Milton, please spare the Don Cesar, a place that holds bittersweet memories for a gay man

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I've been constantly following the updates about Hurricane Milton all day, most especially since I see that St. Petersburg, Fla., is already taking a big hit. What’s going on with Milton, and previously Helene, has been nothing short of horrific. I’m hoping that the storm spares a place on the St. Pete beach that holds mixed memories.

In the summer of 1979, when I was 15, my widowed mother started dating the man who would become my stepfather. He took my mom, me, my brother, and my sister, and his son and daughter to St. Petersburg for summer vacation. We stayed at an iconic pink hotel, the Don Cesar, or the “Don,” as it’s called, at St. Pete Beach..

I told my friends we were going to Florida and staying at a pink hotel. I should have known better. They mocked it as being “so gay.” Little did they know, and little did they know how that cut like a knife.

My soon-to-be stepfather had a good job, and we had very little money, so the trip to Florida was an extravagance. The next year, before he and my mom wed, we returned for one more vacation. Those years were among the worst of my life, coming after my dad’s sudden death and while I endured a priest’s grooming and overtures, my mother’s verbal and physical abuse, and of course the excruciating struggle about whether I was like the pink hotel.

I only remember a few things about those trips since those days were mostly dark, shoved back into the deep recesses of my mind. The first was that the Don was such a huge, castle-like hotel and, to me at the time, excessively opulent. I remember my brother and stepbrother winning a sand castle contest after building a replica of the hotel on the beach.

The other was being pulled aside by my mom a few times and, with her fingers embedded in my arm as she usually did, being told that I had to “be nice to her,” while her nails pierced my skin. Not even the warmth of the sun or a pink hotel would intrude on her cruelty.

One day at the hotel pool, a very good-looking guy my age walked by wearing a Baltimore Orioles T-shirt. My Pittsburgh Pirates had beaten the Orioles in the World Series, so I used that excuse to approach him. We eventually became pen pals. I was infatuated with him, and I was horrified by that thought.

Arguably, it was at the Don Cesar where I fell in love for the first time. And the memories of that are not warm and fuzzy. He was obviously straight. Showed me pictures of his girlfriend and talked about all the girls at the pool. I went along with it all since it was the only thing I could do. To be thought of as “gay” – or whatever you called it – was crushing.

I haven’t thought about him, or the Don for that matter, in 40 years, until a recent trip to the Tampa-St. Petersburg area last month. My partner and I decided to go to St. Pete Beach for a day, which would mean I would see the Don Cesar for the first time since those unsettling days.

On the drive over, I thought about the back-and-forth of those letters,\ and how they were all about baseball. I wanted them to be more, but my secret crush was only in that relationship for a baseball buddy,

I would wait anxiously for his letters to arrive. I would find a place by myself to read them and cry over them. There was so much pain in my life, and on top of it this infliction of infatuation.

Would this foreboding hotel and what I always considered its offensive pink color bring back all the trauma? I was returning as an older, out gay man, something that seemed unthinkable 40 years ago. The Don was a metaphorical crime scene of unrequited passion, abuse, and a warped sense of self.

Was that enormous pink monstrosity going to crush me one more time? I was ambivalent about the whole thing but curious to see it again. It didn’t take long. Once you enter St.Pete Beach, it’s there, right in front of you.

It took my breath away. I was shocked by how small it looked. It was still pink, and anything but disquieting. Maybe that was a good thing?

Obviously, when you return to environments from your childhood, they seem less potent, but in this situation, that was unexpected. That structure had always loomed so large — like all that pain I felt that last time I saw it.

We drove around trying to find the main entrance. When we approached the entry ramp of the driveway, there was a surprise.

Standing halfway up the ramp were two men dressed in gray suits and wearing boutonnieres. They were being photographed and videoed as they held hands and leaned in for kisses. The irony of that moment was not lost on me. I welled up with tears.

I hopped out of the car and went inside. The opulence I remembered was gone. The hotel’s interior shrunk, just like its exterior. It looked so…normal. What was happening inside was larger than anything I remembered about that hotel. It was a wedding reception for a gay couple, a surreal scene.

Being a gay man at the Don was unthinkable 40 years ago. The thought of being gay was fired up inside of me, as it had never been before, when I saw that handsome boy in the Orioles T-shirt at the Don’s pool. At the time, I envisioned a life of secrets, unhappiness, uncertainty — anything but normal.

What I came back to was happiness, love, and exultation in the form of a celebration of a gay married couple. How utterly impossible that seemed decades ago. Gone were all those inhibitions and illusions of desolation. I marveled at the normalness of it all.

I walked out the front door invigorated. The Don was tinier, less opulent, and less ominous, yet its vibrant pink complexion had never been more welcoming – or accepting.

Regardless of the reality and the memories, I hope that Hurricane Milton takes a path that spares lives and this wondrous, bittersweet hotel.

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