Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone (20 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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My doctor found one small wart and treated it with acetic acid. He also discovered that I had a singular hemorrhoid: I always thought they came in pairs, like M&Ms. He referred me to a well-known laser surgeon who I assumed restricted his practice to the nether regions for the warts on my hands. For fear of libel, I shall refer to him as Doktor Gluteus Maximus.
I visited Dr. G. M. during the Gulf war. Families and couples huddled in pain in the waiting room from post-op trauma or preexamination anxiety, as the missiles rained down on CNN. Dr. G. M. had cable. The waiting room was our own private Baghdad filled with war casualties of another sort.
I was in to see Dr. G. M. for my hands.
“Oh, and by the way, I had a few anal warts. My doctor treated one this week. You might as well check to make sure they are all gone.” These famous last words will go down in my personal history like Napoleon’s pep talk at Waterloo.
Dr. G. M. advertised “No bleeding. No pain.” No way!
Remember the bleeding toilet in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation? That was my existence for the next ten days. I became intimate with all varieties of feminine-hygiene products; I was especially partial to Light Days panty liners. I developed a new appreciation for Tucks pads. My steps were measured and tiny, the steps of an octogenarian who recently had a hip replaced, as I walked the one-block distance to the nearest drugstore for additional supplies, hoping that I would make it back before incontinence struck again. Even farts were painful.
I took three sitz baths daily, hot water with Epsom salts. I eventually ended up using an entire year’s worth of sick days in a matter of two weeks. Shouldn’t I be saving some days for a bout of PCP?
Gluteus Maximus, M.D., charged outrageous amounts. His practice was nothing more than a medical mill. There was something bizarre about taking an EKG before local anesthesia. My insurance statements would code every item with a special code, which on the obverse side indicated that the amount billed exceeded the customary amount.
After my insurance paid the first bill, I found that Dr. Posterior administered a much higher grade of anesthesia.
The pharmacist asked me pointed questions after I presented him with my initial prescription for Darvon. “Are these for you? Why do you feel you need painkillers?”
Pained, I told him, bordering on hysteria, “I’ve just had some extremely painful surgery.”
He immediately clammed up and filled the script. I saved one extra prescription he had written for Demerol, should I ever decide to finish
Final Exit.
Now it’s useless: Prescriptions for controlled substances are good for only six months in the state of New York. I should have had it filled immediately. I could have sold them at the next Saint-at-Large party.
On my next visit to the Fanny Physician, he zapped the warts on my hands. It was another nightmare. I understood why they couldn’t do this at the same time as my anal warts: I wouldn’t be able to turn on the bathwater with my hands in swatches of bloody gauze. I decided to document my stigmata. I set the self-timer and took photos of myself with hands spread à la Jesus. This could have been that year’s Christmas card, but I shuddered to think what I would say in the annual letter. It was more appropriate for Easter, anyway. I sent one copy of the photos to my friend in L.A. He did not respond for several years—or perhaps not responding served as his response?
On my third visit to the Butt Doctor one of his associates posed that lethal $64,000 question: “Have we checked your penis yet?”
Two hours later I hobbled home, my mummified penis swathed in layers of cotton. A testament to my monumental insensitivity, this particular laser treatment was relatively painless, save the concept. That night I joined my best friend in the entire world, John Palmer Weir, Jr., and his glamorous editor for a celebratory dinner at some swank establishment. My bathroom visits were as infrequent as humanly possible. For the next five days I had to unravel my new synthetic foreskin, bathe my penis daily in a solution of hydrogen peroxide, and then smear it with triple antibiotic solution before reswathing in cotton. This is one place I won’t risk infection.
Compounding my problems, a desperate sexual contact around this time results in crabs. Don’t ask me how. I somehow manage to coordinate the application of a pediculicide with my efforts at phallic hygiene. Although in the manner of the Jewish-American Princess which I aspire to be, I generally drop off my laundry, Jan, convinced that service laundry is done at lower temperatures to save money, insisted that I wash my sheets, towels, and underwear myself. The height of ludicrousness occurred one Sunday afternoon when I was hobbling to the Laundromat, cheeks clenched, and rushing back between cycles to bake an apple cake I had previously promised to celebrate John Weir’s unscheduled appearance on the “CBS Evening News” with Dan Rather.
