by Pamela Sneed
through hurricanes and earthquakes
saw pillars, foundations, and platforms they’d built washed away
but in our generation it was young Black men who like babies
or children had just begun to articulate, voice thoughts, ideas and desires
that never in the world’s history been spoken,
dying as soon as, moments of, or seconds after
pressing pen to paper.
These were early days, AIDS in its infancy,
before the medical establishment invented drug cocktails
providing life support and badly needed medicine
without which men could and did die within weeks, months of, or
shortly after diagnosis.
At this time, as in the ’40s during World War II
when men enlisted, went abroad to become soldiers,
while women at home were drafted into the work force and professional realm,
took on untraditional roles as welders and electricians
like banks but instead lent limbs, additional hands, and
the occasional missing shoulder.
Because of my stature, writing, outlandish outfits, and flair for the
dramatic
I became a known and requested presence operating throughout the crisis
as an unofficially titled, “funeral diva,” called for
at memorials, readings, wakes and funerals to speak
give testimony and credence to men’s lives
even if they were not family members or close friends
like a job which requires at such sudden, rapid and rising death tolls
quick thinking
like wordsmiths who can articulate at mathematic speed,
capture within hair’s breath, bottle the essence,
execute like marksmen small and mundane details,
all the while like members of the clergy or great actors having the ability
to accurately portray and pay homage to the spirit of someone
who’d lived only for a short time on this planet.
Armed with only a few pre-requisite experiences:
As an adopted and only child, weathering my parents’ divorce
Later, a beloved grandmother, my shelter and protector
devoured by cancer
turned from a robust brown woman to a small gray thing
who could not recognize me
At the funeral, in tribute each of my cousins wore the feathered and veiled hats
of her favorite church collection.
At the memorial for Craig Harris poet, activist, and soldier
I was prepared.
Craig worked tirelessly on the frontlines of the AIDS epidemic at GMHC,
Gay Men’s Health Crisis,
But in off hours between battling KS and pneumonia
and trips to the hospital,
he drank champagne and smoked long Virginia Slim cigarettes,
famous for the slogan aimed at women and their transition from skirts to pants
announcing on billboards “You’ve come a long way, baby.”
A true rebel and pioneer Craig vowed in one of his poems about AIDS
Not to succumb gently, but defiantly, insisted, like a generational star
“I will go out like a fucking meteor.”
For his work at GMHC, Craig talked passionately about AIDS work
in Harlem at a time when illness and gayness was taboo.
To those who would oppose and refute him, he said humorously
“Honey, I’ve got a few bricks in my pocketbook which I’m not afraid
to throw.”
Later at a memorial and tribute to Black lesbian poet Pat Parker
who died of cancer
Craig asked in vigilance, way ahead of his time,
acknowledging women in a voice resounding over the auditorium
at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center on 13th Street, in a poem about
the massive casualties of AIDS and those left behind,
“Who will care for our caretakers?”
a question that still resonates today as I think of Black women poets
whose words like hands, shoulders, arms were used to uplift
whose eyes like stars in darkness provided vision
led us like runaways to freedom
whose poems, songs, and spirits were used to eulogize,
bury dead,
make sense of senseless tragedy.
They were teachers, nurses, soldiers, working long hours
mostly without vacation or pension plans, retirement or a leave of absence
like Harriet Tubman who provided years of service
to Union soldiers and received little pay, walked away empty
like soldiers returning now from Afghanistan and Iraq without services or beds
to sleep on.
Many died silent invisible deaths from cancer with no one to care.
These were the women Craig spoke of when he asked,
“Who will care for our caretakers?”
After a long ferocious battle with AIDS, like a gladiator
or Viking warrior made famous by Kirk Douglas, Craig did succumb.
At the memorial as tribute similar to when my grandmother died
I wore a large circular hat with swirling orange and blue circles
reminiscent of a ’40s, ’50s style movie star diva
Craig loved and emulated.
For Rory Buchannan, a poet and activist, who juggled many roles,
as a father to a teenage son while holding down a full-time job,
was also a member of Other Countries and GMAD, Gay Men of African Descent,
at the wake, I had no words to express my love and gratitude towards him
for hours we spent like musicians and secretaries at keyboards typing
my first poems, then his own and organizing them into respective chapbooks.
We sat in his living room one afternoon making up famous quotes for
our book covers, comparing ourselves humorously with stars of the time
like Audre Lorde.
Rory was spiritual and when first diagnosed with HIV, he believed herbs
could heal him.
