Here’s what Kenny Greene boldly confessed on his death bed to Sister 2 Sister Magazine:
S2S: Hi Kenny. You sound good.
Kenny: Yeah, you know I have AIDS?
S2S: I know. How long have you been in the hospital?
Kenny: It’s been a long time.
S2S: How long have you known you had AIDS?
Kenny: I’ve known for a long time, but it’s just….I sprained my ankle and this ball came under my foot like a bruise and it just swelled up to the size of a tennis ball. It’s called Kaposi’s sarcoma. It’s an AIDS related disease.
S2S: So after the ball came up under your foot, what happened?
Kenny: I was walking around on it and I should’ve got help from the VA Hospital.
S2S: From the Veterans hospital? Why? Are you an ex-soldier?
Kenny: Yeah. I’m not active now but I was in for three years. I was in the Army.
S2S: You’re kidding?! Well, how old were you when you just kept walking around on it?
Kenny: Yeah, I should’ve went to the VA Hospital and got it taken care of, but I didn’t know what it was.
S2S: Well, didn’t it scare you?
Kenny: Yeah.
S2S: It did, huh? Well how did you get the AIDS? Was it intravenously or are you homosexual?
Kenny: Yeah, I’m homosexual…Well, I’m bisexual. I had two girlfriends.
S2S: Do you still like girls?
Kenny: Yeah.
S2S: How did you get AIDS? Do you know the guy who gave it to you?
Kenny: Yeah.
S2S: Is he still alive?
Kenny: Yeah.
S2S: What do you want to tell people out there about the condition that you’re in now?
Kenny: Keep protecting yourself with condoms and don’t have unprotected sex.
S2S: Was this guy that you were with a constant partner?
Kenny: Yeah.
S2S: Is he in the hospital?
Kenny: No.
S2S: He’s okay?
Kenny: Yeah. He’s a carrier.
Today we still live in a society that so often judges a person base on their sexuality, rather than the content of their character. The truth is that if Kenny Greene would have come out as an openly bisexual man, the R&B songs he was killing it on, with his soulful sound, would have probably plummeted because folks would have been confused about whether or not he was singing to a man or a woman. However, instead of Kenny being placed inside of a box, maybe society should work harder to remove the boxes altogether. Of course that’s a lot easier said than done, but the more topics like this are publicly discussed, the more we will all have a better understanding of one another- regardless of if one is straight, bisexual, gay, or try-sexual.
We salute Kenny Greene for putting himself second, and the awareness to help others first, as he laid on his death bed and bravely shared this info about himself in that interview. He knew he was dying and he could have taken his secrets to his grave to allow his legacy to live on untainted, but he chose to be a bigger man than that. May he continue to rest well.
