Life Through the Lens of Gay Storytelling
The cast of It’s a Sin, available on HBO Max.
This past weekend I took the time to watch It’s a Sin, the recently-dropped-in-America HBO miniseries that tells the story of a young group of friends living at the edge of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in 1980s London.
A few of my friends (many across the pond) had raved about the show and I’ll admit, I had done some preliminary digging myself before the US release date. To be honest, anything in this genre usually piques my interest instantly, so I didn’t think twice about it.
As a young gay man, I’ve always been motivated by LGBTQ+ art. During the start of the pandemic, I really dug my heels in with the spare time and cracked open whatever I could find. I read novels, watched documentaries, and did anything I could to just expand my vocabulary on a topic that’s been there for me my entire life.
That brings me to Confession #1: I don’t know if I’ve ever truly connected with my gay self.
Watching It’s a Sin, I had a thought that I’ve always had when learning about the AIDS crisis - I can’t truly comprehend how privileged I am. I’m living in a world that accepts queer culture FAR MORE than it did in the twentieth century. Nothing is perfect and we undoubtedly still have our struggles for equality, but the idea of living in the dark or hiding yourself or your partner from the world entirely isn’t the standard protocol anymore.
In the show, the group of gay men all come from different backgrounds with their own struggles. They meet in London, the big city, where they discover themselves and find comfort and home in an eclectic commune.
Right away, I felt the privilege sink in. I never had to leave home or venture to a faraway land to feel right in my own skin. My “coming out” story wasn’t so much of an announcement as it was an affirmation supported by my family and friends. Of course I handled the standard name calling, taunts, and singling out that comes with K-12 public school, but for the most part, I never felt out of place. So this leads me to wonder: have I earned the right to connect with my identity when so many others had to go through hell for it?
The characters that do come out in the series go about it in heartbreaking, template-free ways that all end up in tragedy. Even today, I know this happens even though you’d think our society would have evolved past the need to come out.
Shout out to “Love, Simon” for that one, but there is something to be said about all kids being straight until proven queer.
Over the course of the show, we’re introduced to many of the staples of gay culture: genderfluid jargon, chosen families, shade, sexual liberation, and of course, the club scene. Techno music and bright, fluorescent lights paired with alcohol, drugs, and beautiful boys throwing themselves at each other - all of it being an honest, accurate depiction of a part of our world.
It was so relatable so naturally, the guilt came.
I go to the clubs. I’ve been to the clubs. If there wasn’t a global pandemic right now, I would be planning my weekends based around the clubs. I could place myself in that exact club in London with all of those boys, laughing and living in the moment.
Had I lived during that time, I know I would’ve been there - while the extent of what I would’ve done is unclear, I know that I would’ve thrown myself into that crowd and that safety net.
For us, the clubs are more than just a place to dance and drink and hook up. They’re temples of safety for thousands of gay boys who have to put up a front for 90% of their days. Where we’d otherwise feel the need to “butch it up” or “tone it down” in public, the clubs are one of the only places that we can walk into and know the guards are down, and we’re free to be as ridiculous, or sexual, or spontaneous as we want to be.
And as you’ll see in the series, that’s exactly what happened.
Learning about the AIDS epidemic is really hard for me. It always has been. It’s something that I can’t ever fully understand or relate to because I wasn’t alive at the time to see the horrors that were unfolding. My own mother, a nurse in NY at the time, shared stories of watching young men come into the hospitals every day and leave in body bags. It’s something that feels so long ago, so unimaginable, and yet it really wasn’t.
It always felt so unfair to me. You have thousands of young people who lived their lives in oppression and secrecy, and the moment they get to let loose - the moment they get the opportunity to discover themselves - a vicious, unforgiving and inexplainable disease attacks them and kills them off like termites.
It’s something I can’t comprehend, but on the same note, it’s my peoples’ history and entirely tetherable. I could see myself there, in that time, feeling the same things that they were feeling. And though I’ll never know the pain and suffering they truly felt, I can’t help but break down imagining what that would’ve done to me or my loved ones.
Everything they felt in the show was valid, from hysteria, to grief, to absolution of sin. We all would have felt the same ways watching our loved ones deteriorate with no guiding light ahead.
And this leads me to Confession #2: I worry sometimes that the gay community has lost it’s empathy.
Shortly after the Pulse Nightclub Shooting, we saw an influx of support and love being shared throughout our community. It was a time of mourning, confusion, and anger comparable to that of the 80s and 90s. We came together to show strength and unfaltering bravery. We told the world once again that we were here, we were queer, and we weren’t going anywhere.
But had Pulse not happened - and believe me, I wish that it didn’t every single day - would we have had that moment of unity? Are we, as a community, only capable of compassion and support during times of suffering? Is this a question for humanity as a whole?
In It’s a Sin, the group of friends are there for each other in every moment, supporting each other, affectionately embracing one another, and being there when the darkest moments come. It was the sense of comfort they needed to get by that made me yearn for a similar community.
They say that times of struggle bring us closer, and we’ve seen plenty of examples this past year. But I hope and pray that our community doesn’t require those moments to shelter empathy.
Truthfully, this post has more to do with gay storytelling in general than it does with It’s a Sin. But the lesson I’ve learned by watching this show is an important and interesting one. And that is that we don’t have to be witnesses to our history to feel the impact in our lives today.
The great thing about these types of shows, movies, and books, is that they transport us to a time or a world that we don’t or couldn’t possibly understand. They place us in the scene and force us to imagine ourselves there.
What would I have done? How would I have reacted? Would I be here today?
Now it’s also worth mentioning that we don’t just connect with the grief. André Aciman taught me about a first love that was so real, it transcended time and distance. Love, Simon gave us a firsthand look at what coming to terms with your sexuality could be for the next generation. For all of these stories, we gained another perspective.
And while I can never truly understand the suffering that came before me, I’m thankful for the storytellers who’ve lived to share their pain with those like me who feel the debt in their bones.
I’m thankful for those that fought for the right to love, the most sacred of human feelings, and gave me the opportunity to be who I am today without even knowing the impact they’d leave on future generations.
It’s hard to think about how many legends we never had the chance of meeting.
But for those we have learned about and those who are still around today to share their stories… well, we have an obligation to honor them in any way we can.
So I’m thankful to works like Giovanni’s Room, and Call Me By Your Name, and The Normal Heart, and RuPaul’s Drag Race, and Queer as Folk, and Maurice, and RENT, and Vito, and Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, and Milk, and It’s a Sin. Because of them, I got a fast-track pass into who I am today, and who I’m still becoming.
Because of them, the road was easier.
LGBT activist and my hero, Marsha P. Johnson.
