Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone (31 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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I flash back to my first bowel movement and potty training.
 
“Shall I tell you the consistency of my latest effort?” I ask my friend Wayne, the relentless top and total control freak who giggles incessantly, on the phone.
“I’d be only too delighted to hear it,” he replies.
 
 
I think of much as I contemplate the tiles on the bathroom floor.
What is the thin line between normal health and HIV? Is this diarrhea that bizarre? Is this something I could have if I were HIV-NEGATIVE? Am I violently ill, or is it all my imagination, the mental amplification of minor symptoms and ailments to the resonant frequency of insanity? It is getting harder and harder to distinguish between common ailments and pathology.
What separates me from everyone else? Low T-cells? It’s just a number. The seventeen thousand and one warts on my hands? I can always wear gloves. An insane fear of death? That’s completely normal. The runs? Who doesn’t have the runs once in a while? An occasional allergic reaction capable of immobilizing me for a week? I have one friend who gets hives when he eats seafood, and another who has asthma. A ream of prescriptions and monthly doctors’ visits? Maybe I’m just a hypochondriac. Fatigue? Is there anyone who lives in New York City who doesn’t have at least a mild case of fatigue?
 
 
A week later (May 22, 1993) I’m scheduled for one day’s worth of community service because I was arrested, along with more than two hundred gay activists, for marching in protest of the Saint Pa-trick’s Day Parade. Peter, Jan, and I have elected against taking the charges to trial because we just don’t want to go through the hassle of forty-nine court appearances to have half the charges thrown out as unconstitutional, maybe leaving one charge that sticks, for which we will be required to do three to five days’ community service. I have only so much vacation time to take. I keep missing work. One day for the faux flu, another for the turkey trots. I keep taking long lunches for demos. I really didn’t plan on getting arrested on Saint Patrick’s Day; when I was finally released, I called in to work and said I was “detained.”
But I’m worried: How will I last eight hours working in a park without my own personal Portosan? I’m better, but still, I’m not altogether sure. I wake up on Saturday at a quarter to seven so I can meet Jan and Peter for breakfast at seven; we take a cab to the park and get there by eight. Our eight hours of community service shrink to forty-seven minutes of actual work, because the trash compactor broke down after we shoveled some rocks into it. It wasn’t my idea. The sanitation worker told us to do it.
 
 
 
 
Now when I am kissed, should I turn my face to the left for a chaste peck on the cheek, like the rest of my terminally ill friends who are afraid of the tiniest bugs? Poor Tim has no short-term memory left at all; Joy had to give him his cha-cha heels seven times last Wednesday in the hospital.
 
 
If only I had taken Imodium that first night. If only I had forced myself to vomit immediately and cleared my system of whatever wretched substances it had ingested. If only I called my doctor on the first day. If only I stopped eating freshly grated Romano cheese. If only I took Gas-X on a regular basis. If only I wasn’t so high-strung and nervous. If only I knew how to meditate. If only I believed in a higher power. If only.
I like to remember the simple time when life was a series of multiple-choice quizzes, and all I needed for success was a sharpened No. 2 pencil and a uniform standardized-answer sheet. I try to reformulate my new-gained knowledge from this dreadful experience into several basic rules. Hindsight is certainly unfair, but occasionally has some practical value. Through hindsight we are allowed the illusion of correcting the past and preventing calamities in the future.
I am comforted by the fact that I won’t have to go through this again, or if I do, at least it will be easier. Yet I know in my heart of hearts that I will—if not this, then some other medical monstrosity. And it will only be worse.
Notes on Death
 
Death means never having to say you’re sorry.
Death means never being able to say you’re sorry.
Death is not proud.
Death has always relied on the kindness of strangers.
Death wears a herringbone suit, a skinny tie, and a black hat.
Death does not brake for pedestrians.
Death is an equal-opportunity antagonist.
Death does not discriminate.
Death is left-handed.
Death is losing its hair.
Death never needs a face-lift.
Death is frequently played by Max von Sydow on the silver screen.
Death is always in style but never in fashion.
Death wears only black.
Death lives in the East Village.
Death does not have a goatee.
Death can be announced at any location: over meat loaf at a dismal diner; in a hospital waiting room; at an ACT UP political funeral; at the Saint-at-Large New Year’s Eve party; at the Trouble party at Zone DK.
Death is the end of all pain.
Death is the end of all pleasure.
Death is the next-best thing to being there.
Death is the final exam, and there are no makeups.
Death can be prematurely embraced as suicide.
Death cannot be cheated.
Death is a way of avoiding responsibilities.
Death masquerades on the subway as a sleeping derelict.
Death does not know the outcome of next year’s Academy Awards.
Death is the one thing worse than being stuck on It’s a Small, Small World for all eternity.
Death does not take kindly to constructive criticism: Hell hath no greater fury than death scorned.
Death comes in like a lion and goes out like the endless abyss.
You Can’t Wear a Red Ribbon IF You’re Dead
 
