Living

Labor of love

Md. man remembers late spouse, years of activism

Published

13 years ago

January 3, 2013

Michael K. Lavers

Larry Esser (right) with his late spouse Tom Toth. (Photo courtesy of Larry Esser)

GLEN BURNIE, Md.—Larry Esser was 25 when he met Tom Toth on his first day of work at the old Chessie System’s office in Baltimore in June 1981. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had just reported the first cases of what later became known as AIDS. Maryland’s anti-sodomy law was still on the books, but Toth, who was 32 years older than Esser, felt it was important to live his life as an openly gay man.

“Tom kind of pursued me, to put it quite bluntly,” Esser tells the Washington Blade during a Dec. 13 interview. “I really liked him, that’s the funny thing. I didn’t feel like he was imposing himself or anything like that … he’s the bravest person I’ve ever met. His personal courage astonished me.”

Esser stressed he “had no idea I was gay” when he met his future spouse. He grew up in what he describes as an “extremely strict Roman Catholic household” in Connecticut where he routinely heard gay people “were probably worse than murderers and they were to be avoided at all costs” and they were “mentally defective.” Esser eventually found himself in a relationship with another man he conceded wasn’t “going anywhere” when Toth finally made his move.

“He was sitting at his desk and he was singing,” Esser recalls, laughing. “It was like in a joking sort of way he was singing and the other people around him were laughing when he was doing it and he was singing something about it’s springtime and it’s time for love. The way he tells this story, I came in the door and heard him singing that and I tried to sneak away. I didn’t want any part of that. And he saw me and he said, ‘Uh oh.’ And that’s when he began to realize that I was not what he thought I was. How can you explain how two people fall in love? I can’t explain that. But it just happened. I wasn’t afraid of him personally.”

Gay News, Washington Blade, Gay Maryland

Frank Kameny with Tom Toth in D.C. (Photo courtesy of Larry Esser)

Couple’s activism starts at home

The couple routinely engaged in what Esser calls “guerrilla activism” that began when he said the railroad fired him after they began dating in 1983 because of his sexual orientation. He considered moving back to Connecticut, but Toth insisted he move into the small Glen Burnie home he shared with his then-84-year-old mother, Mary.

“There was no arguing with that,” Esser says. “The funny thing is when he said it, it was exactly what I wanted to hear, but of course I couldn’t ask him that. It was up to him to ask me, and he did. And I was delighted.”

Esser took care of Toth’s elderly mother until she died the following year. He says the same Chessy System vice president whom he claims fired him threatened to do the same to his partner once he found out they were living together. (He says the railroad in the late 1970s had tried to fire an early member of the Baltimore Gay Alliance that later became the GLBT Community Center of Baltimore and Central Maryland, but the union fought for him.)

“He couldn’t do it directly,” Esser says, recalling efforts to fire Toth, who was a unionized stenographer. “He did a bunch of different things to try to get Tom to quit. And amazingly, Tom was actually ready to resign. A woman whose name I can’t remember, but will always be grateful to her told him don’t resign because the railroad is going to do a bunch of buyouts and you’ll be able to get a lump sum payment and retire, and that’s what he did.”

The couple also for years distributed copies of the Blade at locations throughout Anne Arundel County.

They decided to approach the Anne Arundel County Public Library Board of Trustees in Annapolis in 1993 after they read about the newspaper’s threatened lawsuit against the Fairfax County (Va.) Library for its proposed ban on the publication’s distribution inside its branches. Esser said Toth was “really rough with them,” in part because “he’d gone through a very repressive time back in the 1950s.” (He lived in Manhattan for 25 years and the New York Police Department once arrested him during a gay bar raid.)

“When we got to the library board, he told them point blank, ‘You’d better do this,’” Esser says. “They were not happy. They were not happy at all. I think some of them were actually kind of sympathetic to what we wanted to do, but they were taken aback by how assertive he was. They weren’t used to that. The library board is used to people coming and requesting things, not telling them what they’re going to do. And they were not happy.”

Esser says one of the board members later told him the board did not want to meet with Toth anymore because “he was very blunt,” but in the end they granted them permission to place 15 copies of the Blade in libraries in Glen Burnie, Severna Park and Annapolis. They continued distributing the Blades each week from the Center for more than two decades.

“By putting the paper there, I always felt that, I always wondered … if a young person going by thinking they were maybe gay or knew they were gay but felt very isolated, if they saw those papers, maybe that would give them a little bit of encouragement or a little bit of reassurance. But the other point was just sheer visibility. By having those papers there, Tom used to say … if even one person picks one up, he said even if they throw them away they still got to look at them. And that was an excellent point. And he was quite right. That meant a lot to us.”

