July 15, 2025 • 51 mins
The AIDS crisis devastated our community in the 1980s. It’s an era defined by loss. But those feelings of helplessness gave rise to unprecedented love in the form of caretaking and bold activism. For Marsha, the 80s were all of these things. The era was also marked by a new home and a chosen family in Hoboken, New Jersey. Hear how Marsha found stability, took care of herself, and provided softness and love during one of the darkest moments in our history.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Afterlives is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Outspoken
podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans. Just a
heads Up. The following episode mentions homophobic language and discusses racism, misogyny, transphobia,
and mental health. Take care while listening.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
We need the paper towels for the house. We need
two paper towels. Do we need toilet paper? Now?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
This is from a home video taken in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Marsha moved there with Randy Wicker in nineteen eighty two.
They're talking through their grocery list. Marsha leans against the
coffee table, jotting down what they need.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
God it's chase, okay now, y'all yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Or you're just playing at the don.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I know this is nothing special. We've all made grocery lists,
but this is Marsha P. Johnson talking about cottage cheese.
She's not organizing a protest or preparing for a show.
She just needs to get her computer, which is what
she calls her brain to juggle a bunch of errands
(01:19):
and check out the price.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Waitmen, wait man, my computer.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Any It's a pretty mundane video that captures a shift
in Marsha's life stability, consistency, a solid home base, the
ability to go to the grocery store and pay for
what she needs. This would be her home for the
final decade of her life. But it was still the eighties,
(01:49):
and when we hear about this era in Queer history,
we know it's not good news. The AIDS crisis devastated
our community. Marsha felt that acutely. Of course, it's a
period defined by loss, but those feelings of helplessness gave
rise to unprecedented love in the form of caretaking and
(02:14):
bold activism. We'll get to all of these things, the
heartbreak and the compassion, the despair and the defiance. We'll
start our story early in the decade, a time when
Marcia was sleeping on the street and in bath houses,
until one night she was invited inside and discovered a
(02:37):
new chosen family.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
They called me a ntge because there's how many quaints
God that I'm one of the few quaints still.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
That few quaints, still, that few points I didn't make
expensive every day an.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
I'm Rachael Willis and this is Afterlives, Episode six, Profound
Acts of Care.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
You know it's Tendy Ree's out, and Marcia doesn't have
anywhere to stay.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
This is Randy Wicker again talking about a freezing night
in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
Can Marcia stay here's tonight?
Speaker 1 (03:24):
The question came from Randy's roommate Willie, a white, blonde
nineteen year old from Baltimore. Randy saw him performing at
a Burless's show in Times Square and hoped they'd hit
it off, but instead of finding romance, Willie moved in
and became more like a son. He hadn't been at
Randy's very long before, asking if his friend Marcia could
(03:46):
come over to.
Speaker 5 (03:48):
And I said, would she steal? And he said no,
Marcia would never steal. And he said, and Marshall likes
to sleep on hard floors. Sot, Willie, you don't lie.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
How your telling me is still skeptical. Randy agreed to
let Marcia stay the night, but.
Speaker 6 (04:06):
It came in and she did sleep on the floor.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
And I found out because she had a bullet dodge
near her spine sleeping on the hard floor.
Speaker 6 (04:14):
She is more comfortable there.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Marcia was not the kind of person Randy was used
to being around. For a long time. He was mister
Madachine Society all about respectability and steering away from anything
or anyone that represented gender nonconformity. But Marcia's charm wore
him down. She stayed another night, then another, and another.
(04:40):
Randy's friends literally laughed in disbelief when he told them
he'd taken her in. By then, Randy no longer found
the situation so crazy.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
Marcia was the greatest accent in my life.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
If you didn't catch that. Randy called Marcia the greatest
asset of his life. And it's easy to figure out why.
Marcia brought a levity to the home, almost a goofiness.
Randy recalls random moments when she somehow made him burst
into laughter.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
I'm sitting here, I'm really getting very kind of depressed.
Selling Marcia's up. Jesus loves me.
Speaker 6 (05:24):
How do I know? Because the Bible tells me so.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
And I went from being in the pit of despair,
I mean, I was are Where did you learn that?
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Randy says, comedians can make you laugh, but with Marcia,
it was more than just being funny.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
There's something deeper about Marcia. It was making you feel good.
She had a warmth.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
He reveled in the things Marcia brought into their lives.
This surprises that up ended his everyday life. The parade
of attractive and interesting people, the hot gossip from nights
spent out on the town. They settled into their own routines.
Willie cooked, Marsha did the laundry. She was always putting
together new outfits, frequently sourced from a local thrift store
(06:18):
run by nuns. I like to be a fly on
that wall.
Speaker 6 (06:22):
The sisters over there loveder.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Marcia started off sleeping on the living room floor, but
arrangements shifted over time. Friends and lovers moved in and out.
There were periods where marsh and Willie shared a bedroom.
At points when it was really a full house, marsh
and Randy took turns using his bed.
Speaker 6 (06:42):
Marsha had come home like four or five in the morning, about.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
The time I was getting out and getting dressed and
goeting to work, and she and the dog would sleep
the under the bed all day.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
That dog they had, once upon a time, was a
tiny thing, brown and black, part beagle, part Terry, all mutt.
Speaker 6 (07:01):
The best one I ever had. Her name was Cooley knew.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Randy has no regrets, but he has one caution for
people who might find themselves in a situation like.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
This, Darling, don't hang around with these clitter queens because
you're trying to hang your head on a pillar. You're
gonna get each little cutch. It's amazing. I could never
get rid of the glitter from Marcia.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Rent and groceries were fifty bucks a week. They had
to keep the arrangement on the DL though, so Marsha
would get her full Social Security checks. She still ended
up in jail now and then, but Randy helped her
manage her money and she didn't have to hustle on
the streets so much anymore.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
I haven't been having that many grip, yeah, because I'm
not on the distress of New York City anymore.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
At its best, it was a familial and mutually beneficial relationship.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
I don't know how I haven't made it in New
York without Randy Wicker.
Speaker 6 (08:02):
I mean, Randy's help for.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
Me for so many years in New York has been
helping me pudget money here and everything. Otherwise I wouldn't
even survive.
Speaker 5 (08:13):
Marsha was really a mother. I called her the house
to mother and my extender gay family.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
They would all celebrate holidays together, but it didn't always
look traditional like this one Thanksgiving when they went into
the city.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
I had to speak turkey and well he said, oh,
we don't want to sit here and have a Thanksgiving dinner.
He said, Let's pack this turkey up and take it
up to the gayety theater and we'll give it out
to these four people that have nothing better doing Thanksgiving
to be sitting in a corner of the theater up
in Times Square.
Speaker 6 (08:45):
So we patched up the stuff we went up there.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
Of course, we were first in line, so we had
all the church we wanted.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Things weren't so simple, though. Dynamics in the house could
get challenging.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I can't written much back from this jar brand Ida.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Well per You know, listening back to that home video
with the grocery list, you might pick up on some
of the tensions that ran through the apartment. There's typical
roommate bickering, along with comments that feel a little edgier,
a little meaner.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Got it?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Whatever you see?
Speaker 7 (09:24):
No makeup, no fancy, no maling, no maybeling, no hair straighten.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Why God, nothing is your hopeless case.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
We can't make use glamorous no matter how much we
spend on you.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
I really so, why should I spend my good herder
money because you want to be glamorous. Anything you say,
Marcia's voice goes flat. She sounds totally checked out. Comments
like this about her looks, how she made her money,
even her race were also a part of life and Hoboken.
(09:58):
Randy wrote Christmas utters every winter, kind of like a
recap of the year gone by. Some are fifteen pages
long and provide an incredible window into their life. They
share memories of the good times, but they're also honest.
You can read the retelling of a heated argument, like
once when Randy was so mad he threw eggs at
(10:20):
Willie's bedroom wall. There were racist jokes and surs made
in their home too. Their roommate arrangement was also informal,
so things could get confusing. Marcia did the laundry to
help out. She wasn't really a maid, but sometimes Randy
called her that. Occasionally he'd tip her over time, Marcia
(10:42):
felt ready for something new.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
I don't like Hoboken, honey, I don't like no party jersey.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
I wish I was sitting back in the city.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Marcia had things she could rely on in Hoboken, the
good and the bad. But when she got a call
from her friend Jane in La Marcia felt opportunity knocking,
a chance to get away for a while. Jamie was
an old friend Marsiha met on the streets.
Speaker 7 (11:10):
Marcia was a mother to a lot of young queer,
transgender nonconforming kids. She also befriended Jamie, so Marcia and
Jamie they had a sense of ease with each other
because of the longevity of their friendship.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
That's Tourmaline, Marcia's biographer. She says Jamie really wanted to
repay Marcia for all she had done for him back
when he was a teenager, so he called her from
California in nineteen eighty three, inviting her to make her
way west.
Speaker 7 (11:45):
Jamie was a sugar baby in Calabassis, which a lot
of us know from.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Like the Kardashians, Marcia among California's rich and famous. She
stayed there for a few months, first in eighty three,
and return there in eighty four and again in eighty five.
