Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone (14 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 didn’t take a shower for two months after seeing
Psycho.
I didn’t see a dentist for five years after seeing
Marathon Man.
Then I saw
Little Shop of Horrors,
with Steve Martin as the sadistic dentist and Bill Murray as the masochistic patient. Thereafter I avoided professional dental hygiene for another two years.
 
When I was nine, I deliberately bit my dentist on the hand, just to see how he would react. He ratted on me to my mom. He happened to be my first cousin once removed.
 
I go through a period when I only see dentists named Jeffrey and only date oboists named Mark.
In a moment of extreme poor judgment, I comment to an attractive young man I had met at the sleazy Body Center about the ridiculous dental factory I passed on Bleecker Street that I deemed “Bitter Slime.” In an unfortunate coincidence, Jeffrey C. happens to be employed at said Better Smiles: He is, in fact, one of the two dentists. Out of guilt and embarrassment, I immediately make an appointment and see him for several years.
A few years later, I ask my friend Glenn Person for a dental recommendation. He refers me to Jeffrey H. Glenn is in late-stage AIDS at that time. Jeffrey discreetly asks me if I have a similar condition. I tell him no.
We go to the same gym.
Jeff is competent and mildly boring as dentists go. He once tells me an amusing joke about a woman who is being simultaneously examined by him and another dental professional. “I’ve always wanted to have two men in my mouth,” she says. But then Jeff retires and moves to Florida. Jeff dies of AIDS about a year later.
 
Wayne refers me to his exceptionally cute dentist, Russell. Unfortunately, I never even meet him. My first visit consists of an hour’s worth of X rays with a gaily Hispanic mildly sadistic hygienist named Nanette, who is expecting twins in August. Calipers are used to measure gaps at my gums. This experience is altogether unpleasant. I neglect to make an immediate follow-up appointment. The office is relocating to another floor in the building in a week. The receptionist forgets to schedule my next appointment. A month later, when I return to get my gums planed, Russell is out with a sprained back. Three months later he is dead. AIDS, again. Brenda, the mildly obese receptionist who was either a textbook fag hag in love with her homosexual boss, a sympathetic lesbian, or a former backup singer for an orotund Bette Midler, has disappeared; she is either pregnant or grief-stricken. She has been replaced by a thin-lipped harpy from Queens who wears tight earrings that pinch.
 
Am I turning into Kimberly Bergalis?
I guess it’s too late to sue the estates.
 
This is Kimberly Bergalis in Hell: Every morning she wakes up at 7:00 A.M. to a ringing phone. Groggily, she picks up the receiver to hear, “Miss Bergalis? This is Dr. Acer’s receptionist. I’m calling to remind you that your dental procedure has been rescheduled for today at five.”
 
A stalwart Irish boy with a firm grip grinds my gums down to size on subsequent visits. I spit the requisite mouthful of blood into the bowl, and watch it swirl down the drain, chased by running water.
 
 
 
 
Are there any lesbian dentists in the tri-state area?
 
The hygienist instructs me on the Water Pik. I am to use it nightly with water on the highest setting, and then, once again, with a fluoride solution. After flossing with diligence. After brushing my teeth. After taking my nightly pills. What a drag. This will be the last thing I do every night, when I am completely exhausted. My nocturnal routine has been lengthened by a good ten minutes. Strictly speaking, I should use the Water Pik twice a day, but nobody expects that level of compliance.
For a few weeks the only time I bleed is when I Water Pik at night. I wonder whether I am ameliorating or exacerbating the situation.
For some reason I am acutely embarrassed by my Water Pik. It becomes another most intimate of acts that I hide from the public. There seems to be no discreet way to disappear into the bathroom and Water Pik while some winsome youth is arrayed on the couch in a variety of seductive poses, listening to Tchaikovsky on the Victrola. There is no background noise loud enough to cover it: My Water Pik sounds like a Hamilton mixer on the Pulverize setting for grinding up bones. The Water Pik becomes yet another reason for avoiding sleep-overs, another chain around my neck. My overnight bag now consists of a handful of pharmaceuticals and vitamins, my contact-lens case, my saline solution, my cleaning solution, my Water Pik, the two nozzles, and a bottle of Peridex oral rinse. There’s barely room enough for an extra pair of underwear and socks.
I go to Montreal to visit my favorite French-Canadian over Memorial Day weekend 1992. Although I use the Water Pik in the kitchen, I still manage to keep up Gabriel’s roommate, along with the entire neighborhood in a two-block radius.
The next time I visit the hygienist I ask if I have to bring the Water Pik with me on vacations. Could I skip a few days and simply floss hourly instead? I am worried about European electrical currents and whether Evian water would be suitable in France. Visiting my family in upstate New York is traumatic enough as is.
He is obviously in a bad mood. In the most patronizing tone he could possibly adopt, he says, “You’re not doing this for me.”
 
