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‘Wasn’t That Long Ago…’

topdog

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I read this today on another site (TR) and decided I would leave it here for thoughts and comments. Please forgive the length.

Warning - for men of a certain age it may be hard to finish in one sitting. This was written by Tucker Shaw, the editor of Cook’s Country magazine, two days ago and posted in pieces on twitter. Here it is gathered together.

5347324845_d849e0537b_z.jpg

I overheard a young man on the train on the way home today, talking to another young man. Holding hands. In college, I guessed. About that age anyway. Much younger than I am. He was talking about AIDS, in a scholarly way. About how it had galvanized the gay community. How it had spurred change. Paved the way to make things better, in the long run.

The long run.

Maybe he’s right. I don’t know. It’s not the first time I’ve heard the theory. He spoke with clarity and with confidence. Youthful, full of conviction. But. Remember how terrible it was, not that long ago, during the worst times. How many beautiful friends died. One after the other. Brutally. Restlessly. Brittle and damp. In cold rooms with hot lights. Remember? Some nights, you’d sneak in to that hospital downtown after visiting hours, just to see who was around. It wasn’t hard. You’d bring a boom box. Fresh gossip. Trashy magazines and cheap paperbacks. Hash brownies. Anything. Nothing. You’d get kicked out, but you’d sneak back in. Kicked out again. Back in again. Sometimes you’d recognize a friend. Sometimes you wouldn’t.

Other nights, you’d go out to dance and drink. A different distraction. You’d see a face in the dark, in the back of the bar. Is it you? Old friend! No. Not him. Just a ghost. At work, you’d find an umbrella, one you’d borrowed a few rainstorms ago from a coworker. I should return it, you’d think. No. No need. He’s gone. It’s yours now. Season after season. Year after year.

One day you’d get lucky and meet someone lovely. You’d feel happy, optimistic. You’d make plans. Together, you’d keep a list of names in a notebook you bought for thirty cents in Chinatown so you could remember who was still here and who wasn’t, because it was so easy to forget. But there were so many names to write down. Too many names. Names you didn’t want to write down. When he finally had to go too, you got rid of the notebook. No more names.

Your friends would come over with takeout and wine and you’d see how hard they tried not to ask when he was coming home because they knew he wasn’t coming home. No one came home. You’d turn 24. When he’d been gone long enough and it was time to get rid of his stuff, they’d say so. It’s time. And you’d do it, you’d give away the shirts, sweaters, jackets. Everything. Except those shoes. You remember the ones. He loved those shoes, you’d say. We loved those shoes. I’ll keep those shoes under the bed.

You’d move to a new neighborhood. You’d unpack the first night, take a shower, make the bed because it’d be bedtime. You’d think of the shoes. For the first time, you’d put them on. Look at those shoes. What great shoes. Air. You’d need air. You’d walk outside in the shoes, just to the stoop. You’d sit. A breeze. A neighbor steps past. “Great shoes,” she’d say. But the shoes are too big for you. You’d sit for a while, maybe an hour, maybe more. Then you’d unlace the shoes, set them by the trash on the curb. You’d go back upstairs in your socks. The phone is ringing. More news.

The long run. Wasn’t that long ago.
 

Shelter

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Hi Topdog,
I don't now why? But i really cried during reading this article. Why? As I said - I don't know. Perhaps I'm in a special mood today. But my tears bring me too relief - that our time now and today is a better one than some years ago.

But nonetheless - today I'm in a sad mood! And I don't know why as well.
 

dargelos

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Wasn't that long ago it seemed like we'd all be gone before now. The danger that's been sent from hell was going to kill us all. Ronnie's friends could hardly contain their glee at the prospect. It was worth staying alive just to prove the cunts wrong.
Remember how many of those thousands of deaths could have been avoided were it not for the deliberate delays to funding for education, treatment and research.
 

trencherman

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Wasn't that long ago it seemed like we'd all be gone before now. The danger that's been sent from hell was going to kill us all. Ronnie's friends could hardly contain their glee at the prospect. It was worth staying alive just to prove the cunts wrong.
Remember how many of those thousands of deaths could have been avoided were it not for the deliberate delays to funding for education, treatment and research.

My very own exact sentiments.

Cleaning up homes of friends who died are a truly sad duty. But it had to be done. Almost as if you’re performing their last rites, duty that fell on friends as in the many cases during the height of the AIDS epidemic when most of the deceased’s family had abandoned and disowned them.