She and Jamie went to rock concerts, discos and shopped
till they dropped.
Speaker 7 (12:10):
And there's these really beautiful photos of her by the pool,
and there's this giant olive tree in front of it,
just like luxuriating and just resting by the pool.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
It feels good to know that Marcia had this time
to delve into rest and pleasure. I wish more of
her life had been so simple. I wish it could
have lasted longer. In August of eighty five, Marcia and
Jamie set off on a cruise. There's a picture of
Marsha framed by balloons, smiling wide as she boards the ship.
Speaker 7 (12:45):
Jamie and Marcia went on a cruise that left from Miami,
a carnival cruise on the ship called the Holiday.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
But this trip didn't turn out to be all fun
in the sun.
Speaker 7 (12:57):
It was in that moment that Jamie started to get
even sticker.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Jamie had aids. At this point, the virus had been
spreading across the world for years. The crisis was already severe,
and this is a moment when it all became deeply
personal for Marsha. That's coming after the break.
Speaker 8 (13:29):
Scientists at the National Centers for Disease Control and Atlanta
today released the results of a study which shows that
the lifestyle of some male homosexuals has triggered an epidemic
of a rare form of.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Cancer that's news anchor Tom Brokaw introducing NBC's first report
on what came to be known as Acquired immuno deficiency syndrome,
or AIDS. The clip is from nineteen eighty two. Other
outlets started reporting on the epidemic a year before. A
few months after the NBC report, President Reagan was still
(14:04):
ignoring all of the death and fear. Here's a clip
from a White House press conference in October nineteen eighty two.
You can hear members of the press corps laughing it
off when journalists and Reverend Lester Kinsolving raises the issue.
Speaker 8 (14:19):
Gets done as gay play.
Speaker 7 (14:23):
Oh it is.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
I mean, it's a pretty serious.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Reagan's Press secretary, Larry Speaks treats it like a joke too.
Speaker 5 (14:31):
One and every three people that get Misha died, And
I wonder if the President would were.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
You, I don't have it or you do you?
Speaker 1 (14:40):
This dismissal and neglect of the community continued. Six whole
years passed between the first news reports of AIDS before
President Reagan made a single speech about the issue. Six
horrifying years with virtually no attention paid at the policy level.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
I've seen this as a war on black people, a
war on queer people and a war on marginalized communities,
and all my friends were dying rapidly around me.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
This is Kayenne Doorshow. She's an elder and the founder
of Glitz, which stands for Gays and Lesbians living in
a Transgender Society. This is an organization providing direct services
to the trans community. Today.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
I am the executive direct then founder and a mother
to a lot of people. GQ magazine calls me the
godmother of the Black Trains Life movement. I'm just an
ordinary person actually just fighting for our lives.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
I can co sign Cayenne's tremendous presence in our community.
She's like an auntie to me. And little did I
know Kyenne is also a part of Marsha's lineage.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
I worked in New Jersey and right acrosch from my
job was this young woman named Coco, and Coco just
hounded me and she says, you're going to be my daughter.
When I said, oh, nice, and she says, my mom
is Marsha P. Johnson, And I said, oh. A lot
(16:30):
of people say that. What I didn't know was she
was actually Marsha P. Johnson's daughter.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And so if Coco is a mother to you. Do
you consider Marsha a grandmother?
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Yes, I do, Yes, I do.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Kyenne ran into Marsha from time to time in the eighties.
Once Marsha was giving out sandwiches on Thanksgiving Day to
people who needed them, carrying on a tradition she started
with Randy and Willie. Kaye gives us a window into
a time when we have little information about the black
trans experience. What made the black trans community so vulnerable
(17:10):
in that.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Time stigma, stigma, prejudice.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Historically, when we hear about the ADS epidemic, it's through
a lens that focuses on white siscay Men. I don't
hear stories about my own slice of the community nearly enough,
what we lost, how we survived. Cayenne is sixty today,
but she was fifteen in nineteen eighty and.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
I was terrified. I was terrified.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
She grew up in bush Rock, Brooklyn. Today it's gentrified
as hell and full of queer bars, but back then
it was a working class industrial area. She paints a
picture of a time when there were so much fear
and the people in power were not giving the crisis
any attention.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
I remember my minister, he talked about AIDS and how
AIDS was designed by God to get us.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
As a young, visibly queer child, Cayenne was ostracized even
in the place she should have been the safest.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Me being a child, started to witness and see my
family members not wanting me to actually eat from the
plate where that plastic where to feed us, to feed me.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
This mentality wasn't isolated to Cayenne's tone. A family down
her block made their relative with AIDS wear half mad suit.
The dehumanization was intense, and it was everywhere. By the
mid eighties, there were polls showing that the majority of
Americans supported quarantining AIDS patients. Discussions about closing all gay bars,
(19:07):
or requiring special ID cards or even tattoos for AIDS
patients went mainstream. These ideas scared people away from getting tested.
It was also part of why Kayan started running away
from home as a teen. She went to queer clubs
and got to know a community of trans women people
(19:28):
she could be herself around without invoking fear or judgment.
But as the eighties wore on, those connections were disappearing
before her eyes.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Many of my friends were young, and within months they
were gone. I had a friend like died right in
front of me, Like he went from having a bed
sore to having a hole in his back. And the
pain that was connected to us all being young and
(20:00):
trying to hold on to this physical body, and they
were leaving rapidly and it got to the point where
they were too weak to talk, and how we just sobbed.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
When we say the AIDS crisis today, it can blur
or flatten. These years, we've heard the stories of people
dying of the indifference from homophobic families and the government.
But a crisis is made of many individual people suffering.
(20:42):
Maybe you can remember the early days of COVID nineteen
when there were so few answers and so much anxiety.
People were bleaching vegetables and quarantining their mail. There was
a rampant misinformation, and on top of that, Asian folk
were the target of racist scapegoating, and we saw a
(21:03):
rise in hate crimes. But the disease itself, it affected everyone,
so public health and government channels reacted quickly, But in
the early days of AIDS there was so little help available.
The FDA didn't approve an anti HIV medication until six
(21:24):
years after the mainstream media talked about it. It took
until nineteen eighty seven before there was a national public
health campaign to educate people about prevention and support. Even
when local hotlines and support groups started popping up in
New York, they were centered on CIS, gay men, black
(21:45):
trans folks were never at the front of the line
to get help. That's why we have so few testimonials
from our community during this era.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
We had no network to go to for this we like,
and especially because I and most of my friends appeared
to be quote unquote cross stresses at the time. Now
it's called trends, but we were discriminated from many of
(22:14):
these groups where you could get service.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Racism, sexism, and transphobia make for a toxic mix. Cayenne says.
People weren't talking about safety and prevention or changing habits
like sharing needles for hormone shots. Public health education could
have saved lives, but this is how stigma kills. Being
(22:39):
closeted and assimilating isn't a viable option. Ignoring who we are,
neglecting our community's real needs can be fatal.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
It wasn't until broadways started dying and white men were
affected and white women were dying. It wasn't until they
seen the elite oppressed by HIVD and AIDS that they said,
we have made the wrong drugs and we're sorry.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Oh yes, pharmaceutical companies allowed people to take drugs for
years that were basically ineffective. When Marcia's friend Jamie got sick,
there were over twelve thousand reported deaths from AIDS in
the US. We don't know a lot about Marsha's experience
with the epidemic before the mid eighties, but by this
(23:33):
point the queer community was inundated. When Jamie got sick
in eighty five, doctors told him he had only a
week to live.
Speaker 7 (23:47):
Marcia cared for Jamie, just round the clock.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
That's tourmaline again, she says. Marsha put off plans to
return to New York and stuck by his side. She
stayed up through long nights and changed his sheets. Jamie's
immune system was so compromised that being exposed to dust
and germs could be fatal, so she made sure his
house was spotless. Marcia also cooks and picked up his
(24:16):
favorite McDonald's milkshakes.
Speaker 7 (24:21):
Marsha was doing spiritual care work too, so doing a
lot of prayer work and seances for Jamie and talked about, oh,
I'm really worried that, you know, Jamie's mom is going
to think I'm doing some kind of witchcraft over Jamie.
But that was Marcia's care, something that extended Jamie's life
for a long time.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
He outlived his doctor's predictions and he.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Did beget to live four months on oxyg Jay. You know,
I did the best I could, but let him know
that I cared about.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Here's Marsha looking back at that time in a nineteen
ninety two interview. When Jamie passed in the winter, he
was one more person behind a climbing death toll. Marcia
helped arrange the flowers at his funeral. The government may
have tried to ignore his death and the deaths of
(25:13):
some twelve thousand others up to that point, but he
was more than a statistic. To Marsha, I.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Flowered to church for my branded diabase Jamie in California
when he died, and I said it career.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
I did it for a lot of people that dietabates.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Marcia's prayer was for her friends to live inside her
forever as a flower.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
There were several people I made to a flower inside
of me.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
This was her way of holding them close, filling their spirits.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
I'm plower of it forever and ever and ever.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Of anyone who's lost. Someone knows what it's like to
carry their memory some.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Kind of no prayer like that, sure that I remembered it.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
By early eighty six, Marshall was back on the East
Coast and grieving. Randy writes in a Christmas letter the quote,
A little bit of Marcia's seemed to have died with Jamie.