In the kitchen, there was a crockpot with warm smells emanating
all day through the house.
Death’s swiftness caused in all of us, such accelerated
insight and poetic gems
lines from Rory’s poem still play over and over in my head
like an old 45
“I stopped looking for Mr. Right when I found out I was him.”
At his memorial, like bottles of fine wine broken open to celebrate
between friends, I read a poem of mine that he loved when
I rewrote the story of Rapunzel and portrayed her not
as a blond woman pining for Prince Charming
but as a liberated Black woman with dreadlocks.
“That castle,” I said, “was the love she and the wicked witch built,
and she did not need any rescuing.”
In closure, I imitated the way I’d seen my grandfather and grandmother
and church elders use bible quotes, but instead I used the refrain
of an old R&B classic and vowed like a younger sister gazing up
at a protective older brother in reverence I sang
imitating the voice of the great baritone of the late soul singer Barry White
“No matter how I high I get, I’ll still be looking up to you.”
Months later when David Frechette, one of Other Countries
first members, died, I was not able to attend the funeral
but like a legacy between the business of wakes and funeral as comfort
I often repeated to myself lines of his famous poem, titled
after the song by French chanteuse and diva Edith Piaf, “Je Ne Regrette Rien,”
a song in which David adopted the lyr
ics into his own language and
Black gay experience which states in English, I have no regrets
lyrics which seemed to articulate not just my feelings, but the mood
of a generation.
He wrote: Sister Chitlin and Brother Neckbone
gather around my deathbed asking me to repent
The wicked ways which brought me here
But I don’t regret hours spent in arms of world-class insatiables
Or the hunk I made love to prior to a Washington March
Though my body be racked with fevers and pains “Non, je ne regrette rien.”
And it was these simple lines like lyrics that challenged the sadness and shame
accompanying AIDS, stigmas, and misconceptions that said
gays caused their own illness
these lyrics which challenged the fear and temptation to wallow
in self-pity by spitting back, “Non, je ne regrette, rien.”
I’m not sure where it belongs, but I must insert:
there were times when I, the Funeral Diva, was not always noble,
I was traveling while my dear friend the visual artist Don Reid was dying
and I ran away.
We worked together at the Hetrick-Martin Institute for Gay and Lesbian Youth.
He was an art therapist and at twenty-three years old I ran the afterschool program.
I met him on a panel first at Harlem Hospital.
He was part of the group that existed in the ’80s called
Black and White Men Together.
At that panel, Don carried on his back the baby son he’d adopted
with his white partner.
This is long before gay people adopting children was common.
His son’s name was Max, and he was a tiny brown baby Don adored.
Later, working at the Institute, Don and I would have many adventures
and escapades with Baby Max in tow.
There was a time a year or two after Max started walking, he wanted
to be a peacock for Halloween.
Don being a gay man, a visual artist, and sudden costume designer
searched day and night for real feathers.
He spent all night sewing together Max’s costume.
There was also a time we took Baby Max to church and because
Don raised him to be free, Max wandered down the aisle at three years old,
stood next to the preacher and did an interpretive interpretation of the preacher’s
words.
The preacher seemed annoyed, but Don, a proud parent smiled
the whole time.
I remember our offices at the Institute
located on the Westside Highway, across from Hudson River
and infamous Piers.
There was lots of sunlight.
We were in formation.
We were making ourselves.
While others were dying around us, Don was in denial about HIV/AIDS
We never talked about it.
Even when he got the tell-tale pneumonia, the rapid weight loss,
and the terrible fear.
We never said AIDS.
By then, I had left the agency, I was traveling as an actor and
leaving the next day when I heard Don was in the hospital.
I understand he asked for me.
I heard his voice in my head asking a friend, “How’s Pam?”
But my feet were leaden, I couldn’t go.
I didn’t want my last image to be of a man shrunken down
to a skeleton.
Like the recent survivors of Hurricane Katrina and Maria in Puerto Rico,
I was grief-stricken and waterlogged.
Maybe this is like scenes from the Holocaust or World War II
admissions you won’t find in any history book
but like in concentration camps when stripped to bare essentials.
Like in a novel popular during the ’70s
when survivors of a plane crash devoured human flesh.
Or Margaret Garner, the slave who ran away
and murdered her own child rather than to see it become a slave,
in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, she is haunted
by the child’s ghost.
Like in Chimamanda Adichie’s novel, Half of a Yellow Sun
about the Nigerian/Biafra war, a beloved boy character
whom we believed in is so corrupted and dehumanized by war
he participates in a gang rape.
