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| One of my favorite AIDS activists. Laverne Holley. RIP |
I have a candle on my bookshelf from the October 11-13, 1996
display of the AIDS memorial Names Quilt.
Every once in a while I walk up and look at the candle, wondering about
the people whose names we marched for that weekend. I have another pin that says: “I’m voting in
memory of…” with the words “Rob”
scribbled in marker. Looking at the candle holder I remember the flame that once burned in that candle light march. ACT UP was there to drop the ashes of loved ones in front
of the White House. I was there just to
remember everyone, the clients who had become my friends, the friends who were everything. I walked by my godfather’s
AIDS quilt piece, along with the quilts from Freddy Mercury and the people I
knew in San Francisco who were no longer with us. The world was changing right there in front
of me, with friends passing through my fingers. For a while there, loss was everywhere, and
then the problem of remembering and learning a few of the lessons of the
epidemic, before its lessons were consumed in a vast cultural amnesia.
This feeling was very much on my mind during my recent talk at the Bureau of General Services – Queer Division talk last week. Friends from all over the activist world were
there, including Vicki Noe. She gave me
a copy of her book Friends in Grief:
Thirty Years of Burying Our Friends. Like my Rebel Friendships book, hers is a story about the transformative
qualities of friendships and AIDS work.
This short book offers a brief history of this relationship between
outsiders, stars, mothers, neighbors and our friends relegated to the cultural margins
by this epidemic. It was our job to
bring them back, to care for them, laugh, to bury them, remember them and bring
them back whenever we could.
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| Andrew, James, Jim, Jay, Jim, Jamie and Vicki Noe. |
“Because of discrimination
- whether against homosexuals,
drug users, prostitutes, or just anyone
diagnosed with the virus – friends replaced the families that abandoned them,
as caregivers and support system,” writes Noe early in the story (p.16).
Noe writes about AIDS work as a heterosexual woman who worked
in Chicago raising money for AIDS groups such as Chicago House, an AIDS housing
program there. For a brief while I worked at Chicago House back in 1997, a year
after effective AIDS treatments had become a
reality. But the lethal disease did not
seem to know that. Deaths were still
everywhere there. And the death of
Chicago House residents still brought a sensation of hollowness I can still
feel today, all these years later. We
knew treatments would change this dynamic, but the virus did not seem to know
that. They were not able to save
everyone. While Lazarus Syndrome brought
people back from the dead, countless others were too forgone. Their immune
systems were too damaged. And so we had
to stick together, even when it felt impossible. At Chicago house there was always a feeling of
togetherness, accompanied by a complete sensation of separation. The paradox
was always a part of AIDS work.
Noe writes about this loneliness as an AIDS activist. “I didn’t feel special , or that I was worthy
of attention. I felt like an outsider; like I lived in some kind of alternate
universe where my friends were dying and the rest of the world didn’t see.”
She is not alone in feeling that way. A year before that final display of the full Names Quilt, Cleve Jones, the founder of the project, suggested
to me that:
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| Names Quilt founder Cleve Jones through the years. |
And so out of AIDS came the friendships. They were there before and they follow the
epidemic, helping to transform the lives of those of us still living. Noe describe Elton John’s friendship with
Ryan White. “It wasn’t easy.
But ultimately it was his
friendship with Ryan White – unlikely though genuine - that has guided him…. It is not exaggeration
to say that Elton John turned his life
around… because of that friendship. ‘I’m
here today because of Ryan. He inspired me to fix my life and start my
AIDS foundation. He continues to inspire
me each and every day. I know that he
looked up to me and the thought of disappointing him now, even his is long
tone, makes me shudder. I try to honor
his memory by living the way he would want me to live, by being the person he
thought that I was,’” writes Sir Elton, quoted by Noe.
“What has guided Elton
John is what guides many of us after the death of a friend: the desire to give
back, to make the world a better place, as they make it for us,” confesses Noe. “Their lives and deaths are a part of us.”
She is quick to point out that remembering is hard. Sometimes it is easier to forget. But that
won’t help us out of this conundrum.
AIDS is still with us. And
probably the most important step we can take in coping with this epidemic, is
remembering, and from there being inspired to push forward. “Its not over till its over for everyone,”
Housing Works declared after the 1996 treatments. The point rings true today. Its not over till its over for everyone. Hopefully those in power can find the will
power, we can push those in power to end the epidemic and finally make this a
part of our past.
There is no doubt, AIDS made us more human, more open, more
willing to see through our differences, just as the epidemic reminded us this
is an equal opportunity affliction.
“When the story of the AIDS epidemic is written (in the past
tense) will be of friendship: of the men and women, gay and straight , of all
racial and ethnic groups who tended to
and buried their friends, who marched and demonstrated and testified, who
raised money and awareness – all in the
names of their friends…. Just give of yourself.
And that after all, is the true meaning of friendship.”
So on AIDS day, take a minute to remember our lost friends
and the friends still with us, helping us fight this thing till it’s over for everyone. I remember Laverne Holley, the AIDS activists from NYCAHN, CitiWide, and VOCAL.
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| The hardest working activist in NYC, Laverne Holley. |
On World AIDS Day, lets remember the stories of these friends,
some gone, many still living. Early in
the interview process for
my first book, I talked to a man whose dementia intensified between
interviews. At the end of the final
interview he stopped, got up and vomited.
When he sat back down he stared earnestly and told me, "Ben, if you
can do anything, tell the world this isn't a joke." He died two months later. Art, Marija, Phillip, Mike (and others) all
died after their interviews. On Chistmas eve 1994, Fenton Johnson addressed the
need for our secular culture to allow itself room to ponder the mysteries behind
these deaths and lives. His call for
memories of lost friends and a place for story-telling speaks a great deal for
what is missing in our reified, celebrity-obsessed culture: "I remember a story of someone gone from
my life, and tell it to somebody else, and in the telling of that story take my
proper and necessary place in the chain of being." Through the story-telling process, the
grieving, the laughing, this cycle of being, we preserve memory of the quieter
voices behind this, one of the most important social histories of our time.
My friend, artist Hunter Reynolds posted a tribute to these friends for World AIDS Day.
Dear Friends,
As I reflect on World AIDS Day coming up in three days I take
this time to reflect on the friends I have lost in the last two years.
Friends who have all had profound meaning to my life.
Friendships that have spanned decades though laughter,
fun and parties, art and creativity, the beautiful things that
we do to support each-other through hardships pain and suffering
that life throws at us, often struggling to make sence of it all.
I honor their lives today. So beautiful and full of life is how I
remember them the pain grieving is never really gone but their
lives filled me with love and that I am eternally grateful for.
I share them with you!
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