Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone (21 page)
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Authors: David B. Feinberg
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #Memoirs, #Gay & Lesbian, #Nonfiction, #Literature & Fiction, #Essays & Correspondence, #Essays, #Politics & Social Sciences, #Social Sciences, #Specific Demographics, #Lesbian; Gay; Bisexual & Transgender eBooks, #LGBT Studies, #Gay Studies
BOOK: Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone
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Part 2
I see my doctor at 1:30 P.M. He takes blood for T-cells and tests for toxoplasmosis, cytomegalovirus, and cryptosporidium.
He burns nine mollusca from my neck. I shouldn’t touch them. They will blister, then scab.
He gives me a pneumonia shot in the arm, and a pentamidine shot in the ass. In the new office they will offer IV pentamidine in an infusion room that will have TVs. I’m not looking forward to that.
He gives me a shot of B
12
in the arm.
12
in the arm.
I find out my last T-4 count was 105.
He recommends I try peptide T, a nasal spray, twice a day, from the PWA Health Group. He also recommends seeing an eye doctor once a year; twice a year when my count goes below 50. He gives me to referrals.
I go back to work.
After work, like an idiot, I go to the gym. My arm hurts.
Then I go to ACT UP for two hours. The phone tree is activated again.
I go to sleep. My arm hurts.
I hear a mouse fidgeting in the trash.
I get up at 3:00 A.M. and see the mouse in the trash.
I go to the A&P on Ninth Avenue and Fifty-fifth, which is open twenty-four hours except for those rare occasions when you actually need it at 3:00 in the morning. It is closed. I find some poison at a Korean deli and throw it in the trash.
I wake up at 8:00 A.M. The mouse is dead or asleep in the trash. Did the mouse eat the rest of the poison? Did it commit suicide? It didn’t leave a note. I double-bag the trash and throw it out.
After work I buy some glue traps, mouse poison, and bug bombs.
Luis is in a morphine-induced coma. I met Luis three years ago in ACT UP at a series of demos we had in Atlanta. He is dying of lymphoma.
That night, I take a nap after dinner. I wake up at 11:00 P.M. and go back to sleep at 11:30.
Part 3I am down to 90 T-cells. I call to enroll in a vaccine trial. I am placed on a waiting list. They never reach my name. I don’t panic. I’ve been this low before and I’ve bounced back. I feel I won’t bounce back. Last time I had a cold. I was retested the following week. I reached for my checkbook and the doctor worriedly said,
“There will be no charge for this,” which made me even more nervous.
Part ...It starts out like any other day, but by the time it’s over, you realize
The Canals oF Mars
Next time I’ll remember my sunglasses.
I’ve always hated sunglasses. I admit mirrored motorcycle shades can be sexy, but only because I imagine the brightest, clearest blue eyes behind them. Generally, the wearer of said eye apparel, perhaps confusing a statuesque physique with a statuesque demeanor, will remain immobile long enough to function as an aid to personal hygiene and grooming. I have on several occasions, upon failing to elicit any human response, used an impassive person’s glasses to determine whether a piece of celery or a pubic hair was stuck in my teeth, all the time loudly commenting on my dilemma.
Sunglasses function primarily as a barrier, a way of avoiding someone’s glance. I never know whether the wearer of sunglasses is looking at me, through me, or beyond me, at the skinny blond in the red kerchief barreling through the crowd on roller blades. Sunglasses are just one more layer of hypocrisy to me. I still recall with some nausea the ridiculous fashion a few years back of wearing frames with regular glass to appear intellectual, and knowing someone who would wear contacts beneath such glasses. I suppose there may be some protective value to sunglasses, but frankly, I prefer crow‘s-feet to raccoon eyes.
Only now my eyes are saucers. My pupils could swallow you. It’s a look: sexy, but incompetent. Margaret Keane herself could have painted me as another sad-eyed orphan as I stagger home from my ophthalmologist, located on swank Park Avenue, an impressive but not particularly convenient address. It’s a gorgeous day. I’d feel guilty if I took a cab in such clement weather, if I could find one without running into it. The sun is shining brightly and even the cars look freshly bleached: television ads for Tide or household cleanser. The sun is deadly and I feel like a vampire as I try to leap from one building shadow to the next. If only Dr. F. took evening appointments, preferably when the moon wasn’t full.
I am here to see Dr. Judith F. on the advice of my physician. Given my current health status, it would behoove me to visit an eye doctor specializing in HIV twice a year. I have to watch out for cytomegalovirus retinitis. About 95 percent of the population has been exposed to CMV It can lead to blindness in people with impaired immune systems. The generally accepted treatment involves implanting a Hickman catheter in the chest and daily or thrice-weekly infusions of an antiviral. This treatment only stabilizes the condition; any vision loss is permanent. There is an experimental treatment called intravitreal implants, where smaller doses of the drug are delivered directly to the eye. A single implant can last several months. Implants avoid the common risk of infection at the catheter sight.
I haven’t had regular eye checkups in years. The last time I saw an optometrist three years ago I ended up paying one month’s rent for a pair of designer frames that still cause comment.
In Dr. F.’s waiting room are elderly ladies and frail young men with earrings.
Her office wall is covered with medical degrees from N.Y.U., which somehow makes me feel smug. I had taped my N.Y.U. degree to the bathroom door. The edges curled after a succession of showers. I think I lost it in my last move.
The doctor is wearing a purple pantsuit. Photos of her son and daughter are propped up on her desk. She measures my glasses in a machine that instantly produces my prescription in red crystal diode numerals.
I sit bleary-eyed in the waiting room, and wait for the drops to take effect. In fifteen minutes I am summoned back to her office.
