Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone (29 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 very best friend in the entire world, John Palmer Weir, Jr., to whom my entire writing output is dedicated, came over to sit through the second pentamidine, which was a total of only forty-five minutes of drip. I always used to watch the needles; now I just avert my eyes. But John Weir was making a conscious effort to show me that nothing human offended him; he wanted to show me it was okay. I knew it was okay. I asked him, but
noooooooo
, he had to stare in shock and horror and revulsion as Manny the nurse stuck me, and Manny wasn’t that used to doing this sort of thing in the home environment because even though I have excellent veins—indeed, I’ve entered them in competitions and always gotten at least honorable mention—he was used to hospitals, Perry said, where the patient can be tied down with straps or something or other, and he stabbed me and I bled and John’s eyes turned to saucers, and even though I didn’t want to look it was as if his eyes were reflecting what was going on, which I didn’t want to know; one could see the depth of the sorrow and the pity; it was like watching a twenty-hour movie about the Holocaust in his eyes. Manny tells me that he had a wonderful time skiing in Colorado last winter, and I stifle the impulse to tell him how politically incorrect it is of him to travel to Colorado: Hasn’t he heard of the boycott? What about the political ramifications? Because he is the one sticking the needle into me.
noooooooo
, he had to stare in shock and horror and revulsion as Manny the nurse stuck me, and Manny wasn’t that used to doing this sort of thing in the home environment because even though I have excellent veins—indeed, I’ve entered them in competitions and always gotten at least honorable mention—he was used to hospitals, Perry said, where the patient can be tied down with straps or something or other, and he stabbed me and I bled and John’s eyes turned to saucers, and even though I didn’t want to look it was as if his eyes were reflecting what was going on, which I didn’t want to know; one could see the depth of the sorrow and the pity; it was like watching a twenty-hour movie about the Holocaust in his eyes. Manny tells me that he had a wonderful time skiing in Colorado last winter, and I stifle the impulse to tell him how politically incorrect it is of him to travel to Colorado: Hasn’t he heard of the boycott? What about the political ramifications? Because he is the one sticking the needle into me.
Afterward John Weir admitted it wasn’t particularly pleasant watching me get sticked. I chided him repeatedly, which both of us enjoyed, as we are unnatural. But afterward we went and saw the new Sharon Stone movie, which was really the new William Baldwin movie, in which he relinquished his shirt repeatedly and he was so entrancing we have no idea at all how badly he acted.
Next month I plan on watching the entire Galsworthy saga on videocassette. Unfortunately, I’ve run out of William Baldwin movies.
And now I can’t stop eating. I never miss my cookie snack in the afternoon, my brownie before bedtime. I’m gaining weight at an appallingly slow rate. Farewell, flat stomach, forever. I fear it would bode ill should it ever reappear, for that would mean I was back on the way down, approaching my Christ-on-the-Cross-in-Auschwitz phase. More likely I will end up with a bloated Biafran belly. Too much gas.
My hunger is uncontrollable. Like Marilyn Chambers, I’m insatiable. I am eating when I’m not even hungry. I have subconsciously internalized the
Diseased Pariah
News maxim “Get fat, don’t die!” Like Sylvia Plath, I eat men like air. My sexual hunger has been displaced. And when I become too weak to cook and shop and the boyfriend is anywhere but here, I can always thank heaven for takeout.
Diseased Pariah
News maxim “Get fat, don’t die!” Like Sylvia Plath, I eat men like air. My sexual hunger has been displaced. And when I become too weak to cook and shop and the boyfriend is anywhere but here, I can always thank heaven for takeout.
But somewhere in the pit of my stomach, I worry. Will my fragile physical equilibrium allow this to happen? I don’t think so.
I can think of few sights more terrifying than my itemized statement from Chubb dated 6-15-93, covering three infusions. The bill totaled $3,923.35. Five items listed under medical supplies totaling $3,503.35 are marked with code 53: “Pending receipt of information requested from other sources.” The remaining item, “Registered nurse,” is marked code 13: “Benefits are limited to the reasonable and customary amount.” Chubb feels that $75 is reasonable for a registered nurse, not $300; $75 covered at 80 percent yields $60. Thus Chubb is issuing a draft to Apple Stat for $60 out of a bill for $3,923.35.
