All the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South

I wanted them to have a death certificate so people would know that they had lived and they had died — they were here. Because they at least deserved that. They couldn't be "nobody's nothing" after what they had been through.

The mothers were the hardest on them, the fathers off to the side. Most of these young men were raised Pentecostal, and Pentecostals just hated gay people. The churches were so powerful and set where the family stood in life. The women had probably seen an example made of someone else, about some smaller defiance. Men can sometimes do the deciding about who is exiled, but it's women who do the day-to-day work of shunning. They knew they'd lose everything if they'd showed mercy to their sons.

Can’t have an active hooker going to churches. She might recognize a john in the pews, I guess.

The song ended, but people wouldn't let him go. It was a blur after that; he had to do four more songs before they let him leave the stage. Two lines of people formed on either side of the stage, so he wouldn't have to move around. We all knew this was goodbye, and we were giving him his flowers now, while he could see how much he meant to all of us.

I had a drunk guy stagger over, and when I offered a condom, he said he didn't need it. "I'm not gay," he said, keeping one eye closed so there would only be one of me. "That's nice. You ever have sex with men?" "Well, sure." "There you go," I said, handing him a condom"‘Here, take another.

Allison was there, and I told her this was love.

It wasn't just the people who died of AIDS. Even many who did not have the virus ended up committing suicide. They lived through the depths of the epidemic only to take their own lives. But I knew the memories they were living with, and why it might be too much to bear.

Paul and I sat in lawn chairs in my yard, and usually we could cheer each other up by talking about Billy. It was September 1993, and he had been gone four months. We had started the thing you do, where you collect the stories you'll tell over and over again. You begin to polish the edges of a memory--something funny he said or a specific performance--until the edges are smoothed and the story is comforting.

He wanted me to know he thought I was getting away with something wrong. I thought about the time Billy was sick and said he wanted strawberries. How Paul asked him, "Do you want them cold or room temperature? Cooked down or raw? Narrow it down, because whatever you want, I'll get it for you." Anything Billy wanted, Paul got, whatever it took. And this pathetic excuse of a man had no idea what that kind of devotion meant, and he didn't deserve an answer. The denial of real love-- *that* was the perversion.

Honey, gay men don't have kids," one huffed at me. "Are you out of your *mind*?" They dismissed me--and the lives of so many men in the South who had complicated lives. Who didn't have the luxury of living out of the closet safely. Who were pressured as teens to have sex to prove their manliness, in areas where the teenage pregnancy rate was astronomical. Or who didn't fit into the pigeonholes of ay or straight. No, *I* was the crazy one not worth listening to. What did I know about the lives of gay men?

I grew up steeped in these secrets from my mother's generation and was observant enough to see them repeating in mine. But I kept everything to myself. It just bothered me that people thought they could hide their own sins by inventing ones for others. "Seems as though we should bring a gift basket to Our House," I said. "An apology. Say something like, 'You were the stranger, and we didn't welcome you.

When I met them sick in the hospital, it was too late. But out there in the world, I seized on every bit of joy I could scrape out of the pan. These men had lived on the margins so long that coming into the light to ask for help scared them to death. I had to walk them through the steps, keeping things fun.

I'm here," I'd say. And I'd listen to them cry for an hour, because they couldn't get it out or they didn't know how. "It's okay, just go ahead and cry. And if you can talk then you can talk. And if you can't, well, you know, you let me know when you want to hang up because I won't.

Be smart, be brave, tell the truth, and don’t take any shit.

The hope and duty of survival.

Be pretty if you can, witty if you must, and gracious if it kills you.

I go to the grave shared by my father and Jimmy. The question I get most, the one I hate, is why I went into his room. And why I helped people. Again and again, "Why did you do it? How?" The answer is, How could I not? The real question is, How could *you* not?

That's right. I have you. And I have my guys. And I have Allison. But I spent all this time believing everything I heard in church--that I need a husband to be whole, to have a family for Allison. And the whole time I've been creating one.

Paul and I had one umbrella between us, and we rushed through the rain to get to the tent. "This is for family only," Billy's mother said. We stood there in the rain for a minute, away from them, huddling under Paul's umbrella.. And I gritted my teeth. "Paul," I said slowly. "Throw that umbrella away. We're gonna stand in the pouring rain, and we're gonna get as wet as God wants us to get." I paused. "And then we're gonna hug every member of that family, so they know what they did to us. SO they can *feel* what they did to us. All of us. Because they are assholes.

To his fans at Our House, he was a symbol that having HIV or AIDS did not mean that you had to go hide in exile. You could stay in the game, be social, snatch trophies and *live.* The literature about HIV that I read and shared, by gay men for gay men, emphasized a focus on living with HIV, rather than on dying. But that was all theoretical, just words, until they could see it in practice.

We pulled into the Wal-Mart parking lot, and she pointed to a handicapped spot right near the front. Like I wouldn't see it. We had just gotten out when someone walking by stopped to give us a disapproving look. "You know that spot is for handicapped people," he said. He was a little pip-squeak, someone who should have had something better to do than heckle two ladies. "Oh, you're just who I need," Donnie said in a sweet voice. "Can you come over here and help me with something?" She pointed to the inside of the van. He softened, maybe remembering his Southern manners. "Well, sure," he said. "I can help you." *Oh boy,* I thought. He ambled over as she leaned on the side of the van. When he went to look in the window, she took off her right leg in one fell swoop and started beating him with it. "*This* is why I park in the handicapped," she said, hopping on her good leg.

I started carrying an old tour book for the Florida Keys in my bag with me at all times. I'd had it since I was a kid, and after my daddy died, I read it to escape back to memories of him taking me there. As I read it to my guys, we'd leave whatever hospital we were in, and go somewhere beautiful, away from trouble and worry. They'd all come home to Arkansas, a place that had birthed them but wouldn't claim them. So we left. . . . We went someplace else, where they were safe and warm. Where there was nothing to be hidden and nothing wrong with admiring the way the sun shone down on the beauty of men. As it it existed for that very reason -- to be admired and loved.

My church, First United Methodist, where God was every Sunday morning. And where I was not welcome.

In the South, a lady had her name in the paper only three times: her birth, her marriage, and her death. You were otherwise never mentioned in the newspaper, and if you were, it wasn't good.

They were literally thrown out of clinics because they were gay.

His parents went to a brimstone church, the hard kind that would raffle a hunting rifle to raise money for the youth group summer trip or whatever.

What’s good about the Methodists is they don’t have enough religion to offend anyone.

Thank you," I said, all Southern charm and malice.