a&e features
Losing a lover to AIDS
My years with Rob are how I measure time now
Gary Barton was an actor and former senior vice president of production at Walt Disney Co. In 1992, along with his partner Rob Hershman and Congresswoman Maxine Waters, he won the Leadership Award from AIDS ACTION in Washington. (Photo from Barton’s Facebook page)
That last month, I could look only in his eyes, for that is where he was. His face was covered with raw open sores. His gray translucent skin was stretched tautly from bone to bone. He had become a body with which I had no history.
When I got scared, I held him in my arms and stared into his eyes. They were clear and beautiful and familiar. That is where we connected now.
That last month I remember as snapshots of black and gray. Even the blood Rob bled, in my memory, lacks color. Time is distorted and that month seems much longer than a month is. I can still feel myself pushing away certain memories.
It has been years since Rob died and the black flashes stay a little longer now, and very slowly, like a photograph coming up in a darkroom tray, I begin to see the memory develop and fix. When I met Rob, he was beginning to lose weight. I watched him chart his unexplained fevers daily.
A friend commented that he thought I was courageous to get involved with someone who was beginning to get sick. Courage had nothing to do with it. I knew after spending a few weeks with Rob, that this was the man I would allow myself to love and with more difficulty, allow to love me. I committed to make the journey of my life with him, not knowing where it would lead. It was quite simply, the wisest decision I ever made.
My years with Rob are how I measure time now. Everything else comes either before or after.
The differences between Rob and me were considerable. Rob was very well read and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. I barely made it through high school. Rob was compulsive about neatness and order. I would leave my clothes in a pile where I removed them. I had been living on my own since I was 17 and had developed street smarts that Rob never did.
In fact, he never stopped being naive. But instead of allowing these differences to become a wedge, we learned from each other because of them.
Three years before he died, Rob told me he needed to pursue a spiritual path to deal with what he knew was in store for him. He decided, having been born a Jew, that he would study the Torah. Up until then, he had no particular religious connection with Judaism, but like many Jews, he had a strong cultural bond.
In typical fashion, he excelled in his studies and for this, in that last month, the rabbis with whom he was studying, honored him in a ceremony naming him a maggid. Maggid in Hebrew means: a teacher or storyteller.
It is an honor that is rarely bestowed to a layperson and Rob was indeed honored. He had won many awards including two Emmys and a Peabody award for journalism but this was the acknowledgement of which he was most proud. At that ceremony, our family and friends listened as Rob spoke of how generations ago a person’s character seemed to be so important, and that today no one talks about character. Rob had character. He was the most decent person I have ever known.
That last month, we had another ceremony at our home. For a long time Rob had wanted some formal acknowledgement of our love. I’d had no interest in emulating a tradition that had never welcomed me. But one night, that last month, I looked at Rob’s body in the bed and decided I wanted to marry him. He was so riddled with pain that there was a moan coming from him that seemed disconnected, as if his body was screaming but not his soul. He once described the pain as a beehive in his brain with thousands of killer bees swarming and stinging him from within.
I wanted to give him this gift. And so, before our closest friends, family, our dogs and our doctors, we stood on our deck and celebrated our love for each other. Not a commitment ceremony really, for the commitment had been made many years before. Rob was frail and had trouble standing that Sunday, and yet his face radiated enormous power and strength. His eyes were present and filled with tears of joy.
He died exactly one month to the day with the gold band on his bony finger that matched the one on mine. He was 41.
That last month seems nonlinear. The events are jumbled up. Extraordinary moments of profound joy mix with unbearably painful ones. I didn’t only lose Rob that last month. I also said goodbye to Paul Monette, my beloved friend and fellow warrior, who died with his icy, yellow hand sandwiched between mine.
For many seasons past, Paul and I talked almost daily, sharing our anger and comparing our t-cells. For 10 years we ran neck and neck, only in this race the winner comes in last. There was no room for anything or anyone that was not directly connected to Rob’s care. Even mourning Paul’s death had to wait.
As our world became narrower, Rob’s world of learning, teaching, and touching people seemed to expand. I often think of him sitting at the dining room table with our Guatemalan housekeeper Dani. Her husband had forbid her to go to school to improve her English. Rob offered to teach her, which he did until a week before he died, his patience vying with his pain.
One of the things I so admired in Rob was his total lack of classism. I came home one day and overheard Rob on the telephone explaining to the person on the other end how in American English it was common for certain words to have an opposite definition such as cool and hot, and yet in certain circumstances, they mean the same thing.
