As December 1 comes to a close, I just wanted to mark this day, World AIDS Day.pic.twitter.com/2GQdfBCYQf
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We were freshmen at American University, @ATLJono and me, and we were volunteering for World AIDS Day events. There was, yes, a dance.
Apparently, after weeks of flirting, I had found a way so that we would be working together at the dance. Eventually, we danced a bit.
And, we kissed.
... And, started dating. That night was 20 years ago tonight. And, today, like many days, Jono & I had a nice phone call.
The dating didn't really last all that long, but the friendship we've built since is incredible and a key way I get through the world.
In the years since, I've been privileged to meet (and cover) some of those who fought through the early, darkest days of the AIDS epidemic.
And, I am always amazed by the courage, love, and compassion that they showed to one another — in the face of medical and societal horrors.
So much of the "gay experience" that I grew up catching wind of was not that world, as a 1995 high school graduate from Youngstown, Ohio.
And yet, when I moved to DC that fall, I met Jonathan & others, who had been out (and in bigger cities), and they started to share stories.
I had no ~clue~ at the time, but those first stories were the start of my new life — one of many reinventions in the two decades since.
I think that what I learned in those first days & in the years since about the families we choose has been one of the most powerful lessons.
I am blessed with an incredible family of origin, as they say, but I also have been blessed with an incredible family of choice.
Some of those people are the folks I got to hang out with at my high school reunion last week. And they're wonderful, truly in every way.
But, my queer family of choice also gives me something else. A chance to find (& now seek out) our history — to tell stories otherwise lost.
Obviously, as a journalist, y'all know how much I love those stories. This was the root of that desire to tell those stories.
I love the queer family I've built up over the years. Such amazing, wonderful people. ... I also love that it began with Jono.
I hope, 20 years on, that ours is the type of family that those I so admire for their work in the '80s & '90s hoped queer people would have.
Thank you, to all of the people who worked (and have continued to work) to make the life I get to lead today possible. I am blessed.
"I wish for nothing more than to be only what I am," Nathan Fain, a co-founder of GMHC, wrote in a letter to Larry Kramer in 1983.
I meditate on that; I strive for that humility and understanding of gratitude. ... Bed time. Night, all, and let us be good to one another.
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