She returned to Hoboken, more subdued, quieter, scarred, and subtly
changed in some indescribable way. Still she insisted on going out,
(26:33):
declaring that she wasn't promised tomorrow. She had to have
a good time for the people who weren't around anymore.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
No matter what it, cancer, Poliao, AIDS or whatever. Decided
to make the best of every day anyway.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
In nineteen eighty six, the number of deaths from AIDS
in the US doubled to over twenty four thousand. By
nineteen eighty seven, it would nearly double again. Here's an
interview with Marcia from nineteen eighty eight, when the US
death toll was now over sixty thousand.
Speaker 9 (27:07):
I mean they got billions of dollars to throw out
on rocket chips, billions of dollars to throw out on wars.
I mean, why can't they spend billions of dollars to
help people with a's.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Marcia knew a great injustice was being done.
Speaker 9 (27:25):
I mean, like me, as an individual, when I can
I threw a penny, a dime, a quarter, or anything
I can in AIDS cans.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
With her giving spirit, she jumped in to help however
she could.
Speaker 9 (27:36):
I like to go to work for more AIDS patients, really,
because I'm really not afraid of the a's.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
This may sound mundane, but in the eighties this was
a truly radical idea. There was still so much fear
of being in any kind of proximity to AIDS patients.
But Marcia said this again and again, like in this
interview from nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
I think that you should be ashamed of anybody. Do
you know they have days?
Speaker 4 (28:04):
I think you should stand as close to them as
you can. And I think if you got a friend
that had days, you should just thank God for the
days that you'd have that when you should just stick
close to me as you can and hop them out
as much as you can.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
And help. Marsha did. She performed with the Hot Peaches
for AIDS patients. She participated in Danza Don's to raise
money for a cure. She marched, and she mourned with
her community. She joined a historic nineteen eighty seven march
on Washington where two hundred thousand demonstrators demanded more funding
(28:40):
for AIDS research and an end to discrimination.
Speaker 10 (28:45):
What do you think about Washington Distub?
Speaker 1 (28:47):
It was a division Washington That march marked the first
time act UP, a grassroots protest movement, got national news coverage.
Time magazine called act UP the most effective health activists
in history.
Speaker 9 (29:05):
Well, I went to act UP and we went over
to the UN building and we sat and demonstrated for
five hours for fundraising for AIDS patients. And it was
really nice because we all got together and we just
walked and carried our banners and chanted.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Marshall went to some act UP meetings and demonstrations, but
she wasn't consistently on its front lines. She gave what
she had, including a deeply personal spiritual commitment to the
people who had passed, but.
Speaker 9 (29:35):
My did without demonstrating and stuff like that. People don't
know that we care about these people.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
If you've ever spent nights bedside at a hospital, or
changed soiled divers or watched over someone you love suffering,
you know how hard it is. Arguably Marshall's biggest contribution
to the AIDS crisis was caretaking.
Speaker 7 (29:59):
What she sh showed up doing his like really profound
acts of care, changing sheets, taking people to the hospital,
getting people medicines, going to the hospital, like staying there,
advocating for people to be able to see their loved ones,
advocating for people to like actually get care and not
just getting ridden off. But she was tirelessly doing.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
That Tourmaline writes extensively about care work as a critical
form of activism in her book Marcia, The Joy and
Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson.
Speaker 7 (30:33):
Marcia responding to huge kind of like government neglect of
care for people who really needed it in the midst
of a massive healthcare crisis, and Marcia was trying to
fill that gap as best as she.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
You have members of Act Up storm the FDA headquarters
and chain themselves to the New York Stock Exchange to
protest exorbitant drug prices. As a caretaker, Marcia was also
standing up to the systems that were felling her community.
She resisted stigma and silence. She too, put herself on
(31:08):
the line by constantly showing up for people at all
hours of the day.
Speaker 7 (31:13):
The list is so long of the people that Marcia
took care in an actual daily way.
Speaker 10 (31:20):
There was no real help, and it was the natural
instinct of us is that you're going to help your friends.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
You know. Augusto Machado he hung out with Marsha back
in her time Square days and was a frequent visitor
of Starhouse. He was also a caretaker for many people
in the community during the AIDS crisis.
Speaker 10 (31:41):
They said, how can you change dirty diapers? And I said,
when we were children, someone changed diapers for us, and
if we live long enough, we're going to have diapers too.
I mean a philosophy, it's just like it needs to
be done.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Augusto also walked dogs, clean apartments, picked up prescriptions. People
would call him and ask for help for their friends.
He was sometimes on call for six or seven people
and he couldn't take any more. A lot of people
couldn't handle what Augusto and Marshall were doing. It was
grueling emotional and physical work. It burns you out, and
(32:17):
it left you vulnerable to other people's assumptions surrounding the disease,
even within the very community you were helping.
Speaker 10 (32:25):
Word had spread Augusto's helping them. He may carry the
you're and so stop going to gay bars, because I
noticed people might acknowledge you and wave across the room,
but they wouldn't come over, and they'd sort of, oh,
excuse me, I haven't got time to talk.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
It was an acute kind of cruelty. The care work
that was so desperately needed could leave people so isolated and.
Speaker 10 (32:53):
So little by the little. The subtext is I was
not safe or insanitary or what have you, because I
was helping people.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
When I asked Augusto if he considered this activism, he
said no. I asked what made him so fearless. He
said he wasn't. In his eyes, this was just doing
the right thing for the people. He loved that simple.
He and Marcia shared a generous heart that way.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
I don't think I've been extraordinary. I've just been working
in the gay movement for twenty three years.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Off and now Marcia gave it was her way in
the world but it took its toll. It was hard
to take care of herself, but she needed to.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
I had AHIV. I have HIV for about two years.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Marcia was diagnosed with HIV in nineteen ninety after watching
so many friends pass I can't imagine processing that diagnosis. Understandably,
she had a mental breakdown. She also started showing early
signs of the virus like shingles, a blistering rash that
(34:06):
can be extremely painful. Marcia's case was so bad she
had to be hospitalized, but still it didn't stop her
from helping others. It was about the same time that
Randy's lover David got very sick after living with AIDS
for a few years.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
I remember one tape David actually was laying on a
couch here and he fell on the floor.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
That's Randy again. David had moved in with him Marcia
and another roommate named George. George was in the early
stages of AIDS two. Randy writes in one of his
holiday letters that he and Marsha were both troopers, never
complaining at any hour of the night. When David needed help.
Speaker 5 (34:53):
He said he had fallen Imusha, Russia and just saw
him on the floor and just whooped him up in
her arms and put him back on the bed.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
For the most part, David was taken care of at home.
They made a few trips to the hospital, but it
could be hard to get meaningful medical attention. One time,
David spent six days and six nights lying in a
hospital's hallway waiting for a room. Marsha was with him
(35:21):
in that hallway. Eventually they checked out and went back
to Hoboken. They knew what was coming, but first David
and Randy got married. Same sex marriage wasn't legal then,
but a priest did come to bless the union. Friends
(35:42):
gathered around what would be David's deathbed to surround them
both with love. One friend wrote a poem that we
asked Randy to read.
Speaker 5 (35:55):
David and Randy got married today with a real priest
and every champagne flowers, two tiered kate and lots of friends.
David and Randy got married today as we gathered around
David's bed, no sweeter altar anywhere.
Speaker 6 (36:15):
Don't you always cry at weddings?
Speaker 5 (36:18):
David and Randy held hands today, exchanging valves life partners.
Now David has a ring. It's official. He says, I
can die in peace. David and Randy got married today
to having to hold in sickness and in health.
Speaker 6 (36:39):
Till death do us part? Don't you always cry at weddings?
Speaker 1 (36:50):
David died three weeks later. He was loved and he
loved everyone and that house. Marcia was there for him
in his final moments.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
I thought that he would be screaming and hollering everything,
but he didn't do any of those things.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
You didn't stop raising all.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
All of a sudden, another tragic loss. Randy was bereft.
Marcia was not okay either.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
When I did yet, I had a break. Dad minded
it when signed myself in a.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Hob of more after the breakw.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
It was times of people that had been sick for
the Maid's virus had just finished out.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
My roommate's lover.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Who die debates Welcome back to after Lives. Although Marcia
didn't shy away from helping people who were sick, she
was open about how it weighed on her. In different interviews,
she talks about the people she's lost.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
I can't serve Dad had to go to anymore. There
was my friend Poka.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
And the people she was still helping, and that We've.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Been helping my friend Mike from Little Bitchess Winter, who
has called Brownie.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
It was an impossible time. Marsha grieved. She had multiple breakdowns.
