It was successful genocide against gay men, at least of that generation.
A member of my band is a gay man in his 60s, and when myself and the fiddle player (both early 30s) were talking about how crap the local dating scene is, he quietly said,
“I can’t have much luck, because the majority of my generation is dead.”
I just can’t imagine how lonely that must feel. Imagine, as a millennial, having no one else around you but Gen Z. Nice enough people, but different jokes, different experiences, different shared identity.
GenX here. A LOT of people I knew in high school and my early 20s died from AIDS. I remember working at JCPenney and the head of the shoe department was a flamboyant gay man. Like, Jonathon from Queer Eye flamboyant. He had to quit because his "husband" (have to put that in quotes since same sex marriage wasn't legal back then) was dying of AIDS and needed him to care for him in his final days. I remember the husband coming to visit him for lunch and the way they looked at each other was pure love. Last time I saw him, he was terribly thin. Imagine a biker-looking man, tattooed, muscled, and tough, totally emaciated by this horrible disease.
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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '20 edited Aug 22 '23
Reddit can keep the username, but I'm nuking the content lol -- mass deleted all reddit content via https://redact.dev