I Wish More Younger Queers Learned About The AIDS Epidemic

i wish more younger queers learned about the AIDS epidemic

i'm a 17 year old, ex-evangelical, queer and trans kid from the south; i never learned from the adults in my life about AIDS/HIV and my school didn't teach me either.

i became disabled when i was 13 and at the same time i was in a sort of an identity crisis about my sexuality and gender. i've always been a huge history and culture nerd so those were the first things i looked to in order to make sense of myself. i quickly learned about queer and trans icons of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. i learned about harvey milk, james baldwin, andy warhol, divine, freddie mercury, and jayne county. i learned about how monumental their lives were and how much of an impact they had on our culture. but i still hasn't even scratched the surface. in 2021 dan levy wore a david wojnarowicz inspired outfit and i started doing research on david. in my research about david, i learned about keith haring, and felix gonzalez-torres. i saw their art and absorbed the life inside of it. i started reading about AIDS/HIV and the medical history of it. about how disabling the condition was mentally and physically. how people with it were shamed and shunned. how people still live with the pain and stigma of the condition and how AIDS severely affects the disabled. my heart hurt.

in mid 2024, i watched the series fellow travelers. i was enthralled in the pain and love of it all. people who know me know that when i love something, i LOVE something. the character tim develops AIDS and then eventually kaposi's sarcoma. i didn't know you could get cancer on top of AIDS. you could see him fighting until his last breath. his passion and fire and feistiness never left even when he was at his sickest. witnessing the all consuming love story of tim and hawk and then seeing tim being dragged out of life was painful. knowing that the government at the time did absolutely nothing to help anyone with the condition broke my heart.

all of these things, along with learning later from my queer elders, put it into perspective for me about how much we are fighting for. i cherish my community so much more. my queer joy became radical in the face of politicians trying to take it away. seeing queer and trans people in public and in pictures through history brings me comfort and warmth. i've never had as a big of a smile on my face as when i was looking through a photo gallery of 80s dykes. i'm so fucking proud and grateful and thankful and loving of my community because of us. our existence is enough to keep the world running. our love and our pain are more important than we could ever imagine.

thank you queer elders for being you forever. i love you even though i don't know you. long live the friends of dorothy!🩷🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️