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don't take offense at my innuendo;
When I am six years old, all the way across an ocean from me, a man whose voice I have probably heard dies.
Everything is connected. Pass the wine and start the song, because tonight, we're gonna have ourselves a real good time.
* * *
The year is 1993, perhaps, and I am eight years old. I am visiting my father's family in Pittsburgh. My parents take me to a museum. I don't know which museum.
It has an exhibit about something called AIDS. It is not a very compassionate exhibit. It is as sensationalistic as you'd expect from the era.
I wander through the stands with their giant pictures of grotesquely distorted human bodies, people turned into objects of contempt and contamination. I do not know that I will be a bisexual man someday and these are my people. My little girl's body does not tell me this.
* * *
The year is 1995 and I am explaining to a counselor that at ten years old, I have terrible, crippling, overwhelming anxiety, hypochondria triggered by this exhibit I saw two years ago.
The hypochondria goes away. The anxiety does not, ever, nor does the depression that follows it. It would have happened anyway, eventually. Madness runs in my family's blood.
* * *
The year is 1999 and my parents are forcing me, in tears, to tell them that I've been acting strangely because I believe I am a lesbian.
Eventually they stop telling me it's a phase.
* * *
The year might be 2007 or 2009. This isn't important. I'm in the car with my father when "Bohemian Rhapsody" comes on the radio and I laugh and say that it's "two or three of the best songs in rock." I don't actually know anything about the song or the band beyond that it's a classic. Years later I will do some research about the man who wrote and sang it, and I will learn that this is actually true--the song was stitched together from three disparate ones, because why the fuck not.
My father laughs and agrees with me. Then he falls silent, sighs, and after a moment says, "The best rock stars died too young. Drugs or AIDS."
* * *
The year is 2013 and I am telling my parents I am a bisexual man.
* * *
I never do research how the AIDS crisis affected my people. I manage to avoid it. It's something in the past now.
* * *
The year is 2016 and I am getting religion. Thanks to my newfound independence living on my own across a continent from my troubled parents, and also thanks to Washington's permissive laws about the magnificent entheogen cannabis, I have embraced my personal neopagan faith following the god Dionysos and his wife Ariadne. Dionysos is the god of wine, which is troubling since my father is an alcoholic.
(I later realize that Dionysos is also the god of queer performers.)
* * *
The year is 2016 and I have flown home to New Jersey for my father's funeral. The music of Bruce Springsteen, steady and gently mystic and always high-quality, keeps me sane.
* * *
Our story starts properly now.
* * *
Back in Washington, I engage in emotionally high-risk behavior with Dionysos and Ariadne inside my head, visualizing them as real and beautiful people.
Ariadne can be mysterious in form, but Dionysos is crystal clear in both looks and demeanor. His mannerisms in particular enchant me. He is inexpressibly queer, camp as hell, elegantly theatrical and charming at all times, sliding effortlessly along a strange scale between aggressive, almost predatory, coolly fierce macho swagger and a nearly girlish delicacy. He is magnetic and I love to watch him perform for me inside my head, to visualize him doing campy routines.
He does not sing.
* * *
I seek out the other gods of the Greek pantheon. Some slot into place easily in my own stories; others don't.
The god Hermes is elusive. Frustrating. I need a psychopomp, a messenger.
* * *
It is 2017. My job is hell, but at least I can listen to music all day, here.
I get into classic rock other than Springsteen.
* * *
In the underworld of my terrible job, I put the little purple earbuds in my ears, turn on my MP3 player, and hear the singing voice of the god Dionysos. For the first time I recognize him for who he is.
He is not steady or gentle, but he is mystic.
* * *
In the halls of my imagination, Dionysos raises one hand in a perfectly choreographed motion. "How do you feel about ascended mortals, honey?"
* * *
I am a highly theatrical bisexual man who loves showtunes and his cat.
I try not to identify too much with celebrities, but shit happens. Besides, I have always really loved singers.
* * *
It turns out I have triggers. If I think too hard about certain things I am back in that otherwise forgettable Pittsburgh museum's plain halls, looking at pictures of people turned into plague-riddled corpses, only now they are my people, now they are my new god.
* * *
The year is 2017 and everything in my life still breaks down along lines of "real pure people" and "contaminated broken plague-objects," a line that was always in me, waiting to be exploited by something like that damn exhibit.
