Darling Nicky

Jim Jones and Maria Davis

On Saturday, the neighborhood bakery Make My Cake held a “Client Appreciation Day” fair right outside its doors to honor it patrons for the great business they’ve been getting. There was cupcakes, hamburgers, hot dogs, voter registration, community groups, and music. I talk at length to a few people, not including neighbors, and the one person that really impressed me was a woman who told me she is an HIV survivor just past me asking what she had set up a table for and then asked me. Her name is Maria Davis and she was advocating safe sex for LIFEbeat. She was a music promoter in the ’90s when she contracted the virus from her ex-boyfriend who kept his status hidden from her and even his family. She is very serious about speaking up on people knowing about protecting themselves and knowing about AIDS. She even grilled me on my status, what HIV meant, what AIDS meant, and how would I know if I had AIDS? I aced the pop quiz, by the way!

After finishing up at Make My Cake’s street fair, she was setting up to drive out to Long Island to promote condom use, getting tested, and knowing your status at a Latin music concert. She was very well prepared with condoms and sex education literature in Spanish and she met a woman who works at a voters registration office in Harlem that has Spanish language voter registration forms she could pass out. I expressed to Ms. Davis that I am interested in interviewing her and she gave her card. I am very excited to talk to her, especially since the HIV/AIDS rate among African-American women is is higest due to unprotected sex and many still believing that HIV/AIDS is a homosexual disease. I can’t wait to interview her, although I don’t know where I’ll send the article to. It’s still a very important issue that needs to be stressed – that HIV/AIDS and other UTIs do not discriminate, anyone can get sick and that if you are sick you need to get help and treat your illness and not get bitter and angry.

Okay, I know you think I’m wrong for this but I just do. My grandmother hasn’t had a boyfriend since she dated this man who died from cancer way back when my mother was a teenager, and one day my grandma and I were sitting in the living room watching a movie about romance (I forget which one it was, but I’ll bet it was starring Sandra Bullock) when she says to me, “Nevermind this love stuff. It ain’t never worked out for me. They always leave you.” I never said anything to her or to anybody about it, but I felt really sad that my grandmother felt that way, and just thought that through all that she’s been through in her about 80 years of living my grandma has a broken heart and bitter outlook on love.

Then came the revelation that my grandma sure does spend a lot of times at her friend Charlotte’s house. I’ve never met this elusive Charlotte, but I’ve always heard of my mom or aunts not being able to get in touch with grandma at her house or she was supposed to meet somebody but forgot and was up at Charlotte’s house. I have no idea what Charlotte looks like, what she about, or even where the woman lives, but I think that Charlotte is my grandmother’s lover. I don’t doubt that I’m the only person in my family to think this, and I have never mentioned this to anyone, so I don’t know anyone else’s take on this.

I don’t mind if my grandma is a lesbian. It doesn’t change my love for her, but I would like to know that my grandma has found a life partner to be happy with. And while I do acknowledge that Charlotte might just be a friend, I can’t help think of why two people would possibly want to spend that much damn time together and not be a romantic couple. Grandma is always at Charlotte’s!