Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone (25 page)

Read Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone Online

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
10.78Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
I spend the next day in bed. I call my doctor again. He is on vacation, so his partner calls in a prescription to the local pharmacy for Augmentin for the strep throat. He doesn’t want to give me something for the Hemophilus too because two antibiotics would do a number on my stomach. Somehow I deduce that I have been less ill from the strep throat than from side effects of the rifabutin. I stop the rifabutin and start Augmentin.
I have ten delightful days of Augmentin. It wipes me out. The only side effect of Augmentin is mild diarrhea, which Imodium A-D keeps under control. My sore throat improves. I take acidophilus to restore stomach bacteria that the penicillin is killing. Do I sound like your maiden great-aunt from Philadelphia? I think the pills may have gotten me depressed; then again, this could be my natural state.
The day after I finish Augmentin, I go to visit my friend Jim Lewis, who has just gotten out of the hospital. Jim has a host of problems. His KS is systemic, his stomach isn’t working properly, and he’s lost fifteen pounds in the past month; he’s all teeth and bones. I go uptown to his apartment. I pick up the umbrella I had forgotten last May after GMHC’s AIDS Walk. He and his lover had a housewarming that evening. It rained torrents last year that day; I dropped off my checks at the mud-filled fields of Central Park and ended up doing the AIDS Walk on the stair machine at the gym.
I try to avoid Jim’s cat, who is particularly friendly. I became slightly allergic to cats when I turned thirty. Although I will deny it emphatically, I am increasingly sensitive. This has nothing to do with my sexual orientation.
I take the subway downtown for my affinity group’s final meeting before the Hoffmann-La Roche demo. We are planning on shutting their plant down for the day by blocking all eleven gates. Hoffmann-La Roche has committed a multitude of sins as a pharmaceuticals company; it all boils down to greed. Our demands include an end to the delay in developing the tat inhibitor, a compound that, if effective, might actually kill HIV inside infected cells; the release of the data on European trials of a protease inhibitor; post-marketing studies on ddC, which was only provisionally approved; and a reduction in the price of the polymerase chain reaction, a genetic technology used to test for HIV infection.
I have been involved in planning this action for months. We are going to handcuff ourselves together inside metal pipes and block the entrances at 7:00 A.M. Visualize a chain of paper dolls that has been bronzed. I am hungry and our meeting isn’t for another half hour so I stop and have an egg roll at a Chinese takeout on Second. The middle is still frozen.
At the meeting I feel flushed. My friend Tom tells me I have a rash. We practice hooking our handcuffs onto the bar inside the metal pipe and linking up together. We position ourselves as we would be inside the van on Tuesday morning. We pretend to jump out of a van’s back door and link up into a solid barrier. I am tired and hot and sweaty. My rash is getting worse. After a few hours, I go home, exhausted. I am itchy all over.
Monday night after work I have a meeting with the board of the co-op that I have been trying to buy for several months. I go to work. I don’t go to the doctor. I am taking Benadryl for my rash. I figure I have an allergic reaction to the cat or the egg roll. The rash is all over my body. I wonder whether I should postpone the co-op board meeting. My original loan will expire in one week; any delay involves the risk of a higher rate.
I am filled with misgivings. I have hated my rent-stabilized studio for close to thirteen years, but it’s too cheap for me to leave it. It is a one-floor walk-up. When you are planning future disabilities, these things matter. Every Saturday from eleven at night to two in the morning I listen to the raucous sounds of salsa from the South American restaurant next door. My apartment is a large two-room studio, but since my boyfriend moved in, it feels even more cramped than before.
The rent would be manageable on public disability. Could I risk a move at 84 T-cells? Why should I buy when I could rent? Would my estate be able to sell the apartment in a reasonable amount of time? Is there room for a respirator and a hospital bed? The building has an elevator, but there are five steps in front. How could I keep up with the mortgage and maintenance if I lost my job? Social Security goes only so far. What do I do if I run out of my retirement fund? Will I be forced to spend down to get on Medicare? Do they take away your apartment before you can qualify for public assistance? Why don’t I rent a luxury apartment with a doorman and concierge services if I want to spend all my money now? What will my family do if they are stuck with an apartment in New York? How can I in good conscience spend the money I should be leaving them in my will when they live so frugally and the Fruit of the Month Club goes only so far?
But the real subtext is, “Have I started sliding down that slippery slope?”
I’m sure every HIV-positive person thinks this periodically. Minor aches and pains magnify in the mind’s echo tunnel. Sure, it’s just a minor cough, now. But suppose it’s the start of the long decline. Suppose things only get worse. I generally get this feeling once a week. I have mild allergies, and sometimes I feel that my lung capacity is lower than normal, and I am convinced that I have PCP because maybe I fucked up inhaling pentamidine the last time at my crowded doctor’s office when I ran into my friend Stewart downstairs. I felt as if we were sharing an ice-cream soda with two straws as the two of us puffed furiously. Will this free-floating anxiety ever leave me and float off into the stratosphere, where it belongs?
What will I do when I experience my first life-threatening symptoms? Will I lie to my doctor and stuff my pockets with rocks to camouflage weight loss? What will happen when I get diarrhea? My boyfriend pees a lot. Will I have to install a Portosan in the bedroom? Should I tell all my friends what my favorite foods are now that I am still coherent? What will happen when I can no longer metabolize chocolate? Is Godiva available in IV drips?
There are instructions in my will to shoot me if I ever get religion, because at that point I will have exhibited a complete loss of self.
 
