WORK, WORK, WORK

was a beautiful, and around the world as people sunny spring worried about his disappearance. morning in 2019. I Richard and I had discussed the awoke to a message issue of suicide because a year earlier from my friend a close friend of his, a popular artist Richard Vaughan, who was in who ran a Toronto gallery for a time, Toronto and had caught the opening had taken her own life, and he was of a new film at the Hot Docs Film gutted by it. I spent half a day with Festival the previous night. him in Montreal after he got the news,

“Hey, did you hear?” he wrote. “We and we wandered through the city, just won the queer lottery: You and talking about his friend and the hole I are in a documentary with Fran her absence left. He knew how cruel Lebowitz!” ABOVE Richard Vaughan, left, with the author. suicide is for those left behind. Why

It was a typical jovial message from OPPOSITE Gaten Dugas was slut-shamed and unfairly blamed for the early AIDS epidemic would he do this? Richard, my friend who maintained a Within days, his body was found by prolific output, writing novels, nonfiction books, reviews, police, and I would learn that he had in fact left a note, poetry, and plays. The film he was messaging about one made up of a mere four words: “Suicide notes are was Killing Patient Zero, and being involved was indeed a tacky.” It was pure Richard: funny, absurd, biting. It left reason for pride. Directed by Laurie Lynd, the documentary me in one of those surreal collisions of emotion: As I read tells the story of French-Canadian flight attendant Gaetan it and reread it, I laughed and wept simultaneously. Dugas, who died of complications from AIDS early in the Suicide, of course, leaves behind it a litany of epidemic, only to later be branded as “Patient Zero.” The agonizing questions. Richard’s was no exception. I had name led to a bizarre theory that attempted to explain how just exchanged messages with him hours before he was HIV came to North America by blaming one promiscuous reported missing. While his next steps weren’t entirely gay man. Lynd meticulously traces the life of Dugas, while clear, he did have new projects on the go. I knew that as a making his story about the larger cultural history of HIV writer and curator Richard lived on very little money, but and AIDS and how the pandemic was interpreted by the he always managed to get by. media at the time (spoiler alert: They got much of it wrong). The jarring irony of our appearance in Killing Patient

Besides Lebowitz, Vaughan, and myself, Killing Zero was not lost on me. Richard and I had many Patient Zero’s talking heads include filmmaker John conversations about HIV and the impact it had on our Greyson and critic and author B. Ruby Rich, and it communities and our lives. Both in our 50s, we had also features never-before-seen archival footage of managed to do what AIDS activists and educators were Dugas himself. The film rightly earned critical raves. It urging us to do in the darkest days of the AIDS crisis: We managed to correct the distorted record of Dugas (no, he remained sexually active but practiced safer sex and thus was not the reason HIV came to North America) while didn’t seroconvert. We both had survivor’s guilt and had pointing to the cruelty and vicious homophobia that was discussed that at length too. inherent in the Patient Zero mythology. So Richard had survived, but not really. For many

Little over a year later, I exchanged a few messages with years, HIV was on our minds pretty much constantly. Richard. They were the usual: We were busy complaining We were always hearing about friends who were ill or about how rough the freelance writing business had dying. We wrote about the crisis and got involved with become. Richard was on the East Coast, where he was activist organizations. The AIDS crisis never really ended, finishing up his time being a writer in residence at a of course — it just evolved. But that Richard would have university. He said something bitchy, then something come through all of this loss and sadness and still choose absurd. It made me laugh out loud. to end his life added to my despair about losing him.

The next day, I got a frantic message from a mutual If Richard Vaughan’s life is to mean anything, I hope the friend: Richard had gone missing. No one knew where he queer community will take more time to ponder the various was, and the police were searching for him. Though he ways homophobia manifests itself in our daily lives. HIV had been living in a good place (a friend’s basement), his remains an ongoing health issue, as does substance abuse university gig would soon be over, and Richard had given and addiction, and depression, anxiety, and suicide (all of up his apartment in Montreal and was uncertain of what the above are things we experience at higher rates than the was next. The pandemic wasn’t helping matters. general population). It’s obvious Richard was suffering. My