“People could say that something was very cool as in ‘that song is very cool’ or “that song is really hot” and mean the same thing. I assumed that Rob was talking to Dani continuing one of his lessons. When he got off the phone I said, “how is Dani?” He said,“oh, that was not Dani, it was Prince Charles.” I sadly thought Rob’s previous dementia had returned and as upsetting that was to me, I just let it go.
The next day Rob mentioned how nice it was for Prince Charles to call. With further inquiry I discovered that Rob actually had been talking to the Prince. Rob had done a story about architecture when producing news for CBS. He had interviewed Prince Charles at Highgrove House, his country estate. They had kept up a correspondence and a friendship and when Charles had called Rob at CBS, he was informed of Rob’s condition and called him to wish him well.
I remember Rob used to laugh when he told the story about being left alone in a room at Highgrove, which evidently had hundreds of Faberge eggs just sitting on tables with no security. I thought it was odd that Rob did not pick one up and put it in his pocket but Rob was much too ethical to do that. I viewed it more like taking an ashtray from a hotel. What I thought was cool (and hot) was that Rob did not differentiate how he spoke whether it was to a housekeeper or to British royalty. That was just part of who Rob was. The fact that Rob never made a big deal about his friendship with Prince Charles from before he and I met, was just one more example of his genuine modesty and humbleness.
That last month, Rob was diagnosed with a fungal infection that was literally eating through his sinuses to the bones surrounding his brain. His physical pain was extraordinary and only slightly helped by morphine.
Morphine frightened both of us. It frightened Rob because he so hated the feeling of being disconnected to the very life at which he was clutching and marveling. His inability to study and meditate made the spiritual pain of being on the drug as bad as the physical pain of not. It frightened me because it dulled the bright life force that shone in his eyes.
Rob began losing his vision that last month before he died. He could not see out but I could see in.
That last month I took a photo of Rob in the desert. I look at it often. He is standing next to an also decrepit cactus, both looking up at the sky. Rob is beaming with unlimited joy and the desert bright, washed out light seems to be originating from within him rather than from the sun. Most of the time when I look at the picture, my tears blur my vision, but not my memory of his eyes. Still, that is where he is.
a&e features
Queery: Meet artist, performer John Levengood
Modern creative talks nightlife, coming out, and his personal queer heroes
John Levengood (he/him) describes himself as a modern creative with a wide‑ranging toolkit. He blends music, technology, civic duty, and a sharp sense of wit into a cohesive artistic identity. Known primarily as a recording artist and performer, he’s also a self‑taught music producer and software engineer who embodies a generation of creators who build their own lanes rather than wait for one to appear.
Levengood, 32, who is single and identifies as gay and queer, is best known as a recording artist who has performed at Pride festivals across the country, including the main stages of World Pride DC, Central Arkansas Pride, and Charlotte Pride.
“Locally in the DMV, I’m known for turning heads at nightlife venues with my eye-catching sense of style. When I go out, I don’t try to blend in. I hope I inspire people to be themselves and have the courage to stand out,” he says.
He’s also known for hosting karaoke at Freddie’s Beach Bar in Arlington, Va., on Thursday nights. “I like to create a space where people feel comfortable expressing themselves, building community, and showcasing their talents.”
He also creates social media content from my performances and do interviews at LGBTQ+ bars and theatres in the DMV. Follow the Arlington resident @johnlevengood.
How long have you been out and who was the hardest person to tell?
I have been fully out of the closet since 2019. My parents were the hardest people to tell because my family has always been my rock and at the time I couldn’t imagine a world without them. Their reactions were extremely positive and supportive so I had nothing to fear all along.
I remember sitting on the couch with my mom, dad, and sister in our hotel room in New Orleans during our winter vacation and being so nervous to tell them. After I finally mustered up the nerve and made the proclamation, I realized my dad had already fallen asleep on the couch. My mom promised to tell him when he woke up.
Who’s your LGBTQ hero?
My LGBTQ heroes are Harvey Milk for paving the way for gays in politics and Elton John for being a pioneer for the fabulous and authentic. My local heroes in the DMV are Howard Hicks, manager of Green Lantern, and Tony Rivenbark, manager of Freddie’s Beach Bar. Both of them are essential to creating spaces where I’ve felt welcome and safe since moving to the DMV.
What’s Washington’s best nightspot, past or present?
Trade tops the list for me because of the dance floor and outdoor space. It’s so nice to get a break from the music every once and a while to be able to have a conversation.
We live in challenging times. How do you cope?