She had to manage her own care on top of
everyone else's.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
That's extra money that I would have, but I had
to spend on something. Mouse that had to buy all
these medications and everything.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Lately. Her mother, Alberta, also passed away during this fraud period.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
It was shocking to me. It was devastated.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Marcia and her mom always had a complicated relationship, but
there was love between them and they stayed in touch.
With so many tragedies that just kept coming, Marcia relied
on her spirituality to carry her forward.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
No matter where are go, life can always get dead.
Hawker's crisis, we deal with me.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Marcia also learned to take us when she felt a
breakdown coming on. It would help to get away from
New York. As Tormaline says.
Speaker 7 (39:11):
She was burnt down, you know, just like very plainly.
She was exhausted, like the trips to La and the
Fire Island, going to the cave. She found out ways
to get geographical distance in order to feel a level
of spaciousness in her life.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
I did basically get on the planet traveling.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
And with my nurse and you know, just forget about it.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Just about everything is happening where I am and go
out and get fresh air.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Marcia still made regular trips to California. She was in
LA when she did the nineteen eighty eight interview with
Jim Kaepner. You've heard throughout the series.
Speaker 9 (39:52):
I've never seen you in Dragon, I mean during my
drag anymore. But I'm picking about going back in.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
In the interview, Marcia still has her usual mannerisms and
flares that make her look firm to me. At least.
She's wearing a sweater with pink flowers on it, paired
with a more butch leather jacket and a visor. Just
her natural hair, no wig, no makeup.
Speaker 9 (40:16):
I'm thinking about, you know, doing some more drag because
I'm going to beauty school now around the corner here, Yeah,
I'm going to Newbery in February.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
First, it's a relief to know Marcia had these pleasures
that she knew to make her activism sustainable, she needed
to recharge, be in the sun and learn new things.
Speaker 7 (40:39):
Like these moments where she knew it was a vital
important to care for herself and rest and recover and
not be in service to anyone else other than her
own well being, I think is the real part of
her story.
Speaker 6 (40:55):
How long will the schooling take now?
Speaker 4 (40:57):
Oh, well, forty two years out telling you it's going
to take me a year to go to schal But
I'll be able to help poor people with their hair.
Could to help me with my hair?
Speaker 6 (41:10):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (41:10):
They know how to let me tell you, I bet
you they do. They know how to weave a wig
on that it looks like your own hair and everything.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
I hope to die my hair in law next week
or something. I'd run a new intrigue for Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
With everything she had lost, it would be easy for
Marcia to dwell in the past. But no, Marcia is
still dreaming of the future, a future of helping people,
a future in Hollywood.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
I've not just only helped these people in the past.
I plan to help them in the future.
Speaker 9 (41:50):
But I take restis and this is my rest in
California where I'm going to school.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Marcia helped so many people, and she lots of help
and return. In one interview, she talks for three straight
minutes about all the people who have lent her a hand.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
You have so many, thousands and thousands of people that
helped me.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
All through my life.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
She mentions all kinds of folks. A man named Rob
who she met at her favorite club, the Anavil. He
was restaurant manager, and even after he passed, the folks
at the restaurant would help her out.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
You still give me five.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
And ten dollars now and then, of course, she mentions
that Randy helps her out. Then there's her friend from
the Hot Peaches, Tony.
Speaker 4 (42:40):
Tony Fish gives me help every now and then gives
me a few hundred dollars, or gives me ten dollars
here and ten dollurs over here, and it really ends up.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
She lists some people from the theater scene too, and
they are the friends of friends, folks who have stores
on Christopher Street, her sisters Jeanie and Norma, and her
brother Robert.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
I got so many people in this world.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
As Marcia struggled, but she knew she was cared for.
I think that counts for a lot. In the mid eighties,
she was honored by the community with a special place
in the Christopher Street Liberation March. A seat inside the
(43:27):
Stonewall Car.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
I've been in the movement for like ever since nineteen
sixty nine. I'm in everyday march and I only skipped too.
Ed Murphy, who was a Grand marsha for the Stonewall
Ride contingent.
Speaker 9 (43:41):
He wanted me to ride in the car. It was
an honor in some ways for Marcia.
Speaker 7 (43:47):
That was I think a really beautiful pivotal moment. She
found that she was really receiving her flowers.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
She was being recognized as a person who set the
whole movement off. She was a guest of the Grand Marshal.
Even the Mayor marched in the demonstration that year. Randy
wrote in one of his annual letters that she was
undeniably a living legend in New York. But I want
(44:14):
to take a moment for all of the people in
our community that we lost in the eighties and that
we've lost to AIDS ever since. Our ancestors could have
should have been so much more abundant with talents to
share and stories to tell, but we'll never get to
(44:34):
witness that. This episode is dedicated to the many caregivers
during the AIDS epidemic, including the lesbians, trans people, and
gender nonconforming folks who aren't often given the spotlight for
their tireless work during the crisis. I want to leave
(44:55):
you with Augusto, who has found a beautiful way to
memorialize the people he took care of and all those
that have been lost.
Speaker 10 (45:06):
We talked about honoring all the missing queens on our
street and so forth.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Augusto had a deep desire to memorialize the many, many
people he lost. The crisis peaked long before cell phone cameras,
so instead of photos, he started collecting objects left behind.
Speaker 10 (45:27):
Little mementos. Even if it was a dried flower, this
belonged to x y or Z.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Over the years, Augusto's collection grew and grew. He told
me how one of his friends described him recently.
Speaker 10 (45:41):
This old queen. She's a hoarder. She buys awful art
from street people. She collects everything, she says receipts, she
has ticket steps.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
But these objects became a snapshot of people no longer
with us in places too. They are remnants of a
downtown New York that was changing rapidly, even as Augusto
stayed in his same studio apartment on Third Street. One day,
Augusto's friend the one who called him a hoarder, mentioned
(46:12):
the collection to a couple of art galleries. They came
to see Augusto's decades of stuff.
Speaker 10 (46:18):
Thank god, Sam and Jacob braved getting into my apartment.
They risked their lives because I had stable boxes up
to the ceiling.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
He had things piled everywhere. Several of the objects were
turned into shrines.
Speaker 10 (46:32):
They came and very bravely said we'll give you a
show in a year, and I thought, what show? And
they put up that the shrines were come Stare Craig.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
It was art.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Augusto has always been an artist, even in times he
didn't realize it, whether performing street theater with Marcia, experimental
shows at La Mama or cat Fecino, or these shrines
like Marcia, Augusto's life was about making art, whether or
not it was officially recognized.
Speaker 10 (47:10):
What I was doing through the years in rooming houses
and so forth was.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
Art, and then it was recognized. Augusto had his first
visual art show in twenty twenty two at the Gordon
Robieshow Gallery on Seventeenth Street.
Speaker 10 (47:29):
And thanks to them is that in this latter chapter
of my journey. I'm very grateful it happened now, and
I think I'm still getting a little too much attention
because the pieces were about the pioneers, the people who
did it, who braved and lived their life the way
they wanted to.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
One piece was even acquired by MoMA.
Speaker 10 (47:54):
When they took the shrines, I thought, what is it.
Speaker 11 (47:58):
Going to be?
Speaker 10 (47:59):
It's what does it mean? And now I can't believe.
Speaker 6 (48:05):
Of art.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
It's on display still. You can see it. A white
cabinet with six shelves. There are photographs and newspaper clippings.
There are dolls and beads. There are fake flowers and
plastic fish, a stuffed animal. Next to the shelf stands
a yellow paper sign. It says justice for Marcia. That's
(48:32):
next week on After Lives.
Speaker 7 (48:38):
And I just went up to her and I just
told her I loved her, actually, and I told her
thank you.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Marcia was pulled out of the water light over the
edge here.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
You would never kill usself.
Speaker 6 (48:47):
We knew that we bought it.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
We were handling up to sixteen hundred cases of anti
gay Wesleyan trans violence every year.
Speaker 11 (49:01):
We go to this church, and this church is pat
to the gills pat. This was the most awesome spectacle
I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Thanks for listening to Afterlives. You can find this episode
in future ones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us a rating
and review to let us know what you think. Afterlives
is a production of The Outspoken Network from iHeart Podcasts
in partnership with School of Humans. I'm your host and
(49:36):
creator Raquel Willis. Dylan Hoyer is our senior producer and scriptwriter.
Our associate producer is Joey pat Sound design and engineering
by Jess Krincic, Story editing by Julia Furlong, fact checking
by Carolyn Talmage. Score composed by Wise Murray. Our production
(49:58):
manager is Daisy Church. Executive producers include me, Raquel Willis,
and Jess Krinchich from The Outspoken podcast Network, Amelia Brock,
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley from School of
Humans and The Cats Company. The image of Marsha in
our show art is provided by the Leslie Lowman Museum
(50:20):
of Art Founder's gift p. Fifteen dot six nine nine
dot one oh six. A special thank you to everyone
who provided archival tape, including Marcia nineteen ninety two by
Michael Casino and Marsha at Tony Nunziata's by Michael Casino,
courtesy of Michael Casino. The Randy Wicker and Marsha P.