 
 
I don’t postpone the meeting with the co-op board. The members couldn’t care less about my rash; they are interested only in my financials and whether or not I play a musical instrument. I forget to mention I have a boyfriend, Binky, who will be living with me.
My boyfriend is negative. Sometimes I feel like damaged goods. He has a fifty-year warrantee, and I’m stuck with a failed inspection slip in my shirt pocket: no refunds or exchanges, cash and carry only. I’m a time bomb waiting to go off. I’m an accident waiting to happen.
I have a friend Seth who is ten years younger than I am. I realize with some chagrin that I was probably getting infected during his Bar Mitzvah.
I read the Personals where people advertise for “healthy” people. I can’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to date someone with ... gout. A lot of vegetarians don’t date carnivores. Let’s face it: We’re all going to hell anyway. Some of us are just taking the express. Still, there is a certain amount of sexual apartheid going on. Just casually announce your antibody status at the next orgy and see how fast they all run for the showers. There is also an illogical psychological distinction made between performing certain sexual acts (specifically, oral sex without ejaculation) with someone who doesn’t know his status and someone who does. The theory of safe sex says: Assume your partner is positive and act accordingly. In practice, many
hope
their partners are negative and act accordingly. I have been rejected after saying I was HIV-positive, but the absurd thing is that I am certain I’ve been rejected by someone who was also positive but didn’t know because he hadn’t taken the test.
There’s a certain advantage to dating someone who is positive, if you are positive. You can share nebulizers, prescriptions, and possibly even urns. You can try pooling antibodies and T-cells. You don’t have to worry about infecting each other; reinfection is only a Venial Sin, whereas initial infection is a Mortal Sin. Also, your partner won’t run out screaming when you cut yourself shaving.
 
A few years ago I went to a PWA Coalition tea hosted by Michael Callen at the request of my friend John. I met Glenn Pumilia, who had come to keep his friend Frank company. Glenn and I dated for a few months. It would be nice to celebrate our anniversary with a toast in some seedy downtown cocktail lounge, but Glenn, John, and Frank are all dead. Michael Callen died in December 1993.
 
 
 