My worst suspicions immediately sprung to mind. only wish is that I could go back and convince him his life Richard and I had discussed battling depression, and I was worth living. One of his most beautiful qualities was knew his dark side well. We had many conversations about how gentle he was with others. It was something that didn’t despair and loneliness as well as the uphill battle of being always extend to his feelings a creative type. He was public about his demons, having written an entire book about his chronic insomnia. As a about himself. Internalized homophobia is one of the most MATTHEW HAYS has contributed to The Advocate, The Guardian, Vice, Cineaste, suicide risk, he was a double whammy: queer and a writer. But another inner voice pushed back, wondering how daunting challenges we face. Please watch Killing Patient the Toronto Star, and The New York Times. He is a Lambda Award-winning author and Richard could possibly take his own life. In addition to being an accomplished author and journalist, he had many Zero and take in some of the wisdom of my late friend teaches courses in media studies at Marianopolis College and Concordia University in friends and knew he was dearly loved. This was reflected in the huge outpouring of concern from people across Canada Richard. There will never be another person quite like him. Montreal. He is the coeditor (with Tom Waugh) of the Queer Film Classics book series.

STUPID SEX, SMART ART

PRINCE JOHNNY’S THOUGHT-PROVOKING NEW ALBUM, STUPID SEX, REVISITS THE JOYS AND SORROWS OF QUEER HISTORY THROUGH AN INTROSPECTIVE, MILLENNIAL LENS.

IN A HYPNOTIC mix of indie rock, cabaret, electro-pop, and piano ballads, Prince Johnny’s new album, Stupid Sex, is a poetic ode to the trauma — and untethered joy — of moving through this world as a queer person. Though the genredefying, Brooklyn-based musician didn’t live through things like the Stonewall Riots or the start of the AIDS epidemic, the 27-year-old is deeply connected to their queer history and the impact it continues to have on younger generations.

“I believe the trauma the queer community experienced in the AIDS epidemic has impacted each generation since in a profound and pervasive way,” says Prince Johnny, who uses they/them pronouns. “I explore queer intergenerational trauma in my writing. The concept that trauma can be passed down from generation to generation is a relatively new field of study, starting in the mid-’60s as psychologists began to study the lineage of people who had survived the Holocaust. There’s a 1988 study that found grandchildren of Holocaust survivors were overrepresented by about 300 percent in psychiatric referrals.”

The singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist was born Viktor Vladimirovich to Jewish refugee parents who had fled a then-crumbling Soviet Union in the mid’90s. After a childhood spent listening to their father’s bootleg MP3s (which included Russian alt-rock acts like Zemfira and t.A.T.u.), Prince Johnny began teaching themselves piano at age 13, via Regina Spektor YouTube tutorials. Now, in Stupid Sex, they’re using their art to communicate ideas about how LGBTQ+ people are inextricably linked to generations past.

“I imagine children [in the ’80s and ’90s] learning about queer people from caregivers whose voices are heavy with stigma and fear,” they say. “I think of blood banks nosily inquiring about sexual partners and turning donors away. I remember my own mother telling me, ‘Eighty-five percent of gay men have HIV,’ years before I even came out. The way I approached my sexuality was insidiously informed by the thousands of shameful and fearful messages I internalized growing up.”

Prince Johnny, who, in a nutshell, describes their musical style as “St. Vincent hitting on Regina Spektor at Leonard Cohen’s funeral,” was recently inspired to create the Troubadour Lounge, a monthly queer singersongwriter charity showcase, “like Sofar Sounds mixed with Tiny Desk, but queer.” Pre-pandemic, Prince Johnny and their team raised over $1,000 for the Ally Coalition, and they’ll resume the shows as soon as safely possible. Other performers who’ve influenced the artist include Amanda Palmer, Nina Simone, Perfume Genius, Sade, Mitski, Frank Ocean, and Fiona Apple.

In addition to some of the deeper messaging, Stupid Sex includes lots of fun musical surprises — such as a sample of drag artist Alyssa Edwards’s famous tonguepop sound, a drumbeat borrowed from Chicago’s “When You’re Good to Mama,” and a queer boy reimagining of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” The artist explains why they wanted to touch on the era of queer history just before the AIDS epidemic struck, like they did in “Sex Party,” which samples actual interview sound bites from the documentary Gay Sex in the 70s.

“The ’70s are such a fascinating time to me because it seems to me like it was the closest we got to widespread sexual freedom,” Prince Johnny explains. “I see it as this shining and joyful apex right before the hammer of the AIDS crisis slammed down and reversed so many advancements. I wanted to contrast the freedom of the ’70s to the restriction of the ’80s and imagine where we’ll go from there.”

“I see a link between the current-day fixation on body image and the desire of AIDS victims [in the ’80s and ’90s] to not let their bodies show signs of the virus,” they add. “I see current-day hypersexualization as an exaggerated way to reclaim sexuality that was steeped in shame and exiled away. All of these attitudes and behaviors are ricocheting off us and into the media we consume and back to us.”