Trust the truth

The AIDS epidemic had begun to exert its toll on gay men by the time the couple began dating — Esser recalls a time both he and Toth went to a small Severna Park health clinic to get HIV tests. Toth says the nurse asked him whether he was a gay man. “He said that was the first time in his entire life anyone asked him that directly,” Esser says. “He had never been asked that question.”

Larry Esser today. (Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

Esser says he felt the atmosphere during the late 1980s was “pretty optimistic” in spite of the epidemic and late-North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, fundamentalist preachers Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and other social conservatives who sought to demonize gay men during the AIDS crisis.

“Oddly enough, Tom never disliked [then-President Ronald] Reagan, but I think that’s because he remembered him from his movie star days,” Esser says. “He felt Reagan didn’t understand the whole situation that he was dealing with AIDS and gay people. He felt that Reagan really just didn’t understand it. It’s not that he was anti-gay particularly; he just didn’t really know what he was doing … I didn’t feel so kindly to Reagan at all. I thought he was just horrible.”

Toth and Esser also became involved in the effort to add sexual orientation to Maryland’s non-discrimination law in the 1990s.

He recalls one legislator who was “really being ridiculous, saying really ugly things about us” during a hearing on the measure in Annapolis. One of this lawmaker’s colleagues who had refused to listen to his speech asked Toth and Esser how they could stand to hear his rhetoric.

“Tom said, ‘Well we know it isn’t true, so we don’t worry about it,’” Esser says. “Of course you’ve got to fight. You can’t let people say things that aren’t true and let them say it without challenging it. And Tom did that. But at the same time you can’t let it stop you. You can’t let that negativism stop you. You have to keep fighting, pushing against it and that’s what Tom really, really did.”

Esser notes that Toth’s life spanned the same period through which Frank Kameny lived — the two met during the 2000 D.C. Pride parade. And Esser says when they met, it was as if they were kindred spirits.

“They were really speaking the same language,” he says, noting both Esser and Kameny came of age in the 1950s when lobotomies were performed as a way to cure homosexuality. “It was very impressive for me being a younger person relative to them seeing what these two men must have come through and how they were both so determined to do what they were doing. They refused to back down. They refused to accept what they were being told they had to accept. They wouldn’t do it. And that was a beautiful thing to me. It’s a moment I will never forget.”

Mesothelioma that Toth developed from asbestos exposure while working at a Baltimore shipyard that built liberty ships during World War II had already taken its toll by the time Gov. Martin O’Malley signed the state’s same-sex marriage law in March.

Toth and Esser legally married in D.C. in 2010, but he wanted to vote for both Question 6 and President Obama on Election Day. He applied for an absentee ballot because he did not think he would live until Nov. 6.

It arrived in the mail in early October.

“It came and I said do you want to sign it?,” Esser, who fought leukemia at the same time his spouse struggled with mesothelioma, says. “And he said, ‘No, I’ll do it tomorrow. Well the next day he wasn’t strong enough.”

Toth died three days later — on Oct. 11 — at age 88.

“He never did sign the absentee ballot,” Esser says. “He was very aware of what was going on. He was politically interested. He definitely wanted Obama to win. We just detested Romney. The hardest thing to communicate to people who were not gay (is) how much Obama had done to us, compared to everybody else.”

Esser says Toth wondered whether history would remember Obama along the same lines as Franklin Roosevelt in terms of “what he had done, particularly for gay rights.”

“When you come from a time where you were ignored totally … and suddenly here’s the president and he’s doing all these executive orders and this happening and that’s happening and then he comes out in favor of same-sex marriage, well that’s fantastic,” Esser says. “He was just delighted.”

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Autos

A magical Mercedes

S-Class continues to define what luxury really means

Published

5 hours ago

May 23, 2026

Joe Phillips

Mercedes S-Class

At my stage of life — “somewhere between 40 and death,” as the iconic line goes in the musical “Mame” — I want some pampering. A lot of pampering.

Luckily, for anyone who constantly craves a soothing spa, steam room or sauna, there’s the completely updated Mercedes S-Class. This flagship sedan is now so full of glitz, glamour, and gee-whiz gadgetry, it gives new meaning to the term “auto erotica.”

Does this make the S-Class a “gay” ride? For me, any vehicle that pushes my buttons like this one is a Kinsey 6.

MERCEDES S-CLASS

$122,000 (est.)

