One of the benefits of getting older is perspective; there are many other benefits, among the many or few pitfalls that come with, all of which depend so much on an individual’s temperament, health, luck, ability to financially plan, natural resilience, etc., etc. The gift of perspective is one that endows a broader and more sweeping understanding of your entire life, and – hopefully, knock wood – includes a full dose of acceptance, acceptance of what is, and what was.
A few weeks ago, I was mentioning to my acupuncturist (yes, I have an acupuncturist, and not for the first time in my life, bro’fos!) that I was very grateful, whatever my occasional aches and pains, for my basic good health, my working limbs, good teeth, and strong heart. So many of my friends and classmates I said to her, are already dead, a chunk of them for decades. I lost half my college class before I was thirty-five. She responded, ‘Wow. Lots of hard living, then?’
Oh, the blissful, blessed ignorance of youth, of not having lived through it; she is about forty, maybe a little less, maybe a little more. No, I said, AIDs. AIDs. That other pandemic of my lifetime. Hers too, perhaps, except she wasn’t old enough, or in a place where it would have impacted her as it did me, my generation and older peeps, but especially those in certain arenas and areas, working or living in or among specific places and communities. In college I was a theatre major; my dying or dead friends were actors, directors, and dancers, who, like me, worked in NYC in theatres and supper or night clubs in the 80s and 90s. And in restaurants. All places traditionally more welcoming to LGBTQ humans in the eras before marriage equality, increased visibility, acceptance, and decency, before the cultural milestones of The Birdcage, Will and Grace, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and Ru Paul’s Drag Race.
What a shit-show it was, back in the day (not unlike the C19 shit-show), when that other pandemic raged. It was good preparation for Covid, if you survived and learned your lessons: follow the public health guidelines, and listen to experts. It’s not that fucking hard; follow the accepted scientific wisdom, and you’ll be fine. Maybe it helped enlighten me in that I did see and experience it, up close and personal. If you were engaging in risky behaviors, if you were in a high-risk population (gay men and intravenous drug users), use protection and caution. The AIDs quilt, the many AIDs walks, GMHC (founded 1982) where I volunteered, God’s Love We Deliver (founded 1985) Broadway Cares, Equity Fights AIDs (founded 1992) where I also volunteered, all of these are still going strong thirty-five or forty-plus years later, most of the organizations working on social issues around AIDs for longer than my acupuncturist has been alive.
Because AIDs struck, initially, marginalized (and in many corners reviled) minorities in this country, it did not have the impact on public policy Covid has the potential to create (knock-wood: healthcare equity, including equity of access), but that pandemic did have positives, not enough to outweigh the negatives, yet it did help create change. Awareness in families and communities of how close we all were to persons in the LGBTQ community, to the community of women and men who were given blood containing the virus, to drug users who had been hiding in plain sight. When was the first time I heard the term ‘functional addict’? I’m not entirely sure, but it was the 1980s, I bet. Uncles, aunts, friends, siblings, cousins, neighbors. People you worked with were using heroin (my waitress friend, LuLu) or snorting coke (Cesar, my karate and judo instructor) daily, and while I can’t say they were doing fine, or as fine as a pregnant waitress not using heroin daily, they were functioning, and I had never known, or – I didn’t know at first, and for a long time.
The AIDs pandemic exposed how we as a society treated and felt about gay people, sick people, the poor, drug users – we, this great, wealthy ‘Christian’ nation. Similarly, the abuse of ‘essential workers’ during Covid, the painfully high death rates from the disease in black, brown and indigenous communities, the callousness shown by certain legislators who should have known and done better regarding the most vulnerable: the elderly, the obese, diabetics and others with pre-existing conditions. The selfishness. The indifference to other peoples’ lives in the face of blind political ambition. When will we ever learn? Truth is, pandemics expose the heights and depths of human nature, including human fear and ignorance at its worst.
Acceptance. Doing your part, trying not to judge others for their humanness (heavy lifting, some days), making your point of view known without beating anyone up (also heavy lifting, many days), and knowing that – hoping that – at the other end of this current shit-show (C19 and politics what with Orange Nero running again), we will collectively do better, make better policy, use what was learned to improve the next big thing coming down the pike. Acceptance. Knowing and accepting that I have now lived twice as long as a handful of my former classmates. One of my college friends, now in a wheelchair, has lived with AIDs since he was diagnosed in 1987 or ’88. He has had almost every form of disease you could possibly imagine. Still fighting. Still alive. So, you think I’m gonna complain about my bullshit little aches and pains? Nope. Well, at least not often. Gratitude and acceptance working together are mighty powerful tools.
I meant to write about the perks of aging, and acceptance. Oh well! Another time.