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I wasn’t accustomed to being wanted.
I wasn’t accustomed to being wanted.
It will come as no surprise that I got beat up whenever hateful straight boys needed a punching bag, but I found the isolation to be more painful than the physical abuse. No love letter; no slow dances; no kisses—I grew up starved for affection.
It will come as no surprise that I got beat up whenever hateful straight boys needed a punching bag, but I found the isolation to be more painful than the physical abuse. No love letter; no slow dances; no kisses—I grew up starved for affection.
Lust is a universal language.
Lust is a universal language.
The idea of having to top gave me performance anxiety.
My whole life, I’d been viewed as a sissy. Some people found my effeminate mannerisms disgusting; others found them alluring. I came to believe that I had been stamped a certain way, and that the stamp was immutable. This is not to say that I was rebuking my effeminate side; this wasn’t about subtraction but addition. On the train to and from Queens, I discovered I was capable of expansion. We are not so narrowly defined as society would have us believe. Yet the limits placed on our appetites, talents, and potential are implanted in us when we are children—too young to recognize the prisons
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My cause was born of a lie, but a lie can be the spark that leads to virtue.
Winning rarely changes how people perceive us and almost never soothes our insecurities.
See, even during a pandemic, racism never fails to insert itself into the equation.
“AIDS ain’t nothin’ but another word for death, and when death decides to come for you, it’s out of your hands.”
Women fill a need because they see a need. We don’t necessarily get pleasure from it. We don’t expect a reward. We don’t expect shit.” Angie
“He belittled relevant experience. All the years I’ve devoted to torture play are going to be tremendously helpful.” Peter pulled me in close to whisper in my ear. “When the cops beat my ass, I’m liable to cum.”
If you fight, it will legitimize the unchecked savagery of your enemies. You must remember that your victory comes from unmasking the senseless brutality that the government chooses to sanction against you, a collection of nonviolent demonstrators. The point is to let your bruised and bloodied bodies serve as evidence that the government means to kill you, if you so much as protest its bigoted policies.” A childhood spent attending church services, and the first time I ever felt the Word touch me was during a sermon from Dorothy Cotton delivered in Larry Kramer’s bedroom. It was like I’d
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“Congratulations,” said Larry. “You two are founding members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. ACT UP, for short.”
Larry Kramer.
“Will you die silently while your government twiddles its thumbs?! Will you wait patiently until you’re six feet under while the FDA drags its feet?! Will you spend the rest of your short life wasting your precious time at toothless meetings of the GMHC?” Pandemonium. I’d never heard a crowd that size make so much noise. Larry was tapping into an unspoken anger. An anger at a government that hated fags, at bureaucrats who valued procedure over people in need, and at the groveling political tactics of appeasement embodied by the GMHC.
Dorothy Cotton.
can’t afford to indulge my grief. I’ve got other guys—there are always other guys—that need looking after. I can’t be there for them if I’m hung up on someone else. But
AIDS was killing us long before we gave it a name.70
Theodora Divine,
“If we doin’ this, let’s do it now! Hit the street, bitches!”
The matter was put to a vote, and the decision was nearly unanimous (Dylan voted against me): I was the ACT UP liaison to the Second National March.
César Chávez
