Loving Artemis on the Q Spirit list: an excerpt with the saints and dropping acid, #amreading #MerryXmas #FaithfullyLGBT

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I was delighted to learn that my novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love and marriage (published by Thorned Heart Press) recently made Q Spirit’s list of the top LGBTQ books of 2022. Q Spirit is the LGBTQ inclusive Christian newsletter published by Kittredge Cherry.

Being on this list inspired me to share Chapter 15 of Loving Artemis for which I did a fair amount of research on the Saints on Catholic.com which I combined with research on dropping acid. It is fiction, but sometimes I imagine that I was actually there.

“Come on in,” Beth said to Grace. She stood inside the open door. “I was hoping you’d come early. There’s something I
want to ask you. Take off your coat and get comfortable.”
“Sorry about being so early,” Grace replied as she passed through the doorway. “I had an argument with my mom and had to get out of the house.”
Beth shrugged. “I guess that’s the drawback of having a mother around to fight with.” Grace took off her coat and looked down at the brown shag carpeting.
Maybe Beth would feel better knowing that she wasn’t the only one with a crazy mother, thought Grace. She looked up. Grace usually saw Beth at school under the florescent lights, but here in the house light pooled from two living room lamps with thick ceramic bases and ivory shades. A lava lamp — a chrome base and top with glass in between where a red orb languidly moved through midnight blue liquid — anchored the far end table. In the soft light cast from the incandescent bulbs, Beth’s long, pale face looked even fairer. Grace could just see the large, pallid freckles splotched across the tops of her cheeks.
“My mom told me that she wants me to be a nun,” Grace blurted.
“Wow. That’s far out. I thought my mom was crazy,” laughed Beth. She pointed the way down the hallway to her father’s bedroom.
“You can put your coat on the bed.” Grace headed down the hall. She knew where she was going because the layout of the house was identical to hers, like most houses in this town.. After she put her coat on the bed, she turned around to leave and saw a mirror on the wall over a dresser next to the closed closet door. The beige closet door was pulled across in folds like an accordion. Light spilled from the fixture in the middle of the dingy room. The beige carpeting was stained, and Grace was tempted to go over and run her finger through the layer of dust on the dresser. Grace saw a mirror on the wall and walked over to it. She fluffed
her bangs and ran her fingers through her shoulder-length sandy hair. It hung in loose curls that framed her face on the sides. She
straightened her aviator glasses and grinned at her reflection. She didn’t look anything like a nun. She looked like a high school girl
who was ready to party. She went out into the living room and sat down on the overstuffed tan couch. Beth was on the other side of the room with her back to her. Her heart-shaped ass was poured into her jeans. It looked like she was stacking albums on the stereo. The record dropped. The needle scratched vinyl. Grace heard the opening strains and low voices of Pink Floyd in The Dark Side of the Moon.
“How’s the volume?” Beth asked as she turned her head toward Grace.
“It’s a little low,” Grace responded loudly. She raised her voice to be heard over the music.
“I’ll turn it up in a minute,” Beth replied. “First, there’s something I want to ask you.”
She came over and sat next to Grace on the sofa. Grace looked at Beth expectantly.
“Look what I have,” Beth announced. She leaned back and pulled a plastic baggie out of the pocket of her faded jeans. Inside the clear baggie, a piece of paper was folded over. “George is coming later, and he gave me something to get started with. I have two tabs. Do you want to take a trip with me?” Beth reached into the baggie and pulled out the paper.
Grace paused and looked at the piece of blue-tinted blotter paper Beth held in her hand. Small perforations separated the two
squares and tiny drops glistened on each square. The drops were hardened, like candy dots on paper, but not as big and round. Grace knew what it was; she’d seen it before, but Grace had never dropped acid. She remembered a junior high school program when a cop came to give an assembly about drugs and showed the students a film on the dangers of taking acid. She remembered a young woman standing on a high rooftop. A male voice said that she thought she could fly because she had taken acid. The movie had seemed a little farfetched. Grace didn’t know if she had believed it. But she hesitated a little because she was a little afraid of taking acid. But she did want to be cool like Beth. Even though she could barely admit it to herself, she knew she wanted to be with Beth even if all they were doing was sitting on the couch and dropping acid.
