All the Pretty Queens

This memoir piece is difficult.  I am trying to connect memories to stories to experience by juxtapositioning it with me at 23, out of my mind, a young straight woman in gay bars seeking to find anyone who knew my brother.  I am creating scenes to develop the story, but since it is "Non Fiction", I have to be honest.  I cannot dip into my imagination and basically make shit up.  I am having to rely on language, scenes, characters(real life people), and images to bring emotional intensity.  Yes, this is what one has to do for any writing, but in fiction I can make up all these things. This is a challenge.  Of course, it is interesting to me because I lived it, I felt it.  I have to make it come alive to others, make them live it, feel it. 

Then there is the real issue.  Vulnerability.  I am putting me onto the page.  I am putting my brother, Bob, and other real people on to the page.  I want to make them beautiful.  I want readers to fall in love with all the gay young men who died far too soon.  They were the beginning, they were infected before there was even a name for it.  They didn't know it was out there.  They were just being young and wild back when it wasn't so dangerous to be young and wild.  And it got them.  And of course, it is about me and my love for my brother and my later disenfranchisement from my family and the belief that burned in me that my brother would make everything ok, make me sweet again, innocent again, beautiful again, and loved again...if only he were still there. Vulnerability- here I am naked.  Please read.  Here are my family secrets- Please Read.  What will my family think of this?  Or my brother's friends,  I want to do this right for them, they loved these people, too, and knew them better-including Bob- than I did.

The other issue is....me.  It is hard to write this.  I relive it.  I believe I am strong enough now to delve into my childhood and re-examine my twenties, and to look at the loss again.  I have to go slow so it doesn't cut me.  I have to go slow so I can savor the memories of my big brother. 

Ok...Time to go back to it.  Time to write.  Deep Breath.