James “Jim” Brudner was a city plan­ner, activist, jour­nal­ist and pho­tog­ra­pher. Born in Queens, New York in 1961, Jim attended Stuyvesant High School before grad­u­at­ing from Yale in 1983 with a degree in American Studies ; involved in the­atre as a high school stu­dent, he con­tin­ued with those inter­ests while at Yale. Jim’s senior the­sis was titled “The Moses Method Denied: Robert Moses Meets Green­wich Vil­lage" and his love for cities and urban­ism guided him through­out his life. After mov­ing back to New York, Jim began a series of jobs work­ing in plan­ning and city gov­ern­ment, includ­ing the Depart­ment of Hous­ing Preser­va­tion and Devel­op­ment and the Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion.

Jim’s iden­ti­cal twin, Eric, was a tal­ented jazz musi­cian and com­poser; he died of AIDS-related ill­ness in 1987. Fol­low­ing Eric’s death, Jim became an active member of ACT UP and the Treat­ment Action Group. He also began to write, com­plet­ing a MA in Jour­nal­ism at New York Uni­ver­sity, and writ­ing pieces about gay par­ent­ing, AIDS activism and other sub­jects for The Forward and The New York Times. An avid out­doors­man and trav­eler, Jim cap­tured the rural, chang­ing land­scapes he vis­ited in his pho­tog­ra­phy, to which, later in his life, he devoted much of his time; in 1997 an exhi­bi­tion of his work was held at LaMama Gallery in New York. In his artist’s statement , he wrote: “As a result of our belief in eco­nomic growth at all costs, our world grows a lit­tle uglier with each pass­ing year. The days of many of my pho­to­graphic sub­jects are num­bered. My work is a pho­to­graphic record of an ear­lier world our sys­tem no longer seems to value.”

Jim Brud­ner died of AIDS-related ill­ness on Sep­tem­ber 18, 1998. He estab­lished an annual prize at Yale Uni­ver­sity that hon­ors indi­vid­u­als who have “made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the under­stand­ing of LGBT issues or fur­thered the tol­er­ance of LGBT peo­ple.”

When­ever Jim came by he reminded me of an idling mus­cle car, wait­ing for some­one to press the accel­er­a­tor. His con­ver­sa­tion was so full of mag­netic energy that even to this day, four­teen years after his death, it per­sists in my head: the boy­ish face glow­ing as he makes a point (“It’s incred­i­ble! JustaMAYYYzing!”), his eyes grow­ing large and his head shak­ing briskly from side to side, then form­ing a large cir­cle, each sen­tence flanked by puffs of laugh­ter.

At Yale I never expected nor wished to move to New York, but he talked about it with such infec­tious enthu­si­asm that after three years in San Fran­cisco I couldn’t wait to move there. I came to see the place through his eyes, fas­ci­nated by its archi­tec­ture, appalled yet intrigued by Robert Moses, addicted to the pos­si­bil­i­ties the city offered you. At Uncle Char­lie’s Down­town we met and watched the boys. But we always talked about more inter­est­ing mat­ters, too — at that boy-obsessed age a rather remark­able fact, now that I think about it.

Oh, and the gos­sip! This guy knew every­thing about every­body.  But he was so sweet and gen­er­ous in spirit that even his dish was filet mignon.

He was a big city boy, yet he was intrigued by my small-town roots. He was inter­ested in any­body who might teach him some­thing. I often think, Jesus, how many New York City stu­dents apply to Yale and get —that fact alone tells you some­thing about what an accom­plished and tal­ented per­son he was. Yet I never got the impres­sion that he thought he was smarter than me, or more deserv­ing of being at Yale, or more deserv­ing of any­thing.  

Our grad­u­a­tion year of 1983 was the bor­der­line between the old gay world of care­less love­mak­ing and the new gay world of the mor­tal embrace. I was lucky: it was all new to me. But Jim was an old pro by then. Per­haps his fate was already sealed. In the fol­low­ing decade of death and dying I never shed a sin­gle tear, no mat­ter how near to death I came, no mat­ter how many faces I saw rav­ished by the dis­ease. Today I am deeply, hor­ri­bly moved by it all.