I sleep over at my friend Wayne’s apartment that night because I can’t face taking a taxi or a subway to our meeting Tuesday morning at 5:15 A.M. We are picking up demo supplies in the East Village and meeting our vans. I almost have enough clothes. It’s hard to manipulate the handcuffs and clips wearing thick gloves. I bought thin white outdoor gloves from Paragon Sporting.Goods Monday during lunch.
We demonstrate and freeze for two hours. Miraculously, we aren’t arrested. The temperature is thirty-two. Anne comments that my face is still flushed from the cold. I realize it is my rash. I’m so itchy that night I can’t get to sleep for hours. I end up taking two Ativans. On Wednesday I see my doctor, who tells me I am suffering from a delayed hypersensitive reaction to the Augmentin. He gives me a shot of cortisone. I am better for a few hours. I see him on Friday, because I still feel like shit. He prescribes prednisone as well as another antibiotic because I still have a throat infection.
So now I know I’m allergic to penicillin, in addition to sulfa drugs (which I tried a few years ago as PCP prophylaxis) and rifabutin. At this rate I will have sixty-three infections by the year 2000 and be able to tolerate only Sesame Street vitamins.
My mother calls me on Wednesday to tell me my grandmother is dying. She is ninety-four years old and lives in the Jewish Home for the Aged of Central New York. She has just gotten over her third bout of pneumonia. She has been senile for the past few years and isn’t taking food. They could take her to a hospital and force-feed her, but that would probably extend her life for only a few weeks. It is only a matter of time.
My grandmother is semiconscious; she isn’t responsive. There is no point in flying up to see her. I tell my mother I can’t come up to say good-bye to my grandmother, but of course I will be there for the funeral. She starts crying. I can’t believe I said the word
funeral
to my mother. I hang up.
My doctor calls me on Thursday to tell me to stop taking the drug I am taking and to start Ceftin. It turns out I still have Hemophilus, which isn’t responsive to the drug he had prescribed. I thought he
knew
I had Hemophilus. His partner does. I have to keep on top of everything. It’s difficult when you’re not feeling well to do a proper job of monitoring your health care. I have to take ten days of Ceftin. Back to square one.
Friday morning my lawyer calls me to tell me that we are closing on Tuesday, the day the loan expires. He suggests I get co-op insurance. He tells me the amounts I need for certified or bank checks. I speed off to the bank and then to Allstate.
Monday is a holiday, Presidents’ Day.
The closing takes place on Tuesday. I sleep badly the night before. “This is a mistake, this is a mistake, this is a mistake,” is my sleeping mantra. The seller, the object of yet another one of my pathological flirtations, has troubles of his own. He flew in from San Francisco over the weekend because his mother is undergoing triple-bypass surgery. She is going under the knife as we sign a dozen documents. He hadn’t slept at all the night before.
I use my ridiculous Bugs Bunny and Friends checks for the down payment. I decide if the sale ever goes through, my next set of checks will not contain rainbow flags, animated cartoon characters, or images of Judy Garland.
My mother tells me on Wednesday that my grandmother isn’t doing any better. I realize that I haven’t done my pentamidine in a month. I take pentamidine twice a month; once a month I inhale aerosol pentamidine in my doctor’s office, and two weeks later he gives me a shot of pentamidine in the butt. I am planning on making an appointment to see my doctor on Friday, by which time I would be almost finished with the Ceftin. He could check my throat and give me my shots. But I decide to wait on making my appointment. I am anxious over my grandmother.
My grandmother dies on Thursday. I decide I will fly up early Friday morning. I spend Thursday evening in Bed Bath & Beyond with Binky, burying myself in a consumer frenzy to forget my larger reality. In an orgy of consumerism, we get queen-size sheets, pillowcases, and towels.
 
I have a tuxedo but no suit. My job is at a not-for-profit, which means I don’t have to wear a tie. The only reason I would need a suit would be for job interviews, funerals, and co-op interviews. The tuxedo is for AIDS benefits.
Binky had borrowed my only nice long-sleeve white shirt. I have another one with coffee stains around the collar, which is odd, because I don’t drink coffee. On Thursday night we have one of our typically passive-aggressive fights. Voices are never raised. In the aftermath of the fight, it is difficult to tell that a fight has taken place. The only telltale clue is that the cookbooks have been alphabetized; the silverwear has been polished; and there is a dent the size of a human head in the plaster.
In a fit of controlled anger, Binky takes the shirt out of the laundry bag, washes it in Woolite in the sink, and hangs it on the shower rod to dry. He wakes up with me at 6:10 in the morning to iron it. I walk to Port Authority, take the bus to Newark, and ride the plane to Syracuse. My mother specified: no sneakers. I have my tight shoes in my garment bag.

Other books

The Night Watchman by Richard Zimler
The Other Man (West Coast Hotwifing) by Haynes, Jasmine, Skully, Jennifer
Insecure by Ainslie Paton
Conquering Jude by Trace, Dakota
Frankie's Back in Town by Jeanie London
Good Time Bad Boy by Sonya Clark