It's been 24 years yesterday

Well, if you have been reading this blog any length of time, you know yesterday was a milestone event for me.  I was in NYC last night, staying at the Chelsea Savoy in the Chelsea Neighborhood of West 21 and Fashion Avenue and I celebrated living twenty-four years with AIDS.  (Me at the right with Swatch of Mood Fabric's and Project Runway Fame!)

First let me begin by saying that this trip to NYC was planned around the start of my second Residency at Fairfield Universities Creative Writing MFA Program, which I am very blessed to be in.  My major is Creative Writing and I have spent the last seven months writing my memoirs.  What has it been like, in my perspective, to be have lived twenty-four years in NE Ohio with AIDS.  It's given me a lot of time to reflect, to write and to see things in a new way.

Until January of this year I had this feeling that I didn't know why I had lived as long as I had, when so many others have died --- most recently my friend Edye Gregory.  January I finally was able to put the pieces together and know I had simply had survived to write.  I write to give my voice to the diaspora of literature on what it means to live with AIDS and to live with it long-term.

Many of you know I have had my share or hurdles to face: three rounds of Chemotherapy for Kaposi Scarcoma, four rounds of pneumonia, two rounds of double pneumonia, a spell of meningitis, bouts of neuropathy, the death of two partners from AIDS as well as countless friends and most recently a stay in a nursing facility for physical rehab last August.  It, simply, has been no cake walk; but I'm not complaining.  I had had it easy.

Let me explain.  I met a young man today, actually a young homeless man, living on the streets of NYC.  He was around 23, covered in KS sores and a cardboard sign "Homeless.  HIV+.  Please Help."  We spoke for a few minutes.  Since he is homeless he is ineligible for Medicaid/Medicare.  Which makes him ineligible for medication, except through the Free Clinic and except from receiving Radiation to help with the KS.  It gets worse.  Since there is no address he is ineligible for Food Stamps and relies on an overworked, inadequate Free Meals through different shelters.  A friend of his, also HIV+, this last January froze to death on the streets.  His friend was 21 at the time.  I have not been able to get this young man out of my mind.  I gave him some money and my left over lunch I couldn't eat.  Unable to find a "solution" to his "issue", he says he fears he will freeze to death as well.

It has never been that bad for me.  I deeply grateful.  Yet, HIV/AIDS in this country is a chronic, manageable disease.  Till this to this young man.  Better yet, till it to our soon to be incoming President whomever he/she may be.  What can we do?  Right now, I really don't know.  There has to be something.  Maybe it was just telling his story.  Maybe it was the few bills I gave him.

My life after all has been a cake walk.  I am so very thankful, for so very much.

My mind was filled with memories to this trip.  Last time I was in the Chelsea Savoy Ron was alive, and if I think right that was at least 18 years ago.  I kept thinking of him today.  Wondering if he would be proud of who I am become since 2002 when he died.  What would he say to me.  Better yet, what would I say to him?

I came to this trip nervous and anxious.  I've greyed considerably since January when I left Enders Island.  I'm twenty pounds heavier too.  I was (or am) out of mind ––– when there is so much to be thankful for.

If you've read this far I wouldn't change much of the last twenty-four years.  Here's looking for the next twenty-four

Survival

     I know it's been a while since my last post.  College life as a senior has taken up so much time, energy and effort that this blog has really suffered and for that I am deeply sorry.  It is after all my outlet to openly speak, and bring awareness to topics I think we should know about.

     I sit here today, realizing that somehow, someway I have been deeply blessed to say that as of today I have survived AIDS for 23 years.  Now, I know what you maybe thinking, especially those who were reading regularly, "Charlie you have only 22 years".  Well, I met a friend recently with photographs, that I also happen to have, and we got to digging about information for the Cleveland Gay Pride event, which is where the photographs were taken and its 23 years ago not 22.  It is those photographs in June that for me mark the year as it was in July I got my diagnosis.

     You can imagine my surprise that I had made that simple mistake.  Maybe some of you think "Well  it's only one year what's the big deal?"  The big deal is it finally sunk in that my being diagnosed with AIDS has been half my life and beginning next year it will be over half of my lifetime.

     I know, a miracle into itself that somehow, someway I was able to pull through the early days of the gay holocaust, when nothing but death was around us.  Somehow, I managed to survive through only having one medication that was available to treat us.  Somehow, I survived losing over 600 friends, acquaintances, fellow gay men who in many cases I saw die before my very eyes; while some of those deaths were filled with medical violence--side effects, over use of drug induced comfort and families who in some cases were down right horrible.

     That I was a witness to a "funeral" in front of the White House, with the deceased in a wooden coffin, with the lid off and the young man in that coffin that day was just a few years older than I was.

     Somehow, I have survived where everyone, at every moment was talking simply safe sex.   Now, we as gay men live in an environment were there is the discussion about "safe" barebacking.  We live in an environment now, thankfully where we are living longer, but for those of us who have lived as long or longer than I have how do create a full, enriching and satisfying life when we have literally seen the monstrous eyes of the plague itself?