“I don’t know,” said Grace.
“I tripped once before, and it was beautiful. I’ll stay with you. And I’ll make sure you get home okay.” Beth reached over and
touched Grace’s forearm.
Grace was amazed Beth could sense how she was feeling. Beth’s fingertips were warm on her arm. Grace hadn’t smoked or drunk anything since she arrived, but the music put her in a different dimension. She thought about the conversation she had earlier with her mother. A nun? Her? How ridiculous is that?
She turned, looked at Beth, and said, “Sure.”
Beth smiled beatifically. “Just lick the paper. You take one square. I’ll take the other. It only takes a little.”
Beth laid the squares on the end table and picked up a pen knife. As she leaned over, her shirt pulled up on the side and exposed a triangle of pale skin. Grace tried not to stare, but her eyes kept returning to that small naked place.
Beth sat back and handed Grace a square.
“Here,” she said. “Let’s do it together. Just let it dissolve in your mouth like a piece of candy.” Beth used her teeth to pull the tab off the paper. The tab was on the tip of her tongue. It disappeared into her mouth. Grace did the same thing. They were silent for a moment. Grace listened to the lyrics of “Breathe” While the acid melted on her tongue. It tasted mildly bitter, like the cooked turnip that Grace had bit into once and then vowed never to eat it again.
“It’ll take about a half hour or so to kick in,” said Beth. “We could smoke a joint while we wait, but it’ll be wasted. Let’s just sit back and wait.” Beth took a breath, sat back, closed her eyes. Grace did the
same. In about fifteen minutes, the doorbell rang. Beth got up. Then the doorbell rang again. Grace heard voices. The living room sounded like it was filling up. She opened her eyes for a few seconds and then closed them again.
She felt the sofa seat cushions go down, and then she heard Beth saying, “I’m back. It’s almost time for us to leave the station.”
The doorbell rang again. “Someone else can answer it,” Beth muttered.
“It’s George,” commented a deep voice.
“Tell him to come in and make himself at home,” Beth said.
Grace heard a voice next to them and she opened her eyes. George was standing in front of Beth. Strands of his shoulder-length
brown hair fell forward as he bent over and put large hands on her skinny knees.
“Hey, baby,” he said in a voice that was so deep it was cavernous,
“Did you take what I gave you?”
“I split it with Grace,” said Beth.
“Hello, Grace,” George greeted her.
Grace had heard about George. He was in his twenties, and everyone knew he was a drug dealer, so it didn’t surprise Grace he
could get Beth anything she wanted. He gave Beth the tabs of acid that she was sharing with Grace after all. Still, Grace didn’t know why he was here. Grace though it was unnatural for Beth to be with an older man; she should be with a girl her own age, right? Grace stared at George, willing him to go away.
“I’m sure Grace won’t mind if you leave for a little while. I have somewhere for us to go,” George announced. “We’re going to take a little trip together.”
“But I told Grace that I would take a trip with her. Maybe she can come with us,” Beth protested, a touch of a whine in her voice.
George was firm. “No, baby, this trip is just for us.”
“I don’t mind,” said Grace, but she did mind. Then she drifted into another dimension where everything was okay. George and Beth were where they were supposed to be. She was where she was supposed to be. She closed her eyes. She felt the empty seat cushion next to her. Beth was gone, and Grace felt anxious. Most of the kids at the party and the older guys, like George, were cooler than her. She heard some of them were drug dealers. They probably had tripped before. But then she remembered it was okay. They were who they were, and she was who she was. She put her hand out in front of her and left a purple trail in the
air. She listened to the lyrics of “Breathe.” The record played to the end, and she heard another album drop. She thought she heard the song again. Beth loved Pink Floyd, and she had put a stack of albums on the stereo. Did she have two of The Dark Side of the Moon albums stacked on top of each other? It was then that Grace comprehended that everything was in an endless loop and that she would be hearing the Pink Floyd song “Breathe” forever.
Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind: Become a nun. A nun. A nun. The words were purple and green. They trailed through her mind like streamers unfurling from small planes that flew over the ocean — except that there was no airplane and the words trailed around her in a circle. She felt trapped. Grace stood in the middle of a vortex.
She remembered the domes of the Orthodox Church that she saw earlier in the evening. In her memory, they looked like gleaming
mushroom caps. Maybe her mother was right. If she were a nun, she could make a difference. She could heal the sick. She could perform miracles. She could live in a convent with other women who did not want to marry men. When she was a child, her favorite television program was The Flying Nun. The program opened with Sally Fields, as the young novice Sister Bertille, flying over the mountainside and tumbling through the blue sky. Grace remembered feeling as if she could fly. She could fly. Then she remembered that Beth’s house, like hers, was only two stories high. Still, she could fly if she felt like getting up from the couch. She could be a nun if she wanted to. She remembered reading about the saints when she was getting ready for
her confirmation and learning that so many of the female saints had been nuns. They swirled around in her memory: Joan of Arc, dressing in men’s clothing, mounting her horse, leading the troops; Saint Hildegard of Bingen, seeing visions and writing music. Saint Faith, a young woman remembered for being a virgin and martyr, was tortured to death on a red-hot brazier. The saints receded. Grace became anxious again. That would be just her luck to become a nun and be tortured to death on a red-hot brazier. What was a red-hot brazier? It reminded her of a bra. Was it a brazier or a brassiere? What was the difference?
Grace was enjoying her trip half the time. She waved her hand in front of her face again. It left a neon blue trail. The other half of the time, she was apprehensive. She looked at her hand again. It looked like it belonged to someone else and it was coming toward her. The hand moved back again. She could tell that it was hers because she could wave it in the air. A spring green trail turned bright yellow. The colors pulsed. Then they faded. The hand looked normal. But it still looked as if it belonged to a stranger.
Grace was in her own universe. Would this ever end? Would she ever not be anxious? Would fear eat away at her until she was dead? The sweet smell of cannabis smoke filled the air. Man, Beth knew how to throw a party, and Grace loved Beth. But it was Beth’s fault that Grace was on this trip. Beth might never come back, and then Grace might be on this trip forever.
Time was a circle.
She found herself in a hot pink tunnel with a white flower at the end. She felt like a saint. She was a saint and so was Beth. Beth was a saint from a pagan family, and she ran a brothel in the Temple of Venus. Grace worked for Beth in the brothel, but somehow — it was a miracle really — Grace managed to stay a virgin. Venus was a planet and a goddess. Grace had a recent memory of Venus shining down on her.
Someone came and knelt in front of her. Deep-set, caring brown eyes looked at Grace. Under windswept short brown hair, her face
was handsome: masculine, but feminine, too, with fine features. Grace decided that the person must be Saint Anne. She took Grace’s hand. It seemed like a miracle, but Grace took it in stride. Miracles were becoming common place. Grace knew about Saint Anne. She was from a good family and forced to marry. After she was widowed, she disguised herself as a man and went to live in a monastery. This Saint Anne was wearing a black leather jacket. Her windswept hair was short. Her nose, upturned. She looked at Grace intently with sad brown eyes. When she opened her mouth to speak, a Gregorian chant escaped. Grace leaned back. She felt the cool stone arches of the cathedral. She heard voices rising. She could smell the sweet scent of colors cast by the stained-glass windows. Sky blue blazed from the image of the Virgin Mary. Her halo radiated sparks of golden light.
Gradually, the colors faded. The Gregorian chants receded.
Grace recognized Saint Anne wasn’t a figment of her imagination. She actually knelt in front of her. She held on to Grace’s hand.
“Hey. My name is Art. I’m in your English lit class.”
“I recognize you,” Grace drawled. “You’re Saint Anne.”
Saint Anne laughed, turned serious, and said, “We’ve seen each other around school.”
“Oh? I think you’re wrong. You’re Saint Anne.”
“I was raised in the Orthodox Church, and we tend to have angels rather than saints. But trust me, I’m no angel.”
“I’m taking a trip,” said Grace. She held onto Saint Anne’s hand.
