tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178687658619226992.post1131675546273016673..comments2023-10-25T06:16:12.993-05:00Comments on Let's Be Clear: Remembering family and friends on World AIDS DayDebChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02018798227792356966noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178687658619226992.post-9670283218990514192009-12-03T00:53:39.521-06:002009-12-03T00:53:39.521-06:00Separated at birth is right! I welcome the compos...Separated at birth is right! I welcome the compositions, Cin and am certainly glad to inspire them! Our stories matter, whether this generation cares about them or not. I just want to tell them before they're lost in the "melting pot." <br /><br />Yep that <i>is</i> what we all thought about it back then - until Magic Johnson. Ruthie was so taken aback, she never breathed a word once she was diagnosed in the late 80s (she'd left the boyfriend and had another guy who really loved her by then).<br /><br />It wasn't til she was hospitalized that I knew. Mama and her baby sister (5 years older than me) called to tell me they were driving up to pick me up in MD on their way to see her in NY. She'd told them she had cancer.<br /><br />As soon as I walked on that ward, I knew. When I looked into her eyes - she knew I knew. I had to tell my mother and aunt, both of whom seemed to visibly retract their embrace. I couldn't, I had to hug her - tight. She wanted to leave her room for the day room(her roommate was merely charred-looking skin stretched over bones). So I brushed her hair, put my arm around her shoulder and off we all went. There was a piano there. The patients and nurses were singing all kinds of shit! We sidled on up, holding hands and joined in - loud, off-key, laughing. Her sisters sat off to the side - afraid.<br /><br />She got better - no more lesions on her face, shapely, beautiful - and that mouth like a sailor was back! But now <i>ALL</i> the family knew and when she was around, you could tell. But she was back, on her own "Fuck 'em if they can't see it's still me!" terms.<br /><br />She got her "papers" in order, knew who'd be raising her son (another sister living in NY - her first stop when she came up from "Down South") came home one last time to see her mother - and lived til she died a few years later. Another "dividing time" along this journey of me. <br /><br />Most of us, gay or not, were lucky during those times - some were not. I know what you mean about the "missing." My time in Key West was like that. Friends died - Black, white, Latino. Some of their names are in granite at the Aids Memorial there.<br /><br />I had a month-long birthday celebration one year ending in a night of drinking, dancing and laughing with 2 friends - a white gay guy and a Black woman (the husband's not a partier though I met him in a club. Go figure!). The next day I got a call from Norma saying Kenneth had died - after he got home that night! I wrote a column about it - maybe I'll scan and post it. So many memories...<br /><br />See, you inspire as well.<br /><br />I'd love to hear your grandmother's story,Cin. Already sounds a lot like mine! I've known a "MuhDeah" or two myself! :-) I hope you write it.DebChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02018798227792356966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178687658619226992.post-63666217082700770502009-12-02T20:59:29.602-06:002009-12-02T20:59:29.602-06:00Deb, Deb, Deb...I can never just co-sign your post...Deb, Deb, Deb...I can never just co-sign your posts with a simple, "okay?" or, "I heard that!" Lengthy compositions are not only inspired, but simply required by your thought-provoking essays. <br /><br />I lived in Los Angeles for many of my early adult and early middle aged years. I worked with one of the first patients ever to be diagnosed with the "gay disease" that then had no name. It wasn't until after he passed away that I, along with the rest of the world, began to understand what the "cold or something he just couldn't seem to shake," as he described it, was.<br /><br />I lived in West Hollywood back then, which was almost a homosexual Mecca at the time. The area teemed with so many (mainly male) homosexuals that it resembled a mega Pride Day parade every day, with crowds swelling to traffic-stopping proportions on Friday, peaking on Saturday, and starting all over again Sunday. A few short years later, the difference was startling. It was impossible not to notice just how many people were just...missing. Gone.<br /><br />I remember going to Lakers games during that time and wondering to myself whether the players were taking responsible precautions, hoping they were, but suspecting they were not. When Magic Johnson announced his infection, I felt uncomfortably prescient and impotent, as well as incredibly sad. Fortunately, all of my personal friends managed to escape infection, but then, I've been known to give cases of condoms to everybody on my Christmas list.<br /><br />Since I've been away from the area so long now, I'm kinda out of the loop, but, as far as I know everybody's still fine. But, all my friends and family dramatically changed our wild child behavior PDQ, and believe me, for some of us, that amounted to a 180 degree turn. But when I see the AIDs quilt all I can think of is all those nameless people who I used to see and party with and among back in the day, who suddenly so obviously just weren't there anymore.<br /><br />Maybe one day I'll tell you about my maternal grandmother who had 13 children, 10 that lived past infancy, starting in about 1917, and my father's Pentecostal pioneer missionary "MuhDeah," who had 2, and looked down on her son's wife's family for being "country," "low class," and "po'," though both my grandparents' families made it to Chicago by way of downstate Illinois and Missouri respectively, after their predecessors "escaped" the Deep South at least a generation before.Ciniehttp://cinie.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178687658619226992.post-87265544254739461572009-12-01T22:38:46.915-06:002009-12-01T22:38:46.915-06:00Gracias tanto, mi amor. Estaba hace algún tiempo p...Gracias tanto, mi amor. Estaba hace algún tiempo pero todavía lo siento profundamente. <br /><br />While I was there, no they didn't. We watched several Black, gay people die alone pretty much, while preachers told the congregation what "sinners" they had been. As I wrote this, I was talking to my youngest who remembered my friend Gary, "eating with us for some reason" and then dying - with none of his family around him.<br /><br />I sent Clayton and email today after finding him. I wanted to see where they were with what we'd started. He's not yet responded.<br /><br />Yes, the paper's readership definitely increased once I got my own column. That was the whole "business" purpose of the editor giving me the opportunity -though she said it was, "to make the paper look like the community it served." I know the purpose was to increase readership. And I was fine with that - because I thought I had something to say that would resonate with the disenfranchised - Black, Latino and otherwise.<br /><br />But stupid me, I had no idea how it all worked until a friend - not the editor, but a reporter sharing my cubicle - told me about saving my "clips" (no journalism degree then, or now for that matter!). That's why I can't link directly to the pieces, but rather, I have to scan what I saved in order to re-post. <br /><br />They got me good. I knew nothing about the newspaper business. My Black ass was just happy to speak for, and be heard - and of course, published - for posterity. That's also why I write this blog right now. Not for traffic, ads or blog awards - but for my children. I want them to always know who I was - outside of "Mom."<br /><br />I'm sure there's something I can do, I just don't know what - yet. But I'm working on it. Those columns and editorials are my, "intellectual property" - in the words of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy. I've started writing a sort of, "then-and-now" book on Key West (a compilation of the columns/editorials with updates on the subjects). And as soon as I find out how to get <b>all my shit,</b> they'll all be available without my having to scan, cut and paste.<br /><br />My time there, was definitely the best part of my professional and personal life - I can't lie. I found my voice, myself. I became a part of that community like I never had anywhere else and I treasure that to this day.DebChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02018798227792356966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178687658619226992.post-43367196699556302302009-12-01T21:45:13.908-06:002009-12-01T21:45:13.908-06:00Did the community leaders ever come around? I bet...Did the community leaders ever come around? I bet you had quite the readership at your little paper. <br /><br />Mi sentido pésame.eanoreply@blogger.com