     This is something I struggle with a fair amount of the time.  It is why I am in college in the first place.  To try to create a life off Medicaid, Medicare, and Food Stamps.  To finally have a career, a life where I can possibly own something, buy something without worrying about how am I going to buy food. To be a contributing member to society.  To be able to work to build an IRA and retirement.  To give voice to the stories I want to tell, to give focus to the research I want to do and finally and most importantly, in my opinion, give at least one voice to those of us who have survived the earliest years.

     My awareness to AIDS came as early as 1986, when I was a mere 19 year boy.  I lost a very good friend to what was then called GRID.   Actually to be honest with you he was a boyfriend.  As a 19 yer old boy, I loved him deeply and when he died I stumbled head first into a world of pills and booze.  Pills and booze, it was a battle for years with two trips into rehab.  But as in all cases time marches on and I fell in love again and by October 1988  I was burying a second lover to AIDS.

     That event lead to my first suicide attempt and my falling "off the wagon" and falling even further into the abyss by frequenting gay bath houses.  It is something I am not proud of, I rarely admit it, but I think for many gay men--- my self included-- it was a part of our lives and our darkest days.

     I was then in an 11 month relationship, that ended with my being thrown down an entire flight of stairs.  It had been violent all along and it took cement stairs to bring me to finally leaving that relationship.  Once again "off the wagon" and back to the baths.

     By 1992 I met an incredible man named Ron Rooy Sr.  who simply turned my world upside down.  I dried out completely.  I stop the cycle of the baths.  I was madly in love with a phenomenal man.  We were together four short months of 10 years when he died in our home in 2002.  I have loved him like no other.

     I think about him a lot these days.  Would he be proud of what I 'm trying to do today?   Would he approve of the man I have become?  What would he say about my Honors Thesis work, a Creative Nonfiction piece on gays in the Holocaust?  Would we really enjoy my trying to become a teacher and author?

     I know at my core, if given the chance I would still be with him. today  In many ways I still am.  He was able to finish my sentences, he knew me inside and out.  He was not only my lover, my husband---he was my best friend.  I lost so much when he died, and honestly at times I wonder if I have ever recovered.

   I sit here today knowing how blessed I have been.  Sometimes I wonder why.  Why me?  Why did I survive the horrors of the gay holocaust? Why am I now thinking about my "old age" when 23 years ago that wasn't even an option.  A career with Full Blown AIDS, 23 years ago was damn near impossible and now it is a reality.  So much has changed; and I wonder have I changed enough with the times?

     Am I still living in the past?  Has the past overshadowed everything else?  What will the next 25 years of living with AIDS be like?  By that time I will be 72 years old, and living with AIDS for 50 of them.  Is that even a possibility?  Will our pharmaceuticals make that a reality?  Will our society as a whole change even more dramatically in acceptance or will we still be bogged in ignorance and bigotry?

     For now I am thankful for what I do have.  I am, if I have to be honest, thankful for even the struggles because without them I wouldn't be the man I am today.  I met a Hindu swami recently and asked his advice for someone living this long with AIDS.  He first said in his country my story would more than likely never happen.  He felt I was looking at my diagnosis with AIDS all wrong.  Maybe G-d chose to come and manifest him/herself as AIDS so I could literally see the face of G-d.  That through this "disease" not only see G-d but feel his/her presence all around me; that I may have missed the appearance of G-d in my life because I chose to see it the way I did.

     I know he didn't mean it as G-d's curse on me, as Hindus do not believe that is even possible.  He saw G-d in the disease.  That G-d is in everything, everyone, and everywhere; we however simply have to see it.  That simple thought has changed my life.

     I want to leave you on that thought---can we see G-d in everything, everyone and everywhere or do we chose not see it that way?

Namaste

Why do words fail me....

     I find myself in an odd circumstance today, I am as a writer at a loss of words to begin to describe to you my readers and followers (if I have any left after months of no posting) what I'm really feeling today. If you have followed this blog any length of time you all know by now how hard of a time I have with the month of December since the death of my partner Ron Rooy in 2002. This year marks ten years that he has been gone and today marks the the day of the anniversary we entered hospice care.

     From the time we entered hospice care until he died was only ten days.  The days ending December 21, 2002 and forever altering who I am at my core.  First let me say I would have never have been able to keep him at home, and let him die at home without help.  First his daughter Christina who was there for part of it, despite having very small children at the time, Frank D'Angelo, Ken Walrath, Annette Tabar, my mother, Brian Fabo and of course the nurses and staff of Western Reserve Hospice.  It is amazing you never forget the small details.

     They say that with time, that the wounds of death become less, well that my friends is a HUGE lie!  It does not become less it becomes different and in some ways, and especially for me it is becoming more painful as the years pass.