Which brings me to the char­ac­ter­is­tic I honor most about him: his com­plete lack of anger and self-pity when it had become clear that he had drawn one of the unlucky cards in that most unlucky deck we lived in, the life of the young gay man in the 1980s. Eric’s ill­ness and funeral in 1987 were unpleas­ant real­ity checks for me. What else could they have been for Jim but heart­break­ing, unnerv­ing, ter­ri­fy­ing events?  Yet it never occurred to him to feel sorry for him­self, though more than once he remarked at how sorry he felt for his par­ents.

And that is why his lit­tle busi­ness card (“James R. Brud­ner, Jour­nal­ist, 72440.263@com­puserve.com) stays in my wal­let.  When the dis­ap­point­ments and regrets that occa­sion mid­dle age col­lect into self-pity, I pull out that card and remind myself how to live.

“You were/​are a fire­cracker of a stu­dent. You gave me more joy than I can tell you. You’ll give the world joy, too."

This is a quote from Frank McCourt, famed author of Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis, who was Jamie’s writ­ing teacher at Stuyvesant High School. Jamie was a fire­cracker who led the fresh­man-sopho­more classes to the first win ever for this group in Sing, an annual and hard-fought com­pe­ti­tion. He loved Show Biz and was, with his twin brother Eric, in every play and musi­cal at Stuyvesant. One of their most suc­cess­ful per­for­mances was “The Brud­ner Twins Play Gersh­win” to a sold out audi­ence of stu­dents, fac­ulty, par­ents and neigh­bors.

As a junior high school stu­dent, Jamie decided he wanted to go to Yale and was thrilled to ful­fill that goal when he was accepted through early deci­sion, and hap­pily with­draw­ing his appli­ca­tion from Har­vard. He loved Yale – and after grad­u­at­ing cum laude was elated when Alex Garvin invited him to deliver a guest lec­ture.

While a senior, Jamie dis­cov­ered that any­one who qual­i­fied could attend a music con­ser­va­tory in Ger­many free of charge. He stayed in New Haven for the sum­mer in order to take a cram course in Ger­man (a lan­guage with which he was totally unfa­mil­iar.) When the course was fin­ished, he packed his bags and bike and flew to Ger­many, con­fi­dent that when he audi­tioned at the Leopold Mozart Con­ser­va­to­rium in Augs­berg he would be accepted. And he was.

He spent the fol­low­ing year study­ing music and trav­el­ling all over Europe. He met his mother in Lon­don where she was tak­ing a the­atre course. And, of course, this pro­vided an oppor­tu­nity for him to enjoy some fine din­ing and unex­pected tour­ing. 

When he returned home after his year abroad, it was time to look for a job. He had an unusu­ally strong belief that he had a great deal to offer the pub­lic, and decided that the best place to do this was by work­ing for the City of New York. He worked for sev­eral dif­fer­ent city agen­cies, and although he was not a lawyer, he wrote and nego­ti­ated two con­tracts for the Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion that saved the city $8,000,000 per year.

He decided to pur­sue a Mas­ters in Jour­nal­ism. When asked why he chose New York Uni­ver­sity and not Colum­bia, he had a gen­uine “Jamie expla­na­tion.” He announced to us that after four years of being taught the the­ory of every sub­ject he stud­ied, he was look­ing for teach­ers who had real-world expe­ri­ence. He believed that NYU offered a jour­nal­ism fac­ulty of real reporters and news men and women rather than the the­o­rists he would find at Colum­bia. He briefly worked for the Stan­ford Advo­cate but felt he could do a bet­ter job by con­tin­u­ing to work for New York City, and returned.

He con­tin­ued to write free-lance arti­cles. He worked for a com­mit­tee of the National Insti­tutes of Health on AIDS research and trav­elled around the United States attend­ing meet­ings on this sub­ject. He was the only mem­ber of this group who was nei­ther a med­ical doc­tor nor a psy­chol­o­gist. One of his abil­i­ties that was highly respected by the group was his abil­ity to write reports and other tech­ni­cal mate­ri­als in under­stand­able Eng­lish. Dur­ing this time, he wrote an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times explain­ing the sci­ence behind the then cur­rent AIDS research.

He loved to travel across Europe and the United States tak­ing pho­tographs of towns, build­ings and peo­ple that he found inter­est­ing. He later had a suc­cess­ful show of his pho­tographs at LaMamma Gallery in Green­wich Vil­lage.

