This year, several friends shared their illnesses and vulnerabilities with me. And I am eternally grateful to them for that. Given the constant news of hurricanes and fires and political disasters, we can feel like our personal problems aren’t important enough to talk about. But sick people shouldn’t suffer alone and in silence.



When friends tell me they are going to the doctor, I usually offer to go with them. They rarely take me up on it – but that ended this year.



There was, for example, my gay friend who was facing a cancer scare this summer. I accompanied him to the waiting area of the clinic specializing in LGBT health. And, once they (wisely) separated us to determine that I was not encroaching on his privacy, they let me sit in the exam.

In showing me his vulnerabilities, I got to know and love my friend better

It was a deeply meaningful experience for me. I got to learn more about my friend’s health, his fears and his anxieties. I got to learn more about his sex life and drug use, and understand better ways to support him in enjoying both safely.



When my friend got so nervous he couldn’t recall information, I helped prod his memory. And when the nurse practitioner suggested a course of treatment for therapy and follow-up care, I understood how to help my friend achieve those goals.

I appreciated having our friendship – a type of relationship that is deeply meaningful despite being routinely dismissed as less important than spousal, sibling or parental relationships – validated by the clinic in this way.



In showing me his vulnerabilities, I got to know and love my friend better. But selfishly, I also appreciated that I can now take off my mask in front of him, too. I’m more free to share how I am doing, and don’t have to pretend when I am not well. In being naked with me about his health scare, I feel more free to be naked about my own health issues.

The dynamic of growing more intimate with friends after I learned of their illnesses repeated itself throughout the year. Another time, a dear friend had severe medical issues that he kept pretty close to the chest. He then had to have a series of surgeries which involved parts of his body that would normally be considered embarrassing.

My friend is an extremely handsome man who carries himself in the world with great beauty. That he allowed me to be with him in the hospital for his surgeries, seeing body parts that society deems “shameful” and “dirty” was so meaningful to me. It was an immeasurable gift that he’d let me see him in that state, and we grew closer because of it.

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Another time, a friend texted me a photo of the impact mental illness was having on his body. The photo alarmed me, but I appreciated that my friend was letting me see his vulnerability. And when we met the next day to talk about it, I learned that my friend and I loved and trusted each other in a deeper way than ever. Similarly, I felt closer to a friend who asked me to help them find their way into a drug recovery program.

It was a friend of mine who was at the end of their time here on earth to whom I was most grateful for letting me see her sick this year: the late, great gospel singing photographer Arlene Gottfried. Arlene had mostly kept to herself in the last year of living with cancer. But in her final days, she let me and our friend Belinda come visit her. We got to hug her and tell her how much she meant to us. And hours before she died, our one-time choir director Freeman and I got to pray with her and hold her, too.



I will never be able to thank her enough for the gift of her letting me be with her in her illness, despite the widespread view that we are unfit for human companionship when we are sick.

One new friend was not able to let me close when he was ill, sadly. I met the Broadway composer Michael Friedman on a panel he moderated about queer activism at the Public Theater in May, though the panel was largely about Aids. We went out for quasi-date drinks meetup shortly thereafter. I asked him about a purple spot he had on his cheek that he said was nothing, he was just a little run-down.



We talked a lot about Aids, again – about my academic research on HIV criminalization, and on Aids depiction in Angels in America and in poetry. We talked for hours into the night at my favorite bar, the Scratcher. It was one of those nights when I was getting to know someone that I thought would be in my life for some time.

We made plans to get together later in the summer or early fall after we both wrapped big projects. But in early September, I got a text from him saying, “Hey Thrasher. It’s Friedman. It’s been awhile. Long story, but I’ve been hospitalized for a month. Let’s check in, in a couple weeks? How are you?”

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I offered to visit him in the hospital, but he didn’t respond. Six days later, he died from Aids.



I’ll never know for sure if he knew about his diagnosis when we talked about Aids that night. And I have no judgment about that at all. But his death did remind me about the terrible power of stigma, and the ways stigma can separate us from ourselves, from the people we love and from wellness.

And it reminded me of how terribly grateful I am to my friends who have risked the stigma to allow me to see them, and be with their bodies, even in their toughest days.

Here’s to 2018, friends. In sickness and in health, may we allow ourselves to be seen as we really are. And let’s get through it all together.