All I want is the Cure, and my friends back

[Elphaba]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 9:42pm

Tomorrow is World AIDS Day......

please take a moment and reflect on what this means to you.

To me, it is remembering all the friends who are gone, it is remembering the heartache of the early AIDS days, the government ignoring the problem, and how we truly had to depend on ourselves to get through it.

Many of you will never understand how that affected gay men and women who survived that period. It wasn't only the Fallen who were forever changed.

Please, take a moment to remember a fallen friend, or to call someone who you know could use a cheerful hello or a kind word.

It's time to cure this........

Updated On: 11/30/05 at 09:42 PM

[TheatreDiva612]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 9:44pm

amen

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 9:51pm

The thread title alone has made me cry like a baby....


I miss my friends.


Hug me Elphy....

[PalJoey]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 9:54pm

A whole generation of theater people died. They were our friends and lovers.

And no one believed us that it was going to be a worldwide epidemic.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 10:10pm

But, watch out for that bird flu!

Damn, a WHOLE two people are dead......

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 10:18pm

Thank you for this thread Elphaba.

[brdlwyr]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 10:19pm

There are countless who have been taken, but two people who were instrumental in my arrival to Chicago and my college life were victims. God bless them and the millions who have died and who are suffering from this dreadful scurge.

[gavrochegirl]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 10:49pm

Even though I don't have family or friends who have died of/have AIDS, I'm still observing World AIDS Day.

I'm going to try to get my Home Ec. teacher to give me a few ribbons so I can hand them out to my teachers that I see tomorrow. I will also (if I can) light a candle.

[Typogirl]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 11:00pm

I know it has been posted already but it cant hurt to have it in more than one place. http://www.lighttounite.com/ Go light a candle, every candle is one dollar closer to finding a solution

[Calvin]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 11:00pm

Very nice thought.

I was born in '78 and just a kid in the onset of the AIDS crisis. I remember not really understanding what was going on but being terrified by the images I'd see on TV, whether it was actual news reports with the victims on TV or the TV movies that were coming out. Was this something I could get, I wondered? No one could really explain it to me. Between this and Reagan and nuclear war, I was a scared little boy.

I found out later that a guy who went to my church had gotten it when he moved to California. He wasn't allowed to come back home to his parents. I don't know what happened to him. I know his partner died.

Fortunately, by the time I came out, I met plenty of HIV positive people but it wasn't the death sentence it once was. Progress is worth something.

[new_philosophy_girl]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 11:14pm

Elphaba...thanks for this thread...it is such a shame that in this day and age that AIDS is still in many ways a taboo subject (at least where I live).

And I couldn't agree more with TheatreDiva90016, about the whole bird flu thing. I hear so much about the bird flu and yet, here we have AIDS, a disease that so many people in the US are living with and fighting, and so little is made of it until this time of year.


Did anyone get one of those dogtags from Aldo? I got the speak one.

[Patronus]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 11:36pm

Thank you for starting this thread Elphaba.

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 11:51pm

Remember...

Updated On: 11/30/05 at 11:51 PM

[Chrysanthemum62001]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 11:59pm

I look forward to the day we can say no more people's lives will be taken by this horrible viscious disease.

Until there's a cure...

To anyone who has ever lost a loved one due to AIDS, my thoughts and prayers are with you on this day of remembrance.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 12/1/05 at 12:05am

Sometimes, as we go about our lives, we forget how prevalent this disease still is. Unless of course you are the one inflicted. So many have been taken from us, and although great advances have been made, people are dying everyday.
Thanks for starting this thread, Elpheba. However painful it is we must never forget or give up the fight.

[CostumeMistress]

Posted: 12/1/05 at 12:21am

I'll never forget going with a close friend of mine when he got tested for the first time - holding his hand, seeing the fear in his eyes, and then both of us crying with relief when it came back negative. He was lucky - my heart goes out to all those who were/are not so fortunate.

Please be safe, my beloved BWWers, today and always.

