be a couple. But that never felt right to me. I couldn’t commit to being his life partner, but I could commit to being his companion, and when need be, his caretaker.
Bob was insistent on living independently, though I shamed him into getting an emergency call button. Still, his balance got worse; he fell too often. His memory became too patchy. In March 2020, Bob had a major setback. I visited him in Spaulding Rehab several times, where he’d charmed a bevy of nurses into special treatment. The guy exuded glamour still. The day Bob was set for release was the first day of COVID lockdown. He went to a nursing facility where no one could visit. I’d cycle over and chat with him thorough the exterior window, but he was so confused, I doubt he knew me. Eventually, Lorraine got permission to transfer him to Long Island. After she picked him up, she drove to his condo, where about fifty local friends greeted Bob in the parking lot, all of us masked and distanced. Like so many events during COVID, it was a well-intentioned gesture, yet a pitifully insufficient goodbye to such a glorious man. Bob died on March 2, 2021. Age 69.