MPG: 21 city/31 highway

0 to 60 mph: 4.3 seconds

Trunk space: 19 cu. ft.

PROS: Exceptional comfort. Ultra-quiet cabin. Cutting-edge safety.

CONS: Price climbs fast. Tech learning curve. Sportier competitors.

The S-Class continues to define what luxury really means, with a bolder silhouette, larger grille, and striking, next-gen LED headlights. There’s also an optional illuminated Mercedes star on the hood. Overall, nearly 2,700 parts are new or improved, so more than 50 percent of this vehicle has been updated. An extreme makeover, to be sure.

At the same time, this latest S-Class leans harder into intelligence and electrification than ever before. Under the hood, a range of turbocharged inline-six and V8 engines — paired with mild-hybrid systems — deliver power in a way that seems almost edited for smoothness. Braking is solid and strong, too, but never abrupt. All the engineering is fine-tuned and intentional.

Yes, the top-of-the line S580 version is more expensive, almost $140,000. But it’s also blisteringly fast, zipping from 0 to 60 mph in just 3.9 seconds. That’s as lickety-split swift as a Lamborghini Revuelto supercar, which has a starting MSRP of $610,000 and can easily exceed — yowza! — $800,000.

Colors? There are 150 to choose from for the exterior and 400 for the interior. You can even customize the illuminated door sills, interior stitching and wheel accents.

And the ride quality? Sublime. Adaptive air suspension reads the road constantly, leveling out imperfections before they even register. Rear-axle steering enhances maneuverability, making this full-sized sedan feel surprisingly nimble in tight spaces. On the highway, the S-Class simply glides like a private yacht on the calmest of seas — extremely quiet, composed and completely unbothered.

Whenever you slide inside, the cabin immediately sets the tone. A massive OLED digital display — the same high-def technology used for cinematic viewing and gaming monitors — anchors the dashboard, running the latest MBUX infotainment interface. Highly customizable, this software allows for advanced voice commands that feel natural, not forced. And an augmented-reality navigation system takes your route and overlays it onto live camera feeds. It’s intuitive — mostly, as there is a learning curve for all this cutting-edge gear. Overall, though, such amenities make older setups feel like dial-up internet.

A Burmester surround-sound stereo is available in 3D or 4D, with up to 31 speakers, 1,690 watts and tactile transducers in the seats that vibrate and pulse with the music. Those seats are, of course, extremely comfortable. And the seatbelts? These are now heated.

Let’s not forget the latest cabin air-filtration system, which can remove ultra-fine particles to deliver air quality that rivals medical environments. Clean air, yes, but even this seems like a special treat. It’s like being swaddled in couture, not ready-to-wear.

And lastly, there’s the rear-seat area, which — to be honest — is where the S-Class really shines. Executive packages offer multi-contour reclining seats with rapid heating and ventilating, heated armrests and massage functions. You can opt for a footrest, which ups the glam factor to give you a calf massage. Dual 13.1-inch display screens come with their own remote controls. There’s also a video-conferencing feature, to help transform the rear cabin into a fully connected mobile office. For me, it feels less “back seat” and more “private lounge.”

Even in fiction, high-tech luxury carries weight. Tony Stark helped cement the idea that state-of-the art vehicles can be aspirational, not just practical. The magical S-Class fits right into that narrative — minus the flying suit (for now).

Advice

I’m a 64-year-old single gay man and I hate my life

How can I turn things around before it’s too late?

Published

1 day ago

May 22, 2026

Michael Radkowsky

I’m officially old, maybe even nearing the finish line and I’m getting bitter.

Dear Michael,

I’m a 64-year-old single gay man and I hate my life.

I’ve never had a relationship that lasted more than a few months. I can’t say why. I don’t think I’m defective. I wasn’t unattractive when I was younger (still not bad looking), I think I’m an interesting person to spend time with, but everything always seemed to fizzle out.

Thankfully, I missed AIDS because I came out after people knew what to do. Sometimes I wonder if fear of contracting the virus metastasized into a fear of getting close. I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve consciously kept people away. Consciously I have wanted someone to share my life with, very much.

With my 65th birthday and official senior citizen status approaching, I’ve been taking stock of my life and am coming to the hard realization that I’m never going to find that elusive partner.

I don’t go out anymore because people look right through me, except the ones who have a fetish for older guys. No one’s actually interested in me as me, a unique person rather than what they see on the surface.

I’m tired of my coupled friends. They’re always talking about “we.” Yes, I have become resentful that they have what I want and will never get. I know that’s not admirable but it’s how I feel, secretly, and I am sick of feeling like this when I am around them. So why be around them?

