Pride. The Pier. The Roxy. Let’s go. It’s June 27th 1997 and assless chaps are in. There is skin everywhere I look and never but never have I been at a party where there are so many beautiful men (I joke to dad and his best friend, Kinman) but none of them are looking at me. There is skin and sun and sweat and muscle and all the people on Christopher Street have become one large tentacled being dancing to the beat of life, which is fleeting. Life, which is uncertain. Life, which is honestly in this moment, a miracle.
Every day it seems someone we know goes through the revolving doors at St Vincents and up to Spelman 7. There are near constant invites to memorials somewhere in Chelsea in a windowed room with a poster-sized healthy-faced picture of the deceased. The deceased before facial wasting and Kaposi Sarcoma. The dead when they were still truly alive. And people open these invites and read them.They see the name and gasp and sigh and gather . They put on bright colors in bright rooms filled with flowers and weep. They whisper relief at seeing someone they weren’t sure they’d see again and see the same relief on the faces of those who hug them, too.
I haven’t been to most of these services, I only hear about them. Until just days ago I’ve been in High School in Binghamton NY three hours and a lifetime away.
But now, here I am, fresh off the Greyhound bus and ready for the party. I’ve put on my AJs (polyester bellbottomed tuxedo pants with a baby blue peekaboo stripe) and my three inch platform sandals. I’ve arranged my hair just so and slid a touch of glitter and silver eye liner around each eye. There’s a black tank top, cropped to show enough skin to fit in and a long necklace that swings when I move to the music. I’m here and I’m ready to join in the dance of the living. And the dead.
We’ve gone to the parade in years past but this year we mostly skip it in favor of The Pier Dance, which is all the way West and almost plunked into the river on a renovated piece of cement that used to be a real pier. The music is loud and we are all dancing like it might just be the day the sun explodes because honestly, it is Christopher Street in 1997, so it just might.
A few hours in, close to sunset and the scene gets a little wilder. Bumps of crystal and hands are touching bodies moving beat pumping and Dad and Kinman look at one another a little sideways and then at me and Dad says, “Onward!”
So, we leave. We eat a little and then, after dark, to the Roxy. Gloria Gaynor is performing and soon after our arrival she trundles on stage in sequins to a roaring crowd and when she opens her mouth to sing there is a collective inhale. Everyone stops moving. We are all waiting. She begins
First I was afraid, I was petrified
Everyone has pivoted to face the stage and has begun to move a little, to dance a little but not yet quite to breathe. We are still waiting,
And then she hits the chorus
I will survive
But instead of singing it she throws the mic out to the audience and everyone sings it together because we are, they are, all surviving. Survivors. And in this moment no one here will become the next of the posters to be grieved (Hey Hey). No one here will be taken down (I will survive)it feels reckless and joyful and I am there because he is there and he is there to celebrate life and survival and my God how did we get so lucky. He is not sick—he does not even have it he has told me so— and I am finally here and we are dancing and dancing and dancing and it is all so beautiful.