Welcome to the colorful new iteration of my website, thanks to a brilliant designer!
Having turned 76, those annoying “what was that word/name/place?” moments seem more frequent. So now is a good time to get down all the stories— from being kicked out of three high schools, arriving at one of the first Acid Tests as a drug virgin, to being in an ACT UP die-in during Stonewall 25, to supporting my partner to create the first-ever Drag Queen Story Time, and other moments of political fabulosity and just plain perversity.
For gay people it is impossible to untangle the personal from the political. We have been progenitors of change in the larger society, and we have often been its targets. Articles in my Archive chronicle life-affirming art made by others; it’s a challenge to write about my own life. The memoir-in-progress I am working on will begin a life of well-earned rebellion with mooning my mother during infancy, and proceed from there toward an active fogey-hood. In the meantime this blog is a means to jog my Memoir, so to speak.
I found an unpublished piece from 1993 at the apex of the epidemic, three years before there was any effective HIV treatment, and share it here as my initial blog post. “A Full Day in the Windy City” is a heartfelt paean to an amazing person I met in Chicago during that dreadful year. I hope you will find him inspiring as well.
If you like it—and I think you will—you might click on “Subscribe”. Or maybe forward that blog post on to friends, queer or not. Of course, I’d also love to hear any comment. And if you really like it, feel free to pass it along to your group or list. My aim is to send a post out on the website every two weeks at most, and without any pleas for money. Stay in touch!
Abrazos! Mark “Maysh” Freeman
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