      This year marks ten years since Ron died and, we were together four months short of ten years---so in reality he has been dead as long as we were together.  How do I sit here at my laptop and begin to describe to you what that feels like.

     I am forgetting what he smelled like when he first got of the shower as he stood at the bathroom mirror naked and shaving.  I am forgetting the feel of his hand in mine, the touch of and feel of him in bed next to me as we slept.  I am forgetting the taste of his lips on mine in the morning when we first woke.  I am forgetting what his voice sounded like when he told me he loved me.  The pain of this happening in in a word--- brutal!

     But in all honesty I can not ever forget how I felt when I was with him.  I can not forget how easy he was to talk to, to spend time with or how easily he could make me laugh.  The feel of his hands on me when he made love to me--- those sweet, tender passionate moments sitting in bed on Sunday mornings with the paper and breakfast in bed as we just shared our lives, our hopes, our dreams, our secrets.  I can not forget that he more than anyone made me value the life I have.

     To lose someone like that, not just a lover, or a husband but also your best friend does something to you, it dramatically changes you forever and realizing that this last February we would had been together twenty years was very painful.  I sit here this morning in tears knowing I would still be with him today if I just had the chance.  That even today, ten years later I love him more than ever and I always will. 

     But he only lives in memory.  Am I as the widower the only one who feels the way I do?  Am I the only one who feels that part of my very being is buried with him?  I think a lot about him and what he would have to say about my life and what it is today.  Would he be proud of me?  What advice would he give me?

     I have to admit that I pray to him all the time, my own patron saint--- my own connection to the divine--- I just wish as he said "You will feel me when the wind blows against the back of your neck"---  I need the wind to blow to guide me, lead me and direct my feet to the path I should take.  I need to know that he is proud of what I am becoming, and of what I want to do.

     It sad in so many ways that in many regards I have distanced myself from the life I had, and it has been a huge mistake.... but maybe life does go on, we change, we grow, we adapt and I am not longer the thirty-six year-old man whose partner had died.  I am now his widower, the keeper of his life, his legacy and I am so very very grateful that i have been blessed with that enormous responsibility.

December 11th- Anniversary

As many of you, who have been reading this blog a long time---- know that today is the anniversary day my previous partner, Ron, went into Hospice Care after 16 1/2 yrs of living with AIDS he just could not recover. 

Eleven short days later on December 21, 2002 he was dead. 

Somehow that day has now become NINE painful years later.  It is hard sitting here talking about this, all this time later but what very few GET is how this one single event still plays itself out in everyday life.

There isn't a day that goes by without my thinking about him in someway shape for form.  What would he be doing, what would he be saying, what would he be thinking?  Would we still be involved battling AIDS as much as we were?  I do know  one thing we would still be together, no doubt about it.

I miss him more than ever, the way his smile used to fill a room, the way you could hear him laughing in a theatre full of people, the way he felt in bed next to me.  The things he used to do, used to say and well simply just exist.  I think that is the hardest part of all of it, in all of this time later I have nearly forgoten all of those things, it is like I am losing him all over again.

I know some would say I shouldn't be dwelling on it, I should get over it, I should move on, I "have this great life"--well I say don't judge a book by its cover!  Like Forrest Gump "That's all I have to say" about that part of it.

I was in our old neigborhood , this last week; to have my quarterly blood-work and the house is till empty, the owner has apparently abandoned it and moved back to Belguim.  The windows and doors are all boarded up and---I stood on our old porch longing to go in just one more time.  Longing to be in the dining room where he died, leaving me for ever...the pain has not gotten any easier.  Tears flooded my eyes as I remembered standing in the street barefoot, in my jammies watching them load the gurney into the hearse, the windhowling and snow screaming in the wind.

This year has been very hard with mother having 4 mini-strokes in a matter of five months.  It left her a shell of a woman, barely able to walk, blind in one eye and a conversation window of about 5 sentences per visit.  My mother was the one that told me Ron had died, as I --after 11 days of 4 hours of sleep--fell asleep.

There is just still so much pain, and no one to talk too about it. When does the hurt go away, when can you move on? I have said it before in other posts about this time of the year that more or less Christmas has become a time of the year I dread.  I am beginning to wonder if I am alone in that feeling?

Larry Kramer, talks about what's missing from gay activism: From Metro Weekly

Since the publication of Faggots in 1978, Larry Kramer has been speaking truth – as he sees it – to power.

What's more unusual, Kramer has been telling his uncomfortable truths to those who, like him, claim to be fighting that power.

Kramer, 76, is comfortable making others uncomfortable. Anger, he says in his cluttered, book-filled apartment off Washington Square Park in Manhattan, is ''a wonderfully healthy emotion.''
Although Faggots brought him attention, it was a few years later, as he began to witness the devastation of the strange disease that would become known as AIDS, that Kramer became an immovable object in a then-radical resistance that began with the founding of Gay Men's Health Crisis. GMHC begat his play, The Normal Heart, which debuted at The Public Theater in the East Village in 1985. That play begat the founding of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, better known as ACT UP.