“A trip?” Saint Anne’s sad eyes widened.
She looked like a boy, but prettier, thought Grace. She had an idea. That fast, she forgot what it was.
“Are you okay?” Saint Anne asked.
“I’m doing great — me and The Flying Nun.”
Saint Anne laughed. “I liked that show, too. But seriously, are you okay? I hear tripping can be kind of … intense.”
Grace gazed languidly at her in amazement. “Haven’t you ever tripped?” She still couldn’t believe that she was speaking to Saint
Anne. She was so handsome.
“I don’t see any reason to mess with my molecular structure,” said Saint Anne. “I’d offer to smoke a joint with you, but you probably
don’t need it.”
“No, I’m fine — even though taking the trip wasn’t my idea. I came early and Beth asked me if I wanted to take a trip with her.
Where is she?”
“Beth?” Saint Anne’s eyes narrowed. “It figures that she got you into this. She’s in her bedroom with George. I saw them going down the hallway when I first came in. They’ll probably be in there all night.”
“That’s nice,” said Grace. “The only thing is that she promised to stay with me. And now I’m alone. How am I going to stand up? How am I going to walk? How am I going to get home? I think I could fly, but first I have to get there.”
“How much did you take and when did you take it?”
Grace told her.
“It’s your first time?”
Grace nodded.
“You should have only taken half a hit.” Saint Anne stood up. Then she sat down on the couch next to Grace.
“But don’t worry, I’m staying with you. And I’m right here. You should be coming down in another hour or so.”
Grace felt her knee leaning against something solid. She looked down and saw that it was Saint Anne’s knee. A halo of golden light
emanated around the circles where their knees touched. Grace looked at it with amazement.
She leaned into her new friend. Saint Anne felt solid and soft.
“I’ll make sure that you get home all right. I’ll take you home on
my motorcycle.”
“Motorcycle?”
Art nodded.
“Then you really are Saint Anne,” said Grace. She knew she had a future. She knew somehow that there were motorcycles in it — ridden by women like Saint Anne. She smiled. It felt like eternity passed, and the party started to wind down. It must have been a few hours and Grace was starting to come down also. She could tell by the solid way she walked behind Art. For a
moment, it felt like she hadn’t dropped acid at all. But even though her feet were moving like it was business as usual, her mind was turning the drab house into a wonderland. Grace looked at the lava lamp with blobs of color melting through light in a glass cylinder. She looked away as she followed her new friend, but the image of the lava lamp stayed with her. The front hallway she walked through turned into a lava lamp. With each step she took, she was becoming the orbs of color melting into light.
Grace followed Saint Anne outside and got onto the back of her motorcycle. Grace wrapped her arms around her. They started to
move. The night air felt good against Grace’s face. She could feel purple streamers of light trailing behind them. She hadn’t jumped out of a window, but she was flying.
“What is your house number?” Saint Anne asked when they were stopped at a red light.
“Seven,” replied Grace over the purr of the engine.
Seven was her house number, and it was also the number of glowing angels that descended from the stars and spoke her name.
When they pulled up at the curb outside her house, Grace got off the bike. She knew she lived there, but at the same time she wasn’t sure if she was really the girl who lived there. She sat down in the street.
“Whoa,” said Saint Anne. “Are you okay?”
She got off her bike and helped Grace to her feet.
Grace wondered if she really had met Saint Anne. Could it be true?
She reached out and took Saint Anne in her arms. Saint Anne hugged her back. Then they were still hugging, but they were looking at each other. Their faces moved toward each other. They kissed with their mouths open. Their tongues touched. Grace felt an outline of yellow light fusing them together. The future flew by and brushed the side of her head. It felt like an angel’s wing.
But Saint Anne pulled back. She put her hand on Grace’s arms, steadying her.
“This isn’t right,” she said. “You’re still tripping. Be careful when you go in the house. Don’t make any noise and whatever you do,
don’t talk to anyone. Just go to bed.”
Grace did as she was told. She tiptoed into the house, went to her room, and lay on the bed fully clothed. She had touched Saint Anne and wanted to keep the touch with her. She stared at the ceiling until the entire evening — gazing at the star of Venus, dropping acid with Beth, and kissing Saint Anne — became a dream.

