Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone (35 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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There are ongoing negotiations. Eric Sawyer calls Bob Hattoy in the White House on his cellular phone. Someone else calls an official in the Department of Health and Human Services. Permits are waived. We are eventually offered a compromise march. We can follow the vehicle as long as we keep the casket in the van. We will be able to march with the casket for a block, two blocks away from the White House. Then we must return.
We had planned on having a ceremony at the front of the White House and leaving. We would have been long gone if the police had allowed us to proceed when we arrived. Tim’s brother, Randy, is consulted. He is appalled. Eventually we accept the compromise. Perhaps we will continue with the procession after the block. Perhaps we won’t. We decide that this will be the best way to proceed. We are tired and angry and hurt.
Then, as we are about to start, at three-thirty, after two and a half hours of unpleasantness and ugliness, the police change their mind. We can proceed if we wait until six-thirty, after rush hour.
The police have not acted in an honorable fashion.
The police have just been stalling us for the past three hours.
We decide to take the coffin out of the van and start our procession.
We are operating on the basic assumption that the police will respect the sanctity of death.
We are wrong.
I move with several people on the left side of the van, to give enough room to open the back door of the van. I am face to face with the cops. We open the door and several people start to take out the coffin.
“Put it back in!” scream the police. “Put it back in!”
It seems that they are afraid of death; they are that afraid of the physical evidence of the notorious neglect of this administration and the previous two presidential administrations. Tim Bailey’s body is the smoking gun of the epidemic. Tim Bailey’s body accuses them of murder with quiet fury.
What follows is one of the most horrible moments of my life. In a fracas that reminds me of
Day of the Locust,
police and pallbearers struggle with the coffin. I can’t tell whether the police are trying to shove the coffin back into the van or steal it as evidence of our transgression. This moment of madness is captured on CNN. I can see the coffin banged on the edges. In the extreme violence of the scene, I have the impression that the wood is chipping, splintering, cracking, and breaking. To protect the body, the pallbearers return the coffin to the van. When it is over, the police have arrested Randy Bailey, brother of the deceased, for assaulting a police officer.
Randy Bailey isn’t an activist. He isn’t a member of ACT UP. He’s had no experience with AIDS activism. He’s never been arrested for a political protest. Randy Bailey is a straight man from Ohio whose brother died of AIDS.
Someone yells, “Someone volunteer to get arrested with him so he won’t be alone!”
I look around. I am tired. Jim Aquino pauses, then marches straight into the police, and they immediately arrest him. He is as innocent as a lamb led to the slaughter. Two others attempt to get arrested. James Learned tries to break through a solid line of police with the fury of a caged bull, but they won’t let him through. He is furious.
This is not a game. This is life and death. This is murder. This is the physical evidence. This is AIDS. This is the remains of Timothy Bailey, dead of AIDS at thirty-five.
We begin our ceremony, on top of the van. Someone sets up the sound system. Several people speak eloquently. Joy is fire and anger.
I cannot speak.
The body is to be returned to the funeral home in New Jersey. Barbara starts the van. The police allow us to have a brief procession out of the parking lot. We march and chant behind the coffin. I stand right behind the van. I do not want the police any closer; I do not want them to have any contact with the van. They desecrate everything they touch. The coffin is surrounded by bouquets of flowers from the funeral home. Jim Baggett starts passing back flowers from the van. Tim used to fill his backpack with flowers on Gay Pride Day and pass out flowers to everyone he saw. In his honor, we pass flowers back until each of us has a flower. At the end of the driveway, the cops push us all aside and form a line between us and the van. Vincent was going to be dropped off at a D.C. hotel with the sound equipment. The police tell them to dump Vincent and the sound equipment on the street. The police give the van an escort all the way to Baltimore, Maryland.
Throughout the entire standoff, an officer stands to the side with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Don’t you understand, this is a funeral? Wouldn’t you give this much respect to any warrior who died fighting bravely? He’s dead! Show some respect!” I am close to hysterical. Barry is infuriated. He wants to go to D.C. the next time a policeman dies in the line of duty to laugh at the funeral service.
 
What do you plan on doing with your body after your death? Do you want your body burned in effigy at the offices of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association? Do you want it impaled on the White House fence as an indictment of the current administration? Do you want to donate your HIV-infected organs to the Archdiocese of New York, members of the religious Right, militant antiabortionists, members of the National Rifle Association, feminists against pornography, and right-wing Republicans?
I stand in awe of those like Mark Lowe Fisher and Tim Bailey who are able to commit their bodies for political funerals.
The concept is unfathomable, incomprehensible, as difficult to grasp as death.
Death Be Not Proud
 
