I cut it out of a sketch book, and managed to hang onto it all these years… drew it something like 15 years ago, before art school, probably when I was living in Anchorage, around the time I was coming out. Aha, significance. I’ve drawn her since, in a piece called Rough Door… which is my caustic optimism coming through: each hard thing in your life is just that, a rough blessing — a blessing nonetheless tho.
About ten years later…
I dated (briefly) this guy… nice enough, but definitely defined by his gay-ness. Me being one to at once challenge conceptions and yearn to be accepted, I joined his group of friends. They were ‘professional gays.’ The stereotypes, the group mentality of a minority group, they lived it. Not to say it was all bad, I had a lot of fun going out on the town with them.
The guy kept his crush on me, even though I wasn’t interested. It just wasn’t there, it was too tough to get him to be real, even though he enjoyed it when he was. It’s all there in the pic, with the stylish underwear, the tanned body, the desperation, and the bloody roses. He also had HIV, and though I would love to take the high road and say that it didn’t affect my decision, it did. Because, and I’ve seen this before, I think his response to the disease was just to hide out and not really be himself. Like that Hall and Oates song, ‘I can’t go for that, no-oo ay-I…’