I am having a seventies midlife crisis: I’ve grown sideburns and I’m dating an aerobics instructor. Binky is six-two, with jet-black hair. He never wears underwear.
One night I achieve a major intimacy breakthrough. Binky stays over, and while he disinterestedly flips through last month’s
Inteview
magazine, I Water Pik
in his presence.
Like most potential boyfriends, Binky has minor commitment problems. At five o‘clock he can’t commit as to whether or not he is coming in from Queens to see me that night at ten.
Binky’s HIV-negative, so he can nurse me through sickness and woe and pull the plug when the time comes. We enjoy quiet nights at home together, just sitting in front of the television and watching “A Current Affair,” a show I had never heard of before I met Binky.
I truly love Binky. He makes every night we sleep together seem like a vacation. It is true bliss to kiss him good-night and cuddle with him for a few minutes. Unfortunately, the waking hours aren’t quite as blissful. Binky has a mind of his own. He doesn’t get along with any of my friends. As time goes by, I find him to be extremely passive-aggressive. Just my luck to fall for someone whom I eventually discover I have nothing in common with.
 
 
 
For about a year I keep up with the nightly dental hygiene. I use the Water Pik five or six times a week. I allow myself a vacation every week, just as I allow myself to skip an arbitrary exercise when I go to the gym. Then, abruptly, I stop. I seem to have no ill effects. My gums have stopped bleeding. Astonished, I keep this secret to myself on my next visit to the dentist. I expect to be sharply remonstrated. Perhaps they will even rap my knuckles with a metal ruler. Instead, I am encouraged to keep up with whatever I’ve been doing.
Now I use my Water Pik only on those rare occasions when guilt has so overwhelmed my being that I find it necessary to expiate my sins.
Every day for the rest of my fucking life.
100 Ways You Can Fight the AIDS Crisis
 
1. Wear a red ribbon to show your support of people with AIDS.
2. Explain to people who assume that you’re color-blind and wearing mismatched clothing the significance of the red ribbon.
3. Consider tying a red ribbon around the throat of your least-favorite politician (e.g., Jesse Helms) until his eyes bulge and he turns blue.
4. Use a condom every time.
5. Distribute condoms at your local high school.
6. When short of change, a condom is always welcome at the collection plate, especially for liberal theologians such as Cardinal O‘Connor.
7. Write letters to your local congresspersons demanding they double the research budget of the National Institutes of Health.
8. Shoot Jesse Helms.
9. Send telegrams to your senators demanding they respond to the AIDS crisis.
Originally appeared in LIFEbeat concert fund-raiser program, June 8, 1992.
 
10. Spray-paint stenciled messages on the street in front of the White House reminding the President that the AIDS crisis is not over.
11. Lobby for universal health care.
12. Vote for the presidential candidate who will do the best job combating AIDS.
13. Get your mom, your dad, your ex-lover, your sister-in-law, your nephew, your aunt, and your high-school math teacher to vote for the presidential candidate who will do the best job combating AIDS.
14. Poison Jesse Helms.
15. Chain yourself to the gates of the White House until the President takes responsible action on the AIDS crisis.
16. Join the massive AIDS Unity March and Rally on July 14.
17. Clip and send obituaries of people who have died of HIV- related illnesses along with a personal note to Barbara Bush at the White House.
18. Be visible as HIV-positive. Don’t hide in the closet!
19. Don’t lie in obituaries.
20. Shut down an obstreperous federal organization for a day.
21. Block the entrance to a pharmaceuticals company that is charging exorbitant prices for life-saving drugs.
22. Make a panel for the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
23. Make sure that the President sees the Quilt this time, and not from a helicopter fly-over.
24. Demonstrate against the INS to open the borders for people with HIV
25. French-kiss a person with AIDS today.
26. Stir soup for God’s Love, We Deliver.
27. Volunteer to be a buddy at GMHC.
28. Answer the phones at the Minority Task Force on AIDS.
29. Garrote Jesse Helms.
30. Donate a computer to the Women and AIDS Resource Network.
31. Take minutes at the ACT UP meetings.
32. Form a needle-exchange group.
33. Phone-zap local legislators when heinous repressive legislation is being proposed.
34. Fight homophobia. Hug a queer today.

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