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| Larry Wolf, Remembered (2025) |
Charlie Porter: Nova Scotia House (2025) - Queer Magic
Do you remember that time?, says Gareth. Maybe it didn't strike you because you were so young, you weren't to know. We were all exhausted, all of us who survived, everyone was exhausted. Everyone wanted the nightmare to be over.
Everyone wanted to live normal lives. Everyone wanted to forget about everything. It is understandable, you cannot blame anyone for it. But here is the thing, Johnny. Before the nightmare began, the last thing we wanted was normality. Our lives were dedicated to the pursuit of queer magic,
He stretched out the words. Qu-ee-er mmm-ag-ic.
It was queer magic that reached back through time, reached far into the future, it broke time, it broke the physical realm, it broke the constraints of what is considered normal, that awful world of conformity where really you just become a cog in the machine, where you are milked for profit, where your primary role is to consume and therefore be consumed. AIDS put queer magic in total jeopardy. So much magic wiped out. We have to reconnect with queer magic today or else all is lost.
Gareth sips his tea. Gareth bites his biscuit. Gareth sips his tea. I say nothing, Gareth has not finished, his thoughts are still loose and free, this is intelligence, not academia, not cleverness, this is intelligence, being able to set thoughts loose and free, the bravery, the lack of fear, the nerve and the patience to set thoughts loose and free where they might falter, to let them instead head into full flight, to expand and unravel and reveal themselves and reveal their contradictions and their complexities and their paradoxes and maybe the thoughts become a new plane of realization, maybe that plane is never reached but the attempt is worth it, the attempt takes time, Gareth takes time and so goes beyond time. Gareth sips his tea.
This is how you honour Jerry, says Gareth and he is speaking into new air. Can you see? By connecting with queer magic. By resisting normality. By caring. By coming here, every week, to spend this time with me, by being here, you know how much it means to me, Johnny, that you come here, that you care enough to sit here and be bored rigid by this dried-up old dragon.
Gareth is staring at me as he says this and is smiling.
I am never bored rigid by you Gareth, I say and I mean it, though Gareth is sometimes boring, sometimes says the same thing over and over, often says the same thing over and over, repeats himself, goes over the same stories, treads the same ground, sometimes he is boring and that is OK I am never bored by him, I am never bored rigid.
If we normalize Jerry's death, we eradicate Jerry. We eradicate him. If we normalize the nightmare of HIV, the nightmare of our lives, we eradicate its victims, because so many of its victims lived a life that was anything but normal. It is so normal to say someone is a saint. I hate normality. Anyway dear you know what I think, you've heard me say it so many times, right now it's pretty much only you left that will listen. And Maude.
Maude has not moved.
Keep doing what you are doing, Johnny my dear boy, Jerry would be proud of you, Jerry is proud of you, keep living life as you are living life, keep making mistakes, keep fucking up, keep being glorious. Go and see that awful man again, he sounds so awful. Do make sure you come and tell me all about it, won't you. You know I like to be kept up to speed. All the news that's fit to print.
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