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 12/1/05 at 2:12am

My introduction to the virus came when I was 13. I knew what it was. It was the disease that Rock Hudson had. It happened in New York and California and I lived in Tennessee. Then my father got a call that his cousin had just passed away. He had "cancer." I didn't know him, hell, I didn't know he had existed, but I went to the visitation. Everyone was pretty quiet. No one showed very much emotion. He had been "away" for the last 15 years or so. There was one young man there that I didn't know. He was very handsome and clearly devastated. I felt so horrible that he was there and so upset with no one to comfort him. I asked him if he wanted some coffee and I think he was just happy that someone wasn't pretending he was invisible. His name was Mike. He asked if there was somewhere nearby that we could go just to get away from there. We ended up sitting in a little bakery talking. We were complete strangers and the conversation was awkward at best. I asked the question, "Were you close?" He said they had been roommates. As he talked, he got more comfortable and started opening up about him more. At 13, it took a lot longer to realize the situation than it would now. When I mentioned the "cancer," he rolled his eyes a bit. I finally figured it out. It was the most amazing and intimate conversation I had had at that point, and probably the most important one I have ever had. My parents found me at that point, and man was I in deep. Mike schmoozed my parents until they were no longer mad at me for leaving without telling them where I was going.

At the funeral, I sat with Mike and held his hand. We developed a friendship that I came to treasure. It was the days before email, so there were weekly letters. He sent me $500 when I graduated from high school. He passed away three months later. I never knew my dad's cousin, but his partner changed me forever. I wish I could say that they were the only two people in my life effected by this. It's hard to believe there is still no cure.

Sorry for babbling, but this thread brought on a lot of memories.

[sweetestsiren]

Posted: 12/1/05 at 2:36am

Wow, that's a really touching story, JerseyGirl. Thank you for sharing it.

It's unfortunate that it's one of so many stories like that... THIS is what we as a nation need to be focusing on, rather than the countless distractions in the news everyday.

My heart goes out to everyone whose lives have been affected by this disease. We need to be reminded that AIDS is not a concern of some bygone era, it remains a real threat to today's world.

[Elphaba]

Posted: 12/1/05 at 10:27am

what beautiful posts, thank you all.......my lasting image of this crises will always be of an ex-boyfriend in Chicago, between 1984-1989........who kept on his mantle pictures of all of his friends who had died. When we broke up, as I moved out of state, there were so many, they actually stood up on their own.......it was so sad, and I'll never forget that

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/1/05 at 10:41am

What a sweet story, Jersey Girl. I'm sure Mike felt very lucky to have found you among his partner's family. There were many stories back then of families rejecting the dead son's partner and friends. I hope you did something celebratory with the graduation gift.

[Elphaba]

Posted: 12/1/05 at 10:47am

paljoey, there are many stories still now of familes rejecting living gay partners of their deceased children.....of horrible court battles, etc....that just keeps going on.
The key is to have wills.......and make them airtight so families cannot do this........which more people do now.

There were families who would not let me into a hospital room, just as a friend, to say goodbye.......and I cannot tell you how many tiles I say with someone, holding them as he creied, since he was not allowed to see his partner in the hospital......it was just so wrong. And still is.....

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/1/05 at 11:00am

And because of those stories, gay men and lesbians learned that we have to have wills and estate planning and powers of attorney and advanced medical directives and, ultimately, gay marriage.

Still, I'd rather have the cure and my friends back, but we learned from the loss and we remember.

Here's a picture of one of the friends I want back: Reed Jones, the original Broadway Skimbleshanks in Cats. (I've posted his picture so many times before on BWW, it's almost like he's a member!)



Hey, Reed! Still miss ya, buddy!

Updated On: 12/1/05 at 11:00 AM

[RobbO]

Posted: 12/1/05 at 11:04am

live and let live

[Love4Cheno]

Posted: 12/1/05 at 11:27am

Incredible thread.

I'm sitting at my computer at work with my eyes welling up.

[Rose_MacShane]

Posted: 12/1/05 at 11:33am

When I think of AIDS, Reed Jones, Timothy Scott and Rene Clemente are the first people who always come to mind for me. It's no secret that I'm a huge CATS fan, and I wish I had been old enough to see them in the original cast. But the OCR will have to suffice. I feel like I got to know them, in some small way, through reading up on the show and through Stephen Mo Hanan's book, "A Cat's Diary", which details his experience in the cast. I know it pales in comparison to those who knew them best, but I was sitll touched by them.
I don't personally know anyone who has AIDS, but my heart goes out to everyone who has, and have lost family and friends to this illness.