When his brother, Eric, died, we set up the Eric Brud­ner Memo­r­ial Music Fund at Brown Uni­ver­sity, his alma mater. This fund was orga­nized to pro­vide for a free annual con­cert at Brown Uni­ver­sity for stu­dents, fac­ulty and the peo­ple of Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island. Eric became a work­ing jazz pianist while still an under­grad­u­ate and had won the major music prizes at Brown. The objec­tive of the con­cert was to bring in well known, work­ing jazz musi­cians to work with the music stu­dents and par­tic­i­pate in the con­cert together with the Brown Jazz Band.

Jamie always brought a large con­tin­gent to the con­certs. And when he knew he was ill, he wanted to cre­ate some­thing that would not put an addi­tional emo­tional bur­den on his par­ents. That was the gen­e­sis of the Yale Brud­ner Prize.

Jim Brud­ner was part of why I came to Yale.  I vis­ited as a senior between rehearsals for my high school’s pro­duc­tion of “Pip­pin.”  While wait­ing for an inter­view I wan­dered into a piano room and was plunk­ing out the melody for “Cor­ner of the Sky” with one fin­ger when a ball of brunet energy with flash­ing eyes rushed by, stopped, turned, and said, “You’re doing that wrong! Let me show you.” Leap­ing onto the bench Jim glanced at my score, played the first full page beau­ti­fully while singing it bet­ter than I ever would, then started riff­ing off jazz inter­pre­ta­tions. By the time he fin­ished with an imp­ish smile I had decided that a) I would attend Yale and b) some­how I’d find a way to date that hand­some rogue.

One out of two ain’t bad.  

I took some time to mourn the fact that Jim would never be my Boyfriend.  But he quickly became a good friend, and a guide to a more rogu­ish, rau­cous and joy­ous approach to life than I had known before that.  Jim took me to Part­ners, New Haven’s first gay bar, where I became a favored mas­cot “fag hag” and learned to dance with real aban­don, unfet­tered by dat­ing con­cerns — as Jim did, dat­ing con­cerns or no.  Jim intro­duced me to Freud and Jung and dream inter­pre­ta­tion dur­ing his stint as a Psy­chol­ogy major, which he dropped sum­mar­ily when he felt he had "learned enough” about him­self (he fin­ished as an Amer­i­can Stud­ies major, enjoy­ing both the broad can­vas of Amer­i­can cul­ture and being able to say “I’m Am Stud”).  Jim taught me proper weight lift­ing, which he did reg­u­larly to keep fit and keep at bay pain from an old back injury, but also because, as he said, “One should never under­es­ti­mate the plea­sures of a good endor­phin high.” He helped me exper­i­ment with other highs as well, teach­ing me that expe­ri­ence with altered con­scious­ness, prop­erly chan­neled, can help strengthen con­scious aware­ness. 

I rec­og­nized early that Jim’s full-bore zest for life and all within it was indi­vis­i­ble.  The energy that made him an accom­plished jazz pianist, artist, pho­tog­ra­pher, weight lifter, cross-coun­try bicy­clist, advo­cate for the hand­i­capped and for gay rights, great friend and much else was also the energy that drove him to try any­thing and every­thing that might bring new bite, new excite­ment to life.  When help­ing clean out Jim’s apart­ment after he died, another friend (Steve) and I found a black Hefty garbage sack filled with thou­sands of clothes-pins. I haven’t the faintest idea what Jim did with those clothes-pins, but Steve and I found some breath­less and much needed laugh­ter try­ing to imag­ine what exper­i­ments Jim might have got­ten up to with them.

In some ways my quin­tes­sen­tial per­sonal mem­ory of Jim was the day he first tried LSD and asked me to babysit in case his trip went bad. He was a junior in col­lege then, excru­ci­at­ingly hand­some and dressed nat­tily for the occa­sion, his curly hair bounc­ing with excite­ment as he savored the fla­vor of the tab. Then he sat at his piano and played softly while the drug took effect, remain­ing a lucid com­men­ta­tor who noted joy­ously as the musi­cal sounds for him grew col­ors, and sprouted wings. His play­ing, if any­thing, became more beau­ti­ful. I remem­ber think­ing at the time both that I would never want to take the flash­back risks of acid, and that because Jim was will­ing to take those risks he was hav­ing a rich­ness of expe­ri­ence that I envied. His trip was a good one. His trips nearly always were.