But that has always been the case among gays even before the AIDS epidemic. The epilogue of one of my favourite gay novels, Andrew Holleran’s The Dancer and the Dance was a friend clearing up Malone’s stuff after his disappearance.
 

dargelos

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original title "When Aids was funny"​
 

tonka

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It was a brutal time. The deaths were brutal. The shunning of wonderful people by their families was brutal.
I helped clean out a few apartments. But the situation I remember best was a friend.

She lived in Seattle, and her hairdresser worked at a solon owned by a man whose son became a famous speed skater and celebrity.
Her hairdresser was also a painter, and a collector. As he became sicker, he became more isolated. He asked my friend to be the executor of his estate.
He lost his job and became really sick. My friend tried to contact his mother and sister by letter and phone. No response.
After he died, she tried to contact them again. One day, the doorbell rang. It was the sister, as the mother waited in a moving van.
"Give me the keys". They drove off.

A week later she went over to the apartment. Everything of value was gone. She cleaned out the rest.

Before he died, Eric gave her two of his paintings. They still hang in my friend's home.
 

trencherman

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If it interests you, read the London Review of Books’ AIDS related books review called Here Was A Plague that starts thus:

Aids starts with the deaths. With the dying. At first there was only confusion, incomprehension. Bodies that quickly became unintelligible to themselves. Nightsweats, shingles, thrush, diarrhoea, sores that crowded into mouths and made it impossible to eat. A fantastically rare form of pneumonia. Dementia in men of twenty: brains that shrank and withered. Tuberculosis of the stomach, of the bone marrow. A cancer meant to be slow-moving, to manifest benignly in elderly men from the Mediterranean, which burrowed from the outside in: from marks on the skin, to the stomach and lungs. Non-human illnesses: men dying from the blights of sheep, of birds, of cats, diseases no man had ever died of before. Men dying in the time it takes to catch and throw off a cold: ‘One Thursday,’ David France writes in How to Survive a Plague, ‘sexy Tommy McCarthy from the classifieds department stayed out late at an Yma Sumac concert. Friday he had a fever. Sunday he was hospitalised. Wednesday he was dead.’
 

NeverCD

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It was a brutal time. The deaths were brutal. The shunning of wonderful people by their families was brutal.
I helped clean out a few apartments. But the situation I remember best was a friend.

She lived in Seattle, and her hairdresser worked at a solon owned by a man whose son became a famous speed skater and celebrity.
Her hairdresser was also a painter, and a collector. As he became sicker, he became more isolated. He asked my friend to be the executor of his estate.
He lost his job and became really sick. My friend tried to contact his mother and sister by letter and phone. No response.
After he died, she tried to contact them again. One day, the doorbell rang. It was the sister, as the mother waited in a moving van.
"Give me the keys". They drove off.

A week later she went over to the apartment. Everything of value was gone. She cleaned out the rest.

Before he died, Eric gave her two of his paintings. They still hang in my friend's home.

I guess people really did believe it was contagious right?

Imagine a new virus arrives tomorrow and there is a ?. It's the first year or two the disease is not fully understood. Your friend gets it. Would you really visit and give him a great big sloppy kiss.

+ It wasn't purely a gay thing. Users got it too. Or blood donators. So... I guess some people really were genuinely afraid. Nature has programmed us to fear the unknown for good reasons.

It is after all a pretty terrifying disease, even today.
 

NeverCD

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Hi Topdog,
I don't now why? But i really cried during reading this article. Why? As I said - I don't know. Perhaps I'm in a special mood today. But my tears bring me too relief - that our time now and today is a better one than some years ago.

But nonetheless - today I'm in a sad mood! And I don't know why as well.

Better in some ways. But better in all ways? Has the world has become a more fickle and selfish place overall. People talk sweet but do nothing. They offer little to others in practical terms, but will state the moral position as if to direct others... but they do nothing themselves.

Also no one in government wants to tackle difficult primary problems, but become zealous about tackling the secondary issues. For example, people will get all kinds of STI's in a society where many cycle through large numbers of "partners". Just like the floozy who takes the pill and umpteen other things but eventually, after so many years of sleeping around, she ends up pregnant, so to the floozy who takes the same precautions but after years of fooling around he ends up hiv positive. He is shocked and, laughably (it it weren't so serious) cannot understand why or how it happened. But government policy will not encourage people to be monogamous, oh no! That's too difficult. So they tackle the issue of discrimination against the infected, pouring funding into that, and they throw up a few condom machines and hand out a few pamphlets. But everyone keeps fooling around, year after year after year. And no one dares say that is a stupid and risky lifestyle.
 
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