Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone (23 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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The Manhattan Center for Living follows the Marianne Wil liamson approach to illness. At one point in the memorial Jon read a letter that Luis had written to his illness, and the illness’s reply. Absurdly, in this age of AIDS, Luis had leukemia. Luis had quit dancing professionally to become a full-time AIDS activist. I first met him in Atlanta, where he had flown for a series of ACT UP demonstrations to repeal the sodomy law and change the CDC definition of AIDS. Luis was an extraordinarily sexy man, filled with a tremendous capacity for joy and endless delight. There is no justice when someone like Luis has to die at twenty-seven. How can there possibly be a God, with leukemia and AIDS?
If some sadistic spiritualist forced me to write a letter to my illness, I think the exchange would go like this:
 
Dear HIV: Fuck you! I wish you were dead so I could live a normal life. I am terrified of dying. Yours in hell, David.
 
Dear David: Now, why don’t you just be mature and adopt a New Age view and learn to accept me? Your faithful retrovirus, HIV
 
Dear HIV: As John Weir once said when I asked him if he had slept with a woman, never never never never never never never never never never never.
 
 
 
The title of this piece is redundant. All memorials are Memorials from Hell.
How to Make a Will
 
Consider the fundamental rule of wills: Just because you are dead doesn’t mean you have to cease being a control queen. Follow these simple rules and you, too, can wreak havoc from the grave.
1. Procrastinate for several years.
2. Enumerate all your worldly possessions. Include any item valued at more than five books of S&H green stamps. Certain mo mentos of solely sentimental value (unsigned
Playbills,
calculus textbooks, and those loose slips of paper with first name and number, for example) should be listed separately.
3. Make a list of your friends. When you are done with your will, you can revise it monthly. This will keep your friends on their toes.
4. Make a list of your enemies.
Don’t leave them out.
By remembering them in your will, you will be able to get back at them from beyond the grave. For example, it could be a nice gesture to deed a double-headed dildo to an enemy who is an ostensible top, especially if the will is to be read in public.
5. Nude photographs and other suggestive material should be distributed to friends before you are dead. Families have a tendency to destroy these things inadvertently.
6. The condoms have probably expired by now, so you might as well throw them out.
7. Instruct your executor to burn your unfinished manuscripts, musical-comedy scores, and dress designs. There is nothing more embarrassing than having some hack complete your final symphony. You are responsible for your reputation, shoddy as it may be. Don’t risk having it ruined by someone else.
8. Remember your favorite charities. Consider, for example, endowing an especially uncomfortable chair in sadomasochism for the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY grad school.
9. You are capable of causing mischief from the urn. Divide an item between two people who passionately dislike each other, forcing them to bargain. For example, give Bertram the frame of your favorite Eames chair and give Maurice, his ex, the seat.
10. Be very careful to whom you plan on giving your black book.
11. Think about distributing your ashes in acrylic paperweights and giving them to your friends and/or enemies. This would serve as a constant reminder of your presence. These items are particularly difficult to throw away or sell at rummage sales.
Everything You Do Is Wrong
 
When I told Barry in January 1993 that I was down to 90 T-cells, but I was okay about it—I wasn’t hysterical, as I was last year when I dropped below 100 once—he said, “Why aren’t you?” So, of course, I immediately became hysterical. This wasn’t your traditional standing-on-the-tabletop-pulling-your-hair-and-screaming-at-the-top-of-your-lungs hysterical: I like to think of it as a persistent low-grade hysteria, like a persistent low-grade fever. With me it’s more internal: screaming voices that only I can hear; looking into the bathroom mirror and seeing portions of my face collapse and fall off like dirt into the sink, until I resemble Alexis Smith on the poster for Sondheim’s
Follies
or Mount Rushmore being sandblasted.
The key to understanding me or anyone else who’s HIV-POSITIVE is simple: Everything you do is wrong. My boss passed on an article from the
Miami Herald
about some drug trial in Florida that her boss’s former colleague was involved in. “I thought you might be interested in this,” she wrote on the yellow sticker. A thirty-six-year-old former hairdresser was undergoing infusion therapy. He complained that he would have to lie down and take a nap for a few hours after the gym. He didn’t look half bad. I am exactly thirty-six, go to the gym constantly, and could easily pass for a former hairdresser with my new Vanessa-Redgrave-in-
Playing-for-Time
hairstyle. Was this one similarity too many?
I appreciated her interest and concern. The problem was that my boss had given me this during the twenty minutes of the day that I wasn’t thinking about AIDS.
Like most HIV-positive people, I spend 95 percent of my waking hours thinking about AIDS. Here is a breakdown of the thought processes of an average gay man in his mid-thirties (note that percentages add up to considerably more than 100 percent, because I am capable of worrying about as many as five things simultaneously):
 
95 percent: AIDS. Has the wart or mole on my cheek changed? Is that cough a precursor to PCP? Is my upset stomach a sign of gastrointestinal CMV? Is the tingly feeling in my hands and feet worsening? Are my gums bleeding again? Am I sleeping enough? Am I sleeping too much? Am I more tired than I was a week ago? Am I seeing floaters? Is my vision impaired, or do I just need to clean my glasses? Am I having trouble hearing, or do I just have a gob of ear wax in my left ear? Do I have an appropriate outfit for the memorial service this Thursday?
 
