The Book of David: My East Harlem Love Story

David Rivera and I were young teens when we met in East Harlem/El Barrio in 1960. We went our separate ways after high school and were out of sight and touch for almost half a century. We were in our 60s when we reconnected in 2010 at a neighborhood reunion. We fell quickly, madly and deeply in love. From the beginning music was a connective tissue of our relationship. When David and I were coming of age in New York City, and especially in East Harlem, doo wop, R&B and latin (some call it salsa) music spilled out of apartment windows, dance halls, record shops, restaurant jukeboxes, project hallways and street corners. David and I did not get to spend 20, 10 or even five full years together, but we squeezed so much joy and countless sweet memories out of the time that we had. David was my lover, my comrade, my homie and my friend. My God, how I loved that man; how I loved the people of our old hood; and how I love the music that made us dance and that sustained us as David journeyed to his death in 2015 due to complications of lung cancer. As the group New Edition sang back in 1988, love is easy on sunny days, but can love stand the rain? Ours did. This book is a celebration of love and a reminder that real love can show up at any age. This book is my testimony that death does not have the last word. Just as good music plays on long after the composers, the musicians and the singers have died, love lives beyond the grave. I thank God for loving and keeping me after David ascended to higher ground and for giving me a story to write and to share in The Book of David: My East Harlem Love Story.