The Normal Heart's story of an unrelentingly aggressive activist who is fighting for research, drugs and community activism in the face of a new illness that is killing gay men is Kramer's story. Kramer's sequel to The Normal Heart, The Destiny of Me, opened off-Broadway in 1992 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1993.

D.C. is Kramer's hometown – he went to Woodrow Wilson High School – but The Normal Heart has never been staged in the area, despite several attempts to do so.

Following a Broadway staging of the play that received the 2011 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play, The Normal Heart finally is coming to the D.C. area for a staged reading on Nov. 7 by Forum Theatre Company in residence at the Round House Theatre in Silver Spring.

As talk of a movie – helmed by Glee's Ryan Murphy – and a national tour of the Broadway revival make headlines, Kramer says the play that was once a ''cry of alarm'' is now a story of ''our history.''
That doesn't mean that Kramer sees much progress for gay people in the more than 30 years since he wrote Faggots. And, he's sorry to say, he doesn't see much happening in the near future – both because of what he sees as the apathy of ''the gay community,'' and because he sees the ''enemy'' as recognizing that apathy and willing to put the time and money into stopping equality advancements.

But at least there is the play.
METRO WEEKLY: It has to be amazing to see The Normal Heart back in circulation.
LARRY KRAMER: It just came out of the blue. Joel Grey had arranged a benefit reading here. It sold out and was very well cast and directed, and everyone was just dumbfounded by how current it seemed to be. From the very first line, ''I know there's something wrong,'' you could hear a pin drop for the rest of the night.
Daryl Roth, who's a very powerful Broadway producer, was there, and she said, ''I'm going to take this to Broadway.'' And she did. And that's what got us going again, and it's been like that ever since. It's an unreal experience to have a play come back so powerfully so many years later, almost as if it was new.
MW: To a lot of people, it is completely new.
KRAMER: That's the thing, we wanted young people to see it. When we first opened, the older gays who we thought might come didn't. I wasn't surprised because I've learned from previous productions that gays are not always the best supporters of gay art, of gay writers. They just aren't.
It was Daryl's idea to get the youngsters in. If they could prove they were 30 or under, she'd sell them a ticket for $30. And they started coming. And they started telling their friends, and their friends. So the audiences were very young, which was wonderful. And they didn't have any preconceived notions about anything. It was all new to them. They were amazed, because they didn't know all of this.
MW: When you think of the clarion call that you provided in the '80s, when nobody wanted to hear it –
KRAMER: Well, it's history now. It's not so much a message play.
MW: How do you want those ''under 30'' people to see it?
KRAMER: As I said at the speech I gave at the Tonys, this is our history. We must know our history. And I think people come to that now and see it as that. It's a different play than it was when it was first done in [1985]. Then, it was meant to be a clarion call, as you say, a cry of alarm. And everybody thought it was very agitprop, a term I came to loathe. And now it's seen as a play, and critics are – what's been especially nice to me – responding to the quality of the writing. People always overlooked that because the stuff that I write about is so political. Somehow, for most critics, that doesn't seem to go hand in hand. It drives me nuts. I work very hard on my writing.
MW: People want to know, what's the movie status?
KRAMER: The movie is being prepared. Mark Ruffalo is supposed to play Ned Weeks. Ryan Murphy is directing it and I've written the screenplay. I know he wants Julia Roberts to be the doctor, and I know we both want Jim Parsons to repeat his performance as Tommy. I just assume we're going to shoot next summer, but I haven't heard that from him. But I know he seems to be revving up somehow.
MW: That would be good.
KRAMER: It's about time.
MW: What about the fact that The Normal Heart has never been produced in your hometown, in D.C.?
KRAMER: Well, you know the old expression: ''You can't hit a homer in your own hometown.'' A little is that. Zelda Fichandler didn't like the play, and she was running Arena [Stage] then. So, that was that there. And [Studio Theatre's] Joy Zinoman took it on, and proceeded to fire the director that I had given it to without consulting with me. She found some unknown and I wouldn't go along with that. And Roger Stevens, who was running Kennedy Center, didn't like the play and wouldn't allow it to be done there.
MW: You said that you're hoping to take the Broadway production on tour.
KRAMER: Well, it's more than that. Daryl Roth has been the most amazing producer anyone could ever work with. She's just in love with this play, and she pledged to me that she would take it on tour and that she would get it done in England. And she's working toward both of those. It's hard to arrange tours, because theaters are booked way in advance. And George C. Wolfe, who's going to direct it, doesn't want to go into a big theater. He wants to go into a moderate-sized theater. Daryl will find it. She's just that kind of a producer.
Talks are pretty far advanced in Washington. I won't tell you where or how, but we want it done when the International AIDS Conference is there [from July 22 to July 27, 2012]. So that's the goal, and I believe it will happen.
And then she and Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, are working to set it up in London.
MW: Would you come down for the hometown staging?
KRAMER: I might. If it's the first run on the tour, I probably will. George is the most wonderful director I've ever worked with, so I'd be happy to see what he does again. He's just a genius. He directed the Broadway production.
MW: Turning to current politics, you made a splash talking about what, actually, all of the organizations were already talking about: the value of state marriage equality and the reason why there are all these federal lawsuits challenging the Defense of Marriage Act. And now Servicemembers Legal Defense Network has filed a lawsuit challenging military spousal benefits – saying that spousal benefits need to be equal for same-sex married couples in the military.