(50:44):
Johnson Papers at the LGBT Community Center National History Archives
and Interview with Marsha P. Johnson nineteen eighty eight from
one National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries
Afterlives is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Outspoken
podcast Network in partnership with School of Humans. Just a
heads Up. The following episode mentions homophobic language and discusses racism, misogyny, transphobia,
and mental health. Take care while listening.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
We need the paper towels for the house. We need
two paper towels. Do we need toilet paper? Now?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
This is from a home video taken in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Marsha moved there with Randy Wicker in nineteen eighty two.
They're talking through their grocery list. Marsha leans against the
coffee table, jotting down what they need.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
God it's chase, okay now, y'all yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Or you're just playing at the don.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
I know this is nothing special. We've all made grocery lists,
but this is Marsha P. Johnson talking about cottage cheese.
She's not organizing a protest or preparing for a show.
She just needs to get her computer, which is what
she calls her brain to juggle a bunch of errands
(01:19):
and check out the price.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Waitmen, wait man, my computer.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Any It's a pretty mundane video that captures a shift
in Marsha's life stability, consistency, a solid home base, the
ability to go to the grocery store and pay for
what she needs. This would be her home for the
final decade of her life. But it was still the eighties,
(01:49):
and when we hear about this era in Queer history,
we know it's not good news. The AIDS crisis devastated
our community. Marsha felt that acutely. Of course, it's a
period defined by loss, but those feelings of helplessness gave
rise to unprecedented love in the form of caretaking and
(02:14):
bold activism. We'll get to all of these things, the
heartbreak and the compassion, the despair and the defiance. We'll
start our story early in the decade, a time when
Marcia was sleeping on the street and in bath houses,
until one night she was invited inside and discovered a
(02:37):
new chosen family.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
They called me a ntge because there's how many quaints
God that I'm one of the few quaints still.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
That few quaints, still, that few points I didn't make
expensive every day an.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
I'm Rachael Willis and this is Afterlives, Episode six, Profound
Acts of Care.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
You know it's Tendy Ree's out, and Marcia doesn't have
anywhere to stay.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
This is Randy Wicker again talking about a freezing night
in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
Can Marcia stay here's tonight?
Speaker 1 (03:24):
The question came from Randy's roommate Willie, a white, blonde
nineteen year old from Baltimore. Randy saw him performing at
a Burless's show in Times Square and hoped they'd hit
it off, but instead of finding romance, Willie moved in
and became more like a son. He hadn't been at
Randy's very long before, asking if his friend Marcia could
(03:46):
come over to.
Speaker 5 (03:48):
And I said, would she steal? And he said no,
Marcia would never steal. And he said, and Marshall likes
to sleep on hard floors. Sot, Willie, you don't lie.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
How your telling me is still skeptical. Randy agreed to
let Marcia stay the night, but.
Speaker 6 (04:06):
It came in and she did sleep on the floor.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
And I found out because she had a bullet dodge
near her spine sleeping on the hard floor.
Speaker 6 (04:14):
She is more comfortable there.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Marcia was not the kind of person Randy was used
to being around. For a long time. He was mister
Madachine Society all about respectability and steering away from anything
or anyone that represented gender nonconformity. But Marcia's charm wore
him down. She stayed another night, then another, and another.
(04:40):
Randy's friends literally laughed in disbelief when he told them
he'd taken her in. By then, Randy no longer found
the situation so crazy.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
Marcia was the greatest accent in my life.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
If you didn't catch that. Randy called Marcia the greatest
asset of his life. And it's easy to figure out why.
Marcia brought a levity to the home, almost a goofiness.
Randy recalls random moments when she somehow made him burst
into laughter.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
I'm sitting here, I'm really getting very kind of depressed.
Selling Marcia's up. Jesus loves me.
Speaker 6 (05:24):
How do I know? Because the Bible tells me so.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
And I went from being in the pit of despair,
I mean, I was are Where did you learn that?
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Randy says, comedians can make you laugh, but with Marcia,
it was more than just being funny.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
There's something deeper about Marcia. It was making you feel good.
She had a warmth.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
He reveled in the things Marcia brought into their lives.
This surprises that up ended his everyday life. The parade
of attractive and interesting people, the hot gossip from nights
spent out on the town. They settled into their own routines.
Willie cooked, Marsha did the laundry. She was always putting
together new outfits, frequently sourced from a local thrift store
(06:18):
run by nuns. I like to be a fly on
that wall.
Speaker 6 (06:22):
The sisters over there loveder.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Marcia started off sleeping on the living room floor, but
arrangements shifted over time. Friends and lovers moved in and out.
There were periods where marsh and Willie shared a bedroom.
At points when it was really a full house, marsh
and Randy took turns using his bed.
Speaker 6 (06:42):
Marsha had come home like four or five in the morning, about.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
The time I was getting out and getting dressed and
goeting to work, and she and the dog would sleep
the under the bed all day.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
That dog they had, once upon a time, was a
tiny thing, brown and black, part beagle, part Terry, all mutt.
Speaker 6 (07:01):
The best one I ever had. Her name was Cooley knew.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Randy has no regrets, but he has one caution for
people who might find themselves in a situation like.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
This, Darling, don't hang around with these clitter queens because
you're trying to hang your head on a pillar. You're
gonna get each little cutch. It's amazing. I could never
get rid of the glitter from Marcia.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Rent and groceries were fifty bucks a week. They had
to keep the arrangement on the DL though, so Marsha
would get her full Social Security checks. She still ended
up in jail now and then, but Randy helped her
manage her money and she didn't have to hustle on
the streets so much anymore.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
I haven't been having that many grip, yeah, because I'm
not on the distress of New York City anymore.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
At its best, it was a familial and mutually beneficial relationship.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
I don't know how I haven't made it in New
York without Randy Wicker.
Speaker 6 (08:02):
I mean, Randy's help for.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
Me for so many years in New York has been
helping me pudget money here and everything. Otherwise I wouldn't
even survive.
Speaker 5 (08:13):
Marsha was really a mother. I called her the house
to mother and my extender gay family.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
They would all celebrate holidays together, but it didn't always
look traditional like this one Thanksgiving when they went into
the city.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
I had to speak turkey and well he said, oh,
we don't want to sit here and have a Thanksgiving dinner.
He said, Let's pack this turkey up and take it
up to the gayety theater and we'll give it out
to these four people that have nothing better doing Thanksgiving
to be sitting in a corner of the theater up
in Times Square.
Speaker 6 (08:45):
So we patched up the stuff we went up there.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
Of course, we were first in line, so we had
all the church we wanted.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Things weren't so simple, though. Dynamics in the house could
get challenging.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I can't written much back from this jar brand Ida.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Well per You know, listening back to that home video
with the grocery list, you might pick up on some
of the tensions that ran through the apartment. There's typical
roommate bickering, along with comments that feel a little edgier,
a little meaner.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Got it?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Whatever you see?
Speaker 7 (09:24):
No makeup, no fancy, no maling, no maybeling, no hair straighten.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Why God, nothing is your hopeless case.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
We can't make use glamorous no matter how much we
spend on you.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
I really so, why should I spend my good herder
money because you want to be glamorous. Anything you say,
Marcia's voice goes flat. She sounds totally checked out. Comments
like this about her looks, how she made her money,
even her race were also a part of life and Hoboken.
(09:58):
Randy wrote Christmas utters every winter, kind of like a
recap of the year gone by. Some are fifteen pages
long and provide an incredible window into their life. They
share memories of the good times, but they're also honest.
You can read the retelling of a heated argument, like
once when Randy was so mad he threw eggs at
(10:20):
Willie's bedroom wall. There were racist jokes and surs made
in their home too. Their roommate arrangement was also informal,
so things could get confusing. Marcia did the laundry to
help out. She wasn't really a maid, but sometimes Randy
called her that. Occasionally he'd tip her over time, Marcia
(10:42):
felt ready for something new.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
I don't like Hoboken, honey, I don't like no party jersey.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
I wish I was sitting back in the city.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Marcia had things she could rely on in Hoboken, the
good and the bad. But when she got a call
from her friend Jane in La Marcia felt opportunity knocking,
a chance to get away for a while. Jamie was
an old friend Marsiha met on the streets.
Speaker 7 (11:10):
Marcia was a mother to a lot of young queer,
transgender nonconforming kids. She also befriended Jamie, so Marcia and
Jamie they had a sense of ease with each other
because of the longevity of their friendship.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
That's Tourmaline, Marcia's biographer. She says Jamie really wanted to
repay Marcia for all she had done for him back
when he was a teenager, so he called her from
California in nineteen eighty three, inviting her to make her
way west.
Speaker 7 (11:45):
Jamie was a sugar baby in Calabassis, which a lot
of us know from.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Like the Kardashians, Marcia among California's rich and famous. She
stayed there for a few months, first in eighty three,
and return there in eighty four and again in eighty five.
She and Jamie went to rock concerts, discos and shopped
till they dropped.