In think­ing of Jim I’ve often come back to Pip­pin: “Every­thing has a sea­son, every­thing has its time.  Show me a rea­son and I’ll soon show you a rhyme….”  Jim’s life ended far before its sea­son, yet he lived more fully in his few years than did many who have out-aged him by decades.  I’m now get­ting close to twice the age Jim was when he died.  I’m hap­pily mar­ried, a par­ent with a decades-long career, prop­erty, and retire­ment accounts. Jim never got to expe­ri­ence those joys, a fact I still mourn. But I can’t mourn one iota of the full-throt­tle excite­ment and won­der of his life. I miss him still.

It’s the early ’90s at a party hosted by a mutual Yale friend, Steve Car­lin. Jim is explain­ing the behind-the-scenes machi­na­tions that plague the redesign of the side­walks of Sixth Avenue in Green­wich Vil­lage, mak­ing it clear that 1) though he worked as a pol­icy ana­lyst at the NYC Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion, this was not his pro­ject, and 2) despite some noble efforts, not all of his col­leagues are as ded­i­cated and skilled as he is. I play the pushy, pissed-off local a lit­tle too real­is­ti­cally, and Jim’s exas­per­a­tion builds. Our dis­pu­ta­tion, our debate—the kind of heated ver­bal tus­sle Jim thrived on—soon expands to embraces pol­i­tics, prag­ma­tism, phi­los­o­phy. Despite, or because, we nearly come to blows, I know imme­di­ately this is a per­son I want to have in my life.

Jim grew up on the sub­ways and could eas­ily have decked me.  He was proud of his mus­cu­la­ture, hav­ing recently shed the extra pounds he put on after his twin brother, Eric, died of AIDS; but he knew that words were his best weapons. He expertly deployed both when­ever he went out cruis­ing.  

He was wise; I learned much later that beneath his con­fi­dent and hyper-artic­u­late demeanor, he was smart enough not to hide his vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties (at least some of them) from those he trusted. He was also insa­tiably curi­ous. He wanted to know how every­thing worked, and how it could be made to work bet­ter. Then he would explain it all to you in an avalanche of details and con­nec­tions, and ask more ques­tions. In urban plan­ning and AIDS pol­icy, for exam­ple. Or what he saw when he drove through rural Amer­ica with cam­era in hand. Not averse to self-pro­mo­tion, he could tell you, to the exact dol­lar, how much money he saved for the city when he man­aged bus routes in Brook­lyn and Queens. This was actu­ally kind of endear­ing, mostly because Jim loved to laugh at his own eccen­tric­i­ties. 

Liv­ing with HIV, Jim drafted his many friends into an exten­sive sup­port net­work.  He knew exactly how each of us would be able to assist him, and he did not hes­i­tate to ask for help. Because Jim and I lived only a few blocks apart, he some­times called me on his way to the emer­gency room with a minutely detailed list of instruc­tions— what books to gather, where to find extra pairs of socks, which mag­a­zines to hide from the clean­ing woman. This hap­pened more than once, so when Steve phoned to tell me Jim had been admit­ted to St. Vin­cent’s with what would be his final ill­ness, I nat­u­rally assumed that once every­one did what Jim needed them to do, he would be home in a few days’ time.

One Decem­ber, Jim and I both decided we were through with the New Year’s Eve bar-and-party scene. A bet­ter plan: We would cel­e­brate together qui­etly, just the two of us, with Chi­nese take-out and a rented video. Jim came over bear­ing Taxi Dri­ver. It’s a dark and vio­lent film, an odd hol­i­day choice—but then, Jim was an urban anthro­pol­o­gist who got a charge from the film’s depic­tion of the streets just a few blocks east of his apart­ment as an expres­sion­is­tic jun­gle. And as a com­poser, he was enam­ored with Bernard Her­mann’s score.  At the stroke of mid­night we shared a cham­pagne toast and a good, long hug.  

Per­fect.  

Then, sheep­ishly, we headed out sep­a­rately to the very par­ties and bars we had lately scorned. We laughed about it soon enough, and look­ing back, that’s the evening I first real­ized I loved Jim.

Jim was my big brother, my con­fi­dant, my role model.  I wish he were here today, writ­ing about pol­i­tics, play­ing the piano, pho­tograph­ing aban­doned store­fronts, explain­ing how cities func­tion, sav­ing money for the tax­pay­ers. I miss Jim ter­ri­bly, and I love him still.