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I just literally don& #39;t know who I would be as a person, a writer, or an activist without Larry Kramer.
The first time I met him, we brought him to Northwestern to speak to students. I introduced him. He insisted in taking all the queer student organizers out for ice cream after, where he grilled us about our lives and loves, our ideas, our politics, our dreams.
And then he kissed us all on the cheek and -- I assume someone walked or drove him back to his hotel but all I remember is @Lizeeek turning to me and saying with shining-eyed awe: "It& #39;s the night Larry Kramer kissed us."
We were ready to hang on his every word -- teach us oh great one how to be so pure of anger! -- and all he wanted was to know what our queer lives looked like. That too was a lesson in leadership.
I wasn& #39;t friends with Larry Kramer -- I can probably count on both hands the number of times we spent significant time in the same room -- but as a young editor at @pozmagazine we became colleagues of a sort. He would send long missives and call to scream at us if we cut a word.
We -- someone -- would usually holler through the small office, as they placed him on hold, "Bubbe Kramer& #39;s on the line!" And one of us would pick up and let him yell. He& #39;d earned it, even when he was being ridiculous. It was an honor to be lectured by him, especially for edits.
I have been thinking a lot lately about The Normal Heart (and Angels in America) and what each taught me, dramatically speaking, as a young queer, about what we owe to each other in times of great illness and fear and government abdicating its responsibility to save us.
I just don’t have the energy to go digging through my boxes of college photos and ephemera and see if I was smart enough to save the text of that first intro I gave Larry Kramer in...probably 1997. But I remember being so nervous.
I remember thanking him for teaching me *how* to be angry. How to be meaningfully, constructively, rhetorically and demonstrably angry — as if that young rage wasn’t enough, I suppose. I remember wondering how he did it, how he stayed so angry, day after day.
It seemed to me at the time, I remember, this mammoth strength, this superpower. I knew rage, and injustice, but also I was 20 and very queer and very determined to find the joy of my people. His tender curiosity about us — especially about what brought us joy — was a surprise.
I cannot now remember a day when I didn’t feel angry and heartbroken. There is certainly some joy, some brightness, and also so so so much fucking fear and tragedy and malfeasance and corruption.
Somehow I am surprised still — on a semi-regular basis — to find that I am so angry. That my heart can still be broken by selfish hateful ignorant people. I suppose that is the long game of it: the surprise. I believe we can be better together. I believe we can fight back.
Or anyway I want to believe we can fight back and it will matter. I can hear him yelling at us not to fucking give up, not to be cowards. At POZ I grew up, in a way, hearing everyone’s stories about Bubbe Kramer, arguing with him on the phone or in person or behind his back.
But he was always out there, somewhere, angry with and for all of us, the embodiment of gay tough love, the one who taught us to care if we lived or died. I have a thousand words to say about every rare time I was in a room with Larry because he was a fucking giant of a person.
We live in a time and place where every single day in big and small ways so many people are told over and over — and laws passed or blocked or selectively enforced to back it up — that their lives do not matter. That they are not worth getting angry on behalf of.
Larry Kramer taught me to insist, angrily, every day, that even if the whole world seems be saying otherwise — your life is necessary to save. Your life is important for me to stand up and scream about. Your life story is valuable and precious for us to hear. Thank you. 
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