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

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Finding the Light — a #UU talk by Janet Mason #amwriting #inspiration

I am reposting this talk that I gave to to mark the occasion of Hanukkah.

The talk was a Unitarian Universalist (UU) service that was called “Ringing in the Light.”

I talked about my childhood memories of being touched by Hanukkah and my experiences in celebrating the Winter Solstice and with the Gnostic Gospels. You can see my words below on the YouTube video or read the reflection below that.

As far back as I can remember, the light beckoned.

The sun was a ball of fire in the sky.  The light changed into vibrant colors in the morning and the evening.  It filtered through the branches of trees.  The sunlight had, in fact, shined down and helped to form the trees.  So the light was in the trees (along with the rain and the earth).

Even when it was cloudy, I knew the sun was there. Sometimes I could see the ball of sun outlined behind the gray clouds.

The first time I remember being drawn to the light in a religious context was when I was in elementary school watching a play about Hanukkah.

Despite its nearness to Christmas on the calendar, Hanukkah is one of the lesser holidays in Judaism. Hanukkah, also called The Festival of Lights, began last Tuesday at sunset and ends this Wednesday, December, 20th, at nightfall.

When I asked my partner what Hanukkah meant to her, she responded that it is a celebration of survival, hope and faith.

The holiday celebrates the victory of the Maccabees, detailed in the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud.

This victory of the Maccabees, in approximately 160 BCE –  BCE standing for Before The Common Era — resulted in the rededication of the Second Temple.  The Maccabees were a group of Jewish rebel warriors who took control of Judea.

According to the Talmud, the Temple was purified and the wicks of the menorah burned for eight days.

But there was only enough sacred oil for one day’s lighting. It was a miracle.

Hanukkah is observed by lighting the eight candles of the menorah at varying times and various ways.  This is done along with the recitation of prayers.  In addition to the eight candles in the menorah, there is a ninth called a shamash (a Hebrew word that means attendant). This ninth candle, the shamash, is in the center of the menorah.

It is all very complicated of course – the history and the ritual – but what I remember most is sitting in that darkened auditorium and being drawn to the pool of light around the candles on my elementary school stage.

I am not Jewish.  I say that I was raised secular – but that is putting it mildly.  My mother was, in fact, a bible-burning atheist.  Added to that, I was always cast as one of the shepherds in the school’s Christmas pageant since I was the tallest child in elementary school.

Also, I had Jewish neighbors – and as a future lesbian and book worm growing up in the sameness of a working class neighborhood — I may have responded to difference and had a realization that I was part of it.

Then I grew up, came out, thanked the Goddess for my secular upbringing, and celebrated the Winter Solstice with candles and music. This year, the Solstice falls on December 21st. The Winter Solstice (traditionally the shortest period of daylight and the longest night of the year)  is this coming Thursday in the Northern Hemisphere of planet Earth – which is where we are.

One of our friends who we celebrated the Solstice with is Julia Haines. Julia is a musician who has performed at Restoration.  She has a wonderful composition of Thunder Perfect Mind which she accompanies with her harp playing. You can find her on YouTube. Thunder Perfect Mind, of which I just read an excerpt, is one of the ancient texts of the Gnostic Gospels.

The Gnostic Gospels were discovered in the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.  Originally written in Coptic, these texts date back to ancient times and give us an alternative glimpse into the Gospels that are written in the New Testament. They are so important that they are banned in some conventional religions.  And in my book, that’s a good reason to read them.

