I had a deep conversation today with the new addition to the household, my transgender (m-f) roommate Kyra's (Or "Pooh" as we call her) 'gay brother' who I'll call M. He was really torn up because his boyfriend broke up with him today. I spent the evening listening to M's life story and looking through family pictures. He talked about the many times he had been jumped in Philadelphia because he was gay. He told a story about how he had been arrested for manslaughter because a man at a bar launched a hate attack and tried to legitimately kill him outside the bar. PA doesn't have a law for self defense, but as no one came to his help he was forced to defend himself which ended badly. Afterwards, he explained that his now-x had been cheating on him and gave him syphilis and HIV. His courage and positivity despite everything that he's gone and currently battling inspired me so much. I cancelled plans and a job interview because he seemed so happy to have the chance to tell his story, to have someone listen. We talked about how HIV wasn't a death sentence, it's a part of living--
I feel so fortunate that I've had the experience of getting to know M and to put my small, over analyzed daily anxieties into a different perspective. Coming from a tiny island in Maine, where the state's population is 90% trees and 99% white I realize now I've been sheltered from many of the conflicts created by urban poverty, racial inequality, and social pressures in black communities to conform to the traditional family and gender models.
The transition from a sterilized, textbook idea of civil rights and social issues is proving to be more emotionally charged and thought-shifting than I could have ever imagined.
Things have cooled off now and my predominant concern for the night is to make sure M doesn't drunk dial his ex-boyfriend and continue watching Ru Paul's Drag Race with Pooh.
