Cumming to terms: Bareback Pornography, Homonormativity, and Queer Survival in the Time of HIV/AIDS

In October of 2010,1 attended a farewell book reading by the infamous Mattilda (aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore) at the Modern Times Bookstore, one of the first collectively owned book sellers in San Francisco. A founding member of San Francisco’s chapter of Gay Shame (Sycamore 2008; Weiss 2008) a radical queer political instigator, and editor of several queer-themed anthologies (for example, the anti-assimilationist collection That’s revolting!) as well as three autobiographical novels, Mattilda read from her newest work, The End of San Trancisco, and explained to the audience present the nature of the health issues driv- ing her relocation to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Despite Mattilda’s cynically humorous writing and performance style, the selection of pieces pro- duced a feeling of melancholia for those connected to radical queer pol- itics in San Francisco—agenda radicalism that Mattilda sadly contended was rapidly disappearing and disaggregating. The nostalgia evoked in her reading stirred within me a yearning for these queer actions and analyses of yesteryears; simultaneously, Mattilda’s physical exodus from both San Francisco politics and the city’s queer artistic landscape served as a disheartening metaphor for what I perceived as the increasing exile status of radical queer politics in an urban locale with a rich history of queer critique of oppressive, exclusionary state practices.