In Harms Way: Everyone

My letter to Mark Morford, by now you know he's my hero, is below. You may access his latest column, as always, by clicking the title of this Blog Spot. Warning! Dire Times Ahead!



Dear Mark,

Yikes. I do still read your column, but we fell through the venerable class crack because of massive illness for both my partner and I, and fell to the less than venerable Medi-Cal set. We're clawing our way back - he just received a job offer in NYC after two years of therapy and surgery for a broken back. I'm still looking, after years of AIDS and bilateral hip replacement surgery (the necrosis caused by my anti-virals); at nearly 50 you wonder what the F**K you CAN do.

We watched in horror as a class division I thought didn't exist anymore except in rural backwards pockets unfolded in New Orleans. Intellectually, I new there was a divide, but it was different, not like the sixties and before - WE grew up in a civilized time, a time of equality and justice for all. Yet, now I was seeing it LIVE. The utter abandonment of an entire ethnic and economic block of people. You couldn't hide it. Did you see any white people on your screen? My African-American friends have all made it to a middle class or higher state of living, and they were shocked, too.

I sit here amongst the evidence of our former lives - a few antiques, some good china (no more dinner parties) and those Egyptian cotton sheets, becoming a bit threadbare and which we can't have pressed anymore. I used to bemoan my status change. Then I watched as our so called government simply washed its hands of a city full of people and I knew that was the same list I'm on: a liberal, social service using aging faggot who's only considered a liability in our new world of Bush. A truly scary place for a queer, if you see my point.

Maybe we'll make it back to a safer economic ground. Lord, that's what sheltered us before from harm. Maybe not. The point I think you're giving is this: we're on our own, be prepared, no one's coming to help. I already knew. I just keep wanting to believe it isn't true.

As I've navigated a health care system and a medical community which is often homophobic I've always taken a polite but full monty approach. "Do you have a problem with my partner and I being a couple?" Because if they do, they've been put on notice: I'm Out, don't tread on me. And if they're really afraid of gays they can decline - or we can - to go further. Of course, I still dust off the Zegna that's least out of style and use my best but not quite Oxford English, full sentences and no slang. It's an art pulling rank when there's no money to impress. And it's a sorry thing, don't you think, that I've had to at all? But you can't be humble and nice and expect cooperation when you're an indigent poof. I tried. Doesn't work. It's the way of this world. I just watched it on television.

D. Larson
Los Angeles