What if? If only? If...when. If...then.
I don't know. I think people my age have forgotten we are a lost generation, just as lost as those Americans on whom Miss Stein's pronouncement fell in the 1920s. An entire generation of us was lost, as AIDS killed us, so many of us. I miss so many of my friends from the 1970s and early 1980s, all the pretty boys with their pretty smiles and their pretty tongues barbed as a cat's; all the the smart boys with their sonatas and their sonnets and their paintbrushes and photographs. I miss those photographs. I miss laughter and louche looks and champagne for no reason. I miss platinum-edged china and paper plates and the proper use of salad and shrimp forks with both. I miss Faruk and I miss Sam and I miss Danny and I miss Jon ("I took the goalpost out of my name, sweetness"). I miss Jimmie mocking my Kentucky accent and teaching me how to buy a dress and curl my hair. I miss being able to wear fur and Frye boots. I miss automats and egg creams and pizza by the slice slapped on a sheet of wax paper at 1 a.m. I miss waking up at 11 a.m. and drinking mimosas till happy hour. I miss Happy Hours. I miss the trek from Russian Tea Room to CBGBs to the corner deli. I miss the hours I used to spend with my friends, the hours they didn't have left.
if only...
If only every day, I didn't curse Ronald Reagan, the prejudices that prevented treating a pandemic, and the entire staffs of small-town hospitals. If only every day I didn't know in my bones, in the dreadlocks of my own DNA, that science could have killed the AIDS virus back in the early 1980s, could have classified it and cultured it in a petri dish and crushed its replication, could have prevented its spread as well as clarifying care and cures for others. There could have/should have/would have been a vaccine by now, a cure by now...if only there weren't Republicans in office...if only there was a heart and an art to public health...if only the word "pariah" ddn't come to be redefined in so many cities and small towns...if only suffering people were treated as well as dogs and cats and cars are treated. So much wit, charm, beauty, talent, heart we lost; there are so many words we will never read, so much music we will never hear, so many paintings and photographs we will never stand before, amazed...So much might have happened, so many might have lived, and lived well, if it weren't for the ilk of Ed Koch, for drug companies who'd rather turn a profit than save lives.
If only...
I remind myself that I am alive, and I am healthy, and I have memories. I am thankful for that.
I am thankful for Ward 86, SFGH.
I am thankful my friend was treated with compassion when he was dying.
I am thankful I was there.
I am thankful that I was alone afterward.
If only...
In my own person, in my own personal grief, I wish that I could remember everything. I forget sometimes that I am a witness to one of the great tragedies of our times.
I forget that it is the duty of the witness to testify.
But people, it is so hard.
Be patient with me these days. I am writing from my very nerve endings.
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