KRAMER: Good for them. There's just so many fights. I'm sort of surprised that Boies and Olson – they did such unbelievable work, and that somehow it's being held to ransom by the financiers of all these suits that keep the enemy at our door so assiduously. All they do is file lawsuits, and that's going to go on forever. Wherever we win, they're going to come in and sue. I don't know what it takes to make the Supreme Court do its job properly. They're probably happy that they don't have to worry about it yet. So we're caught in this terrible situation. I'm not the only one saying that.
MW: You look at the '70s, when Faggots came out, the devastation of the '80s, and then you see wedding cakes in New York this summer. What sort of a path is that? Is it a coherent path, is it just that history happens?
KRAMER: Are you looking for patterns?
MW: What's the long view?
KRAMER: Take it a day at a time.
I remember in ACT UP, everything was so bad all the time that we just sort of had to make it up as we went along, what we were going to do. Because today's emergency wasn't necessarily tomorrow's emergency, or the other way around. People who were in one job one day weren't there the next, and you were constantly having to educate people.
People always ask me, ''What was it like?'' I don't look back. I look to today and to what we still have to do in the days to come. What we achieved in the past has always been haphazard and more often by luck than by skill.
We're still a leaderless population. The same things I've complained about since the beginning have not been rectified in any way.
I know that there's a lot more sympathy for Obama than I'm prepared to show him. We still haven't got these things, you know. I don't consider ''Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' some major victory. It's a small, dishonest political move that Clinton did to enchain us, and it's been unknotted. But it's for a very small percentage of us. Everybody acts as if it's a major thing for all of us, and it isn't. And he knows that. It's been a small gift he's given us to throw us a bone. The big gifts, he's not giving us – no one's giving us. And that hurts. I don't see that changing.
MW: What do you see as the big gifts?
KRAMER: Equality, pure and simple. From the Supreme Court. That we're allowed to get married, for a start, and get all the benefits that straight people get. That's it. That's the whole megillah, as the Jews say.
Anyway, we do not have equality. That's what the Bill of Rights says we're entitled to. That's what the Constitution says we're entitled to. And we don't have it. I don't see us getting it for a while, quite frankly, because the other side is willing to spend too much money to see that we don't get it. The Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, primarily, have very deep pockets to see that we don't get it. And they've learned this tactic that I don't think any of us saw coming, which is that the minute we win, find something to sue. Tie it up in the courts. And they can tie 'em up in courts until we're all dead. It's pathetic.
MW: Do you think that's more a failure of LGBT leadership or of mainstream leadership, or whatever you want to call it?
KRAMER: At the height of the Holocaust, when Jews were being shoveled into the ovens by the trainload, a great woman by the name of Hannah Arendt, who was a political philosopher – Jewish, obviously, and German – said, in essence, to all of the Jews in the world, ''Why are you allowing this to happen? Where is your army?'' She thought the Jews should actually have their own army, which was an unbelievable thing for a woman to say. And, in essence, she was saying, ''You brought all this on yourselves. You get what you deserve. You're not fighting back. And you've never fought back, ever, in your whole history.'' And I say that about us, too. People don't want to hear it.
Where are the ACT UPs today? Where are the anti-Vietnam [War] demonstrations of such amazing numbers today? This business with Wall Street is fine. I view it as rather disorganized, and I'm glad they're able to keep it together for so long. I don't hear what the demands are that are being met. The banks aren't folding up and going out of business.
I never understood why so few of us are willing to fight. At the height of the AIDS plague, from '91 to '96 when it was really awful – with how many millions of gay people, 10 [million], 20 [million], who the fuck knows how many, but a lot – there were no more than maybe 5,000 or 6,000 people in various ACT UP chapters around the country or in California with Project Inform who were willing to fight for their lives. I've never been able to understand that. So few of us were willing to fight to get those drugs. We got those drugs. ACT UP got those drugs. They're not there for any other reason.
And, now, all these people who want to get married so badly, where are the demonstrations? All these people who are married, don't they know that marriage is what I call a ''feel-good'' marriage – doesn't provide anything except nice, warm feelings? That seems to me to be cowardly – a cowardly evasion of the truth.
We're all in an enormous state of denial somehow – and we continue to be. And it doesn't get any better.
MW: Did you think the Get Equal White House protests about ''Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' were something like what you're describing?
KRAMER: Get Equal is something that was very well meaning that just seemed to come and go. It was well financed by a very rich man, but I didn't see it drawing the kind of support or troops that it needed. I don't know why activism is so scarce now.
MW: Do you even consider something like the Human Rights Campaign to be activism?
KRAMER: I think HRC is the dregs. I think it's the toilet of the gay movement.
MW: So, you have no opinion of HRC?
KRAMER: [Laughs.]
MW: That's a criticism leveled against them by people – maybe not in those exact terms – but, why?
KRAMER: What more can be said? I find them useless, and I find them perpetuating con jobs on all of us. Ass-kissers extraordinaire.
MW: One can criticize things that they do, but then, things like the hospital visitation memo, which might not matter....
