25 years
thanks to more media coverage than ever existed when AIDS was recognized by the CDC - I've learned over the past few days that this is the 25th Anniversary of AIDS...how can that be?
I came out during the mid 80's...I came out surrounded by a group of gay hairdressers that adopted me as one of their own....I started going to the bars before I came out so I grew up with a bunch of older, queeny dudes in a lot of ways....and then in the midst of the partying we started seeing little blips in the gay magazines brought in from Atlanta and Charlotte that something was making gay men sick...pneumonia, weird skin lesions, death....nobody took it seriously, we still didn't exist, what could possibly be targeting gay guys....but then in Columbia SC, those older, queeny dudes started disappearing - and not coming back....it was here and it was real...
Big Daddy Reagan turned a blind eye for a long time and then only begrudgingly gave a nod to what was going on...oh, we protested, we screamed, we yelled, we made visible political statements to shock people into paying attention...but still 25 million people are dead and looking into the future the projected death rates make me want to puke....
sure there's great progress in prevention and disease management, but how did this happen?....we're more concerned about a mystery pandemic that may or may not ever happen than a disease that is still killing a staggering number of people every second of every day....
I'm part of the first generation who had to deal with AIDS as part of our sexuality...my nieces and nephews have never lived in a time where that disease didn't exist...I've lost friends and family - some whose names I can't even remember now....cried at the quilt, cried at bedsides, just cried because it sucks so bad to see people fade away....but it's still here...still scarey, still daunting to have an HIV test no matter what your sexual history...
I don't have any answers....I don't even know if I'm still angry...but I do know remembering the 25th anniversary of AIDS is something that never would have occurred to me...
I came out during the mid 80's...I came out surrounded by a group of gay hairdressers that adopted me as one of their own....I started going to the bars before I came out so I grew up with a bunch of older, queeny dudes in a lot of ways....and then in the midst of the partying we started seeing little blips in the gay magazines brought in from Atlanta and Charlotte that something was making gay men sick...pneumonia, weird skin lesions, death....nobody took it seriously, we still didn't exist, what could possibly be targeting gay guys....but then in Columbia SC, those older, queeny dudes started disappearing - and not coming back....it was here and it was real...
Big Daddy Reagan turned a blind eye for a long time and then only begrudgingly gave a nod to what was going on...oh, we protested, we screamed, we yelled, we made visible political statements to shock people into paying attention...but still 25 million people are dead and looking into the future the projected death rates make me want to puke....
sure there's great progress in prevention and disease management, but how did this happen?....we're more concerned about a mystery pandemic that may or may not ever happen than a disease that is still killing a staggering number of people every second of every day....
I'm part of the first generation who had to deal with AIDS as part of our sexuality...my nieces and nephews have never lived in a time where that disease didn't exist...I've lost friends and family - some whose names I can't even remember now....cried at the quilt, cried at bedsides, just cried because it sucks so bad to see people fade away....but it's still here...still scarey, still daunting to have an HIV test no matter what your sexual history...
I don't have any answers....I don't even know if I'm still angry...but I do know remembering the 25th anniversary of AIDS is something that never would have occurred to me...
posted by Lee @ Monday, June 05, 2006
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