Speaker 7 (12:10):
And there's these really beautiful photos of her by the pool,
and there's this giant olive tree in front of it,
just like luxuriating and just resting by the pool.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
It feels good to know that Marcia had this time
to delve into rest and pleasure. I wish more of
her life had been so simple. I wish it could
have lasted longer. In August of eighty five, Marcia and
Jamie set off on a cruise. There's a picture of
Marsha framed by balloons, smiling wide as she boards the ship.
Speaker 7 (12:45):
Jamie and Marcia went on a cruise that left from Miami,
a carnival cruise on the ship called the Holiday.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
But this trip didn't turn out to be all fun
in the sun.
Speaker 7 (12:57):
It was in that moment that Jamie started to get
even sticker.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Jamie had aids. At this point, the virus had been
spreading across the world for years. The crisis was already severe,
and this is a moment when it all became deeply
personal for Marsha. That's coming after the break.
Speaker 8 (13:29):
Scientists at the National Centers for Disease Control and Atlanta
today released the results of a study which shows that
the lifestyle of some male homosexuals has triggered an epidemic
of a rare form of.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Cancer that's news anchor Tom Brokaw introducing NBC's first report
on what came to be known as Acquired immuno deficiency syndrome,
or AIDS. The clip is from nineteen eighty two. Other
outlets started reporting on the epidemic a year before. A
few months after the NBC report, President Reagan was still
(14:04):
ignoring all of the death and fear. Here's a clip
from a White House press conference in October nineteen eighty two.
You can hear members of the press corps laughing it
off when journalists and Reverend Lester Kinsolving raises the issue.
Speaker 8 (14:19):
Gets done as gay play.
Speaker 7 (14:23):
Oh it is.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
I mean, it's a pretty serious.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Reagan's Press secretary, Larry Speaks treats it like a joke too.
Speaker 5 (14:31):
One and every three people that get Misha died, And
I wonder if the President would were.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
You, I don't have it or you do you?
Speaker 1 (14:40):
This dismissal and neglect of the community continued. Six whole
years passed between the first news reports of AIDS before
President Reagan made a single speech about the issue. Six
horrifying years with virtually no attention paid at the policy level.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
I've seen this as a war on black people, a
war on queer people and a war on marginalized communities,
and all my friends were dying rapidly around me.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
This is Kayenne Doorshow. She's an elder and the founder
of Glitz, which stands for Gays and Lesbians living in
a Transgender Society. This is an organization providing direct services
to the trans community. Today.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
I am the executive direct then founder and a mother
to a lot of people. GQ magazine calls me the
godmother of the Black Trains Life movement. I'm just an
ordinary person actually just fighting for our lives.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
I can co sign Cayenne's tremendous presence in our community.
She's like an auntie to me. And little did I
know Kyenne is also a part of Marsha's lineage.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
I worked in New Jersey and right acrosch from my
job was this young woman named Coco, and Coco just
hounded me and she says, you're going to be my daughter.
When I said, oh, nice, and she says, my mom
is Marsha P. Johnson, And I said, oh. A lot
(16:30):
of people say that. What I didn't know was she
was actually Marsha P. Johnson's daughter.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And so if Coco is a mother to you. Do
you consider Marsha a grandmother?
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Yes, I do, Yes, I do.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Kyenne ran into Marsha from time to time in the eighties.
Once Marsha was giving out sandwiches on Thanksgiving Day to
people who needed them, carrying on a tradition she started
with Randy and Willie. Kaye gives us a window into
a time when we have little information about the black
trans experience. What made the black trans community so vulnerable
(17:10):
in that.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Time stigma, stigma, prejudice.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Historically, when we hear about the ADS epidemic, it's through
a lens that focuses on white siscay Men. I don't
hear stories about my own slice of the community nearly enough,
what we lost, how we survived. Cayenne is sixty today,
but she was fifteen in nineteen eighty and.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
I was terrified. I was terrified.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
She grew up in bush Rock, Brooklyn. Today it's gentrified
as hell and full of queer bars, but back then
it was a working class industrial area. She paints a
picture of a time when there were so much fear
and the people in power were not giving the crisis
any attention.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
I remember my minister, he talked about AIDS and how
AIDS was designed by God to get us.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
As a young, visibly queer child, Cayenne was ostracized even
in the place she should have been the safest.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Me being a child, started to witness and see my
family members not wanting me to actually eat from the
plate where that plastic where to feed us, to feed me.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
This mentality wasn't isolated to Cayenne's tone. A family down
her block made their relative with AIDS wear half mad suit.
The dehumanization was intense, and it was everywhere. By the
mid eighties, there were polls showing that the majority of
Americans supported quarantining AIDS patients. Discussions about closing all gay bars,
(19:07):
or requiring special ID cards or even tattoos for AIDS
patients went mainstream. These ideas scared people away from getting tested.
It was also part of why Kayan started running away
from home as a teen. She went to queer clubs
and got to know a community of trans women people
(19:28):
she could be herself around without invoking fear or judgment.
But as the eighties wore on, those connections were disappearing
before her eyes.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
Many of my friends were young, and within months they
were gone. I had a friend like died right in
front of me, Like he went from having a bed
sore to having a hole in his back. And the
pain that was connected to us all being young and
(20:00):
trying to hold on to this physical body, and they
were leaving rapidly and it got to the point where
they were too weak to talk, and how we just sobbed.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
When we say the AIDS crisis today, it can blur
or flatten. These years, we've heard the stories of people
dying of the indifference from homophobic families and the government.
But a crisis is made of many individual people suffering.
(20:42):
Maybe you can remember the early days of COVID nineteen
when there were so few answers and so much anxiety.
People were bleaching vegetables and quarantining their mail. There was
a rampant misinformation, and on top of that, Asian folk
were the target of racist scapegoating, and we saw a
(21:03):
rise in hate crimes. But the disease itself, it affected everyone,
so public health and government channels reacted quickly, But in
the early days of AIDS there was so little help available.
The FDA didn't approve an anti HIV medication until six
(21:24):
years after the mainstream media talked about it. It took
until nineteen eighty seven before there was a national public
health campaign to educate people about prevention and support. Even
when local hotlines and support groups started popping up in
New York, they were centered on CIS, gay men, black
(21:45):
trans folks were never at the front of the line
to get help. That's why we have so few testimonials
from our community during this era.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
We had no network to go to for this we like,
and especially because I and most of my friends appeared
to be quote unquote cross stresses at the time. Now
it's called trends, but we were discriminated from many of
(22:14):
these groups where you could get service.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Racism, sexism, and transphobia make for a toxic mix. Cayenne says.
People weren't talking about safety and prevention or changing habits
like sharing needles for hormone shots. Public health education could
have saved lives, but this is how stigma kills. Being
(22:39):
closeted and assimilating isn't a viable option. Ignoring who we are,
neglecting our community's real needs can be fatal.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
It wasn't until broadways started dying and white men were
affected and white women were dying. It wasn't until they
seen the elite oppressed by HIVD and AIDS that they said,
we have made the wrong drugs and we're sorry.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Oh yes, pharmaceutical companies allowed people to take drugs for
years that were basically ineffective. When Marcia's friend Jamie got sick,
there were over twelve thousand reported deaths from AIDS in
the US. We don't know a lot about Marsha's experience
with the epidemic before the mid eighties, but by this
(23:33):
point the queer community was inundated. When Jamie got sick
in eighty five, doctors told him he had only a
week to live.
Speaker 7 (23:47):
Marcia cared for Jamie, just round the clock.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
That's tourmaline again, she says. Marsha put off plans to
return to New York and stuck by his side. She
stayed up through long nights and changed his sheets. Jamie's
immune system was so compromised that being exposed to dust
and germs could be fatal, so she made sure his
house was spotless. Marcia also cooks and picked up his
(24:16):
favorite McDonald's milkshakes.
Speaker 7 (24:21):
Marsha was doing spiritual care work too, so doing a
lot of prayer work and seances for Jamie and talked about, oh,
I'm really worried that, you know, Jamie's mom is going
to think I'm doing some kind of witchcraft over Jamie.
But that was Marcia's care, something that extended Jamie's life
for a long time.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
He outlived his doctor's predictions and he.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
Did beget to live four months on oxyg Jay. You know,
I did the best I could, but let him know
that I cared about.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Here's Marsha looking back at that time in a nineteen
ninety two interview. When Jamie passed in the winter, he
was one more person behind a climbing death toll. Marcia
helped arrange the flowers at his funeral. The government may
have tried to ignore his death and the deaths of
(25:13):
some twelve thousand others up to that point, but he
was more than a statistic. To Marsha, I.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Flowered to church for my branded diabase Jamie in California
when he died, and I said it career.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
I did it for a lot of people that dietabates.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Marcia's prayer was for her friends to live inside her
forever as a flower.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
There were several people I made to a flower inside
of me.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
This was her way of holding them close, filling their spirits.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
I'm plower of it forever and ever and ever.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Of anyone who's lost. Someone knows what it's like to
carry their memory some.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Kind of no prayer like that, sure that I remembered it.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
By early eighty six, Marshall was back on the East
Coast and grieving. Randy writes in a Christmas letter the quote,
A little bit of Marcia's seemed to have died with Jamie.