It’s your best friend Howard’s thirty-third birthday, and judging from his recent blood work, it may be his last. You’re at your wits’ end trying to select the perfect present. A one-year subscription to
Entertainment Weekly
might be overly optimistic. Somehow a case of Sustecal lacks that personal touch. Why not consider a LifeStyle Urn™?
Yes, in that vast suburban mall known as Amerika, Land of the Free (to Shop Till You Drop) and Home of the Grave, an innovative company called LifeStyle Urns™ has started marketing cremation urns designed specifically for the gay community. One urn has a lambda carved on the top panel, symbolizing gay pride. Another has a rosebud, symbolizing peace; a third is gracefully smooth on all sides. And, yes, there is a twenty-four-hour toll-free number (1-800-685-URNS) for catalog and order information. The press release (accompanied by a refrigerator magnet and a Rolodex card) states: “By offering the privacy of at-home catalog shopping, LifeStyle Urns™ serves those who are ill with AIDS.”
I for one associate the term “lifestyle” with condoms and Robin Leach. But I guess that “DeathStyle” would be too morbid. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before Ivana Trump starts hawking LifeStyle Urns™ on the Home Shopping Network. One day you’ll be walking through your favorite department store and hear the loudspeakers boom: “Attention, Kmart shoppers! We have a blue-light special in aisle thirty! Fifty percent off on LifeStyle Urns™ for the next fifteen minutes.”
Originally appeared as “Urn Your Keep” in
Out,
December/January 1994.
 
Last Sunday I called them up for further information.
“Hello. Is this LifeStyle Urns™? Could you tell me how much your cremation urns go for? ...
“Gee, that’s pretty expensive. Do you ever have sales? Do you sell seconds at a warehouse outlet? Like maybe when you were doing sample runs, you did a few with the lambda on backward? ...
“You don’t? You see, my lover, Bernard, just died last week and the problem is the insurance barely paid for the memorial service. I’m kind of low on funds myself, since I had to quit my job and go on public assistance last fall. It looks like I’ll be a goner in a couple of months, too, so I really don’t see why I need an urn for the mantelpiece that will last forever. His family disowned him when they found out he was gay. Most of his friends are already dead. Do you have any slightly damaged urns? Ones that biodegrade in a few years? Do you have any urns that are cracked on the bottom, so nobody would know?”
But of course I didn’t actually call them.
I was too appalled.
Is this crass commercialism? Is this tasteless exploitation? Or is it just another example of niche marketing in our consumer marketplace?
I admit I had my doubts about this product until I read the tag line on the press release:
“LifeStyle Urns™: The Dignified Choice.”
Regrets
 
I’ve never been to Greece.
I waited until I was nineteen to have sex.
I had sex with the wrong person in 1982.
I had anal sex with the wrong person in 1982.
I had anal sex without a condom with the wrong person in 1982.
I had anal sex without a condom with the wrong person in 1982 and got infected with HIV
I had anal sex without a condom with the wrong person in 1982 and got infected with HIV and warts.
I went to Gluteus Maximus, M.D., and suffered the consequences.
I allowed someone to slip his dick into my asshole and fuck me without a condom in 1984 even though he tricked me into it, but especially because he said he couldn’t possibly be positive because he was only a top.
I didn’t have wild sex with drugs in 1979 because I was too shy, restrained, conservative, neurotic, and a mess besides; I was afraid of chemicals and the addictive personality. I never really binged and purged and went crazy and drank excessively and didn’t suffer the next day. I did drugs only a few times (I wonder if heroin would have been nice), and the only solace is that I may end up trying morphine at the end.
I believe that there may be some possibility of transmitting HIV infection through oral sex, and consequently, my HIV-negative boyfriends of the past haven’t been able to blow me on a regular basis.
I didn’t try water sports even though my boyfriend was rather insistent.
I never got used to anal intercourse.
I never rimmed anyone in 1979.
I never rimmed anyone without Saran Wrap, period.
I never jerked off Vito in the Chelsea Gym steam room. I never was fist-fucked.
I never really let go.
I never found my G spot.
I never made it with a lesbian.
I had sex with a former health-care professional of mine in his office.
I had sex with a former health-care professional of mine in his office during an appointment.
I had sex with a former health-care professional of mine in his office during an appointment when there were several people in the waiting room.
I had sex with a former health-care professional of mine in his office during an appointment when there were several people in the waiting room, and he charged for the entire session.
When I found out that Harold was dating Barry, for whom I lusted and would never have again, I spent an hour regaling Harold with rude and sordid tales about his therapist that were unfortunately true.
I didn’t get arrested at the Supreme Court in 1988 to protest the
Hardwick
decision.
I never found religion.
I don’t believe in an afterlife.
I don’t believe there is anything after death.
I never paid proper attention to astrology.
I didn’t charge more things on Visa before declaring bankruptcy.
I didn’t move out of that hellhole in Hell’s Kitchenette for thirteen years.
I was such a snob that in college I didn’t major in applied mathematics, I majored in pure.
I didn’t go to that interview for a mathematician at the jet-propulsion lab because I had already accepted a job as a computer programmer.
I’m still at my fucking job at the Modern Language Association after twelve years and counting.
I wasn’t attracted enough to John to be his boyfriend.
I didn’t fall in love with Mark.

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