If You Came Up Then You Would Understand

[JamesSavik]

If You Came Up Then You Would Understand

 

"If one more idiot asks me if I'm a top or a bottom, I swear, I'm going to deck them!"

"Easy, easy champ."

"It's none of their damned business. There's no way I'm going to play hide the salami with a perfect stranger."

"Dude, it's not the eighties anymore."

"Thank God. If you came up then, you would understand."

"If I'd come up then, I would probably have been a causality or a basket-case. What was it like?"

"It was like some malevolent thing was stalking you and everyone you cared about. At the time, being out often ostracized gay people and the community was all they had. People read the paper back then. Every day you would look at the obituaries and hope you didn't recognize a name."

"Jesus."

"There was a guy who was part of a group that ran a few record stores around the area. I saw him at the store pretty regular. Then he wasn't there one day. A week later he was on the obituary page. If you were lucky, it was like that. It just nipped at your acquaintances. If it got someone close to you, and you were faithful and stuck around, you got to see what a real nightmare looked like."

Rocky put his hand on the older man's arm and said, "You sound like you are speaking from experience."

"Yeah. AIDS was an epic shit show. Nobody got out of that without scars."

 

 

 

[Merkin]

‘This is something that just can’t be understood…’

Right on.

[Jason Rimbaud]

So many friends in the early nineties disappeared so fast.

To this day, the young people that work for me ask me what it was like back then, and sometimes I can't say anything but frightful. Unless you lived through it, much like what I imagine war would be like, you can't make someone else understand. Tragic in so many ways.

J