“But we also need to find a way to stop new cases,” Stephen continues. “And what better place to start than by educating young people?” He looks at Judy and me, and he adds affectedly, “Our innocent, pure young people.”
“If my face isn’t enough to scare young people into having safe sex,” the thin man says, “then I don’t know how protesting outside the department of education will help.”
He’s right. I look at his face and realize it’s the face I’ve been seeing in all my nightmares since I first understood what sex was, and since I first understood that Judy and I would never get married and have kids like we said we would, because I really do want to sleep with the basketball team. And the football team. And every member of Depeche Mode and the Smiths. I basically want to sleep with everyone with a Y chromosome. But this man’s face—gaunt and covered in caked-on concealer doing a poor job of hiding purple lesions—is the face that stops me from acting on any of my abundant desires. It’s the face my dad and I were looking at five years ago when we were sitting outside one of those awful French bistros where all the men wear identical suits and all the women wear dead animals on their backs. One of those faces walked by us, leading a poodle on a leash, and my dad looked at it—the face, not the poodle—with a grimace of disgust and said, “They deserve it, you know. Maybe when this is all over, we won’t have any more of them in the city. Maybe even in the world. Wouldn’t that be something?” And then the face walked away, leaving me and my father alone, steak frites in front of us and a new barrier in between us.
How was he supposed to know that only a few months before, I’d had my first wet dream, about Morrissey? How was he supposed to know that I had discovered—after a childhood spent assuming I was just like others—that I was not only different but despised? That he had just suggested the world would be a better place if his own son dropped dead after a few years of lesions, diarrhea, and blindness? I wanted to reach over and strangle him. To exterminate him and anyone with that kind of hate in their hearts. I could see the headlines—Old Money! New Scandal! Greedy Banker Killed by Effeminate Son. Revenge of the Gay: Son Brutally Strangles Father. But I didn’t kill him. I just ate my steak in silence and listened as he told me about his latest trades.
“We do have two teenagers here with us,” Stephen says, pointing to me and Judy. “My beautiful niece Judy, and her best friend, Art. Not to put them on the spot or anything, but maybe they could tell us something about their experience.”
“We have no experience!” Judy says, way too boisterously. “Not in that department, I mean. None. Nada. We’re basically Doris Day and Sandra Dee.”
A man in the corner with fuchsia hair says, “And even if they had experience, do you think they’d want to tell a roomful of grown-ups including their uncle? Have you forgotten what being a teenager is like?”
“Bite your tongue,” Stephen says. “I only just turned nineteen.” When he says this, he sounds like he’s in one of his melodramas. Stephen loves old black-and-white movies. It’s funny, ’cause he’s the most colorful person I know. He’s brighter than color. He’s Technicolor.
“I have something to say.” That’s me talking. My palms are sweaty, and my voice shakes. “I, um, it’s about something that I think is, um, super important. It’s just, well, I think that there’s something that would be missing even if the department of education spoke to teenagers.” I pause for a long time, and Stephen gives me a nod of support. “It’s the parents,” I finally say. This is it, the gist of what I want to say, and once I start, I can’t stop. “It’s the parents who have to change first. Because so long as parents are telling their kids that being gay is a sin, or that this disease is God’s way of killing gay people, or that celibacy is the only way not to die, or that they can get it from sitting on the wrong toilet seat, then nothing else matters. Because teenagers, well, I mean, we don’t tell grown-ups what we do because we already know how they’re going to react. We already know that they’ll either pretend we never said what we said or they’ll ground us or blame us. And you know, most people don’t really have parents like you.”
“Thank God—I’d be Daddy Dearest,” one man in the back cracks, but Stephen quiets him with a flick of his wrist.
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” I say. Stephen gives me another nod. Here’s what I think I’m saying: that Stephen is the dad I wish I had, the dad I was supposed to have, the man I consider my spiritual father. And that life for gay people is inherently unfair, because most gay people are born into families that just don’t get them at all. And that’s the best-case scenario. The worst cases . . . being abused, kicked out of the house, thrown into the streets. I guess I’m lucky my own case is somewhere in between. I mean, I know my parents think I’m a pervert, but they also haven’t disowned me or anything. But that’s probably because if they did that, then their whole social circle would inevitably find out why. And they’re saving face as long as they can. They just care how things look to their bridge club. When I told them what they should have already known from the Boy George posters on my wall, my dad just walked out of the room, like this was a business meeting he was cutting short. And my mom . . . she looked at me with disappointment, like I’d gotten a B-minus in math or something. Then she told me that it would all be okay, so long as I didn’t tell anyone or do anything.
They never mention that conversation, not even when I wear eyeliner or tank tops or dye my hair or blast Madonna so loud that our place sounds like a pride parade. They’ve basically chosen to ignore me, and I’ve chosen to make that hard for them. “I guess I’m just saying that I think someone should protest parents. Or maybe not, like, all parents. But someone should protest my parents.”
I finally shut up. And then the man with the fuchsia hair turns to me and says, “Gimme their address, and we’ll handle them.”
I sit down, my face hot and my hands shaky. I’ve been to a few of these meetings with Judy, but this is the first time I’ve spoken. Thankfully, the conversation is steered back to their next action. Six men are going to dress as traders, use fake badges, and infiltrate the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to protest the pharmaceutical company that is making AZT prohibitively expensive. As I listen, it suddenly hits me how hard being eloquent is, how angry I am, and how I have no idea how to be an activist. That’s when I raise my hand and stand up again. All I say is “I want to help.”
Stephen glares at me, but I stare him down. This is when it comes in handy that he’s not really my dad. I don’t need his permission. And nothing’s more important to me than ending AIDS. Yeah, it’s because I want to help people, and I don’t want to die before my time, and I’m filled with love for Stephen, and I’m inspired and swept up in the electric energy of this room. But it’s more. I don’t know how I’ll ever begin to live while this disease is raging. Who will love me when all they’ll see when they look at me is the possibility that I may kill them? Judy will meet someone eventually. She’ll probably have kids, be a famous designer, live in a fancy Upper West Side condo overlooking the park with her hot architect husband. And me . . . I’ll either die or be eternally single because guys are too scared of me. So what choice do I have but to do something about this?