Appalachian Interracial Gay Couple-Randy and Steven

all right randy and stephen where are you guys from originally randy i'm from here i'm from charleston in stephen where do you grow up i'm from uh pokken like toy area so just north of here yeah yeah and uh what were your childhoods like um i mean mine was mom was actually pretty chaotic you know i just had a mother growing up who was you know my mom was uh addicted to crack growing up so it was kind of just me and my brother my mother brother my little sister and i kind of raised them and like growing up like my mom was always kind of like my best friend so i kind of had a chaotic childhood you got chaotic yeah yeah no abuse or anything but just nuts i mean like in the beginning there was a little bit of abuse like from some of her boyfriends and stuff like that but as i got older that kind of went away there was sexual abuse i mean a little bit yeah yeah when i was younger like maybe when i was like five or six that's what i'm saying i don't think i was ever technically a virgin and that sounds terrible but yeah i don't think i ever actually was and stephen how'd you grow up well it was this me my mom and my stepdad um 30 years he just passed away last year from lung cancer room i was beat up every day going against the wall born hungry fans all kinds of stuff i got scars all over me from childhood people look at the exterior they don't see them the past um i was sexually abused by my brothers starting my little brother was starting about eight nine ten and every time i would go talk to my mom and my dad stepped out about i was lying because they didn't want to believe it but they knew what was going on and it wasn't until my little niece come forward and said she was sexually abused by my brother's own kid by him and my family's i was thrown out because i would because i turned against my family so i was myself with a lot of use and so you're kicked out at what age i was kidnapped probably about 16 17 years old and i've had to work ever since i was 19 like we had to pay away did you finish high school oh yeah you did yeah i went to college and stuff like that yeah i believe in breaking the cycle um [Music] but i still uh i stood up for my nieces and nephews and um there's a big news story here a couple years ago about a woman using a stun gun on a kid's and that was my brother and my sister-in-law died and i was the only one in the family i stood up for there's five of them i stood up for all five of them because i didn't want to see them go through abuse like i grew up with uh where there was locks on the refrigerators i mean they even counted little debbie cakes and stuff if a pop was missing i'd get my ass ripped yeah so i didn't watch my little niece and nephew so i still i was the only one in the whole family stood up for him and i got thrown out and to this day my family didn't have hardly anything to do with me to this day because i betrayed the family but my nieces and nephews i'm proud to see my i'm a great grand great uncle my niece the stun gun was used on was raped talking to contact me the other night and she had a little girl and i'm in contact with her so yeah my my life has not been easy i had to cook math for my family starting at the age of 11 12 i had to start cooking math that's how i had to pay my weight your family was selling crystal meth they were making money by cooking it yeah thank god i went to office of worry and i went to college so drug use is that something you guys are involved in druggies um i struggled with for many years and i just recently got off a couple months ago when i lost my leg and i had to because it was starting to really really affect my health like i'm 40 years old now i lost my teeth this year and there's many years of drugs what drugs have you used christian math and age every once in a while but not then i had to get off up because i can't do it anymore because my body my body's i got a body of a 90 year old and randy what to what about you um i did like the first time i ever tried crystal meth was when i was like 12 13 years old and then after that like i did it then and maybe for that year when i was i was in middle school actually i did it then and i stopped and then like now and recently kind of i have struggled through like heroin which i'm still kind of battling with trying to get off of it honestly and so how do you guys support yourself now um we have his mentor like his um family friend growing up he pays our bills pretty much pays our rent and everything until he gets his disability and in between that and food stamps and stuff and whatever kind of way we can hustle and kind of you know not have to [Music] yeah you ever get involved in like sex working like that no i don't know i mean i have whenever i was younger not recently since i've been with him no but you know there was a time when i would you know like get him grinder and i had guys that i would meet you know i had sugar daddies and stuff like that and john got some of a guy that would pay me and stuff like that see well since i mean i in the engagement we usually you know gay people don't want to be sleeping around well i was as you say pool say ho at one time but i never done sexual money but i was a hoe you know kind of [ __ ] if you don't my language and but ever since i got it was diagnosed as being hiv positive i started an outlook on stuff i started waking up like i wake up every day sick from hiv was that right yeah and i don't want to subject anybody to hiv i refuse to how does that affect your relationship with randy he has every positive too he's the one that gave it to him i mean yeah as far as we know but i mean honestly it's a blessing in disguise because we have each other you know it's nice to know that i have somebody who doesn't you know judge me for it and someone to stand by my side and it's loyal to me you know i mean so i used to i used to do insulin the hypodermic needles and i went to my doctors and i was like y'all got changes because well i looked out my window over here one day and i saw this old woman and his old man going through the dumpster taking out needles like i've been doing news i i was before my leg got cut off and i i went out and i told him i said y'all may not want to be taking my needles i said that means happy positive because i don't see nobody getting infected so i went to my doctor's and um i had them change it to the pens that way i don't have to they'll it won't be on my conscience somebody grabbed a needle from the dumpster and got hiv due to me even though those that i don't know is doing taking my needles because that's a that's a if you don't understand it's a hard thing to carry boredom knowing that if you you gave some hiv i mean you changed somebody's life i mean like my life has changed radically where i'm going once or twice a month blood work i mean not just your simple blood draw there's twenty thirty tubes of medicine amount of bowels they take out of me the medication is hoarse the medication will make you sick just that's why i don't take my medicine a lot because it makes me so physically ill so i don't want to subject anybody else to this so i'm very cautious when it comes in if i can just stop it my needles even my needles get stolen from the homeless people coming out to my apartment they were taking my years and he was stealing my