KRAMER: What is the hospital visitation memo? We've been able to visit people in the hospital almost since the beginning. It was never a big problem here – '
MW: Maybe not here [in New York City], but it was in Florida, where Janice Langbehn wasn't allowed in to see her partner as she died. I grew up in Ohio, I can certainly see places there where a gay couple wouldn't be allowed to see each other. I feel like, at some point, things that might seem ''past'' for people in New York, California, D.C., have more relevance in other areas of the country that have anti-gay marriage amendments in their constitutions and it's going to be a long time going before they get to the place where New York is.
KRAMER: I think we should have learned by now that this "pebble at a time" attempt to make right is just that. They're pebbles. We need bricks. Until we're ready to throw bricks, we're not going to get anywhere. You can name any kinds of wonderful things [HRC has] done, but they still have not changed the basic problem: We are not equal. We do not have equality. They do not look at the big picture, they look at the small picture. As does every other gay person, who is just happy to go home at night and go back into their state of denials.
It's a very, very passive population, and that is our great tragedy. I love being gay, I love gays. It hurts me to say this. These are all lessons that I've learned painfully since 1981, but until we learn to fight back we get what we deserve.
MW: If you had those troops today, what would you do?
KRAMER: We have the troops, and we did it.
MW: But what would today's mission be?
KRAMER: Same thing. You go after the enemy. You organize yourself, and you divide up what you have to attack, and you go after it. It's no mystery.
ACT UP, at its height in New York, had 1,500 members. We had so many committees going after so many pressure points in getting us these drugs, in getting us this research. There were meetings that you could go to every night, seven nights a week. We were organized, and we were smart. And we got it. We had the smart ones figuring out the strategy, and we had the street troops. The good cop/bad cop. Every corporation works that way. The street troops were there to protest, to show you that we mean business. The strategy is being figured out and being delivered to them at their committee meetings, saying, ''We want this, or else.''
No big mystery. If there's 20 million of us, that's 20 million soldiers. When we get angry enough that we don't have what we deserve, when we get angry enough that the taxes we pay don't get us what they get everyone else, then maybe we'll do something about it. I don't see that happening. So, therefore, we stay like we are, and leave it to the HRCs of the world to pick up the tiny pebbles.
It's not a mysterious process. It's called visibility, anger, unity. We don't have that.
MW: We definitely don't have unity.
KRAMER: Name me one gay leader. Who have we got? I don't see anybody. I don't hear anybody saying what I'm saying to the extent that I'm saying it. Where is a gay leader that people can hear? We've never been able to birth him or her.
The few good ones we've had in the past – [former National Gay & Lesbian Task Force Executive Director] Ginny Apuzzo, [former Human Rights Campaign Fund co-chair] Vivian Shapiro, [former NGLTF Executive Director] Urvashi Vaid, interestingly all women – have all, in the end, given up in despair. My friend Rodger McFarlane committed suicide out of despair for all of this, after having built three wonderful organizations – tried to bring them all together, tried to make everyone work with each other, called all the leaders into Washington to meet and stop backbiting. It doesn't happen. And, I guess, my saying all this just depresses everybody into doing less.
MW: You don't see the birth of a perfect leader who would pull everybody together?
KRAMER: I wish I could. I wish I would make enough people angry enough to do something. I mean, ACT UP was anger. ACT UP was made out of anger and fear. I happen to think anger is a wonderfully healthy emotion. Until you have anger and fear, you don't have any kind of an activist movement.
MW: Do you think that pebbles – to continue your metaphor – actually decrease the fear?
KRAMER: I think the drugs decrease the fear, not the pebbles. Suddenly, we weren't all going to die. And, so you can go back into your state of denial instead of realizing that how we got those drugs should lead us to the next step, building on what we were able to accomplish. That's where organizations like GMHC have fallen down. When Paul Popham and I started the organization, we hoped that its future would be very different, that it would become an advocate for gay health, that we would work with getting recognition and insurance and all kinds of things. It didn't happen. I guess I haven't got much good to say about anything today, and I'm sorry.
MW: But there are accomplishments, there are changes.
KRAMER: I don't look to the past, I look to the future. I used to have this fight with Frank Kameny all the time, who had to constantly be congratulated about all the wonderful things that had been done because of him, instead of looking at the things that still hadn't been done.
I would criticize the past for not giving us the future, and, of course, he's the one that gave us the past in his eyes so he would get mad at me and say, ''Look at how much we've accomplished.'' Well, I don't think we've accomplished all that much. I really don't.
MW: You don't see gay lives as being lived differently, more openly, more successfully than they were 30 years ago?
KRAMER: A lot of that is because the culture has provided that for everybody. It's not for anything we can take credit for. I think we want to take credit for it – ''Look how far we've come'' – but we didn't do much to get there. More of us are here, more of us are out, because that's the nature of life today, for all minorities.
We still are treated like shit, and we still aren't equal. So, if you want to look at that as how far we've come, be my guest. I just won't join you.
I'm glad my play's out there. That's nice. I just want people to see what I'm talking about. People come out of this play crying, saying, ''What can I do? What can I do?'' Well, the play tells you what you can do -- but I don't see you doing it.