I’m still figuring this out. What is working right now is writing music and spending time with family and friends. I’ve also been spending less time on social media going to the gym at least three times a week.
What streaming show are you binging?
After “Traitors” Season 4 ended, I was in a bit of a show hole, but “Stumble” has me in a laughing loop right now. The writing is so witty.
What do you wish you’d known at 18?
At 18, I wish I would have known how liberating it is to come out of the closet. It would have been nice to know some winning lottery numbers as well.
What are your friends messaging about in your most recent group chat?
We are planning our next trip to New York City. If you can believe it, I visited NYC for the first time in 2025 for Pride and I’ve been back every quarter since. Growing up in the country, I was subconsciously primed to be scared of the city. But my mind has been blown. I can’t wait to go back.
Why Washington?
It’s the closest metropolitan area to my family, but not too close. I love the museums, the diversity, the history, and the proximity to the beach and mountains. It’s also nice to live in a city with public transportation.
Aging RFK Stadium has come down, but the RFK grounds are still getting lit up. Welcome back to the stage Project GLOW, D.C.’s homegrown electronic festival, on May 30-31. Back for its fifth year on these musically inclined acres, Project GLOW returns with an even more diverse lineup, and one that continues to celebrate LGBTQ antecedents, attendees, and acts.
Project GLOW 2026 headliners include house and techno star Mau P, progressive house legend Eric Prydz, hard-techno favorite Sara Landry, and bass acts Excision b2b Sullivan King, among the lineup of trance, bass, house, techno, dubstep, and others for the fifth anniversary year.
President & CEO Pete Kalamoutsos — born and raised in D.C. — founded Club GLOW in 1999. In 2020, GLOW entered into a partnership with global entertainment company Insomniac Events to produce live events like Project GLOW, which kicked off in 2022.
As in past years, Project GLOW not only makes space, but is intentionally inclusive of the LGBTQ community, one of its most dedicated fan bases. The festival’s LGBTQ-focused Secret Garden stage blooms again — a more intimate dance area that stands on the strength of DJs and musicians who draw from the LGBTQ community. D.C.’s LGBTQ nightlife mastermind Ed Bailey is the creative mind behind Secret Garden again. He joined Project GLOW in 2023.
“Kalamoustos says that “he’s proud of his partnership with Ed Bailey, along with Capital Pride and [nightlife producer] Jake Resnikow. It’s amazing to collaborate with Bailey at the Secret Garden stage, especially after the curated lineup we worked on at Pride last year.”
The Secret Garden will be a bit different from other stages: Eternal (“At the Eternal stage, time stands still. Lose yourself in the dance of past, present, and future, surrendering to the eternal rhythm of the universe”) and Pulse (“Feel the rhythm of the beat pulse through your veins as the heartbeat of the crowd synchronizes into one. Here, every moment vibrates with life as it guides you through a new dimension of euphoria”). The Secret Garden stage is in the round, surrounded by 16 shipping containers. The containers play canvas to muralists from around the world, who are coming in to paint them in a vibrant garden-style vibe. “We gave this stage some extra love with this layout,” K says, “ we finally cracked the code.”
K says that this will be the biggest lineup yet for the Secret Garden, featuring Nicole Moudaber b2b Chasewest, Riordan b2b Bullet Tooth, Ranger Trucco, Cassian, Eli & Fur, Cosmic Gate and Hayla. The stage is also the largest yet, featuring an expanded dance floor and 360-degree viewing.
Across all stages, K says that his goal for the fifth anniversary is “More art and fan interactive experience, more like a festival, strive to be like a Tomorrowland, as budget grows to add more experience.” Last year’s Project GLOW alone drew 40,000 attendees over two days.
K, however, was not satisfied with one festival this spring. GLOW recently announced a “pop-up” one-day event. Teaming up with Black Book Records, GLOW is set to throw a first-of-its-kind dance-music takeover of Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., headlined by electronic music star Chris Lake. Set for April 18, this euphoric block party will feature bass and vibes blocks from the White House. Organizers expect as many as 10,000 fans to attend. Beyond music, there will be food, activations, and plenty of other activities taking place around 6th St and Pennsylvania Ave NW – a location familiar to many in the LGBTQ community, as this sits squarely inside the blocks of the Capital Pride party that takes place in DC every June.
