What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

river-b:

lemme talk for a minute about the regan-era “conversation” about HIV and AIDS in this country.

lemme talk about my grandmother and great aunt who were disinvited from bridge games and dinner parties, by people they had known for 20, 30 YEARS, because their friends were afraid they’d catch the “gay cancer” from touching playing cards or cutlery touched by these amazing women who were taking care of my cousin while he died. Cut off, with the most pathetic excuses, from friends, because they were reading to him when he could barely open his eyes because the light hurt, cooking for him, food soft enough for him to eat with the sores in his mouth, holding his hand while he wept because he was dying, and half his friends were sick, and a quarter of them were already dead. 

lemme talk about the boy in my health class who argued violently and at length that he knew FOR A FACT that you made AIDS by mixing the blood or the semen of [gay men] (not the word he used. and the teacher didn’t say a thing when he used a slur instead). 

lemme talk about walking down the street in my flowery dress and combat boots with my freshly shaved head and having a man snatch his 6yo daughter out of my path when she smiled at me while he hissed at her “don’t look at her, she’s got cancer” and I knew he didn’t mean cancer. 

lemme talk about sitting in a cafe eating lunch under a TV screen that cycled pictures of men in the neighborhood who had died of AIDS, and never coming back to the same picture.

lemme talk about doing sexual health education in 1992 and coming across people who’d moved to California for college who had literally NO IDEA that you could get AIDS from having PiV sex. 

lemme talk about AIDS quilt panels as far as the eye could see, and standing at a podium reading lists of names in hour-long shifts, dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of people in a row. 

lemme talk about kiss-ins where you were at a very real risk of being assaulted for kissing someone on the lips.

lemme talk about people dying alone because their lovers and friends weren’t allowed to visit them in the hospital.

lemme talk about years and years and years of SILENCE from the government and the media.

lemme talk about how there was no conversation at all.

(via kissmeagainarthas)

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