I’d like to thank the Tony Awards committee and the true husband of my heart—oh, sorry, wrong speech.
I know you’re eagerly awaiting those lesbian folk singers from the Soviet Ukraine; please bear with me. The bisexual marching band should be coming in around ten o‘clock, and the Gay Caucus for Reasonably Priced Tickets to Bette Midler is auctioning off the only pair of underwear that Sharon Stone has worn in the past three years.
I know I should be talking about the great issues of the day, like whether red ribbons represent a deep-seated commitment to fighting the AIDS epidemic even when they involve color-clashing, or whether they are merely used to express our solidarity with the people who attend the Tony Awards.
I know I should be talking about gays and lesbians in the military. Our grand marshals, Perry Watkins and Miriam Ben-Shalom, are our heroes. And I’m not just saying this because Miriam has me locked in her rifle sights. Of course we are opposed to homophobic discrimination in the military. Everybody here should read Randy Shilts’s relentless
Conduct Unbecoming
to find out just how horrifying these witch-hunts have been and continue to be. But we can’t afford to lose focus on AIDS. At times the emphasis on the military made the March on Washington feel like the Nuremberg rally to me.
Speech delivered at Gay Pride rally, Union Square, New York City, June 26, 1993.
 
Unfortunately, we have a President who is capable of handling only one lesbian-and-gay-related issue at a time. The military is the sexy issue this year. So it’s taken Bill Clinton five fucking months to name an AIDS czar who doesn’t report directly to the President or even to the Chief of Staff, but to a domestic-policy adviser. And whatever happened to the Manhattan Project he promised?
I’m halfway down that HIV Highway to Hell. You know the route: Finding out you’re positive, telling your friends, your first nucleoside-analogue reverse-transcriptase inhibitor, telling the folks, your second nucleoside-analogue reverse-transcriptase inhibitor, your first bad reaction to a PCP prophylactic, your third nucleoside-analogue reverse-transcriptase inhibitor, telling your prospective tricks, your diagnosis according to the recently changed CDC definition of PWLTC—Person With Lousy T-cells—your fourth nucleoside-analogue reverse-transcriptase inhibitor, telling your current boyfriend, your first infusion, your thirty-ninth arrest with ACT UP, your ninety-third placebo-controlled protocol, your forty-eighth opportunistic infection, and eventually, hopefully after the Oscars, Gay Pride, and Part 2 of
Angels in America,
you achieve the status of metabolically challenged, which is a polite way of saying “dead.”
You can’t wear a red ribbon if you’re dead. You can’t march in the Saint Patrick’s Day parade if you’re dead. You can’t register as domestic partners if you’re dead. You can’t belong to the military if you’re dead.
I’ve been a member of ACT UP since 1987. ACT UP is a diverse, nonpartisan group, united in anger and committed to ending the AIDS crisis. I know, it feels as if the great moment of ACT UP has passed. Many of our members have burnt out. Many more have died. After finishing his duties as bus monitor, David Serko calmly set up his infusion on the bus ride to Kennebunkport when ACT UP invaded Bush’s summer home. David Serko is dead. Tom Cunningham selflessly managed our work-space for two years with heart and soul. Tom Cunningham is dead. Katrina Haslip brought AIDS activism to the New York City prison system. Katrina Haslip is dead. Robert Garcia energized the Latino/ Latina Caucus of ACT UP with his commitment, ideals, and vitality. Robert Garcia is dead. Last year during the presidential campaign, Bob Rafsky, our conscience, our reality check, accused Bill Clinton face to face of dying of ambition while Bob was dying of AIDS. Bob Rafsky is dead.
It’s exhausting fighting this seemingly endless fight. Let’s face it: We’re all tired of the AIDS crisis. We’re over it. But we’re stuck with it. It’s not going away. It might not end in our lifetimes. We can’t just give up. We’ve got to keep fighting!
If up to half the gay men in New York City are HIV-positive, can there by any other overriding issue?
Needle-exchange and bleach kits are stopgap measures. Fight for the Gottfried Bill to decriminalize needles in New York State! Open the U.S. borders to people who are HIV-positive! We must never again allow our government to create an HIV concentration camp, as it did in Guantanamo Bay for Haitian political refugees. Fight for universal health care and a single-payer system! Managed care is nothing more than health-care rationing where insurance companies select your doctors. Teach safer sex and condoms in schools! The religious Right is literally killing us by ignoring the realities of teenage sex and preaching only abstinence and blocking education in the public schools. Stop drug companies like Astra Pharmaceuticals from raping us by charging $30,000 a year for drugs to fight CMV retinitis! Force drug companies like Hoffmann-La Roche and Daiichi to stop stonewalling research on promising drugs for KS and HIV! AIDS is a health crisis, not an opportunity for profit. We need a fully coordinated Manhattan Project to end the AIDS crisis. The Barbara McClintock Project developed by members of ACT UP is one solution. Get President Clinton to fulfill his campaign promises! Fight for the cure! Come to a Monday-night meeting of ACT UP at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center.
I’d like to close with a chant.
We will not rest in peace. AIDS CURE NOW!
I wrote the first draft of this speech three weeks early and changed it every night, driving Binky crazy. Typically, when I read, it’s for a crowd of twenty or thirty. The last time I miscalculated the size of a crowd was that hideous abortion at the New York Public Library where John Weir and I humiliated ourselves in front of four hundred paying guests. We were asked to have a public conversation about using humor in our writing about AIDS. The organizer insisted on a spontaneous exchange. The result was probably no more tedious or embarrassing than the first week of Chevy Chase’s canceled talk show.
“They’re not going to release the refugees from Guantanamo before Saturday?” I asked my friend Jan.

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