Over the past two decades, Club GLOW has produced thousands of events, from club nights to large-scale festivals including Project GLOW, Moonrise Festival, and more. Club GLOW also operates Echostage.
a&e features
New book celebrates 1970s dance music icons
‘A Night at the Disco’ features interviews with Donna Summer, Debbie Harry, more
If you’re a fan of 1970s-era dance music, don’t miss the irresistible new book by Christian John Wikane and Alice Harris, “A Night at the Disco,” which revisits more than 90 interviews conducted with some of the biggest names in pop culture.
“A Night at the Disco” (ACC Art Books) was published on March 24, and distributed by Simon & Schuster. It celebrates more than 100 artists who sparked a phenomenon in dance music from 1970-1979 and features excerpts from interviews with everyone from Donna Summer to Debbie Harry.
Lost City Books (2467 18th St., N.W.) will welcome author Christian John Wikane for a book signing and conversation about “A Night at the Disco” on Thursday, April 16 at 6 p.m. Details at lostcitybookstore.com. Bird in Hand Coffee & Books in Baltimore (11 E. 33rd St.) )will also host a Q&A with the author on Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. Details at theivybookshop.com.
Below is an excerpt from “A Night at the Disco.”
“I’ll let in anyone who looks like they’ll make things fun.” Steve Rubell is guiding a New York Times reporter through Studio 54 as resident DJ Richie Kaczor dazzles the crowd with records by CHIC, Odyssey, and T-Connection. “Disco, that’s where the happy people go,” The Trammps sing as dancers spin and twirl underneath tubes of flashing lights. Seven months since Rubell and co-owner Ian Schrager opened Studio 54 in April 1977, it’s welcomed untold numbers of “happy people” … at least those lucky enough to pass through the doors.
“We were part of the chosen few,” says André De Shields, who immortalized the title role in The Wiz on Broadway at the time. “We could show up at Studio 54 and the doorman at the velvet stanchion would look over everyone and point to us from The Wiz to come in, that kind of thing.” As the lead vocalist in the GRAMMY-nominated Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, whose debut modernized big band sophistication for the discothèques, Cory Daye had carte blanche in the club. “The energy was like a New Year’s Eve party every night,” she says. “I would go up to the mezzanine and watch the mechanical light pillars go up and down, metallic confetti falling from the ceiling, the spoon and the moon. I was so fascinated and enamored by it.
“When a certain song came on, the people would just rush to the dance floor. There was no contact dancing — the hustle was pretty much on its way out — but it was just an amazing experience to see all the cultures together. It was a fusion of cultures, which described my life and my band, so I was right at home there.”
“Studio 54 was the place,” adds Linda Clifford. “Crazy parties. If you could think it, you would see it. It was like a circus. Just an amazing place to be. I worked 54 so many times. It was like a second home to me. The people there treated me so well. The crowd always seemed to enjoy my show. I always had a good time with them. That was the most important thing: making sure that they had fun.”
Well before Studio 54 opened, disco had become a business juggernaut. “A four billion dollar market and still growing,” Billboard announced in February 1977, with dance music offering more variety than ever. “There is no longer a single, readily identifiable disco beat, but a kaleidoscope of sounds that are melodic and danceable,” Tom Moulton told the magazine. In the clubs, records by veteran artists like Stevie Wonder and the Bee Gees were mixed in with a range of new acts like Grace Jones, Boney M., and The Ritchie Family, while everyone from ABBA to Marvin Gaye scored number one pop hits with songs that had club-centric storylines.
Beyond the charts, disco itself remained as idiosyncratic as ever, especially on several productions by Laurin Rinder and W. Michael Lewis, whose studio creations, El Coco (“Let’s Get It Together,” “Cocomotion”) and Le Pamplemousse (“Le Spank”), joined their own “Lust” from Seven Deadly Sins (1977) among the most tantalizing releases on AVI Records. Rinder & Lewis also produced acts for the newly hatched Butterfly Records in Los Angeles, where Saint Tropez (“On a Rien à Perdre”) and Tuxedo Junction (“Moonlight Serenade”) reflected the duo’s high gloss sound, spanning everything from European sophistication to a more literal translation of the ’40s sensibilities popularized by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band.
12-inch singles had also grown as the preferred format to approximate the club music experience at home. Nearly a year after Atlantic Records introduced its series of promotional 12-inch singles for DJs, New York-based Salsoul Records released the industry’s first commercially available 12-inch single, “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure, in May 1976. A year later, T.K. Records was the first label to certify a gold record for a 12-inch single when Peter Brown’s “Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me” tallied one million sales.— Christian John Wikane
(From “A Night at the Disco” by Alice Harris & Christian John Wikane. Published by ACC Art Books.)
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Queery: Meet artist, performer John Levengood