And I’m tired of my friends who are focused on sex all the time. It just all feels like a waste of time. I don’t get anything from a hookup anymore, they’ve been feeling increasingly meaningless. I feel like I’m someone’s momentary opportunity to get off, rather than any kind of real connection.

I’m just sick of the whole chase I’ve been doing for the last 40+ years.

I’m realizing that the whole thing has been pointless, a quest for a partner who is never going to materialize and a lot of diversions along the way that have added up to a despairing feeling that I’ve wasted my life trying to get something that will never happen.

Gay life hasn’t been so gay for me. And I’m officially old, maybe even nearing the finish line. Yes, if you haven’t noticed, I’m getting bitter.

What do I do with this dead end?

Michael replies:

How about looking for a different road to go down?

I’m not going to challenge your belief that you aren’t going to find a partner. I think it’s possible that you could, because there are other guys out there, in your age range, who are looking. But you have no guarantee, especially if you have decided to take it off the table.

So what else can you do with your life? How can you make your remaining time on this earth well-lived?

From your letter, it’s clear what you don’t want to do: Look for a boyfriend, hook up, or spend time with your current friends. Surely there must be more possibilities for your life than those options.

So my advice is to figure out some things you care about and start doing them. Travel? Volunteering? Getting a companion animal? Taking classes? Finding a new career? Those are just a few of the ideas I can come up with, but I don’t know you. What ideas can you generate, that you suspect you’d like to pursue?

In other words, start putting one foot in front of the other and go in some new directions that intrigue you enough to explore.

Sitting around feeling miserable does not help you to get anywhere. It keeps you feeling miserable. Sitting around waiting to feel better does not lead you to feel better. What would help you get to a better place would be to start taking action on your own behalf. Always keep in mind that while you are alive, with your faculties intact, you do have the choice to take this step, over and over and over again.

If you give yourself something (or some things) worthwhile to put your focus on, and do your best to shift your focus there whenever you notice that you are lamenting, I’m hopeful you will create a more fulfilling and meaningful life.

I’m also hopeful that if you are spending time doing things that you actually enjoy and that enrich your life, you may find more satisfying companionship than you are experiencing with your current friend group. (And yes, this could include a romantic relationship if you decide to be open to this possibility.)

A brief reply in an advice column can point you in the right direction, but it is likely not enough to sustain and motivate you through a major life overhaul.

Therefore, I suggest that you find a therapist to help you figure out how to move forward and what to move toward; and also to grieve, and put to rest as best you can, the loss of the life you hoped you would have.

I know that transcending the loss of a huge lifelong dream may seem impossible. But working toward this, as best you are able, would help you.

Relatedly, one more thing that I hope you can address with a therapist is your bitterness. I do understand why you feel so bitter, and I also think that it is torquing your life in a downhill direction.

Michael Radkowsky, Psy.D. is a licensed psychologist who works with couples and individuals in D.C., Maryland, Virginia, and New York. He can be found online at michaelradkowsky.com. All identifying information has been changed for reasons of confidentiality. Have a question? Send it to [email protected].

Real Estate

Honey, have we been priced out of gay paradise?

Rehoboth remains more accessible than many queer beach destinations

Published

6 days ago

May 17, 2026

Justin Noble

There are still pathways to homeownership in Rehoboth Beach. (Washington Blade file photo by Daniel Truitt)

Let’s set the scene, darlings. It’s a scorching July Saturday. You’ve got a trunk full of rosé, a playlist that slaps harder than a “RuPaul’s Drag Race” elimination, and a group chat blowing up with your people en route to Rehoboth Beach — the Delaware beach town that has been the LGBTQ community’s summer headquarters for decades. Sun, sand, Poodle Beach, drag shows, and the kind of easy, breezy freedom that only comes from being surrounded by your tribe.

Now imagine pulling up to a “FOR SALE” sign on that charming two-bedroom cottage two blocks from the boardwalk — the one you’ve been eyeing for years — and seeing the price tag: $1.97 million. Honey, put the rosé down. We need to talk.

Nation’s Summer Capital Has a Spending Problem

Rehoboth Beach has long worn the nickname “The Nation’s Summer Capital” like a crown, owing to the annual migration of Washingtonians — and increasingly, Philadelphians and New Yorkers — who descend on its 27 miles of Atlantic coastline every summer. For the LGBTQ community in particular, Rehoboth has never been just a beach town. It has been a sanctuary, a second home, a place where you can hold your partner’s hand on the boardwalk without a second thought. But the real estate market? She is not reading the room.

