Big Old Jet Aeroliner

I am tired.  No, I am exhausted. I am in coach, a daughter on my left, a daughter on my right. I have the attention span of a gnat, so while they are watching movies. Leiney, on my left, is watching The Santa Claus, while Abby is watching Tony Kushner's Angels in America. I saw both parts at the Repertory Theater back in the day, after reading Roy Cohn's biography. I wasn't prepared. I was in my 20s, and Kushner's storytelling overwhelmed me. I thought the Reagan era Republicans were the worst monsters. Given the number of people who they let die without lifting a finger and continuing to propogare hatred toward gay men and IV drug users, it's hard to argue that they weren't Nazis. How many died during that time? How hard did ACT-UP have to fight to get the government and the people to care? How could we as a country just let people be left to the ravages of the virus? The hysteria--someone should juxtapose the way the culture responded to these crises. I remember this Time or Newsweek story, also covered by the networks about this doctor refusing to perform surgery on patients with HIV without wearing a Level 4 biosuit. I thought about that every time I heard people complaining about masks during COVID. Of course, during the latest epidemic millions of elderly people and the infirm (people like me) were seen as acceptable losses in the fight against the tyranny of the mask. Andrew Cuomo ought to be on jail for his actions toward the elderly, requiring those with COVID to be moved to nursing homes, thus spreading the disease and massively multiplying the disease. Anyway, this wasn't intended to be a post to talk about this. I think visiting The Drama Bookstore on midtown today set me a kilter. Abby had asked to go, and of course we all wanted to visit--its a bookstore after all. As I was perusing amonngst the thousands of bound scripts, I came across Larry Kramer. I admired him so greatly both as an activist and playwright. His righteous anger and refusing to be tone policed in interviews as his whole world of friends was dying around him still makes me cry in admiration. 

I remember one particular interview among those I saw that had me so angry and perplexed with "respectable" media, an appearance on Charlie Rose. Kramer was condemning Reagan and in later episodes Clinton and America for its failure to do anything meaningful to help people in need, to find research, to act like it was a health crisis consuming some of the best and brightest, the ordinary, the drug addicts--more succinctly  the humans. Rose, in my recollection, tut ttutted him, tone-policed and acted as if he were the grown up in the room. I wanted to set him on fure--and hated him ever since. Turns out, he was a piece of shit willing to let a holocaust take place as he sexually harassed young women on his staff. Anyway, if you haven't read or seen any of Kramer's work, or Kushner's, do it now. I read The Normal Heart by Kramer years ago, and it's sequel, both about the HIV epidemic. (I'm sure he was on Road promoting the book when I saw him on Charlie Rose). Unlike the woodeness of Rose (and, frankly, much of America), Kramer was human, moved by the profound loss and indifference to that loss he saw and experienced all around him. So much for this being a post about our travels.

On a positive note, we have gone from "God didn't make Adam and Steve" being an acceptable argument to support bigotry and hatred to a place where non-binary, gay and lesbian kids can go to work or shop at a bookstore as their true selves, out and proud., with much less fear and, at least on the coasts and in most big cities, the support and protection of the establishment. Only now as I write this do I understand people preaching tolerance fall well short of what is needed to make this world a better place for all of us. Fuck tolerance. 

I accidentally stumbled across an archive of text conversations between Jenny and I while searching for something on my phone.  It broke my heart to read those things. Life is fleeting. Kindness, understanding and love are everything. 

I am on a plane, stuck. So, I went back and couldn't find the Rose episode I remember, but Kramer was on the show multiple times over the years. My memory may have embroidered the interactions such that Rose wasn't the dick I portrayed, but I feel certain it was real.

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