Your Perspective is Your Religion: Growing Up Gay in the 80s and 90s

By Chauncey Dandridge

I remember when MTV debuted on television in 1981. I was five.

I remember the brilliant, sexy and sepia toned Calvin Klein “Obsession” ads on the back of Rolling Stone magazines.

I remember, in 1989, opening up the liner notes for Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” cassette and finding this little sheet of facts about AIDS and how to practice safe sex. She was one of the most vocal and most famous pop stars talking about it, educating her fans and the masses. It felt like she was looking out for us.

I remember when George Michael was ‘straight’.

I remember religiously listening to the “Red, Hot and Blue” Cole Porter Tribute cd, some of my favorite artists and musicians donating their talents to the cause. This collection of songs is certainly what made me understand the epidemic and kickstarted the edgier side of my activist mentality. The power of music was sinewy and palpable.

I remember asking my older brother if he wanted to sponsor me for my very first AIDS WALK in 1992 and he said “No.” And I said ‘Why not?’. And he replied, “maybe because I think AIDS is a homosexual and drug addict disease.” Gratefully, his mentality and stance has matured since then.

I remember being so excited to raise money for and attend the AIDS Dance-a-Thon at The Jacob Javits Center. We danced and danced all night long.

I remember when Freddie Mercury died.

I remember my first one night stand. I was young. His name was Santo. I met him at Uncle Charlie’s on Greenwich Avenue, my very first gay bar. I remember watching my first Jon Waters film on a Sunday afternoon there. It was “Pink Flamingos”. I remember the rush of stepping up to the urinal next to another gay man there for the first time, and the rush that happens still to this day.

I remember when my drink of choice was an Amaretto Sour.

I remember when it was called “AIDS” and I remember when it was the gravest insult you could throw at someone after you called them a ‘faggot’. “I hope you get AIDS and die.”

I remember that joke about Rock Hudson. “What do you call Rock Hudson in a wheelchair?” “Rolaids.” Kids can be cruel. Adults can be more cruel.

I remember my best friend Diane finally locating her estranged Uncle Joe after many years and discovering he was positive and I remember the eerie experience of visiting him in the now vanquished St. Vincent’s hospital in 1994. I remember smoking pot with him in his West Village apartment once he got out for a few months. I remember the day he died just months after my mother did in 1995.

I remember volunteering at a fundraiser for a needle exchange program in New Brunswick, NJ with my friend Claudia.

I remember New York City.

I remember The Roxy.

I remember the somewhat secret side entrance of The Limelight on Wednesday nights, where you got in for free if you were gay. The stairway led to “The Cha Cha Lounge”, as we called it. We danced and cavorted around the room, decorated with gilt framed mirrors all around the dance floor while what is now considered ‘classic house’ reverberated from the speakers. We smoked cigarettes and took ecstasy. Around 4 am each week, we would all migrate to the walls and await the legendary Kevin Aviance’s performance. He would enter the room and lip sync to an old soul number in full drag sans a wig, his bald head gleaming in the colored lights.

I remember Tom of Finland postcards.

I remember porn on VHS tapes.

I remember The Meatpacking District.

I remember Wonderbar.

I remember Stingy Lulu’s.

I remember Mother and Jackie 60 and Click N Drag.

I remember starting my first New York City job at Housing Works Thrift Shop on the Upper East Side in 1997.

I remember having sex twice with the same person in the same apartment on Gay Street five years apart.

I remember AOL chatrooms.

I remember when you had to wait anxiously for weeks before you got the results of your AIDS test.

I don’t remember ever thinking about sex and it not being accompanied by a sense of dread and fear and a condom attached.

Your perspective is your religion. This was my perspective. Everyone has their own, but no one has yours or mine. Growing up in the 80s and 90s was certainly an interesting time to be alive and an even more interesting time to realize you were queer. The tourniquet that was AIDS halted the hedonistic majesticness of the 70s, the decade riding the euphoria of the Stonewall Riots and the magic of newfound freedom and rebellion. Being homosexual had another filthy stigma swashbuckled onto it creating thicker layers of shame and fear and risk. You only shared the secret with your special friends, the ones you knew would never tell a soul and the ones you knew would think it was cool. Back then it was dangerous and taboo, you were different and you were special. Stars weren’t yet coming out in press releases, they were outed. There was mystery. There was still a hidden language. There was no social media. You had to wait for things.

I remember being delightfully confused and intrigued by Boy George and the New Romantic styles of Adam Ant and Dead or Alive that even creeped into Prince and his proteges’ style. Men were wearing makeup and lace, while women like Annie Lennox were wearing suits and showing authority through their androgyny. Gender bending was en vogue.

Growing up in New Jersey, we discovered the power of the Path train. That one dollar was our admission to ‘the city’. It was a gateway to a celebratory but sinister fantasy land where we could escape our small minded town and be frisky, be confident and be alive. We had access. We had treasures to discover. We had magic to perform.

We smoked cigarettes on the steps on the church on Christopher Street. We cruised. We made eye contact. We danced in basements. We were in awe of gogo boys. We found about parties from flyers handed to us on the streets. We got Caesar cuts and pierced our ears and noses. We wore necklaces and rings and big black boots. We hung out on the pier when it was still ‘the pier’. It was filled with uptown kids downtown, voguing and cavorting. There was a community. Underdogs and outcasts looking out for one another. Bitch tracks on mixtapes blaring from boomboxes. Boys dressed half like girls. Girls dressed half like boys. We didn’t use labels back then because we had names.

This perspective was our privilege and it helped shape me and the rest of my clan into who we are today. We had places to go and be ourselves. We had places to go and be someone else for the night too. We listened to the whispers in the streets. We found one another. We only knew things about each other we were interested in telling each other. We had privacy and we had anonymity and in that we had freedom, but we were still in danger. We were still hated and we were still threatened and we were still an endangered species.

I became a DJ somewhat later in life comparatively, I had my first gig at 26 in 2002. This gave me a whole grand decade of being a nightlife creature and it has kept me optimistic and has kept my spirit young throughout my almost twenty year career. I’ve seen a lot and I’ve done a lot and I’ve survived.

We come from a generation of fighting and marching and standing our ground. We are accustomed to facing adversity and discrimination and we know about grassroots and fundraising and taking care of and looking out for our own.

There has certainly been much progress since I was a new kid on the block of St. Christopher Street. The ominous and sinister acronym of “AIDS” is archaic and we call it “HIV” and it is not the death sentence it was to us. With breakthroughs like PreP, most people I know that are positive are “undetectable”. There is no cure yet, but the crisis has been doused out. But people from my generation are scarred.

I don’t remember ever thinking about sex and it not being accompanied by a sense of dread and fear and a condom attached.

Some of my friends are gone. Some of my friends have moved West. Some of my friends have settled for simpler lives. Some of my friends I still see on the streets and in the bars. Somehow, I simply stayed on this path. I still speak up. I still get a supreme, almost overwhelming rush when I’m at a rally or a march. I still get dirty. I still am a conduit to connect people to create change and I am still an information booth when it comes to what’s going on in the underground as well as the activist circuit. I’m still an optimist and a hopeless romantic.

Over the years, I have met so many people who have come before me to learn from, admire and respect. I also continue to meet and cherish the new kids on the block that have a lot to teach me as well. Look both ways before crossing. I am always grateful and humble and will always wonder what my own legacy shall be. My perspective has been modified and matured and molded but it is still mine and your perspective is your religion.