Anderson Cooper 360 AIDS Special tonight

Hope Survives: 30 Years of AIDS will Air Friday, January 14th at 9pm ET
CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° will dedicate a special hour to AIDS in America as we approach 30 years since the first diagnosis. The special will focus on the role stigma continues to play in the spread of HIV both here in the U.S. and around the world, and how through education and scaled up prevention there is hope for an HIV-free future generation. The show will also explore the latest medical breakthroughs and discoveries.
In addition to Anderson Cooper’s in-depth interview with Sir Elton John about his foundation’s work to end the disease, the show will also include interviews with Academy-award winning actress Mo’nique, Project Runway’s Mondo Guerra, Phill Wilson, Founder and Executive Director of the Black AIDS Institute and co-founder of Greater Than AIDS, a new national movement developed with the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The special hour will also feature emotional clips from famous personalities on their personal “Deciding Moment” that changed how they think about the disease and inspired them to get involved, including Academy-Award winning actress Susan Sarandon, actress Sharon Stone, singer Barry Manilow, basketball legend Kareem Abdul Jabbar, comedienne Margaret Cho, Author Maya Angelou and Jeanne White Ginder, the mother of the late Ryan White.

Sir Elton John and his Elton John AIDS Foundation have been leaders in the fight against AIDS for over 18 years, serving vulnerable at-risk populations without judgment, reducing HIV-related stigma and discrimination, educating people about HIV/AIDS, and supporting science-based, culturally appropriate HIV prevention programming.
“I’m deeply grateful to CNN and Anderson Cooper for focusing a special hour of programming to bring attention to the continuing impact of HIV/AIDS, not only internationally, but also right here in the United States,” said Sir Elton John “We’ve all become way too complacent about a deadly epidemic that is only getting bigger, especially when we already have creative readily accessible prevention methods that we know to be highly effective at curtailing the spread of this disease right now.”

Established in the US in 1992 and in the UK in 1993 by Sir Elton John, the Elton John AIDS Foundation (EJAF) is one of the world's leading nonprofit organizations supporting innovative HIV prevention programs, efforts to eliminate HIV/AIDS-related stigma and discrimination, and direct care and support services for people living with the disease. Together, both entities have raised $220 million for worthy programs in 55 countries around the globe since inception. For more information, please visit www.ejaf.org.

A Very Painful Visit

I am not sure I want to exactly share this story, but there is a big part of me that feels like I need to just to get it off my chest and by doing so I might be able to deal with it better---who knows for sure.

As many of you know who read here regularly, you also know that tomorrow is the anniversary of the death of Ron.  Eight years tomorrow and somehow, someway the pain is still so tremendously unbearable beyond words.

I decided to drive this afternoon out to Eastlawn Cemetery in Brunswick, Ohio where he is buried. I decided to go alone, spend some time by myself. It isn't all that far from where we live maybe thirty-five minutes.  It was one of those drives where I didn't turn on the radio, I wanted surrounded by my thoughts and emotions and nothing else.  I was crying before I even got there.  That should have been my warning sign.

I pulled into the cemetery and into the section where he is buried, stopped, and put the car into park.  The emotions just engulfed every pore of my being.  It was this tsunami of unbearable deep horrific pain.  It was like being there eight years ago.  I could still see the bundled and huddled crowd, the tent, the hearse, the coffin, the blowing wind whisking the snow and well I completely lost it.  I sat in the car for an hour and half and just literally wept myself uncontrollably sick.  I couldn't move, I never opened the car door, I never got out, I never got to the grave.  I just sat their and wept bitterly and deeply, grief unthinkable and I feel like I am the only one that feels that way.

I am the only one that visits that grave, I am the only one still so unbearably distraught, that I could not even get out of the car.  I got the car in gear and just drove away, tears still in my eyes, the emptiness pervaded and I felt so ashamed of myself for what happened there.  Feeling so alone, feeling like I couldn't talk about any of it.