To be continued.
Everything is connected. Pass the wine and start the song, because tonight, we're gonna have ourselves a real good time.
* * *
The year is 1993, perhaps, and I am eight years old. I am visiting my father's family in Pittsburgh. My parents take me to a museum. I don't know which museum.
It has an exhibit about something called AIDS. It is not a very compassionate exhibit. It is as sensationalistic as you'd expect from the era.
I wander through the stands with their giant pictures of grotesquely distorted human bodies, people turned into objects of contempt and contamination. I do not know that I will be a bisexual man someday and these are my people. My little girl's body does not tell me this.
* * *
The year is 1995 and I am explaining to a counselor that at ten years old, I have terrible, crippling, overwhelming anxiety, hypochondria triggered by this exhibit I saw two years ago.
The hypochondria goes away. The anxiety does not, ever, nor does the depression that follows it. It would have happened anyway, eventually. Madness runs in my family's blood.
* * *
The year is 1999 and my parents are forcing me, in tears, to tell them that I've been acting strangely because I believe I am a lesbian.
Eventually they stop telling me it's a phase.
* * *
The year might be 2007 or 2009. This isn't important. I'm in the car with my father when "Bohemian Rhapsody" comes on the radio and I laugh and say that it's "two or three of the best songs in rock." I don't actually know anything about the song or the band beyond that it's a classic. Years later I will do some research about the man who wrote and sang it, and I will learn that this is actually true--the song was stitched together from three disparate ones, because why the fuck not.
My father laughs and agrees with me. Then he falls silent, sighs, and after a moment says, "The best rock stars died too young. Drugs or AIDS."
* * *
The year is 2013 and I am telling my parents I am a bisexual man.
* * *
I never do research how the AIDS crisis affected my people. I manage to avoid it. It's something in the past now.
* * *
The year is 2016 and I am getting religion. Thanks to my newfound independence living on my own across a continent from my troubled parents, and also thanks to Washington's permissive laws about the magnificent entheogen cannabis, I have embraced my personal neopagan faith following the god Dionysos and his wife Ariadne. Dionysos is the god of wine, which is troubling since my father is an alcoholic.
(I later realize that Dionysos is also the god of queer performers.)
* * *
The year is 2016 and I have flown home to New Jersey for my father's funeral. The music of Bruce Springsteen, steady and gently mystic and always high-quality, keeps me sane.
* * *
Our story starts properly now.
* * *
Back in Washington, I engage in emotionally high-risk behavior with Dionysos and Ariadne inside my head, visualizing them as real and beautiful people.
Ariadne can be mysterious in form, but Dionysos is crystal clear in both looks and demeanor. His mannerisms in particular enchant me. He is inexpressibly queer, camp as hell, elegantly theatrical and charming at all times, sliding effortlessly along a strange scale between aggressive, almost predatory, coolly fierce macho swagger and a nearly girlish delicacy. He is magnetic and I love to watch him perform for me inside my head, to visualize him doing campy routines.
He does not sing.
* * *
I seek out the other gods of the Greek pantheon. Some slot into place easily in my own stories; others don't.
The god Hermes is elusive. Frustrating. I need a psychopomp, a messenger.
* * *
It is 2017. My job is hell, but at least I can listen to music all day, here.
I get into classic rock other than Springsteen.
* * *
In the underworld of my terrible job, I put the little purple earbuds in my ears, turn on my MP3 player, and hear the singing voice of the god Dionysos. For the first time I recognize him for who he is.
He is not steady or gentle, but he is mystic.
* * *
In the halls of my imagination, Dionysos raises one hand in a perfectly choreographed motion. "How do you feel about ascended mortals, honey?"
* * *
I am a highly theatrical bisexual man who loves showtunes and his cat.
I try not to identify too much with celebrities, but shit happens. Besides, I have always really loved singers.
* * *
It turns out I have triggers. If I think too hard about certain things I am back in that otherwise forgettable Pittsburgh museum's plain halls, looking at pictures of people turned into plague-riddled corpses, only now they are my people, now they are my new god.
* * *
The year is 2017 and everything in my life still breaks down along lines of "real pure people" and "contaminated broken plague-objects," a line that was always in me, waiting to be exploited by something like that damn exhibit.
To be continued.