In recent years, when the title of elder has been placed upon me, I’ve always rejected it. Not just because I felt too young, but also because I believed that being an elder was something you earned. And I did not believe I’d earned it yet. I still don’t.

What I have come to understand is that much of being an elder is really about who survives, and who is left to tell the story. In this sense, being an elder for me seems to be about loss, loneliness, and grief. It’s a reminder of the collective trauma that we as Black gay men and so many marginalized communities face—the war that was waged against us, against our bodies and desires that forced too many of us to become ancestors before we became elders. And for those of us remaining—left to become elders prematurely.

In 1999, the blocks between 10th street and 14th street in Midtown Atlanta was the world I entered. This is where I found community, made friends, earned enemies, felt desired and rejected, built community, mourned community, and ultimately became politicized in a way that is no longer possible. This is where I became an activist. This is where I became a leader; my origin story, if you will. Entering that world for me was like visiting Narnia.

The most painful symptom during my two-week bout with monkeypox has been the grim understanding that if this were a different era, and the arrival of a different epidemic, any column or essay I wrote about my experience with the illness might’ve been among my last words.

I grieve thinking of how many of our gay ancestors attended a Sunday kickback like the one I went to a couple of weekends ago, played dominoes and laughed at memories; announced goals and made plans for getaways; attributed the queasiness they felt after the gathering to having drank too much on an empty stomach; went a couple of days expecting their sickness to pass, only for those at the kickback to soon learn that their friend was dead.

My sickness seems to be passing, and I’m operating under the assumption that this current outbreak does not have a 100 percent fatality rate or lifelong consequences. However, as a gay man who came of age in the 1980s and ‘90s, I feel the terror of being in the first wave of an emerging epidemic. I’ve spent my adulthood in the fast lane and have always recognized it could lead to early exposure to previously unknown threats, but it’s sobering when you find yourself in a situation that could’ve led to a fiery crash. Fortunately, it has felt more like getting a flat tire, as my monkeypox infection has been relatively mild.