Former Montana Professor Memoir Examines Life He Thought He Wouldn’t Live
He walks in late with a cane, appearing feeble. His age surprises me. Although, it shouldn’t. It has been 30 years since I took my first class from him at the University of Montana.
Prior to Casey Charles taking the podium, the sparse audience talks about Casey before he begins his reading at Shakespeare & Co., in Missoula, Montana, a town where Casey – retired from UM – spends half his time.
“Very popular professor,” is one comment.
“First queer studies professor in the state,” is another.
“His class was very popular and controversial at the time,” is a third.
I took Gay and Lesbian Studies from Casey Charles around 1996. As an English literature major, it satisfied an upper level credit requirement. From the first day of class, I was fascinated. There was something about Casey that struck me.
I remember his aura.
His intelligence.
The corduroy jeans, brown or gray. The blazer with patches on the elbows. (They are so memorable they have a cameo in the book).
I never missed a class, where we read, wrote, and discussed books like Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown, Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden, and Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg. These were books with topics that had been hidden from me for 21 years.
All of our class conversations centered around the literature we read. My conservative, small town background kicked me into a world very, very naive. I did not realize until years later how few lesbian books were published at the time. I certainly had no realization that I was sitting in a class deemed controversial. A class that almost didn’t get a section opened. A class that was the first of its kind in the state and the western United States. I lived it.
Totally enamored by the college professor look and intelligence, I enrolled in Casey’s Shakespeare class – a requirement for all English majors – the following year. Casey had been to New York, San Francisco. He was an advocate. He took morning runs without undies in Central Park. He was in love in 1989.
I was none of those things. Had accomplished nothing. Had been nowhere.
I hadn't thought of Casey in years. Didn’t stalk him on Facebook. Had long since lost track of the books I had bought for class. Books that opened my mind to different perspectives. The value and importance of all stories.
In 2023, I met up with a friend in Columbus, Ohio. We talked of classes we had taken together at Montana, me in graduate school, he an undergrad. Casey’s name came up.
I loved him!, I exclaimed, adding I had not thought about him in years.
So did I, said my male friend, going on to tell me that, as a student, he had gone to his house multiple times for wine. Dinner. At Casey’s house! He would not tell me much else. Or anything else. He had lost track of Casey, he said.
He did stalk him on Facebook, though.
And there he was six months later. Four weeks removed from hip replacement surgery: Casey Charles.
Shane, a former student, who currently lives upstairs in Casey’s house, introduced him at the reading.
“He’s ‘totally gay,’ Shane read from his introductory notes. The crowd laughed.
Casey was at the reading in Missoula on June 12, 2024, because he published a memoir, Undetectable.
Casey takes the stage, converses with the audience. Reads from the book, a book he describes as “very personal.”
Shakespeare & Co., Missoula.
The cover: a sign of survival of HIV.
The title: a viral load so low, the disease can’t be transmitted.
Came out late in life (late 20s).
Has been HIV positive since 1991.
Recognizes the lethal aspect of love.
“This book is a story of survival,” he says.
He writes about an early lover, the love of his life. How he “... fell deeply and dangerously in love.”
He references Shakespeare (of course!).
As he reads, he laughs at the funny parts, his smile and laugh … two things I do remember from that class so long ago.
There are parts he can’t read out loud. It's still too personal. When he finds out his lover is positive. Losing that lover. To this day, he doesn’t know the whole story of his former boyfriend. He is still alive. They still email.
And, Casey is alive, too, something he wasn’t sure would be true in 1991. Something he kept to himself all those years in Missoula, teaching and advocating. Being gay, even in Missoula, was hard enough. In Montana, he dedicated his life to being a gay advocate, not an HIV activist. He was a founding member of the Western Montana Gay and Lesbian Community Center as well as the Outfield Alliance at the university.
Undetectable is a story about survival. It is filled with raw honesty. Just like that controversial class I enrolled in 30 years ago. I didn’t know until that day in June about the power of that class. The fact it existed, and I was in it.
Just as Casey exists, he writes, “... I can only say I don’t know for sure [why he wrote the book]. I tell them I am exploring my recalibration from a death sentence to the chronic gusts of survival …”
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