His Name Was Daniel Matczak

GRID ...  AIDS …  HIV … T-Cell ... Seroconversion ... Immunocompromised ...  AZT … Kaposi’s Sarcoma ... Thrush ... Peripheral Neuropathy … Wasting Syndrome … Secondary Brain Tumor ... Palliative Radiation …  Night Sweats …  Night Terrors …  Bowel Incontinence ... Toxoplasmosis ... Dementia … Morphine ... Breakthrough pain ... Coffee Ground Emesis … Do Not Resuscitate

These were the vocabulary words of my young adulthood.

I was 16 years old when my closest friend was diagnosed with the new gay disease. He was 17. Beautiful. Immortal. Fearless. Radiant. Irreverent. Brilliant. Gorgeous. Slutty. Hilarious. Bitchy. Outspoken. Sparkling. He moved to New York City as soon as he could get away. He and the city were made for each other and he thrived there for 8 or 9 years. He created a family. Modeled and learned to act. Waited tables. Did sex work. Tried the new drugs. One of an endless stream of young faggots trying to make their way. Except he was my young faggot. I loved him and missed him. We talked and visited. We spent Christmas and the Fourth of July at his mother’s. We exchanged cards and letters.

One day he called me at work. He’d been to visit a friend at St. Vincent’s Hospital. Men were lined up in the hallways on gurneys. They were groaning, crying and scared. There weren’t enough beds. He’d been to more than 100 funerals before he stopped going. He sounded frightened on the telephone. He told me he was coming home. Home to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It occurred to me that he was going to die in the place he couldn’t wait to flee.

He asked me to help take care of him. I spent about 18 months helping Daniel die. It was a privilege, and I’m grateful to have gotten to be an intimate part of his final year. It was also brutal, terrifying and tragic. My beautiful boy became a lesion-covered, emaciated, shuffling, moaning nightmare from a horror film. Caring for him was not easy, and it certainly wasn’t pretty. I cleaned his shit.I lowered him into and hoisted him out of the bathtub while he screamed in pain. I held his hand while he cried and told me he didn’t want to die. I spoon-fed him. I listened when he said he’d never been in love, and he couldn’t believe he was going to die without having been in love.I learned to drive a stick so I could take him to radiation therapy. I changed his linens. I slept on the floor next to him. I lied and said that he would get his wish to make it to 30. I gathered his hair from the pillow so he didn’t have to know it was falling out. I walked with him in public where people recoiled as we went by. I took notes as he described the funeral he wanted. I was in the room when he reconciled with his father. I held his mother as she sobbed. I gave him his medicine and stood by while he tried to choke it down. I emptied bedpans and urinals. I emptied dish pan after dish pan of vomited blood.  I rode in the ambulance. I held vigil at the hospital with the rest of his chosen and biological family. I prayed he’d die. I begged him to die. Finally he did. He was 27 years old. I was 26.

I think of him every day of course. But I don’t think of these details very often. They are too painful and not what I want to see when I remember him. His death and the epidemic that killed him, and continues to kill people just as unique, loved and wonderful as he was, shaped my life profoundly That time turned me into an activist, a radical and finally a queer.

Yesterday evening, though, those terrible memories and feelings came flooding back when Hillary Clinton, the presidential candidate endorsed by the HRC, praised Nancy Reagan and how she quietly began the national conversation about the AIDS crisis.

In some ways it is the revision of our nightmare to something polite and whispered and appropriate that offends me most. There was no national conversation. There was a howl of agony, of rage, of terror. When it became clear that those in power were not going to help us, we rose up. We took action. We took to the streets. We radicalized. We stopped traffic. We died-in. We learned and taught safer sex. We took care of one another the best we could because nobody else gave a fuck about us. In the language she used, Hillary Clinton turned our riot into a tea-party held at the White House and led by the first lady.

I’m a person committed to a life of compassion and connection. Helping Daniel die is a big part of the generation and continuation of that commitment. Therefore, I’m ashamed to admit that I hate the Reagans. I hate them with a white hot flame deep inside me. I seethe when I see their photographs. I hope they burn in a hell I don’t believe in. It infuriates me that they got to live into their 90s when their silence, homo-hatred and disdain led to the deaths of so many of my people. I wish I could make those feelings different, but I haven’t been able to (yet). I was angry and upset just seeing that woman’s face plastered everywhere as she was lauded and celebrated. Last night that anger and upset flared into rage and grief. The contained white flame became volcanic and burned in me like it was the day 30 years ago when we put Daniel into the ground.

If Hillary Clinton didn’t remember this history before she spoke, she fucking should have. If she is the person and ally she claims to be, there is no doubt that she would have. She is either a political opportunist or even more out of touch than I’d imagined. Or both. If it was up to me, she wouldn’t have gone to the funeral. Why is it required that a Democratic presidential candidate speak in reverential tones about a person she should despise just because that person once had political power? Nonetheless, I accept that there is some rule somewhere that says one must appear, participate and even eulogize. Especially if they want the votes of the “Reagan democrats”. Especially if they feel they have the gay vote all sewn up.

(Upon re-reading this, I actually don't understand why there is a rule that says she had to attend this funeral. I think it speaks to how ingrained the cultural norm is in me that I wrote that. I think it speaks to how I don't believe that a candidate for president can behave with integrity rather than pragmatism.)

The apologists are coming out of the woodwork this evening. The HRC and its (under)statement about what she said. Other gay political types who likely think marriage is the apex of gay politics, and now that we have it we should all go home. The folks who don’t want queers, leather people, freaks, drag queens, trans-folks, sluts and rabble rousers to show themselves lest the people looking realize we aren’t just like them after all. These folks are out in full force in the press and social media today. “She didn’t mean it”. “It was the heat of the moment.” “She apologized.” “She was confused.” “She apologized again, and this time it’s better”.  I say exactly what I said to the assimilationists then. Fuck off. When you’re ready to be part of the revolution, we’re here. Until then, just fuck off.

If Clinton becomes the nominee, I’ll vote for her. I’ve never missed voting in an election and this sure as hell won’t be the first one I do. But I’ll be holding my nose and carrying a rock in my heart. I won’t shed the tears I expected to when a woman became president. That day, if it comes this election, will fulfill a fantasy I’ve nurtured all of my life. But instead of joy, it will be another bitter example of how I will never get the government I want, of how little room there is for the queers, for the diseased, for the freaks. How little room for me and mine.

I don’t quite know yet what to do with this avalanche of memories and feelings. I don’t quite know yet how to regain peace. It’s springtime. Almost Daniel’s birthday. I think I’ll visit his grave and hang out there for a while. I’ll listen to the birds sing and touch the grass. Maybe I’ll cry.