Abuse and sexual violence doesn’t require deception at all. It happens right out in the open, and people tolerate it, because it’s a demonstration of power

What if everything everywhere was designed with the intention of having many different people accessing it? People in wheelchairs, tall people, short people, fat people, elderly people, people with less than four limbs, blind and deaf people, people with chronic pain and illness, and on?

Here, for those interested:

Those sex scene choreographers/film editors deserve an award, I'm dead serious

I think this was the first piece of yours I read and it hit me right in the heart: then and now.

I posted a piece from Mark Harris about an individual who had kept a list of everyone he personally knew/knew of in the NYC theater/dance/opera community who died of AIDS. Someone interviewed for the story remarked “It’s like the entire company of Wicked dying twice a year for 20 years.” 😔

But I wonder if that isn’t the prevailing feeling for any of us as our experiences— Things That Simply Happened— get narrativized for posterity or whatever.

There is no (spiritual) sense to be made of it. And? Maybe I can take responsibility for tending this memory anyway. [12/12]

I didn’t learn until years afterward that Martin himself had died, months before I traveled to Washington, in January of 1996.

Maybe one reason I’ve been reluctant to write about this is the implication that I was the chosen recipient of some kind of cosmic gesture. Who, after all, am I? [11/]

After traveling for 20 hours, within five minutes of arriving and stepping into that 30-acre space, there it was, among more than 41,000 panels: the quilt Martin made for Tom.

I wasn’t even seeking it out.

It was coincidence beyond all reason. [10/]

The following year, in October of 1996, was the last time all the panels (to date) were included in a unified display on the National Mall. A group of us took a bus from Wisconsin to Washington, DC for the occasion.

The Quilt’s size and the scope of loss it represented was unfathomable. [9/]

Martin and I exchanged a couple letters. I told him about volunteering as a quilt monitor: wearing all white, offering tissues to weeping visitors, and gentle reminders to not step on the panels.

Tom’s wasn’t among them. “I am sorry. I walked the entire display, many times over.” [/8]

So he wrote me, enclosed snapshots of himself and of his quilt panel for Tom— who was, it turned out, Dreamgirls lyricist Tom Eyen.

(Here is a screenshot from the digitized Quilt’s searchable online archive. In 2025, we can check in on the panels, on our loved ones, whenever we want). [7/]

I didn’t explain that the display in our city represented only a small part of the memorial in its entirety. It was unlikely that I’d see Martin’s panel for Tom. He’d sent it off, imbued with trust, knowing that *he* would probably never see it again, either. [6/]

One of her close dance friends, Martin, had also moved away from New York and was living in San Francisco. Martin’s boyfriend, Tom, died in 1991, and Martin had recently created a quilt panel for him.

Maybe, my aunt suggested, I could keep an eye out. [5/]

One of my aunts, my mom’s middle sister, had lived in New York City for several years in the 1980s while pursuing a career in dance. Although she was, by then, back in Wisconsin, she remained connected to her NYC dance community which had, of course, been devastated by AIDS. [4/]

After countless hours of civic advocacy, they were successful in securing a suitable location for the display at our local university’s athletic center, and the endorsement of the city’s key leaders. Panels from the NAMES Project would arrive and be unfolded and on-view for a weekend in March. [3/]

In 1995, I was a high school sophomore and ardent, if unskilled, volunteer with my small Wisconsin hometown’s AIDS project.

The previous year, a cohort of my fellow volunteers formed a committee with the goal of bringing part of the AIDS Memorial Quilt to our city. [2/]

[*taps sign*]
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Unfortunately, if my intel is accurate, in small denomination Applebee's gift cards (only one redeemable per visit).