As of this month, I have been on this planet for 46 years. I never thought I would see 40, much less 46, so it can be difficult to believe I’m here.
I feel like my life truly began when I left home for college at 17. I was not a smarty pants who skipped grades or anything, I just started kindergarten at the age of four because my birthday falls in September. I could have waited another year but my mother thought I could handle school at that age.
A male in musical theater who could sing, dance and act, I had my pick of colleges upon graduation. I wanted to be as far away from Florida as possible. Somehow, innately, I knew this was how I would begin my new life; my actual life. No more orange groves. No more big fish, small pond theaters. No more rules.
I had chosen the University of Cincinnati, College – Conservatory of Music (CCM) to attend. To me, Cincinnati was a huge city. It was also a renowned school for musical theater with a far reach into the world of Broadway musicals. It was magical, new and exciting. It was 1993.
In 1993, the world was consumed by a global pandemic: HIV and AIDS. It was everywhere in my world, specifically. One of my professors was open and had been diagnosed with it and we, as students, were confronted daily by his fragility but conversely, his will to fight.
This pandemic was transmitted through the exchange of fluids, but there was a massive stigma surrounding the disease and the gay men it, at least initially, seemed to have been specifically targeting.
Watching icons die, week after week, became numbing. Friends, afraid of touching, afraid of drinking from the same water fountain, afraid of sharing a restroom, were normal occurrences. My life, relationships and romantic world became about avoiding contact. Real physical contact.
Then, if contact was made, began the worry of “Do I have it now?’ “Do you have it?” Each new relationship started by going to get tested together. My first boyfriend that tested positive wept in my arms when he was diagnosed. We wept together in fact because we did not know if the future we thought we were on the verge of beginning was going to even happen.
We were young and in love, facing mortality at 19 or 20. Sex could literally kill you. Then the “cocktail” came and there was a light at the end of a very dark tunnel – a mixture of certain drugs that helped to rebuild the immune system that has now brought people living with HIV/AIDS to a point of no detection of the disease. The development in the treatment of this global pandemic that I have seen over the near 30 years I have been aware of its existence is truly incredible.
It is sad to think of the lives lost due to misinformation, ignorance, misguided anger and bigotry due to its initial attack on the gay population. It was also quite angering. I wanted to do something, needed to do something, so I joined ACT UP.
ACT UP was an organization that not only talked about the devastation HIV/AIDS created but also protested inaction of governmental agencies with undeniably public displays. I also became involved with the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and helped whenever I could. These were tangible ways to deal with my pain, hurt and anger.
In 2020, the world was consumed by a global pandemic. This time it truly affected everyone. No sub-genre of a supposed sub-class of human, but men and women, LGBTQ+ folx, all global citizens.
This pandemic was and is, as best we can tell, exchanged through means like the air. Contact is to be avoided. Masks are necessary for everyday life. I cannot help but equate this to the AIDS crisis I have already lived through.
Masks = Condoms. Social Distancing = Abstinence. If we had a vaccine that would have prevented people dying from AIDS, I would have been first in line and administered it daily if I had to in order to save lives, including my own.
This time however, the stigma is being placed on those who wear masks and get vaccinated by some. We have once again turned something that should bring us together into a fight over who is right and who is wrong.
It is a fool’s errand to make judgements on things we barely know anything about. We barely know anything about the current pandemic and its possible variants due to its infancy. Scientists and doctors are as reliable as the knowledge they currently have and are not psychics or fortune tellers.
Change does not always bring out the best in people and the divisiveness in our current culture surely proves that, but I must believe that there is love and hope in people. I must believe that people are inherently good.
I must believe that we can come together and make good decisions that will help all. I have witnessed and lived through the onset of two global pandemics and the one thing I can truly attest to is that a person’s true colors are revealed when faced with dramatic change.
This is 46.