Reading them led me to think of myself as a Gnostic – meaning one who has knowledge and who pursues knowledge – including mystical knowledge.  The Gnostic Gospels have provided me with inspiration for my writing, particularly in my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders, soon to be published by Adelaide Books. And they also inspire me in the novel I am currently writing — titled The Unicorn, The Mystery.

I am inspired by the Gnostic Gospels in part because they let in the light.  In particular, they let in the light of the feminine.

As Julia says in her rendition of Thunder:

am godless

I am Goddess

So how does finding the light factor into my experience of Unitarian Universalism? Later in life, after fifty, I found a religion that fit my values.  I found a religion wide enough – and I might add, secure enough – to embrace nonconformity.

In finding a congregation that is diverse in many ways – including religious diversity – I have found a deeper sense of myself.

And in that self, I recognize that the darkness is as least as necessary and as important as the light.

As a creative writer, I spend much of my time in the gray-matter of imagination.

It is in that darkness where I find the light.

Namaste

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

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Everything’s vegan?! — celebrating #TheRespectforMarriageAct #govegan #amreading

Today, to celebrate the signing of The Respect For Marriage Act, we decided to have a vegan/ plant-based meal out. I was looking for a restaurant with a vegan option. I found a few but then when I found HipCityVeg — a totally vegan restaurant — I was amazed. The restaurant didn’t disappoint. In fact, I was amazed and felt like we had arrived in the future. The food was delicious and filling,

For us, the reasons to go vegan were for health but were inspired by the non-human animals we knew. Then we learned more about how a plant-based diet can improve the life of the planet. This diet/lifestyle is delicious and rewarding. And it’s great to be part of the future!

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

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The Respect for Marriage Act and History — Loving Artemis, #amreading, #TheRespectforMarriageAct #History

In honor of The Respect for Marriage Act which is slated to be signed into law this week. I am bringing you part of interview that is being published by Literary Titan.

A historian friend commented to me that I documented an important piece of history leading up to marriage equality in my novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love and marriage (published by Thorned Heart Press). That history is still with us. I was amazed in 2015 when same-sex marriage was ruled by the Supreme Court of the United States to be legal nationwide.

And I was amazed today when I learned that “The Respect For Marriage Act” (protecting the right to same-sex and interracial marriage nationwide in the U.S.) was passed by the House and is expected to be signed into law by U.S. President Joe Biden.
 

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

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The Sapphic Book Advent Calendar–“taking back the light:” #UU, #amreading #FaithfullyLGBT

Recently, I’ve been fortunate to connect with the lesbian writer Jae from Germany and to be included on her Sapphic Book Advent Calendar. Since I was raised secular, I don’t have much knowledge about Advent.

But many of my books are inspired by or have religious (as well as queer) themes, so it’s a good fit. In fact, my romance novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love and marriage (published in August 2022 by Thorned Heart Press) was chosen by Kittredge Cherry, publisher of QSpirit, as one of the top LGBTQ Christian books of the year.

In the past decade, I have become a Unitarian Universalist (and a lay minister) as well as a qigong practitioner and I am increasingly drawn to the light which is quite beautiful and different in my region this time of year.

In thinking about Advent, the first thing that came to mind was “Take back the light.”

When I first heard someone talk about Advent, it was several years ago when our then new Unitarian minister talked about the importance of Advent to him growing up in the Christian tradition. He talked about the practice of waiting which I liked.

There is much to be said about inhabiting each moment and there is much to be said about waiting (which is different).

I might be used to inhabiting the moment but being included in the Sapphic Book Advent Calendar is what I’ve been waiting for.

Sapphic Book Advent Calendar

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

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#World AIDS Day — Surviving a Plague: When Literature Invokes Life

Note: I am re-blogging this in honor of AIDS World Awareness Day.

This piece of commentary was previously aired on This Way Out, the LGBTQ news and culture syndicate headquartered in Los Angeles and published in The Huffington Post.

