Written by Corey Saucier


They call us “fags,” and “sexual deviants,” and “abominations,” and flamboyant fem flamers who only complain about our rights… but they forget that we also stood in packed hospitals as our lovers died terrible pale-lipped deaths.

We took our friends home to hospice because their families rejected them, and we nursed them in our guest rooms until their medications no longer worked and there was no more breath for them to breathe.

We were brave…and selfless…and beautiful…and Holy, like some blue-eyed black-winged creature screaming tears into the corner with our eyes squeezed shut so that we didn’t go mad—casting spells made of light and prayer—as savage as any monster.

We gay men were bright unflinching examples of how to love the dying.

And so many of us remain….

Walking the streets of gay ghettos in bright pink shirts with limp wrists and loud gay sayings.

Yelling, “Yaaaasss!” at cocktail parties; pretending to be vapid and silly and vain….

But really we were the winged creatures in golden halos garbed in long-suffering and grace that carried our loved ones from one world to the other like angels, or fairies, or the ferocious Valkyrie.