watching the documentary common threads: stories from the quilt again and i remember that, oh yeah, that was my adolescence and i remember all the finger pointing, the ignorance, the fear, the sub in my 8th grade french class who showed us a movie about aids in haiti and it was 1984...1984. me, living in dc, where politicians...ignored...ignored...denied? and i graduated to the quilt...only to move on to knowing too many friends who would be dead, sooner than later...and my mom telling me in the kitchen what happened to that neighbor kid and part of me still doesn't want to believe it because of marvin, because of others...and i wonder if that was supposed to make me feel better...because it doesn't, it still doesn't. there was nothing anyone could do, she said, because he'd already died and...

two people die in separate car accidents. one was your friend and one fucked up your brain and some say both were sinners but that can't be right, that can't be. and i remember marvin telling me after one of my many oh-so-traumatic breakups...if i were straight, i'd marry you in a heartbeat. and i remember driving around in his beat up piece of shit car after rehearsal, after class, after bitching at bk for hours and we'd yell "what the fuck" out the window, toward the drillfield and us laughing about holly's hair catching on fire at that party, the one that jay was at and we realized what the deal was and paul and i going to formals and debbie weirded out by everyone in her life changing and it would have been more fun if marvin had been there...

years later, years later, in the attic finding out about it all and i remember he was the only one becki confided in, back in those days when we were weak but thinking we were strong and i remember her telling me in that grand sitting room at that impossibly posh virginia resort about his husband dying...and i tried to call...i did call...and we were supposed to meet up but he never showed and later i learned that he...

yeah, that's it, that's the end of that story.