A flash memoir about the legacy of AIDS in Gen X bodies.
- Red Noise Collective
I Am Thinking About AIDS
I am thinking about AIDS. I am thinking about AIDS and space. A mentor of mine once remarked about the proliferation of muscle queens in early-90s San Francisco, “They have to make up space for the ones who are gone.” My mentor was then very slim and lithe. He began showing symptoms shortly thereafter and became almost unrecognizably over-muscled himself. I am thinking about how I pull my limbs towards my torso so as not to take up too much space. I am thinking about how I am learning to expand instead. I am thinking about a day on the beach in the early 80s, when my dad told me with tears in his eyes that his friend Dick had died but had never told my father he was sick. I am thinking that mom and dad really loved Dick but didn’t know how. I am thinking how they thought he was cool but were also afraid of him. I remember thinking then that I knew why Dick didn’t tell them. I am thinking about how this told me who I was. I am thinking of Jerry Falwell and Anita Bryant and Bad Brains and how they also told me who I was, and that sex was panic. I am thinking about how my friend simply disappeared one day by way of a midnight Mormon rendition. I am thinking how we were never able to locate him. I am thinking how I also thought he was cool and scary. I am thinking about a whole inter-generation of us who were too young to experience the plague in its terrible immediacy but nonetheless have trauma in our joints.
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