needles if i can just stop one person from getting it i'm done a lifetime i don't want just diseases almost like my diabetes it's something i don't know what's on anybody even people i hate i would never wish nobody on hiv hiv is terrible and i don't care what they say oh there's medication to help you all medication let me take some medications horse there's nothing bad once you take it and get in your system and you're using yourself taking it for a year and you get the right one it's not that bad it's made me sick every day for me i think it depends on your body everybody's different it's you know for each individual honestly well last month i got dinos with having morsa and they put me in the hospital and um everything went more so in my bones that's what caused me my mind my you know more so than the infection insurance commerce is yeah i got dinosaurs in my bone and it was um a combination of having diabetes and hiv and uh the antibodies they put me on i had to take finnegan and um zofin for the anti nauseams and i take both of them together when they gave her i was on 24-hour antibiotics it's strong antibiotic it pulled my blood count down which i had to sign a release because this only antibiotic would fight it where i was so infected with the melissa that i feel it's pulling my blood count down if you get your blood count the white blood count cell count if it gets down below 200 you go into the age with my blood count it poured my blood count all the way down to 212 214 meaning i only got 14 blood cell counts white blood cell counts to fight infections in my body before i go into ace violence which probably i've been out about a month and a half from the hospital it's probably it's probably turned into east valleys right now so i'm fighting about all my life more worse than anything i've ever fought wasn't a drug addiction it wasn't anything is that your biggest fear right now my biggest fear yes and then i have extra stress about being thrown out on the street like i am with are you getting evicted from your place mm-hmm he's already everybody evicted today's d-day it's the last day we have yeah i have a problem with me until i got my leg cut off and it's just he just doesn't want to pay the thousands of dollars and make it handicap successful even a store i mean i don't know how he gets by with a store not even have electronic doors for 88. the american disabilities act of 1990 is this the lowest point in your lives no no i how about you randy um i can't even begin to even tell you for sure what's the lowest point but this is nothing compared to some of the other things i've been through honestly yeah you guys have each other which helps me exactly we have each other so it kind of makes things easier honestly this has been my lowest point losing my leg learning how to walk over everything learn how to walk you know i got a hospital i haven't learned how to pee stuff in i got to get the rest of my about my knee now cut off and i don't i'm like see if you cut off some more yet mm-hmm because it said there's no infection in his bones they somehow missed this is the lowest point in my life i think we've been through worse than this you go through like depression and things like that mm-hmm yeah they're bad really bad imagine i'm 40 years old going 40 years alone in hawaii i could because you honestly after 40 years learning how to walk and then you're walking and i have to learn how to do everything or again when i had to have somebody wipe my butt and you know just stand me up to use the bathroom you know can you imagine could you how would you deal with that like just gonna take it one day at a time and that's what i'm hearing my faith in god is strong but my faith is way like i know bits of tdj taught us this is only a test and basically jake says big [ __ ] about it charleston washington across things so here here in appalachia does it make it you know the the attitudes maybe a little different than they are in other parts of the country is it difficult to be an interracial gay couple mm-hmm i come from polka poco west virginia i don't race hysteria in this area imagine growing up being gay then you have ku klux klan people and jamie over there knows the area come from imagine being gay let alone have an attraction to black guys yeah they have their ropes and their cross is ready for you he's younger like now now today's age people might really look at us it's different and they're really bad eyelash that we're you know in a relationship in this area like this downtown we're we're like downtown but if i take them over to my area which is much more rural i don't think so he has given his opinion like he hasn't my mom's wife you know what i'm saying he's never been exposed to the type of people i was raised around like i would never take him around people in my neighborhood jamie you know what i'm talking about he thinks he knows he thinks he knows no people have hidden covers people wear sheepskins while i live i mean yeah there's no way in hell i would ever take him around my neighborhood in daylight let alone in nighttime honestly be honest what what was the best times of your life ready mm-hmm meeting him yeah waking up every day him next to myself yeah i'm saying kind of meeting each other getting to know each other it's been it's been pretty good honestly it's nice to hear mm-hmm a lot of people surprised like ups and downs but overall a lot of people have surprised seven years seven years a lot of people are surprised like when they find out where i'm from and then find out how they black guys how the hell did you make it you know of course and he knows one day he was at tutors and nitro and i'm sitting outside and talking to this guy and if you talk to me i'm not you can't really tell i'm gay okay unless you get to know him they should get to know me and know me well because i was raised in environment with man you gotta be a man you can't feminist no hell no you get you get you hung across but we said tutors eating breakfast one day and randy was in the car and i sat and talked to this old white dude old man and he's like these damn quills and these [ __ ] and they're sorry he was getting on that's all things i'm talking about gay people being married stuff and then out pops ran in the other car and he comes up to his head babe he gives me a kiss and that guy went i was like oh but that's just a way i i've adapted to people like both both sides of tracks like i've been fat and i've been skinny i know what it's like to be fat i don't know where it's like to be skinny i'd much rather be fat again and be honest with you what would you say is the most important lesson you guys have learned in your lives other people see less than he said i showed other people love for other people forgiveness life of swords tomorrow's never promised that's about graves and definitely just kind of just learning to forgive people honestly and learning to kind of just keep your head up and just keep going honestly very good well randy and stephen thank you so much for sharing your stories you're very welcome and i hope you guys find a new place and i wish you the best of luck thank you thank you

Channel: Soft White Underbelly

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Id: Z2k4Alkk30s

Length: 16min 33sec (993 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021