Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away – called New York City – there was a special place where fairies could go when they weren’t feeling well. It was known as the Gay Men’s Health Project. The friendly bears and slender youths who ran this magical dispensary helped unlucky fairies mend their wings and wee-wees so they could get back to working through their issues and flit off to the nearest after-hours disco, bath house, abandoned truck or dilapidated pier.
Then, in the year of eight tens and two, the fairies began to wither by the thousands and fall from the sky. No one knew why. So those who were still of able body came together again to build a new safe haven specifically for their sick brothers: a non-profit service organization called the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Thanks to the actions and determination of these bold heroes, GMHC succeeded in providing legal aid, counseling, and even some housing to 15,000 fellows affected by HIV and AIDS.
But the elders, led by the prophet Larry Kramer, soon became weary of doing all the work themselves. They wanted support from the royal court. So they amassed an army specifically to agitate and create awareness of the needs of their ailing brethren. They called their legion of troops ACT UP, and their motto was SILENCE = DEATH.
The warrior fairies did not trust the king and queen, who hailed from a make-believe place called Hollywood. Even though there were many fairies in Hollywood, the elders imagined that the king, whose name was marked by a malevolent ”R,” would round up their infected friends and lock them in concentration camps. The fairies only trusted royals whose names boasted a benevolent ”D.”
So fearing the worst, they paid no heed to the warnings of their own shamans. Instead, they fought to protect their underground turf from the imaginary menace of the “R” invaders by keeping their fairy-only, non-reproductive recreation centers open. Thousands more fairies fell from the sky.
Time passed. Powerful potions were eventually conjured up to keep infected fairies healthy and alive. Kings began to grant them audiences, and the peasantry as a whole became more accepting of their existence, and appreciative of their hard history. The fairies were celebrated and honored for the injustices they endured. The peasantry took extra care to be more tolerant of fairy feelings.
But the fairies couldn’t reciprocate. They didn’t know how to trust or to let down their guard. They had become addicted to attention, self-pity, and anger.
When the two mighty towers were destroyed by flying far-right religious trolls, who had a blood-soaked and homophobic history, the new king took fierce action to prevent any further attacks. But because this king also sported an “R’ after his name (and wore a cowboy hat), the fairies felt it was against their religion (D-ism) to support his efforts.Instead, they mocked him, accused him of plotting a sinister master plan, and prayed for his assassination. They stood in solidarity with anyone who railed against the “R”-lettered king. And they remained willfully ignorant of the plight of their less fortunate fellow fairies in far-away lands, who were still being brutalized by evil trolls. They were no longer capable of recognizing an enemy.
Domestic fairies enjoyed many fetishes, but none was so great as their fetish for the letter “D.” They became isolated from the rest of their countrymen within their own affluent domain, commonly referred to as “the gay ghetto.” They became obsessed with how they were portrayed in minstrel shows, and they presented golden statuettes to any princess who extolled their virtues in the Land of Make Believe. They became lazy and self-satisfied, but annoyed that some people still lived by ancient beliefs and rules that did not include them. They demanded that all beliefs and customs that did not take them into consideration be “reformed” (whether or not they really wanted anything to do with those beliefs).
Finally, in the year twenty and nine, a Savior arrived who was similar to the trolls in color and name, but who wore a holy letter “D.” He promised to be the fairies’ best friend. He promised to ban the law of the land that prevented them from joining in blessed unions like the rest of the peasantry. He also vowed to allow the fairies to serve, in all their proud flamboyance, in His armed forces.But the King’s seductive words proved meaningless. He was more concerned with soothing the savage trolls with His charm - to what end, no one was sure – while dreaming up ways to siphon the peasants’ money.
To that end, the King passed a grand law that, He declared, would improve the physical and financial health of every single person under the crown, including the fairies. But the peasant majority was suspicious of the King’s intent, and challenged Him, loudly and publicly. This made the King frown, and totally threw Him off his game.
The King wasn’t interested in what the peasants wanted. He believed He was the smartest man in the world. So He just scowled, and lectured, and got His way. His royal henchmen laughed in the faces of the good, hard-working peasants.The fairies, who were once the most boisterous rebels in all the land, didn’t rush to the peasants’ defense. They made not even a peep. Transfixed by the King’s big “D,” their fairy spirit had been paralyzed. Polarized by pride (and prejudice), they were no longer able to question authority - and certainly not the motives of their smiling Messiah.
It didn’t matter that many of the witch doctors who had long toiled to eradicate AIDS doubted that the King’s costly law would actually be beneficial to ailing fairies, leaving them instead with fewer, less potent spells.
It didn’t matter that nowhere in the final law passed by the all the King’s men were the fairies’ needs – medical or legal - even mentioned. Those crucial words had vanished, quietly replaced by a pricey call for abstinence, something the fairies had long shunned.
It didn’t matter that a provision giving the loving partners of fairies the same tax exclusion as peasant spouses on the value of employer-provided health benefits was also removed. It didn’t matter that the King’s law (which He called “my bill”) made it more advantageous for fairies to remain unmarried.
It didn’t matter that a prosperous mouthpiece for the fairies openly announced his disappointment in the decree, or that a spokesperson for the King declined to comment.
It didn’t matter that one of the King’s henchmen declared that, more important than healing fairies’ bodies, the new law would fix the “mal-distribution” of wealth among the peasantry. Nor did it matter that another apple-polisher let it slip that the underlying goal was “to control the people.”
And it didn’t matter that the UN, which was teeming with fairy-hating trolls, hailed the King’s bill as a demigodsend.
The only thing that mattered to the fairies was that their King had a “D” after his name. In their hard-won comfort, they had forgotten how to fight. They waved away any inconvenient reality that didn’t glorify the mythical icon. Their own tough, triumphant past no longer moved them. A pampered new generation of fairies mistook ”equality” for “freedom,” and had no knowledge of the fickle nature of politics or safety. They believed Lady Gaga was forever.
SILENCE now equalled COMPLICITY.
And so they marched in unison again. Only this time, it wasn’t a movement born of urgency, compassion, or even thought. It was the catatonic death march of the true believer. The fairies had turned into the fanatics they once abhorred. And that is how they gave up their magic power and lost their ability to soar.
Yes, Virginia, there is an end to this story. We just don’t know exactly what it is yet.