She returned to Hoboken, more subdued, quieter, scarred, and subtly
changed in some indescribable way. Still she insisted on going out,
(26:33):
declaring that she wasn't promised tomorrow. She had to have
a good time for the people who weren't around anymore.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
No matter what it, cancer, Poliao, AIDS or whatever. Decided
to make the best of every day anyway.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
In nineteen eighty six, the number of deaths from AIDS
in the US doubled to over twenty four thousand. By
nineteen eighty seven, it would nearly double again. Here's an
interview with Marcia from nineteen eighty eight, when the US
death toll was now over sixty thousand.
Speaker 9 (27:07):
I mean they got billions of dollars to throw out
on rocket chips, billions of dollars to throw out on wars.
I mean, why can't they spend billions of dollars to
help people with a's.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Marcia knew a great injustice was being done.
Speaker 9 (27:25):
I mean, like me, as an individual, when I can
I threw a penny, a dime, a quarter, or anything
I can in AIDS cans.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
With her giving spirit, she jumped in to help however
she could.
Speaker 9 (27:36):
I like to go to work for more AIDS patients, really,
because I'm really not afraid of the a's.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
This may sound mundane, but in the eighties this was
a truly radical idea. There was still so much fear
of being in any kind of proximity to AIDS patients.
But Marcia said this again and again, like in this
interview from nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
I think that you should be ashamed of anybody. Do
you know they have days?
Speaker 4 (28:04):
I think you should stand as close to them as
you can. And I think if you got a friend
that had days, you should just thank God for the
days that you'd have that when you should just stick
close to me as you can and hop them out
as much as you can.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
And help. Marsha did. She performed with the Hot Peaches
for AIDS patients. She participated in Danza Don's to raise
money for a cure. She marched, and she mourned with
her community. She joined a historic nineteen eighty seven march
on Washington where two hundred thousand demonstrators demanded more funding
(28:40):
for AIDS research and an end to discrimination.
Speaker 10 (28:45):
What do you think about Washington Distub?
Speaker 1 (28:47):
It was a division Washington That march marked the first
time act UP, a grassroots protest movement, got national news coverage.
Time magazine called act UP the most effective health activists
in history.
Speaker 9 (29:05):
Well, I went to act UP and we went over
to the UN building and we sat and demonstrated for
five hours for fundraising for AIDS patients. And it was
really nice because we all got together and we just
walked and carried our banners and chanted.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Marshall went to some act UP meetings and demonstrations, but
she wasn't consistently on its front lines. She gave what
she had, including a deeply personal spiritual commitment to the
people who had passed, but.
Speaker 9 (29:35):
My did without demonstrating and stuff like that. People don't
know that we care about these people.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
If you've ever spent nights bedside at a hospital, or
changed soiled divers or watched over someone you love suffering,
you know how hard it is. Arguably Marshall's biggest contribution
to the AIDS crisis was caretaking.
Speaker 7 (29:59):
What she sh showed up doing his like really profound
acts of care, changing sheets, taking people to the hospital,
getting people medicines, going to the hospital, like staying there,
advocating for people to be able to see their loved ones,
advocating for people to like actually get care and not
just getting ridden off. But she was tirelessly doing.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
That Tourmaline writes extensively about care work as a critical
form of activism in her book Marcia, The Joy and
Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson.
Speaker 7 (30:33):
Marcia responding to huge kind of like government neglect of
care for people who really needed it in the midst
of a massive healthcare crisis, and Marcia was trying to
fill that gap as best as she.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
You have members of Act Up storm the FDA headquarters
and chain themselves to the New York Stock Exchange to
protest exorbitant drug prices. As a caretaker, Marcia was also
standing up to the systems that were felling her community.
She resisted stigma and silence. She too, put herself on
(31:08):
the line by constantly showing up for people at all
hours of the day.
Speaker 7 (31:13):
The list is so long of the people that Marcia
took care in an actual daily way.
Speaker 10 (31:20):
There was no real help, and it was the natural
instinct of us is that you're going to help your friends.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
You know. Augusto Machado he hung out with Marsha back
in her time Square days and was a frequent visitor
of Starhouse. He was also a caretaker for many people
in the community during the AIDS crisis.
Speaker 10 (31:41):
They said, how can you change dirty diapers? And I said,
when we were children, someone changed diapers for us, and
if we live long enough, we're going to have diapers too.
I mean a philosophy, it's just like it needs to
be done.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Augusto also walked dogs, clean apartments, picked up prescriptions. People
would call him and ask for help for their friends.
He was sometimes on call for six or seven people
and he couldn't take any more. A lot of people
couldn't handle what Augusto and Marshall were doing. It was
grueling emotional and physical work. It burns you out, and
(32:17):
it left you vulnerable to other people's assumptions surrounding the disease,
even within the very community you were helping.
Speaker 10 (32:25):
Word had spread Augusto's helping them. He may carry the
you're and so stop going to gay bars, because I
noticed people might acknowledge you and wave across the room,
but they wouldn't come over, and they'd sort of, oh,
excuse me, I haven't got time to talk.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
It was an acute kind of cruelty. The care work
that was so desperately needed could leave people so isolated and.
Speaker 10 (32:53):
So little by the little. The subtext is I was
not safe or insanitary or what have you, because I
was helping people.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
When I asked Augusto if he considered this activism, he
said no. I asked what made him so fearless. He
said he wasn't. In his eyes, this was just doing
the right thing for the people. He loved that simple.
He and Marcia shared a generous heart that way.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
I don't think I've been extraordinary. I've just been working
in the gay movement for twenty three years.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Off and now Marcia gave it was her way in
the world but it took its toll. It was hard
to take care of herself, but she needed to.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
I had AHIV. I have HIV for about two years.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Marcia was diagnosed with HIV in nineteen ninety after watching
so many friends pass I can't imagine processing that diagnosis. Understandably,
she had a mental breakdown. She also started showing early
signs of the virus like shingles, a blistering rash that
(34:06):
can be extremely painful. Marcia's case was so bad she
had to be hospitalized, but still it didn't stop her
from helping others. It was about the same time that
Randy's lover David got very sick after living with AIDS
for a few years.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
I remember one tape David actually was laying on a
couch here and he fell on the floor.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
That's Randy again. David had moved in with him Marcia
and another roommate named George. George was in the early
stages of AIDS two. Randy writes in one of his
holiday letters that he and Marsha were both troopers, never
complaining at any hour of the night. When David needed help.
Speaker 5 (34:53):
He said he had fallen Imusha, Russia and just saw
him on the floor and just whooped him up in
her arms and put him back on the bed.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
For the most part, David was taken care of at home.
They made a few trips to the hospital, but it
could be hard to get meaningful medical attention. One time,
David spent six days and six nights lying in a
hospital's hallway waiting for a room. Marsha was with him
(35:21):
in that hallway. Eventually they checked out and went back
to Hoboken. They knew what was coming, but first David
and Randy got married. Same sex marriage wasn't legal then,
but a priest did come to bless the union. Friends
(35:42):
gathered around what would be David's deathbed to surround them
both with love. One friend wrote a poem that we
asked Randy to read.
Speaker 5 (35:55):
David and Randy got married today with a real priest
and every champagne flowers, two tiered kate and lots of friends.
David and Randy got married today as we gathered around
David's bed, no sweeter altar anywhere.
Speaker 6 (36:15):
Don't you always cry at weddings?
Speaker 5 (36:18):
David and Randy held hands today, exchanging valves life partners.
Now David has a ring. It's official. He says, I
can die in peace. David and Randy got married today
to having to hold in sickness and in health.
Speaker 6 (36:39):
Till death do us part? Don't you always cry at weddings?
Speaker 1 (36:50):
David died three weeks later. He was loved and he
loved everyone and that house. Marcia was there for him
in his final moments.
Speaker 4 (37:04):
I thought that he would be screaming and hollering everything,
but he didn't do any of those things.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
You didn't stop raising all.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
All of a sudden, another tragic loss. Randy was bereft.
Marcia was not okay either.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
When I did yet, I had a break. Dad minded
it when signed myself in a.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Hob of more after the breakw.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
It was times of people that had been sick for
the Maid's virus had just finished out.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
My roommate's lover.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Who die debates Welcome back to after Lives. Although Marcia
didn't shy away from helping people who were sick, she
was open about how it weighed on her. In different interviews,
she talks about the people she's lost.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
I can't serve Dad had to go to anymore. There
was my friend Poka.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
And the people she was still helping, and that We've.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Been helping my friend Mike from Little Bitchess Winter, who
has called Brownie.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
It was an impossible time. Marsha grieved. She had multiple breakdowns.
She had to manage her own care on top of
everyone else's.
Speaker 4 (38:21):
That's extra money that I would have, but I had
to spend on something. Mouse that had to buy all
these medications and everything.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Lately. Her mother, Alberta, also passed away during this fraud period.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
It was shocking to me. It was devastated.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Marcia and her mom always had a complicated relationship, but
there was love between them and they stayed in touch.
