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In 2019, at age 38, I started taking Truvada.
ButIt Came From the Closetforgoes simple conclusions in favor of much thornier, more difficult conversations with readers.
Terrified, I sprinted back toward the house.
He looked just like Mark, the counselor fromFriday the 13th Part 2.
In one decisive motion, like Zeus hurling a thunderbolt, my hero severed the snake in two.
I wanted to thank him, to give him a kiss for his gallantry, but I resisted.
There were more snakes, no father, and no Mark to save us.
I denied it, pretending I didnt know what she meant.
I planned to hang myself from the banister with my white karate belt.
Whatever happened next is chained to the bottom of my memory, struggling to breathe, waiting to resurface.
Everything fades to black.
CAMP CRYSTAL LAKE EVENING
The screen door slams shut just as the rain begins to pummel the camp.
The screen freezes on the back of his head with the machete lodged in the front.
Smash cut to the next teen sacrifice.
My mother wanted each of us to read it so we could talk about it as a family.
This was never proven.
President Reagan didnt even acknowledge HIV/AIDS for six years, and only because Elizabeth Taylor manipulated him into it.
Nancy Reagan stood by in her bloodred dresses, red as an AIDS ribbon, red as gore.
Gay blood must be toxic, and I visualized it clogging my veins like black Jell-O.
At bedtime, every night, I petitioned Jesus not to let me die of AIDS.
Sleep felt like a trapdoor for death, a time for all of my worst fears to creep in.
Sometimes, in the darkness, I counted my heartbeats and wondered how many I had left.
I lay awake thinking about my abdominal cavity, a butcher-shop case of throbbing organs writhing together.
I categorized each spasm, waiting for my insides to turn on one another and then on me.
I would brainstorm escape plans to New York, tracing the route Id walk in an imaginary atlas.
And when I was older, I watched horror movies.
I started withNightmare on Elm Street,Halloween,Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Id convince my mom or dad to let me rent whatever I wanted.
They were too guilty or too tired to object to my selections.
Next came looking at the scary art on the box covers, then reading the descriptions.
Each villain was deformed, disfigured by scars, and masked.
Often these figures were the objects of early shame for some disability outside their control.
Pushed to the fringes, they became experts in the behavior of their victims.
There was something about the simplicity ofFriday the 13ththat especially appealed to me.
In the original film, Jasons mother is the killer.
In her mind, all of the teens deserve their grisly fate they should know better.
As I got braver, I watched all of theFriday the 13thfilms.
Rather, I studied them.
Slasher films gave me a way to order the violence and death that occupied most of my attention.
No one is ever really harmed.
Anxiety is temporarily relieved as the credits roll, a vulgar catharsis.
When real fear creeps back in, just rewind the film and start again.
Go to Crystal Lake in your mind.
You might think that once youve seen oneFriday the 13th, youve seen them all.
But you would be incorrect.
The finer points distinguishing each film may seem negligible to a layperson.
The story is told repeatedly, repetitively, almost obsessively, every time.
The endlessly refreshed archetypes are all guilty of something outside of their control.
Except for the final girl.
Everyone recognizes the final girl.
The final girl is beautiful not too beautiful smart, funny, charming, wholesome.
Something she may or may not value about herself.
She is the ideal victim.
Does anyone want to be the final girl more than the young closeted queer?
Brimming with unseen inner power, waiting to demonstrate her strength.
Each makes their move, struggling for primacy.
Each fulfills their function.
The coda is almost always his unmasking, revealing the true, repulsive, unlovable face beneath the mask.
But by enduring this horrific spectacle, her previous sense of safety is permanently annihilated.
HIV and AIDS permanently shaped me.
Now, HIV and AIDS are manageable conditions for those with access to care.
Here in the Gulf, seroconversion rates are still alarmingly high; seeking care is still stigmatized.
I struggle to locate and connect with the few elders from the generation most decimated.
How can the younger queers I love understand what it was like?
Is it better that they do not?
I am grateful they are spared the horror.
Nobody wants to be the poor, disfigured boy who grows up to be a serial killer.
Even though I want to be a final girl, Im more of a Jason Voorhees.
My tongue is my machete.
I built a persona out of pain.
But the world has changed.
Does Jason retire when he gets sick of the murder business?
Does he just want privacy at Crystal Lake?
FromIt Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror,edited by Joe Vallese.
Excerpted with permission of the Feminist Press.