According to Redfin data, the median sale price of a home in Rehoboth Beach recently hit $1.96 million — a jaw-dropping 106% increase year over year, and a figure that sits 127% above the national median. The price per square foot has climbed to $1,160, up nearly 27% in the same period. Gag.

So Who IS Buying Right Now?

Let’s not be dramatic — people are still buying in Rehoboth. They’re just a specific kind of people. According to neighborhood data, the per capita income in Rehoboth Beach runs around $118,239, equating to a household income of nearly $473,000 for a family of four. About a third of the workforce telecommutes, many in high-earning, white-collar professions. And more than 68% of residents hold a college degree, compared to a national average of under 22%.

If you want to buy a median-priced home in Rehoboth today with a standard 25% down payment, you’d need to bring nearly half a million dollars to closing — and then cover about $4,000 a month in ongoing expenses.

Still, the market isn’t quite the frenzy it was at peak pandemic frenzy. Homes are sitting on the market for an average of 88 days as of early 2026 — up significantly from the frantic bidding wars of a few years ago, when a listing might vanish before you could refresh Zillow a second time. Sellers are (slowly) getting the memo that buyers have limits.

Have Your Beach House (and Airbnb It, Too)

Many LGBTQ buyers have discovered a savvy workaround to Rehoboth’s sticker shock: buy a property, rent it during peak season, and let your summer visitors essentially pay your mortgage.

The numbers surprisingly support this strategy. The Rehoboth Beach short-term rental market currently has around 928 active listings, with hosts averaging $400 per night and annual revenues of approximately $39,689. The busiest month, predictably, is July — when guests book an average of 96 days in advance (so yes, those summer reservations your friends keep missing out on are being snapped up in April).

The key is making your property stand out in a crowded market. Properties accommodating eight or more guests dominate the Rehoboth STR market (nearly half of all listings), so that five-bedroom house with a game room suddenly starts to look like a business plan. At the same time – keep in mind that location, location, location honey – that is also so valuable. Even a two-bedroom condo close to the beach will also rent favorably well and get those numbers needed to make the most sense to your pockets.

This method allows you to have a second home, enjoy it, have friends enjoy it, and also helps recoup some of the overhead so the overhead and increase in overall purchase price is a bit more manageable.

What It All Means for Our Community

Rehoboth has always been more than real estate. It is one of the few places on the East Coast where LGBTQ people have, for decades, built an actual physical community — businesses, organizations, gathering spaces, neighborhoods — not just a social scene. CAMP Rehoboth, Poodle Beach, the Blue Moon (which, after some drama, was recently sold to new owners who pledged to keep it a queer-affirming space — phew), and countless gay-owned restaurants and shops form an ecosystem that attracts our community every summer precisely because the roots run deep.

But ecosystems require people — year-round residents, small business owners, artists, service workers — not just wealthy second-home owners. When prices rise to the degree they have in Rehoboth, the people who sustain that community can no longer afford to stay. It’s a pattern playing out in LGBTQ neighborhoods from San Francisco’s Castro to New York’s Chelsea, and it’s worth watching closely here.

The good news? Rehoboth remains more accessible than many comparable queer beach destinations. Provincetown, Mass. — the other iconic LGBTQ beach town on the Eastern seaboard — regularly sees median home prices north of $1.5 million with far less inventory and a significantly smaller footprint.

And Delaware’s tax structure does the community a quiet but important favor: no state sales tax, among the lowest property tax rates in the country, and relatively favorable income tax treatment for retirees. These aren’t glamorous talking points, but they matter when you’re running the numbers on whether your beach house dream can actually pencil out.

The Bottom Line, Babe

Can our community still afford Rehoboth? The honest answer is: it depends on what you mean by Rehoboth.

If you mean a single-family home within walking distance of Poodle Beach with an ocean view and a wraparound porch — prepare to spend north of $1.5 million, need a household income pushing six figures annually, and move fast when something comes to market.

If you mean a condo or townhome in the greater Rehoboth area – or a property you plan to rent out in peak season to offset costs — there are still real pathways in.

And if you mean belonging to a community, showing up every summer, taking up space on that beach, supporting LGBTQ-owned businesses, and making sure Rehoboth’s queer identity doesn’t get washed away by the luxury market tide — well, that part doesn’t have a price tag.

It just requires showing up. So pack the car. Bring the rosé. The beach is still ours.

Have a real estate question or Rehoboth market tip? Reach out to [email protected] for LGBTQ-friendly real estate resources in the Rehoboth area.