Dear ones,
When we first meet in 2003 in the hallway of the Michigan Ave. apartment building, Michael and I have a moment. He is handsome, I notice right away, and he tells me later that he likes that my nose is pierced, my green eyes. There is something magnetic between us, and I am pulled to him and him to me; we find each other in that hall and nearly hug our way into an introduction. We exchange names, where we’re from (him: Massachusetts, me: Ohio), he says he lives one floor up. I live here, I point to the door behind me that I just walked out of. At this point, Michael and I think we may like-like each other, because at this point, neither of us has said out loud that we are anything other than straight. But of course we knew, in our guts anyway, that this was something different than a crush. This centripetal urge was the stuff of queer kinship.
*
World AIDS Day has been recognized every December 1st since 1988. When it began, HIV and AIDS were impacting certain populations across the globe not dissimilar to how Covid is impacting us right now. Transmission was different -- instead of the morally neutral path of airborne particles, it was stigmatized blood and sex, and in the US more common in men who have sex with men and intravenus drug users -- but the result for many communities was the same: mass death, no cure, so much loss, so much anger. Love, and rage. Just like today, marginalized communities - both domestically and globally - suffered worse.
*
Michael and I became fast friends. We drank together in the dorms on the weekends, we cuddled in corners sharing tidbits of trauma that we never thought to categorize as such, we rode the El and talked about the egregious symptoms of capitalism. We sang songs from RENT together, quoted Donnie Darko, and took late night walks through the ghost streets of the Chicago business district. We laughed, until we didn’t….About a month into our intense relationship, Michael became distant.
*
I studied ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power that formed in 1987, for my doctoral dissertation. (I also study it informally as a queer who values her elders and her history.) In my research for my PhD, I make an argument that the contemporary LGBT movement and the modern-day labor movement should both look to their past of militant resistance; from ACT UP organizers occupying Wall Street (decades before #Occupy) to workers occupying factory floors, our queer and laboring ancestors took a decidedly social movement (rather than policy or electoral) approach to change. And it worked. Direct action got us the eight-hour day and end to child labor, and direct action got us relatively affordable HIV meds and forced the government to acknowledge a virus that was killing millions of people.
Outside of research, I study stories of ACT UP like sacred parables. These queer ancestors, living on as ghosts or stories, a reminder of how to fight for our lives. The chorus of elders teaching us that silence equals death, and who modeled for us how to navigate divisions within a movement. Their praxis I think of, always, when I hold on to pleasure in the face of fear. Their writings on how queer family, care, and kinship meant everything.
*
We were by the river when Michael said out loud that he’d had sex with Wesley, who lived in our building. And that he’d sex with another man before that too. He stared off in the distance when he said it, into the Chicago River, doing a sad version of a Gene-Kelly-on-a-street-light spin on a pole on the bridge. Okay, I said, that doesn’t change anything for me. He knew, he said. How do you feel? I wondered. He didn’t say anything, just did another languid spin, then walked forward in silence.
Michael stopped going to classes. He would spend days away from the apartment. “I’m not feeling well,” is the most Michael would tell me, “maybe I have mono again.”
*
ACT UP shifted things. When the pressure of their actions forced government officials to take it seriously, drugs finally became more widely available in the US, and ACT UP eventually expanded its propaganda to include the struggle of people with AIDS outside of the US as well. Soon, South Africa, Latin America, and Europe had their own organizations fighting for medical treatment and against stigma.
*
It was October 29th when he asked me to meet after class in the courtyard on Racine. The fall leaves were a fire in the sky, so orange and full like flames. “You’ll want to sit down for this,” he said, leading me toward a bench. Then, “The good news is, I don’t have mono.”
In 2003, when your friend tells you he tested positive for HIV, you envision his funeral. In 2003, you remember what happens in Rent and in Philadelphia, and you feel like actually nothing matters because your friend might die.
There are not many stories of young people surviving in the liminal space of after ACT UP but before HIV was as manageable as it is today. The peak of the AIDS crisis is recorded as occurring in 2004, just after he was diagnosed. We were just two teenage millennial queers, barely a toe out of the closet, searching pop culture for help. “Living with, living with, not dying from disease,” we sang through tears.
Michael left school before the end of the first semester. We stayed close, we learned about viral loads, we learned about the intersection of mental health and physical health; we learned what happens after the movie ends or the curtains draw. You just keep going.
*
The march of progress is a slow one, but the righteous rage and organizing that occurred in the 80s and 90s mattered. Today, HIV-related illness still kills hundreds of thousands of people world wide, but that number has dramatically decreased since the 90s and early 2000s. Statistically there are more people living with HIV than ten years ago, but this is due to the fact that treatment for the virus is getting better and allowing people to live longer. Of course, the populations who suffer most continue to be low-income people, in the face of domestic and global capitalism. Covid, too, has increased complications with people living with HIV.
*
17 years and one month later, Michael and I are still close, maintaining our kinship across the miles. He’s an example of one of the 1.2 million people in the US who live full lives with HIV. (He gave me permission to write the parts of his story that were also the story of our friendship; encouraged it, really. What a beautiful story we have to share, we agreed.)
*
The penultimate scene in Tony Kushner’s socialist-fueled, AIDS-crisis-era theatrical masterpiece, Angels in America involves the character Harper talking to us from an airplane seat, sharing a dream she had:
“Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles, and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them and was repaired.
Nothing’s lost forever. In this world, there’s a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead.”
On World AIDS Day, I honor ACT UP, and I honor the millions of people across the globe impacted by a disease that is as political as it is medical. I honor Michael and the generation of oughts millennials who navigated diagnosis in what felt like an in-between time. I honor the painful progress and the longing; and always, as any fight for our lives must, I honor the dreaming.
love & solidarity,
Raechel
Read, Watch, Listen.
On whiteness and hillbilly nostalgia. The assimilationist politics of the New A-Gays. A thorough and critical look at the global pharmaceutical supply chain. Vicky Osterweil talking In Defense of Looting on the Beyond Prisons podcast. The legacy of the Battle in Seattle. Autostraddle’s Happiest Season roundtable. And from Piper Anderson on sailing and grief and trauma: “I’m still learning how to go at this pace; how to enjoy a slow upwind sail with my crew on a beautiful day without constantly bracing myself for the next storm, the next collusion, the next crisis to jolt me into action.”
Mutual Aid.
Here is a collection of Venmo and CashApp handles of HIV+ people in need of economic support that I collected from Twitter posts requesting funds. I hope you’ll consider sharing if you’re able.
$CashApps
$alexanderbrunton
$WinterBreedlove
$OllieKasmar
$STAXKDAYOUNGAN16
$bossbitchmacc
Venmos
@Jeffrey-Klein-31
@JYAIR-ROBINSON
@ResistanceisBeautiful
@tranMona-Precious
Joy & Attention.
Okay, honestly, Happiest Season brought me a lot of joy (I know that opinion is the minority one on the gay internet). Having the ability to rest in a warm home while I got hit with a terrible cold over the weekend. The support for striking teachers in Cleveland Heights. Belt Magazine and Belt Publishing. Finally getting back out for beautiful walks, including one last night in the snow. The snow, in general. Delicious salads and soups. Kitty snuggles. The Saddle Creek sampler I was listening to while writing this. Elliot Page. The start of holiday decorations in the apartment. First vegan hot cocoa of the season. Oh, and, also...my book Rust Belt Femme made NPR’sFavorite Books of 2020 list, and yeah, that brought me some joy. :*)