80 percent: Sex. Is the guy whose personal ad in
Homo Xtra
I answered two and a half weeks ago going to call me when my extremely jealous boyfriend is here? Is the cute boy at the gym who used to wear leopard-skin Lycra shorts and who’s turning thirty this March and who made me do fifteen minutes of abdominal exercises with him ever going to finish his workout and take a shower? If you stare at the bulge in a Marky Mark underwear poster long enough, will you fall into it? Does Madonna ever have lesbian sex with men in drag? Which movie star is Jodie Foster’s rumored love interest? If Brad Pitt’s film career crashes, will he ever be leading ab classes at the Chelsea Gym? Is there a gym remote enough in Manhattan for me to escape my hideous past? If all my former boyfriends got together, would there be a catfight or an orgy? Who is my next prospective former boyfriend? Do I have an appropriate outfit for the sex party this Sunday?
 
48 percent: Food. Should I try some new American Lean Cuisine tonight or stick with Thai takeout or something from the gourmet deli around the corner? Am I going to end up like Goldie Hawn in
Death Becomes Her,
eating frosting directly from the can? Has anyone ever in recorded history kept a box of Pep peridge Farm cookies for longer than three days? Why are all my boyfriends vegetarian?
 
25 percent: Madonna. Has Madonna done enough for the AIDS crisis? How did my mother know that I would buy a copy of Sex the day it was released? Is Madonna ever going to have a viable film career? Is the reason that
Erotica
didn’t include printed lyrics their sheer banality? How many magazines is Madonna going to be on the cover of in 1993? What’s Madonna’s next look? What will Madonna look like at fifty? Am I changing my physical appearance and reinventing myself as often as Madonna?
 
18 percent: What would Bette Davis say in this situation?
 
0 percent: What’s on television tonight?
 
If you ask me how I’m feeling, I’ll feel that you’re invading my privacy, giving me the third degree, bringing up a topic that I don’t particularly wish to discuss at the present time. But if you don’t ask me, I’ll feel neglected, unwanted, denied any empathy. You can’t win. Everything you do is wrong.
Paradoxically, now that I understand this, it matters less. I can hardly get angry when I know in advance that whatever anyone does it will undoubtedly be wrong. Despite the best of intentions, no one will ever get it.
So when Binky asks me, “How are you feeling?”
I tell him, “I’m feeling fine.”
“Are you sure?” he persists.
“I’m fine.”
“Are there any changes in your symptoms since last week?” he inquires.
“What symptoms?” I ask myself. “No,” I tell him.
“Are you sure?” he inquires.
At wit’s end, I admit, “I’m getting a headache.” Probably from this exchange, I mutter beneath my breath.
“I’m so sorry,” he allows.
And then I have a seizure and blurt out, “I might as well tell you that yes, I got PCP while you were away, but I’ve completely recovered and I would have told you earlier if it hadn’t slipped my mind or what’s left of it from my dementia.”
Finally satisfied, he gives me a bemused smile and returns to
The New York Times
crossword puzzle, contentedly filling in the squares with letters in ink.
Miss Letitia Thing’s New Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior For the Dying
 
1. Use your discretion to determine whether you wish to receive an audience. Try not to be too irritated should a visitor bring an inappropriate favor. Resist the impulse to criticize their appearance. This is a trying time for both of you.
2. Take all the medication you want. Clarity isn’t always necessary at this point.
3. Don’t feel guilty about the sudden need or desire for a priest or reverend, even if you’ve been brought up as an orthodox Jew.
4. It’s all right to act a little spoiled. This may be your last chance to be a prima donna. Make the most of it.
5. Feel free to invent extravagant chores so those less-amusing acquaintances can feel useful. If you have a sudden craving for toasted-coconut donuts from the South Bronx, I’m sure you can assign this task to the appropriate visitor.
6. Tell your friends if you want to be alone. Don’t feel obligated to entertain them into exhaustion. If they don’t know how to amuse themselves without you, they’d better start practicing.
7. Ask for what you need. This may seem obvious, but it is very difficult for most people. Do not be disappointed if a simple request isn’t fulfilled. Instead; consider revising your will.
8. Short-term memory problems may result from either the drugs you are taking or those pesky neurological difficulties. Don’t feel embarrassed asking the strangers who visit what their names are. If one responds “Dad,” kindly pat his hands and tell him you were merely performing a psychological test on him and he passed, even if he still looks rather unfamiliar.
9. Don’t be afraid of the tunnel of white light. It’s just a special effect designed by George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic Company; it has something to do with that computer chip they soldered into your brain the last time they put you under. It is intended to comfort you when the time comes.
10. Don’t feel guilty about overstaying your welcome. Until we have universal health care and a single-payer system, you will be merely bilking some insurance company that has raped thousands over and over again. It is, in fact, your civic duty to run up the highest hospital bill. Pretend you are playing a pinball game, and your bill is your running score. Just keep on working at it and you may be allowed to enter your initials in the Book of Life.
A Season in Hell
 
I see my doctor a lot these days. We have this ongoing relationship. Today I’m here because there’s a tickle in my throat that may or may not be strep. Also, it’s time to get weighed and go over possible symptoms and have blood drawn to check my T-cell and platelet counts and various antibody and antigen levels, and to get a shot of B
12
and a shot of pentamidine and get refills for my prescriptions that have run out since my last visit four weeks ago.
Don’t even think of mentioning managed care to me.
You see, I have AIDS. Sometimes I find it difficult to tell people I am gay; coming out as a person with AIDS can be even more complicated. Do you tell everyone, including your boss at work, who recently slapped you with a rather poor annual review? Do you tell only your closest friends and the people whom you’ve had intimate knowledge of in the past fifteen years? Is there a difference? When you are introduced to a prospective former-boyfriend or a potential lifelong friend, is it appropriate to say,

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