"Home of The Letter Wars as featured in USA Today and The Advocate."
Wes and Tom were a gay male couple with AIDS. A fundamentalist aunt told Wes that Tom was not invited to Wes' family reunion. Wes took it to the family and challenged her right to exclude Tom. The whole family chimed in with their opinions. The entire thing was written, since Wes lived in Houston and the aunt was in Oregon. Here Wes shares it with you. Be proud of who you are, and live your life with dignity and honor. There's also have a memorial to friends who've died. "Things From Wes' Nose" chronicles Wes' four sinus surgeries in five years, and gives some tips for fellow sinus sufferers. And there's even female mud wrestling. Seriously.
The Letter Wars | Wes' Mind | Wes' Nose | Who? | Honors | Guestbook | What else is new
The Letter Wars (aka The Homophobe Hellhole)Well, it seemed straightforward enough. Wes' large family was having a family reunion in Oregon. He would come from Houston and bring his partner. SPLAT! The caca hit the fan. Yes, Dear Readers, one particularly self-righteous aunt (whom we've dubbed Priscilla, Queen of the Northwest in honor of the drag movie of similar name) took it upon herself to call Wes and inform him that Tom was not invited. Wes was not amused. Read on for the gory details. And so it began. Letters back and forth. Both sides convinced of their moral superiority. Read the saga for yourself: We captured for posterity a living, fire-breathing example of homophobia.
Peruse the wildly homophobic rantings of the aunt, documented in a wonderfully bizarre series of letters that we've named The Letter Wars. See how we -- and particularly the rest of the family -- responded to Priscilla.
But keep a sense of humor while reading: After all, Priscilla puts the fun back in dysfunctional!
This is where much of the fun stuff is, including where Wes shares about his sister the former mud wrestler, when he drove over a cliff, and where he does his little rants on whatever comes to mind.
Includes People Wes knew who have died from AIDS and other ways.
Wes had chronic sinus problems. They were a regular drain on his immune system. We would have worried about the infections being caused by AIDS-related conditions, except that Bad Sinuses run on his dad's side of the family. Nonetheless, infections in AIDS Dudes need to be handled to ease the strain on the body. As a result, he had four surgeries in five years to clear up massive infections and internal design flaws with his sinuses. Here he shares tips for other sufferers, and shows some of the things that have come out. (Don't worry: You're forewarned before being presented with a picture...)
Who were we?
"Were?" We split up in 2008 after nearly 17 years after Tom broke an explicit trust agreement. Tom died in 2020. Wes keeps the site up as an anti-homophobia resource.
Previously, I described us as two cool dudes. Wes met Tom in a bar in October 1991. Tom was wearing jeans, a white-T-shirt and leather vest, and chaps. Wes was looking particularly studly in his cop uniform! After two years of commuting (Tom was in Dallas, Wes in Houston), we obtained a house together in Houston and Tom moved down.
The reason we use the word obtained to describe our housing arrangement is because China Cat actually owned everything. She was just kind enough to let us live there.
We made major changes in our lives in 1999-2000, moving to Austin, Texas, to be with our leatherboy, boy tim. Later in 2000, Wes & boy tim realized they preferred not living together.
In late 2002, Texas proposed reducing healthcare support to its uninsured citizens, so we moved to California.
For even more details, read our annual Christmas letters: 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. (It really helps to read them in order, as they tell the tale of how our relationship grew; cracked with drug addiction; and life after for Wes.)
If you are curious about intimate details, you can learn more about how we handled fidelity to each other in an open relationship in Tom's words on fidelity and trust.
But whatever you read, be sure not to miss The Story of Wes & Tom's Big Date, and Wes and Tom marry then split. Tom died in 2020.
And here are some pictures.
We've been blessed with fun recognition, including a nifty article in USA Today and a blurb in The Advocate!
We've had great messages through the years. We're trying out blogger.com as a new guestbook, and have saved a guestbook archive to read.
If you'd like to drop a line, send it to:
westomdotcom
[at]
officerwes.comWhen you write, please tell us how you got here. It's neat to hear!
This page had about a thousand unique hits each month for a decade. By 2007 the count was 177,000, when the incrementing slowed to a crawl.
Our best guess is that the search results of Google -- which find inside content directly -- made this intro page somewhat obsolete.
So, we took the counter down.
