We're All Screwed 2

I am thinking of a fellow I introduced to Wizard and Spider one day in one of the local coffee shops.  I will just call him M.  I said, "This is M.  He does bad things."  With a smile of course.  M took good-natured offence, since, for a cocaine dealer he had a remarkably intact sense of humour.  He, like his male partner, J, was also a survival gay sex worker.  We had become particularly close friends during my years of ministry downtown.  I remember when I sent them a postcard from London where I spent over two months, featuring two punk-rockers with multihued Mohawks and their middle fingers proudly raised.  They loved the postcard.  "Greetings From London" it said.

This couple became close friends to our little community.  They were both living with AIDS.  J was already dying.  M had a strong sense of justice, a very tender heart, and a conscience.  I had an interesting chat one day with him about the likely source of the cocaine he was selling (no, Gentle Reader, I was not one of his clients, and certainly not in any other sense, either!).  I told him all about the Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, the violent Maoist Guerillas wreaking incredible havoc throughout Peru.  They had gained control over many of the local campesinos and their coca farms.  Coca, being the natural source for cocaine, was of course also obtained through the agency of those murderous guerrillas and found its way to the illicit markets in North America and up the nostrils of many happy cocaine users here in dear little Canada.  I said to M that by selling cocaine he was contributing to the bloodshed and brutal murder of innocent children, women and old people in Peruvian villages and farms.  M was saddened and outraged, started trembling, and could only say, over and over, "I wish you hadn't told me that, I wish you hadn't told me."

I simply replied that, well, now you know, and it's up to you to do something about this new information.  I will never know what he did with the information.  I had already done my job.

They sometimes came to our little country house in Richmond for dinner.  I was sometimes invited to visit their apartment in Marpole.  They had a beautiful calico cat and a cockatiel.  The cat was often trying to stalk the bird and the little cockatiel would fight back, dive bombing and scaring the crap out of her.

J went to hospital where he died.  M disappeared.  I haven't seen or heard of him since.

These were two young men who lived and breathed trauma.  Two survival gay sex workers trying to make the best out of the crappy lives they had been given.  Their choices were imperfect, in some ways worse than imperfect.  They were two flawed human beings with dignity and broken beating hearts with an almost embarrassing capacity for love.

I don't know about the lives or identities of any of their customers, for drugs or sex.  I imagine they were generally reasonably well off men, absolutely unmoved and unconcerned about the impact that their choices were making on others, be it blood cocaine or paid sex with one of two young men whose lives had been all about loss, heartache and abuse.

I do not justify how M or J made a living.  But they did privilege me by welcoming me into their lives and sharing with me their wounded and open hearts.  Two beautiful individuals I know I will never see again.