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About twenty years ago, Julie met a boy named Timmy. He was 16 and had just run away from home to experiment with his sexuality, drugs and the freedom a town like Madison affords. He tried, at all costs, to be “different than the normal American farm boy.” He got into punk music, spiked his hair, and played in a band. He moved to Washington D.C. and then to San Francisco where he met a faction of gay punks into speed and cocaine and he had a pet rat that he’d let sit on his shoulder when he rode the subway, which almost always disgusted somebody. Tim and his rat lived downstairs from Anjy who also had a pet rat. When he moved to Italy, he left his rat to live with Anjy’s rat in her sofa. The two rats later died together and Anjy put them in a plastic bag with a brick and threw them off the Golden Gate Bridge. Shortly after Tim settled into life in Milan…where he lived with his lover, taught English and worked more seriously on his painting…he discovered he had AIDS. He died at age 30. A couple of years ago we ran into Anjy who’d left San Francisco and come to Milwaukee where she bought a house and operated her own bead shop. She was working at a natural food store deli counter at the time and had made the studded bra she’s wearing. The knife and cutting board are her favorites and things she’s had with her since living in San Francisco. A few days later she quit her job in the deli to take a higher paying administrative job at a gasoline distributor. © J. Shimon & J. Lindemann 1998 |