Every now and then comes that rare book that brings your life rushing back to you. How To Survive A Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France (Knopf 2016) is one such book.

The book chronicles the AIDS epidemic from the early 1980s – when the mysterious “gay cancer” started appearing — to 1995 when hard-won advancements in research and pharmaceuticals made AIDS a virus that people lived with rather than a disease that people died from.

It was an epidemic of massive proportions. As France writes:

“When the calendar turned to 1991, 100,000 Americans were dead from AIDS, twice as many as had perished in Vietnam.”

The book chronicles the scientific developments, the entwined politics, and medical breakthroughs in the AIDS epidemic. AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is a chronic infectious condition that is caused by the underlying human immunodeficiency virus known as HIV. The book also chronicles the human toll which is staggering.I came out in 1981 and while the devastation France writes about was not my world, it was very close to my experience.

In my book Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters (Bella Books, 2012), I write about how volunteering at an AIDS hospice helped me to care for my mother when she became terminally ill:

“The only caregiving I had done at that point was tending to an old cat and reading poetry to the patients at an AIDS hospice, called Betak, that was in our neighborhood. A friend of ours, who was a harpist, had started a volunteer arts program for the patients. She played the harp, [my partner] Barbara came and brought her drum sometimes, and I read poetry. These were poor people—mostly African American men—who were in the advanced stages of AIDS and close to death. The experience let me see how fast the disease could move.”

In those days, the women’s community (what we then called the lesbian and feminist community) was mostly separate from the gay male community. Understandably, gay men and lesbians had our differences. But there was infighting in every group. Rebellion was in the air, and sometimes we took our hostilities out on each other.

Still, gay men and lesbians were also allies and friends (something that is reflected in France’s writing).

I’ll always remember the time my partner and I took a bus to Washington D.C. with the guys from ACT-UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, an international activist group that is still in existence) from Philadelphia to Washington D.C. to protest for reproductive rights. The women then went to protest with ACT-UP at AIDS-related protests. Remember the die-ins in the streets?

One thing that lesbians and gay men had in common was that we lived in a world that was hostile to us. At that time, many gay men and lesbians were in the closet because we were vilified by society and in danger of losing our employment, families, housing and, in more than a few instances, our lives.

AIDS activism necessitated coming out of the closet. Hate crimes against us skyrocketed.

There is much in this book that I did not know, even though I lived through the era. In 1986, in protest of the Bowers v. Hardwick ruling of the US Supreme Court (which upheld a Georgia law criminalizing sodomy – a decision that was overturned in 2003), about 1,000 angry people protested in a small park across from the legendary Stonewall Inn in New York City, where the modern gay rights movement was born after a series of riots that started after a routine police raid of the bar.

At that same time, Ronald Reagan (then president) and the President of France François Mitterrand were celebrating the anniversary of the gift of the Statue of Liberty.

“’Did you hear that Lady Liberty has AIDS?” the comedian [Bob Hope] cracked to the three hundred guests. “Nobody knows if she got it from the mouth of the Hudson or the Staten Island Ferry.’”

“There was a scattering of groans. Mitterand and his wife looked appalled. But not the Reagans. The first lady, a year after the death of her friend Rock Hudson, the brunt of this joke, smiled affectionately. The president threw his head back and roared.”

How to Survive A Plague is told in stories, including the author’s own story. This is apt because the gay rights movement was full of stories and — because of the epidemic — most of those stories were cut short.

Almost every June, my partner and I would be part of the New York Pride Parade and every year we would pause for an official moment to honor our dead. The silence was cavernous.

This silence extended to entire communities. A gay male friend, amazed when his test came back negative, told me that most of his address book was crossed out. He would walk around the “gayborhood” in Center City Philadelphia surrounded by the haunting places where his friends used to live.

And we were all so young then.

When I turned the last page of How To Survive A Plague, I concluded that this is a very well-done book about a history that is important in its own right. The plague years also represent an important part of the American experience. And an understanding of this history is imperative to the future of the LGBT movement.

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

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