All this time later and it seems no better, no less it just seems no one wants to talk about it, or hear about it or even think about it.  People wonder why I hate Christmas now and this is it and no other reason.  He died just four days before a holiday I loved, a holiday we celebrated to the hilt and he was so viciously and violently ill those last days and he died so gruesomely I was haunted by nightmares for months.  The bloody vomiting, the bleeding KS sores, the unconsciousness and his grief over what happened with New Hope.  He felt like he wasted so much time by working for so long and so much, it felt like he wasted us and what we could have had.  I had no idea what to say, I still don't all this time later.

Do I feel better sharing--honestly I am not so sure, ask me in a few days.  Until then I am so glad we had this time together

Serious Thought for the day

As many of you who have been reading this blog a long time know that today is the anniversary day my previous partner, Ron, went into Hospice Care after 16 1/2 yrs of living with AIDS he just could not recover.  Eleven short days later on December 21, 2002 he was dead.  Many ways, I have never been the same since and probably never will be.  Until last night while reading "Losing Julia" by Jonathan Hull I felt like no one understand what that feeling was like then I read.......

"One person dies and the whole world looks sadder, hollowed out  so that you hear echos in places where there aren't supposed to be any.  Each passing day and month and year is an accumulation of absences; of people, places and events that a loved one will never see or know about.  When you have suffered a terrible loss you look at things and think: I wonder what he would have made of that?  Wouldn't he have enjoyed this and oh G-d he would have hated that and shit this reminds me of him.

When people die it's as though the earth itself opens briefly and swallows them up.

The last thing people do when they die is to change all the people who loved them.  I can still feel the dead reverberating through my own life, sometimes with the delicacy of ripples on a pond, other times with the force of shock waves.  And the strangest thing is how much talking the dead still do; talking in our heads.  I've actually grown quite fond of it.

But I can't shake the sadness. Sometimes nostalgia swamps me like a flash flood and leaves me floating face down amid the flotsam of the past.  Not the nostalgia that comes with the change of the seasons--which is as good as sad gets: a rusty, blood red if you gave it a color--but deeper, more funereal longing.  Melancholy if you will."

I haven't cried like that in a long time or felt so lonely in my life, but also like finally words were given to what I really felt.  What I really needed to say.  Someone got me and in a big way.  Eight years ago today, where has the time gone?  His voice fading from my memory, but those memories just as alive and fresh and real as they were all those years ago.

So my thought for the day is do you feel that this section from "Losing Julia" adequately describes what you have gone through in having someone you love die?

More 19th Anniversary thougths.......

I guess I am just a thinking mood here the last few days, maybe it is the not being in school that has prompted all this thinking in the first place. I don't feel much different today 19 years later and I guess I expected to. Somehow older, wiser, more focused, more in tune to myself. G-d did I get that all wrong.

I have gotten over the fact that nobody remembers this day but me, after all this day nineteen years only changed everything for me. No one else was changed forever. Its true. Maybe its time for today to become just another day, no more milestones although 20 years livig with AIDS for some reason sounds much better than 19 years . I know goofy as all hell.

I was 25 years old then and I am still all this time later trying to find myself. I read this book quite sometime ago and I find the quotes still relevant today---

"Were AIDS a disease which one contracted, brought death within forty-eight hours of exposure, it would be a far more easily avoided illness-but because it is not, because it is invisible, unknown, for such a long period of time, because it is something people got before they even knew it existed (with each passing year, the time gets longer), the Fear of AIDS is limitless....There's a memory--of an evening, an incident--to justify every fear. And nothing exists that will guarantee the fearful that even if they are functioning now they will not get caught in the future".
 "Looking at some of the guests I can tell which ones are celibate; which ones are having less, more cautious sex; and which ones are going right on with the old ways. It has nothing to do with one's degree of personal exposure to the dying; it has to do with temperament, with the way different minds respond to the same facts. We face each other, after all, over freshly dug graves. There are ghosts among us. We are the actresses who meet in the ruined theater in Follies. We're the tourists who have been admited to an exhibit of our own former lives".

These quotes are from "Chronicle Of A Plague Revisted: AIDS and It's Aftermath" by Andrew Holleran and for me this year I guess I am more aware than ever of the ghosts among us.  Those that we loved who are no longer gone.  I may have said this before but when Ron died now almost eight years ago I stopped counting those who died of AIDS.  Ron was number 600, unbelieveable isn't it.  Today all those years ago changed everything I ever knew and changed forever who I am.  Many ways I am grateful, in some ways I am not.  It just is.  Better or worse for the time being AIDS is going no where and by G-d neither am I.  I have fought this long what the hell is another twenty years?

Well until next time I am so glad we had this time together. Ok fair warning this Lady Gaga spoof is a little much with the "blue language", some erotic themes, near nudity and someover all offensive themes THIS VIDEO IS NOT FOR EVERYONE! But I thought it clever, funny as all get out, So if its your cup of tea enjoy!