Monday, January 29, 2001

Meeting out a punishment

The Giant Queen has just come from a meeting of a local gay political group and, even before he places his order for a "double anything", his frustration is evident. If he were a cartoon character -- and of all of my acquaintances, he is perhaps the nearest to being so -- there would be little exclamation points emanating from his skull to indicate stress.

"How did the meeting go?" I ask.

His drink is gone in two gulps and another is ordered before he turns to me. "I don't care what the fucking religious zealots say," he says. "AIDS is not a punishment from God. If God really wanted to kill gay men, he would put us all in a room with three lesbians and not permit us to leave until we reached 'consensus'".