Six weeks after my first encounter with the Heinie Horror, it’s time to check my ass again. The anal warts have already returned. I postpone surgery until the following Monday, because I have friends in from out of town over the weekend. The physician expresses amazement at how fast the warts have spread, even since my last visit. After surgery, I am out of work for another seven days, not including the weekend. At this point my reconstructed asshole is worth approximately $20,000. I decide to retire it. Like a brand-new Mercedes before its first scratch, I am reluctant to expose it to the possibility of any further abuse. Absolutely nothing goes up there, not even unscented toilet paper.
I decide to forgo future treatment. It’s not worth it to me if I have to return every six weeks for another two weeks of unendurable pain. I keep this in mind should chemotherapy be indicated in the future. My down-time was spectacularly unproductive: I couldn’t read, I couldn’t write, although in my Darvon-induced haze I decided to write my next novel based on the Pet Shop Boys’ latest CD.
A few weeks later the Posterior Physician is indicted on several charges of medical fraud and abuse. It develops that he had been barred from practicing in several neighboring states. Unnecessary surgery is one of many accusations. Scurrilous pieces appear in the daily tabloids, accusing him of sexually abusing his employees. The Butt Van is impounded. But of course he’s still in business, to this day, I assume.
This past year nothing seemed to work. Years ago I used a gelatinlike petroleum-based product called Efudex on my anal warts, applying it myself with a finger cot. Now my doctor suggests using Efudex on my hands, every night, after wearing down the warts with a pumice stone. I soak my hands in warm water for five minutes and then whittle them down with the stone until I bleed, which may be why I tend to do this only once a month. But I am a bit leery of Efudex. If I apply vanishing cream on my face every night, will I eventually disappear? If I put some Efudex on my hands and then so much as accidentally touch my penis, will my member be erased? My endless nightly ritual has once again been extended indefinitely: swallow and or snort nocturnal drug doses with the appropriate beverage, brush teeth, floss, Water Pik, soak hands, rub with pumice stone, apply Efudex to the places that aren’t still bleeding, and then sleep, making sure that any masturbatory practices have already been completed.
My doctor also gives me a small razor. I can cut them off myself. It’s only dead skin. But it’s my own skin. I have already overcome the natural fear of sticking my fingers into my eyes: I wear contact lenses. With practice and necessity, I could probably learn how to inject drugs with a needle. But I can’t bring myself to cut myself, except inadvertently, when I’m shaving. Scratch that method of suicide.
Leaving an ACT UP meeting one Monday night, I shake hands with my old friend Philip, the filmmaker/masseur/near clinically depressive whom I haven’t seen in several months. “Eek!” he shrieks, dropping my hand as if it contains a lethal dose of radioactivity. “Those are warts! They’re highly contagious!” If so, my boyfriend’s body would be completely covered by them by now.
My friend Tom tells me that all I have to do is soak my hands in warm salt water, pat them dry, then cover my warts with garlic oil, put on a pair of large latex gloves, and sleep in them. How can I do this with a steady boyfriend? Won’t the odor alone drive him away?
My doctor tells me I can always will them away.
I wonder whether sacrificing a chicken would help.
At an ACT UP meeting, I find out that some men in a hyper icin trial have discovered that their anal warts have disappeared. I am, of course, ineligible for entry to this trial: something to do with some drug I almost took last February or another drug I attempted to take in August.
I decide to try laser therapy again, but only for my hands. The receptionist at my former dermatologist, who is currently in South America working on his septum, refers me to another dermatologist whom I’d gone to once five years ago when I had impetigo; his receptionist refers me to a dermatologist at N.Y.U. Medical Center who does laser surgery. This time I’m prepared. I take the day off from work. I buy vast quantities of groceries: I remember how it felt when the plastic grocery bags dug into my wound-mottled palms. I have my last gym workout. I go to the video store and rent all three Indiana Jones movies, all three Star Wars, and the entire Buckshot collection. Masturbating will be a chore. The night before, I visit the Prism Gallery and spend several hours not getting laid.
I trudge over to the hospital for my 8:30 A.M. appointment. The doctor’s office is located on the extreme East Side, far past any subway lines. Downstairs in the lobby are newsstands with my favorite daily tabloids, screaming headlines about Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuocco. I find the correct floor and wait. The receptionist hands me the form I am so accustomed to filling out. I indicate I am HIV-positive in the appropriate section, and list the drugs I am currently taking.