With so many tragedies that just kept coming, Marcia relied
on her spirituality to carry her forward.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
No matter where are go, life can always get dead.
Hawker's crisis, we deal with me.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Marcia also learned to take us when she felt a
breakdown coming on. It would help to get away from
New York. As Tormaline says.
Speaker 7 (39:11):
She was burnt down, you know, just like very plainly.
She was exhausted, like the trips to La and the
Fire Island, going to the cave. She found out ways
to get geographical distance in order to feel a level
of spaciousness in her life.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
I did basically get on the planet traveling.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
And with my nurse and you know, just forget about it.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Just about everything is happening where I am and go
out and get fresh air.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Marcia still made regular trips to California. She was in
LA when she did the nineteen eighty eight interview with
Jim Kaepner. You've heard throughout the series.
Speaker 9 (39:52):
I've never seen you in Dragon, I mean during my
drag anymore. But I'm picking about going back in.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
In the interview, Marcia still has her usual mannerisms and
flares that make her look firm to me. At least.
She's wearing a sweater with pink flowers on it, paired
with a more butch leather jacket and a visor. Just
her natural hair, no wig, no makeup.
Speaker 9 (40:16):
I'm thinking about, you know, doing some more drag because
I'm going to beauty school now around the corner here, Yeah,
I'm going to Newbery in February.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
First, it's a relief to know Marcia had these pleasures
that she knew to make her activism sustainable, she needed
to recharge, be in the sun and learn new things.
Speaker 7 (40:39):
Like these moments where she knew it was a vital
important to care for herself and rest and recover and
not be in service to anyone else other than her
own well being, I think is the real part of
her story.
Speaker 6 (40:55):
How long will the schooling take now?
Speaker 4 (40:57):
Oh, well, forty two years out telling you it's going
to take me a year to go to schal But
I'll be able to help poor people with their hair.
Could to help me with my hair?
Speaker 6 (41:10):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (41:10):
They know how to let me tell you, I bet
you they do. They know how to weave a wig
on that it looks like your own hair and everything.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
I hope to die my hair in law next week
or something. I'd run a new intrigue for Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
With everything she had lost, it would be easy for
Marcia to dwell in the past. But no, Marcia is
still dreaming of the future, a future of helping people,
a future in Hollywood.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
I've not just only helped these people in the past.
I plan to help them in the future.
Speaker 9 (41:50):
But I take restis and this is my rest in
California where I'm going to school.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Marcia helped so many people, and she lots of help
and return. In one interview, she talks for three straight
minutes about all the people who have lent her a hand.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
You have so many, thousands and thousands of people that
helped me.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
All through my life.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
She mentions all kinds of folks. A man named Rob
who she met at her favorite club, the Anavil. He
was restaurant manager, and even after he passed, the folks
at the restaurant would help her out.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
You still give me five.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
And ten dollars now and then, of course, she mentions
that Randy helps her out. Then there's her friend from
the Hot Peaches, Tony.
Speaker 4 (42:40):
Tony Fish gives me help every now and then gives
me a few hundred dollars, or gives me ten dollars
here and ten dollurs over here, and it really ends up.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
She lists some people from the theater scene too, and
they are the friends of friends, folks who have stores
on Christopher Street, her sisters Jeanie and Norma, and her
brother Robert.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
I got so many people in this world.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
As Marcia struggled, but she knew she was cared for.
I think that counts for a lot. In the mid eighties,
she was honored by the community with a special place
in the Christopher Street Liberation March. A seat inside the
(43:27):
Stonewall Car.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
I've been in the movement for like ever since nineteen
sixty nine. I'm in everyday march and I only skipped too.
Ed Murphy, who was a Grand marsha for the Stonewall
Ride contingent.
Speaker 9 (43:41):
He wanted me to ride in the car. It was
an honor in some ways for Marcia.
Speaker 7 (43:47):
That was I think a really beautiful pivotal moment. She
found that she was really receiving her flowers.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
She was being recognized as a person who set the
whole movement off. She was a guest of the Grand Marshal.
Even the Mayor marched in the demonstration that year. Randy
wrote in one of his annual letters that she was
undeniably a living legend in New York. But I want
(44:14):
to take a moment for all of the people in
our community that we lost in the eighties and that
we've lost to AIDS ever since. Our ancestors could have
should have been so much more abundant with talents to
share and stories to tell, but we'll never get to
(44:34):
witness that. This episode is dedicated to the many caregivers
during the AIDS epidemic, including the lesbians, trans people, and
gender nonconforming folks who aren't often given the spotlight for
their tireless work during the crisis. I want to leave
(44:55):
you with Augusto, who has found a beautiful way to
memorialize the people he took care of and all those
that have been lost.
Speaker 10 (45:06):
We talked about honoring all the missing queens on our
street and so forth.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Augusto had a deep desire to memorialize the many, many
people he lost. The crisis peaked long before cell phone cameras,
so instead of photos, he started collecting objects left behind.
Speaker 10 (45:27):
Little mementos. Even if it was a dried flower, this
belonged to x y or Z.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Over the years, Augusto's collection grew and grew. He told
me how one of his friends described him recently.
Speaker 10 (45:41):
This old queen. She's a hoarder. She buys awful art
from street people. She collects everything, she says receipts, she
has ticket steps.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
But these objects became a snapshot of people no longer
with us in places too. They are remnants of a
downtown New York that was changing rapidly, even as Augusto
stayed in his same studio apartment on Third Street. One day,
Augusto's friend the one who called him a hoarder, mentioned
(46:12):
the collection to a couple of art galleries. They came
to see Augusto's decades of stuff.
Speaker 10 (46:18):
Thank god, Sam and Jacob braved getting into my apartment.
They risked their lives because I had stable boxes up
to the ceiling.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
He had things piled everywhere. Several of the objects were
turned into shrines.
Speaker 10 (46:32):
They came and very bravely said we'll give you a
show in a year, and I thought, what show? And
they put up that the shrines were come Stare Craig.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
It was art.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Augusto has always been an artist, even in times he
didn't realize it, whether performing street theater with Marcia, experimental
shows at La Mama or cat Fecino, or these shrines
like Marcia, Augusto's life was about making art, whether or
not it was officially recognized.
Speaker 10 (47:10):
What I was doing through the years in rooming houses
and so forth was.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
Art, and then it was recognized. Augusto had his first
visual art show in twenty twenty two at the Gordon
Robieshow Gallery on Seventeenth Street.
Speaker 10 (47:29):
And thanks to them is that in this latter chapter
of my journey. I'm very grateful it happened now, and
I think I'm still getting a little too much attention
because the pieces were about the pioneers, the people who
did it, who braved and lived their life the way
they wanted to.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
One piece was even acquired by MoMA.
Speaker 10 (47:54):
When they took the shrines, I thought, what is it.
Speaker 11 (47:58):
Going to be?
Speaker 10 (47:59):
It's what does it mean? And now I can't believe.
Speaker 6 (48:05):
Of art.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
It's on display still. You can see it. A white
cabinet with six shelves. There are photographs and newspaper clippings.
There are dolls and beads. There are fake flowers and
plastic fish, a stuffed animal. Next to the shelf stands
a yellow paper sign. It says justice for Marcia. That's
(48:32):
next week on After Lives.
Speaker 7 (48:38):
And I just went up to her and I just
told her I loved her, actually, and I told her
thank you.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Marcia was pulled out of the water light over the
edge here.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
You would never kill usself.
Speaker 6 (48:47):
We knew that we bought it.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
We were handling up to sixteen hundred cases of anti
gay Wesleyan trans violence every year.
Speaker 11 (49:01):
We go to this church, and this church is pat
to the gills pat. This was the most awesome spectacle
I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Thanks for listening to Afterlives. You can find this episode
in future ones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us a rating
and review to let us know what you think. Afterlives
is a production of The Outspoken Network from iHeart Podcasts
in partnership with School of Humans. I'm your host and
(49:36):
creator Raquel Willis. Dylan Hoyer is our senior producer and scriptwriter.
Our associate producer is Joey pat Sound design and engineering
by Jess Krincic, Story editing by Julia Furlong, fact checking
by Carolyn Talmage. Score composed by Wise Murray. Our production
(49:58):
manager is Daisy Church. Executive producers include me, Raquel Willis,
and Jess Krinchich from The Outspoken podcast Network, Amelia Brock,
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley from School of
Humans and The Cats Company. The image of Marsha in
our show art is provided by the Leslie Lowman Museum
(50:20):
of Art Founder's gift p. Fifteen dot six nine nine
dot one oh six. A special thank you to everyone
who provided archival tape, including Marcia nineteen ninety two by
Michael Casino and Marsha at Tony Nunziata's by Michael Casino,
courtesy of Michael Casino. The Randy Wicker and Marsha P.
(50:44):
Johnson Papers at the LGBT Community Center National History Archives
and Interview with Marsha P. Johnson nineteen eighty eight from
one National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries
Host
Raquel Willis
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