Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen
Hair coloring becomes an issue of quite some significance to the chorus of those claimed by AIDS. The prevalence of every shade of color known to Sherwin Williams and the fact that dying one’s hair the most extreme shades has gone mainstream would likely be a welcome shock to that lost generation:
"... in high school, hair existed on the bland spectrum of black/brown/orange/blond/gray/white. But tonight in Kindling we have Ryan walking into the community center with his hair dyed a robin’s-egg blue. Ten minutes later, Avery walks in with his hair the color of a Mary Kay Cadillac. Ryan’s hair is spiked like the surface of a rocky ocean, while Avery’s swoops gently over his eyes. Ryan is from Kindling and Avery is from Marigold, a town forty miles away. We can tell immediately that they’ve never met, and that they are going to.”
The Colorization of Gender
The whole hair thing briefly becomes an intense focus as a symbol of the divide between gay lifestyle in the age of Aids and gay lifestyle in the 21st century. Eventually, the focus is bound to bleed into the transgender issue which was all but underground and hidden in the 80’s, but is proudly out and about now;
“But think about it—it just shows how arbitrary gender is. Pink is female—but why? Are girls any more pink than boys? Are boys any more blue than girls? It’s something that has been sold to us, mostly so other things can be sold to us. My hair can be pink because I’m a boy. Yours can be blue because you’re a girl. If you free yourself from all…that society controls us with, you feel more free, and if you feel more free, you can be happier.”
The Angry Chorus
The chorus can get angry as well as philosophical and excited about cosmetic alterations in the fabric of mainstream American life. And, indeed, anger is the driving emotion when it comes to recollecting the axis at which politics, Christian morality, and equitable health care meet and spin like a top out of control:
“…it will take a movie star to die and a hemophiliac teenager to die before ordinary people start to mobilize, start to feel that the disease needs to be stopped. Tens of thousands of people will die before drugs are made and drugs are approved. What a horrible feeling that is, to know that if the disease had primarily affected PTA presidents, or priests, or white teenage girls, the epidemic would have been ended years earlier, and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of lives would have been saved.”
How to Marathon Kiss
The premise of the story is constructed upon the foundation of a same-sex couple trying to break the Guinness world record for marathon kissing. Regardless of gender, however, the mechanics of the attempt remain pretty much the same. Although, the last part of the imagery definitely tends to give an edge to any all-male team.
“It’s a tricky operation—kissing Craig and sipping from a straw at the same time. But Craig makes sure Harry’s covered, and gets more than a few drops of energy drink in his own mouth as a result. Almost immediately, Harry can feel his heart race as the drink goes through his system. He’ll be good for a few hours, and then might need another boost. Luckily, his bladder is behaving.”