There’s a story I heard in South Africa after
the end of apartheid
A boy and his friend rape a girl on the road, they kill her.
The boy eventually turns her over and discovers the girl he raped
and killed was actually his own sister.
A teacher hears this story and screams out to her classroom appalled
asking after all Black people have fought and died for
“Tell me, is this the new South Africa?”
Like that South African boy, Margaret Garner, the subjects of Victor Frankl’s essays
about the Holocaust and others, some of us in the AIDS crisis
did terrible things to survive.
Never made it down aisles of the hospital wards
of Bellevue and St. Vincent’s.
Couldn’t bear brown shit-stained walls and
terrible wretched smells of death.
Some of us couldn’t bear the hatred and scornful eyes
as we passed the nurses station
saw doctors and family members who blamed us.
Some of us were so grief soaked and waterlogged
we couldn’t take one more step
having seen and experienced things in our young lifetimes that
no human being or citizen should.
During Hurricane Katrina, I was in Ghana.
On television, I saw a tidal wave sweep downstairs and trap
a young Black girl.
Firefighters yelled through a basement window
“Hold on, Baby Girl. Just hold on. We’re coming. “
But despite hers and their desperate efforts, she drowned.
Some of us were noble, we tried but we just couldn’t carry anymore
and were forced to let go
watched bodies devoured,
the very breath and essence stolen
limbs, life support-cut off
some of us went MIA
AWOL
were forced
into black-market drugs and operations like women in the ’60s,
using cord, wire hangers, and glass
to abort in back alleys.
Some like Sammy, lover of Michael Brody, father of The Paradise Garage,
a beautiful Latino boy with pure soul ravaged by AIDS
shot himself in the head at point blank range
couldn’t stand what the virus did to him
the shame he felt
like something out of Kafka’s Metamorphosis
when a human being is transformed into a bug
we became pariahs, the despised, choosing to wear
in defiance badges, gays in the Holocaust wore pink triangles
like something out of Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart
Like in The Diary of Anne Frank, we hid beneath floorboards
transforming into monsters or messiahs because
as Audre Lorde declared in her battle with cancer
once coming face to face with death, who might ever
have power over us again
Some of us who were witnesses had blinders and
bandages ripped off
developed an x-ray vision
some of us like survivors of the Japanese internment camps
and WWII having lost everything
developed new appreciation for life
For some of us snowfall, rain, water, flowers, a book,
apple, paint brushes, papers, pen took on new mea
ning
Some of us when we were touched or someone was actually kind
we cried.
The only words I have to describe this time were
The words written by poet Michael Lassell
“How to watch your brother die,” and Essex Hemphill’s
“When My Brother Fell,”
The only thing that kept us all going were words of Audre,
Essex, Pat Parker, and Joe Beam.
The only thing that freed me from the guilt of
not seeing Don in the hospital was a story I read years
later by bell hooks when she talked about not going
to see a grandmother who was dying, because she said,
“I was the person who loved her most.”
When Don died, I was on a hilltop outside of Paris,
like a cord cut
I felt the exact moment breath left his body.
When I returned home from Paris, I saw Max who
was about four years old. We went to a museum together.
The next day I called and Don’s surviving lover Steve reported
Max had awakened the day after we went to the museum
and said aloud, after I just begun to believe my friend
Don was dead and gone forever,
“Pamela laughs like Daddy.”
Don Reid, Rory Buchanan, Craig Harris, David Frechette, Essex Hemphill
are just a few, there are countless others,
So many wakes and funerals I attended paying tribute
to strangers, as if each were a family member of my own
or close friend, but the basis of this story could never be
for thousands, hundreds of thousands who’ve died,
about massive grief remaining unprocessed, blows endured
to every industry, fashion, literature, business, performance.
It’s not about the mysteries, invisible hands, minds, legs,
Behind things I still think, wear, do.
It’s not about martyrs who gave and lost lives
so that we now can enjoy freedoms of marriage and
protection under laws.
It’s not about men and women I will never forget, faces
publicly streaked with tears, empty caskets carried openly
through streets in protest.
It’s not about those like Alan Williams who worked with me
at The Gay and Lesbian Institute, a volunteer who would say
every time I saw him, “You’re so beautiful.”
He loved to hear the story of how I as a little girl, a little Black girl
would go to the hairdresser as a child and ask the hairdresser
to make my hair whirl and twirl like the figure skater Dorothy Hamill.
“Write that story,” he’d say.
This story is not about Tim Boyd, the sign language interpreter
