I REMEMBER TOM
This year for World's AIDS Day, I wanted to pay homage to Tom and a difficult time. Tom was battling AIDS and coming to terms with being an incest survivor simultaneously. More than 30 years later, I decided to look at this painful time. This story is a work in progress. I REMEMBER TOM At twenty-one, I was a die-hard romantic in a relationship. It was the equivalent of marriage when matrimony and civil unions were not legal or legitimate options for queer men and women. The nuances of gay identity and gender roles puzzled me, and I did not understand the compulsion to attach labels to everything. Why was gay life demonized and misrepresented by a willingness to engage in casual sex? Why were we permanently reduced to our sexuality? My partner and I refrained from using terms such as "queer," "lovers," "coming out," "outed," or "in the closet" when disclosing our sexual orientation to friends, family or broader humanity. We repud