“What’s Trental for?” asks the intern.
“It’s an experimental treatment which supposedly reduces tumor necrosis factor in the bloodstream,” I rattle off.
“Oh.”
The intern looks at my hands. She is taken aback. There are many more warts than she had expected. “You know there’s a very low chance of curing warts in someone who’s HIV-positive?”
I know.
“Do you have AIDS yet, or are you—?”
“I’m asymptomatic as yet. Just lousy T-cells.”
I forgot to take the before photo for my personal pathogenesis scrapbook. I forgot to count them. Is this denial?
The doctor comes in. He looks at my hands.
“There is a zero cure rate for HIV-positive people,” he tells me.
“I suspected. I thought maybe once a year I could come,” I say to myself.
“I can’t in good conscience use laser surgery on these warts. I would leave you with hundreds of open wounds. You have a low immune system, and putting you at such an increased risk of infection would be unconscionable. Have you tried anything topical?”
“Nothing seems to work.”
“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do. Oh, but you should avoid picking at them, it only makes them spread.”
Thanks a lot.
I resolve to grind them down nightly with my pumice stone, a resolution I break that very night. Instead of laser surgery, I do the obvious alternative: I go shopping. I spend all the money I will receive in my imaginary AIDS-discrimination suit against the hospital, the intern, and the resident physician. I buy a leather jacket at Macy’s and two pair of Calvin Klein undershirts, one of which was too small to wear but it was on sale—so how could I resist?—and two pair of pants at the Gap, duplicates of pairs I had purchased previously, so now I have one identical pair (I had to throw the other original out when I got too much fake blood on it when I was demonstrating in D.C. chained to the White House fence), and a nonstick rolling pin from Lechter’s and a sifter, which my boyfriend promptly broke, and a large bottle of Duane Reade mouthwash, which is half the price of Scope, and some other stuff. I return home and play my messages from well-wishers who have called to comfort me after my surgery. The painkillers are neatly arrayed on the kitchen table. I return them to the bathroom cabinet and weep.
Remember how it felt when you were a kid gluing together a plastic model? When you were finished, you had some dried rubber cement stuck on your fingertips. Or you would pick your nose and end up with day-old mucus under your nails. Sometimes it would be stubborn, but eventually you could wash it off. Well, whenever I rub my fingers together, I feel the same type of physical deformations. Except it doesn’t rub off. Ever.
The Day
From Hell
 
It starts off like any other day, but by the time it’s over, you realize it has been the Day from Hell.
Part 1
 
The alarm rings at 6:45 A.M. Fuck the gym. I turn over and go back to sleep. I have carnal knowledge of my boyfriend at 8:15 A.M. I arrive at work at 9:30 A.M. I read the paper. Work is hell. We have an endless meeting about our hardware migration at 11:30 A.M. I talk to my best friend in the world, John P Weir, for about an hour to recover from the meeting. I spend ninety minutes typing up memos and letters to vendors at 3:00 P.M. My best friend in the world, John P Weir, calls me at 4:45 P.M. I meet the extremely loquacious Gil, everybody’s favorite Chelsea real-estate agent, at 5:30 P.M. to look at apartments. The first is huge. Perfect for sex parties, remarks Gil. The second has a sauna. The third has a sunken living room with an iron railing. This is where you would put the handcuffs, Gil comments. Leaving the last apartment, we run into Bruce, whom I tricked with in 1981. He played the piano and talked too much. He offered to fuck me. I demurred. Not on the first date. He said there wasn’t going to be a second date. His lover, Dale, is in the hospital. Dale isn’t doing well. I assume Dale is the Dale who was the last person to fuck me without a condom, back in 1983. He slipped it in surreptitiously, and I complained, and later he said I had nothing to worry about because he was only a top. Later I find out it is a different Dale. At 7:30 P.M. I buy flowers to celebrate six months of hopeless misunderstanding and dysfunction with my boyfriend. At 7:45 P.M. sexual congress of a somewhat ambivalent nature takes place. I don’t particularly feel like it after hearing about Dale. At 8:30 P.M. Binky asks, “What was that all about?” I explode in anger. At 9:15 P.M. he disappears for a “walk.” I write letters and postcards. I talk to my friend Wayne at 10:30 P.M. I take a Xanax and go to sleep at 11:00 P.M. Binky returns at 11:30 P.M. and sleeps on the floor.

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