The Bastion of Youth
(originally ranted in 2006)

I grew up in the 1980s. I was torn between this time of protest in the 1960s and this lackadaisical, laissez-faire mentality of today. I wanted something to cry out for, yet it seemed there was nothing to sound the alarms to. I wanted to be a part of something larger- something that mattered- something relevant.

Sure, my friends were doing drugs, but I could not take a stand against that. I would be alienated. And besides, I wanted someday to partake myself. Cocaine was cooler than a BMW- but God gave me a heart condition, and I never got the chance to sniff my way to divinity.

My social life revolved around the gay scene. My mother had recently divorced, and all her friends were gay. Consequently, so were all my friends.  They thought I was beautiful. They thought I could dance and mix drinks and make witty conversation and look fabulous in the face of adversity. And when I did not want to expend the effort to haunt the gay bar, I donned my spikes and leather, frequenting the punk shows. My attitude fluctuated from “fabulousness is mandatory” to “fuck everything.” One night, I would make myself beautiful beyond measure, and one night as ugly as possible- attract and deflect, attract and deflect.

Nothing mattered in the world but who I pretended to be that night, and who I chose to surround myself with, or whether I was listening to the Pet Shop Boys or the Ramones. But then came AIDS, and everything changed. Suddenly, I was afraid my friends would die, and I was not even completely sure why they were condemned.

The first meaningful death I recall was the fashion designer Willi Smith. I was rocked to my very core. I even went to the priest at my Catholic school and prayed for the latent redemption of Willi’s soul. I hoped against hope that there was something that could be said to some incomprehensible being that would end all this madness and stop the death. “Give Willi salvation.” After all, he was fabulous.

Suddenly, without my realization, there it was- this thing to care about, this thing to be a part of, this cause to take up. People were dying. Maybe it wasn’t Viet Nam- I never noticed. People were dying in greater numbers then Viet Nam and it was happening at home.

Back then, it was the “gay cancer.” It wasn’t something that single mothers and drug addicts got. It seemed to hit men with a more vigorous attack than women. I didn’t know how to react anymore to the people I once loved. Can I kiss them on the cheek? Can I hold hands? And what about that one- the one I had been holding out for- he that I had hoped against hope that he would not be gay, he that would someday realize that I was his destiny? I had to hold out for him… and pray to a God I didn’t even believe in that he would be spared from this epidemic so he and I could wed and be married and have children and commute and barbeque and have pool parties.

He’s still gay today, in case you’re wondering. And since then, I have given my life to the Lord and work for a church. Everything now is different than it was then. Then, gays were a statistic- a part of the PowerPoint pie chart. Now, it affects us all. But back then- it was the biggest thing that had hit our generation. Suddenly nothing else mattered but the obituaries.

It wasn’t all that much different than Viet Nam, really, only that famous people were dying. Everyone was affected- the poor, the rich, the fabulous, the irrelevant, the beautiful, the impoverished, the best friends, the worst enemies. Suddenly, we all had something to cry out for no matter our social affiliation.

Eventually, the headlines died down, and we were right back to where we started. Cocaine equaled beautiful, and beautiful equaled rich. There it remained until we all grew up and tried something different. Some remained gay. Some remained punk. Some remained fabulous. Some became extinct and unimportant. Eventually, it became just another disease- SAARS gone terribly wrong- something we could have avoided if we would have been “smart.”

I don’t see that kids today are any different. If you shove the issue of a confusing election in their face, they will riot against “the man” and believe that there is some grand injustice. You put the war in Iraq before them, they will rage against it. It has nothing to do with whether or not it is actually unjust. It is just an issue, and they must fight against SOMETHING. That is the nature of youth.

Then we start to accept the re-election and the fact that we are at war. After all- we DO remember the Towers coming down. Sure, people are dying, but it’s people we don’t know. Our college buddies aren’t enlisting in the army. They have too much going for them. They are all pursuing their degree, planning their corporate takeover, hoping that stock in Microsoft will still pay off even though they were late in the game. After all, even Apple is converting to Intel. And damn if we’re going to let ANYTHING get in the way of our iPod.

That is what they have to care about- their money and their entertainment. Do you really think that there is anything relevant going on in the mind of the youth today? They will only care about what we put before them- just like it was in my day, and the day of Viet Nam. Give them the headlines- they will demand action. But when the headlines are only about whether or not Angelina is adopting a baby on her own or WITH Brad Pitt- THAT is what they will care about. WE are the ones telling the youth of today what they should think is consequential.

When I was young, I thought that Willi Smith, Kenny Scharf, Jimmy Sommerville, Neil Tennant, and Exene Cervenka were the voices of the time. Now, Brad and Jen and Angelina, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore are the shouting cacophony. How can you expect them to care about or to act upon anything? What Paris Hilton was wearing last weekend is more important than the hurricane last weekend.

Once, the great injustice of a civil war in Viet Nam mattered. Once, an epidemic of devastating proportion mattered. Now, it matters only that MTV is previewing some show that has nothing to do with music, that Christina is engaged, that Brittney had a boy, and that Waters is rejoining Pink Floyd one more time “for the good of the cause.” We are training these kids to believe THAT is important - not the war, and not the people dying, not the drug epidemic, not the children left homeless or starving, not the people still enslaved in Africa, not the people slipping into Hell every second because they could not commit. And by next week, not even the twin hurricanes. WE are teaching the youth of today what is important. We did not tell them in a meaningful way that their vote DOES count, that their sexual preference IS relevant, that they CAN speak out against terrorism OR the war OR gas prices OR social security reform OR those last remaining bastions of racism. We taught them to move on as soon as the headline passes.

But it’s their fault too. They chose to look past the events that don’t directly affect them. They do not know how to separate the innocuous from the truly consequential, to quote Dennis Miller. How could they? How can they help where we are at as a nation? Bush is resolved and he has been re-elected. There is no disputing that this time. They are staring down the barrel of a gun they cannot deflect. They hold on to their wealth in the 2000s in the same way that we held on to our heterosexuality in the 1980s. We felt safe then, and they feel safe now.

The truth is- I am too old to speak for the youth of today. I can only speak for  myself and the era I grew up in. And I am grateful that I was not hit harder than I was by the epidemic of my time.

And even now, the mother of a precious boy and a wife of none, I hold out that one man, that specific one, will realize that he is madly in love with me and not with other men. A girl still has to have her dreams, no matter how removed from reality. That is the pull of immaturity, isn’t it? That is freedom- the bastion of youth.