Reply #12: Here's one thing I'll seldom get used to: the drama!!

[bridgit]

Two of our dear friends are 'positive' (not only two but the two who's stories are related here), a 3rd wants in on 'the gig' cause he's older, nearly 60, very fem, and burnt his lover of 27 years out of his mother's house he inherited, gone, and now being frail...into a nursing home that he never visits which is a better thing cause other members of the community are caring for him now. Well, not actually 'burnt' but burnt in the sense he had him put him on all his accounts, learned his PIN's, and began taking out mortgages and buying spendy stuff he didn't tell his lover about and poof! It was all soon gone. Does this bother him? It does not seem to, as he's back down at the saloon sucking up everyone else's booze like there is no tomorrow, so...

Our two positive friends are trying to reconcile after their back & forth; the one slashing the bike tires of the other that works from home rending him without transportation (we all live downtown within services, etc); and the other having friends over for companionship yes, but the effect is just as easily read by 'the one' as rubbing his nose in it and there may be something to that who can say for sure but to suggest that...

The other then begins, under the guise of friendly reconciliation; to introduce companions to the one (the work from homer, nice, pleasant, 30-ish+, already survived the Bronx) one that then made copies of his house keys and had sneaked back in under influences of meth, held knives to his neck, split his lip, and blackened his eye, now, as...

The original other, the first guy, picks up from the saloon we all drink at; but then takes a rough rider back to his 98 year old mom's house then leaves him there to go cop some stuff...comes back and mom's on the floor, the rider has whipped his rescue pup into a whimpering mess, and is sitting in the back of a police cruiser, cuffed, and on his way back to Reno cause it turns out he's on parole for being a violent offender and not to have left Nevada. Do these things only happen in the community? Of course not. People that are fearful are fearful of a good many things i.e. young black males walking both sides of the street, yummy little white prostitutes w/anti gravity boobs leaning into their car windows at stop lights asking with sparkly eyes & milky teeth, "Want to party?", bearded Muslims, even crazier whiter tattooed skin-meth-heads with AK47's, so it's not just you the weak minded are afraid of, they're afraid of their shadows

But yeah, you're here you're queer. And it isn't a matter of my getting used to it. After 4 years of HIV/AIDS counseling in LA, I have shed & sobbed tears and been broken into two whole pieces while sitting in the hospitals rooms of dying gay friends as I begged...BEGGED THROUGH MY OWN TEARS!! -- the parents of these their children to just speak with them in that they would be gone in mere days of not hours and do you know what? They would not speak to their own dying children. Similarly, I've seen too many graves filled with too many similar tears.

The people we need to convince, and believe me when I say this unto you...are out there, in the world. They are the ones that need to get used to it. Many here already know. Many others only think they do.