She shines the light directly into my left eye. I look back and the veins of my eye resemble the canals of Mars. “Look up. Now to the upper right. Now to the right. Now to the lower right. Look down. Now to the lower left. Look left. Now to the upper left. Good.” She clicks the lens machine, and now my left eye stares into blackness, and my right eye is exposed. I wonder whether she is interrogating me or the virus.
I hop onto the subway after my grossly extended lunch. Back at the office, I turn out all the lights. Even the CRT burns at its dimmest setting. After a few senseless hours, I blunder my way home.
Six months later, I return for my second appointment, but later in the day. Again, I forget my shades.
The receptionist hands me the clipboard. Any new drugs since the last visit? Change of address? I list them all, including my new allergies. It won’t be long before my chart here is as voluminous as a novel by Trollope.
Dr. Judith evinces a mild interest that I find slightly patronizing. “Oh, you have that new book on gays and the military. Is it as good as the Times said yesterday?”
“I’ve only just started it.”
After she gives me eye drops, she tells me I can read if I hold the book directly in front of my eyes without glasses. I sit and watch the room slowly grow blurry and bright, a fish inside a large bowl made of prescription-strength glass.
Briefly apologizing, she takes a personal phone call in the middle of my examination. Her husband can’t find her son at the airport.
She examines my eyes through a monstrous magnifying glass I dub the Pupil Enlarger: a fifties horror sci-fi movie prop used to examine mutant flies and crabs exposed to radioactivity. With the calm patience of an affectless serial killer, she scrutinizes the blood vessels in my eyes.
“Your eyes aren’t any worse. They’re as bad as ever. Stay out of trouble. Have an uneventful six months.”
I’ve forgotten to ask her about intravitreal implants.
I’ve had bad eyes since I was seven. I bet a friend at Day Camp Ir oquois the unthinkable sum of a dollar that the arrow he had shot at the archery range was in the yellow. It was, in fact, in the blue ring. Shortly thereafter I got my first pair of glasses, to be replaced, each year, by a thicker model. With each new prescription the world suddenly presented itself to me with stunning clarity. I could actually see each individual blade of grass, each strand of carpet. Yes, this is the unexpected explanation for why nerds with glasses stare at their feet: We are continually astounded at our surroundings.
My eyesight grew so bad that for several years an ophthalmologist would give me drops, under the mistaken belief that the untouched eye would grow stronger to compensate for the weaker one. I remember weaving my way to the bus stop and missing the first two buses because the glaring light made it impossible to read the sign on the bus. Where is that fucking seeing-eye dog when you need him?
By twenty I was pathologically myopic. A barn would make a nice reference point if it didn’t blur into dusk at ten feet. At the beach, after I gingerly removed my glasses, someone would have to point me in the direction of the ocean. After a brief dip at Ven ice Beach, I spent a good twenty minutes trying to find my towel, aided only by my friend Greg’s raucous laughter.
I can’t focus without my glasses. I lose my balance. Words become indistinct. Shouts become murmurs. All is in shadow.
I was raised on standardized multiple-choice aptitude tests. I remember working my way through the colored reading folders in sixth grade, going all the way up to gold. At eye exams I was in a constant state of anxiety: Am I answering correctly? Is the green letter really clearer than the red one? What do you do when the lenses flip into place and you can’t distinguish? What happens if your left eye waters at that crucial moment? There are no study guides. There is no Stanley Kaplan crash course. Still, it was hard to avoid memorizing the eye chart on the wall moments before the questions would begin. I was always afraid that I would give the wrong answer and no one would know.
I’ve felt this way for doctors’ exams. Am I remembering the correct symptoms? Am I asking all the correct questions? Is it a phantom pain in my feet or an actual neuropathic disorder? What is the exact quality of pain, mercy, fear, and hope?
After my examination, I reflect on how much my life revolves around seeing. I write on my laptop. For relaxation I read, or I go to a movie or a play. Everything I do is visual. What do I enjoy that doesn’t involve my eyes? Sleep. There is only sleep.
What would I do if I became blind?
I would get a Kurzweil reader.
I would learn to appreciate music, which used to be nonvisual, before the advent of music videos.
I would have the microwave embossed with instructions in Braille.
I would learn Japanese from tapes.
I would get a Soloflex, because although as a person without sight I would have finally attained enough attitude to go to the gym, I would no longer be able to cruise, which effectively negates all justification to go.
I would try to remain self-sufficient: Perhaps I could install a vending machine in my apartment with cheese and crackers, peanut butter and crackers, macaroni and beef—that sort of thing. Each time I’d press the button, a new surprise would topple down.
I would move to an apartment with no view.
I would order out a lot.
I would only call numbers preprogrammed on my phone.
I would hire hustlers.
But ultimately what’s the point in planning for contingencies?
Raul chided me when he found out I didn’t have a comprehensive disability package. “You’re not likely to get insurance now at any price,” he told me. Raul was very well prepared. It was only natural. He worked for a gay investment firm. Raul had extensive insurance for disability that would have lasted for years.
Yet for all his planning and foresight, Raul was still dead in three months when KS ate away his lungs.
How to Visit Someone in the Hospital with a Terminal Disease
1. Bring gifts suitable to his disability. Don’t bring a cassette of his favorite Audrey Hepburn movie if he’s recently gone blind. Try to stay within his field of vision, if he has any left.
2. Remember to bring vases with flowers. He may need that plastic container for other, more urgent purposes: urine, for example.
3. Don’t be offended if he falls asleep in the middle of your running commentary about your pet’s crazy antics or your boss’s latest tantrum: This may not have anything to do with his level of interest.
4. It may not be the best time to show him your latest piercing if he has just had a catheter implanted in his chest.
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