December 1st is World AIDS Day.
I go back to the day I first heard about this mystery sickness killing gay men. June 5, 1987. I was 22. Six years after the first known case in North America. Canada loves to pretend nothing ugly exists here. Especially anything that touches homosexuality. We hide our rot behind our politeness.
I was in some greasy restaurant. My big brother was pushing food at me like I was a stray he refused to let die. I was strung out on meth. We called it speed back then. My arms were covered in needle marks. I had fresh ones on my neck because the high needed to hit harder. Someone told me hitting your juggler would drop me right into that warm hug. That perfect escape from myself.
My brother knew how to slow down the storm in my head. He would read the news to me. He knew that was the only thing that made me sit still. He would lift the paper and say let’s see what the boys are saying today.
We were both junkies. Not because we loved the high. Because we were trying to live with the aftermath of child sexual violence. That kind of pain never leaves. It wraps itself around your ribs and squeezes until you cannot breathe. Dope gave us a few hours of quiet. A break from the memories that lived under our skin. It kept us from going crazy. Even while it was killing us.
I was the one disappearing. Skin and bones. Eyes vibrating. I would not listen to talk about getting clean, but I would open my mouth if he slid hash browns toward me.
The story that day was almost all about gay men dying. Then there was one tiny line about intravenous drug users. One line. My brother and I looked at each other and fear ripped straight through us. The world had never cared if we lived or died. But now something was coming for people like us too.
Knowledge can hit you like a punch. Even a drop of it.
I am not saying we stopped hitting dope. I am saying something cracked open. We started thinking about living. Even if we had no idea how to do it.
We were surviving minute to minute. Wanting to live. Wanting to die. Sometimes both in the same breath.
Maybe that was the first moment I wanted to stay alive.
The next day I got run over by a transport truck. Suddenly I had a bed. A roof. A place where the floor did not move. The hospital became the closest thing to stable housing I had.
Then the funerals started. Friends dying from what the streets called the Fag Disease. Friends taking themselves out because the shame of HIV weighed more than being a junkie.
Four years ago I buried my beautiful brother. He stayed as long as he could. I write this for him and for the other family members who could not stay because child sexual violence ripped their will to fight right out of their bodies.
This year I heard a song that cracked all of this open again. It is written by Maureen Pollard and it is called I Hope You Stay. It feels like someone reaching into the dark for the ones barely holding on. The ones fighting to live. The ones hoping they do not wake up. The ones who need someone to say staying is not weakness. It is courage.
I write this for the friends I buried.
I write this for my brother who fought until he could not.
I share Maureen’s song for anyone standing on that razor edge.
And on World AIDS Day, I remember the ones we lost.
To the virus.
To the shame.
To the silence that killed faster than HIV ever could.
I hope you stay.