After seventeen frantic phone calls to Hemasuction, Chubb LifeAmerica, my doctor, my accountant, my crisis-intervention counselor, my personal trainer, and the Psychic HelpLine, the situation is straightened out. As the Clintons hold a series of private meetings to determine how this country will achieve universal health care, I sit on my futon couch and stare at the plastic bag of precious liquid as it drips into my arm; I sit huddled into a tiny ball, still as a statue, emotionally distraught, wondering who the hell is going to pay for my next infusion.
The
AIDS Clone vs. the New Clone
AIDS Clone vs. the New Clone
A fad is ten minutes, a trend is six months, but a clone is forever. Clones have been with us since Stonewall, the dawn of Modern Gay Time. Throughout the seventies we saw the rise of the circuit queen (henceforth referred to as Clone Classic) with his mirrored sunglasses, tight jeans, gym body, and severe haircut. The Clone Classic was found in gyms, discos, and on Fire Island. One of the three memorable
Christopher
Street cartoons captured this phenomenon with a drawing of six clones captioned: “Why gay men are seldom identified in police lineups.” The late eighties gave us the New Clone, with his multiple earrings, backward baseball cap, gym body, and severe haircut. The New Clone could be found at the gym, at ACT UP meetings, at Queer Nation demonstrations, and on Fire Island. In the postmodern nineties perhaps fifty percent of the gay men in New York City are seropositive. Inevitably, health status has mutated into a fashion statement. Witness the comparisons.
Christopher
Street cartoons captured this phenomenon with a drawing of six clones captioned: “Why gay men are seldom identified in police lineups.” The late eighties gave us the New Clone, with his multiple earrings, backward baseball cap, gym body, and severe haircut. The New Clone could be found at the gym, at ACT UP meetings, at Queer Nation demonstrations, and on Fire Island. In the postmodern nineties perhaps fifty percent of the gay men in New York City are seropositive. Inevitably, health status has mutated into a fashion statement. Witness the comparisons.
Originally appeared in
Diseased Pariah News,
Issue 9, Winter 1993/4.
Wide Sargasso Sea
I don’t know about you, but I appreciate hindsight. Not that I would ever sit on the throne of justice in all pomp and circumstance, dressed by the same couturier who clothes Queen Elizabeth, or perhaps Quentin Crisp, and dispense well-reasoned opinions about personal relationships and traumas after the fact, generally concluding with that tiresome, yet admittedly satisfying, adage, “I told you so.” Revenge may be sweet, but a well-placed snide comment is true vindication.
But then I return to my natural state of guilt. Who am I to judge? How can I achieve personal growth with such a spiteful demeanor? Do I care? Perversely, I prefer the solipsistic approach of self-directed retrovision. After I screw up, as I invariably do, I like to repeat to myself, “I told myself so.” I have only myself to blame.
If only I hadn’t eaten fried rice for dinner after going ballistic at lunch and gorging myself at the salad bar; if only I hadn’t asked the dental hygienist for a mint-flavored topical anesthetic while I was taking Flagyl for my latest gastrointestinal disorder; if only I hadn’t eaten that last piece of chocolate—I might not be sitting on the cold, cold tile floor of the bathroom at eleven o‘clock waiting for that next inevitable wave of disgust to leap from the throat into the porcelain goddess I lay myself prostate in worshipful attendance of, while Binky and his two sisters are applauding the final curtain of the Thursday-evening performance of
Jelly’s Last Jam.
Jelly’s Last Jam.
In January I itched. In March I coughed. And in May I shat.
In January I itched for a week, a delayed hypersensitive reaction to a form of penicillin to which I was previously unallergic. My body was transformed into an ambulatory rash approximately sixty-eight inches tall, against which a battery of antihistamines and steroids proved ineffective.
In March I coughed through the night, due to some annoying postnasal drip rivaling the primordial ooze in both consistency and ubiquity, to the point of waking myself up at four in the morning in fits of hacking.
And in May I shat in a continuous stream, for what seemed like forever, but was probably not more than a week.
It began on Friday night. Should I attribute it to the individual-size cheesecake I got from the gourmet deli near work for dessert at lunch? I doubt the case that contained it was refrigerated. Or was it perhaps the twentieth nacho chip I had after work, visiting my friend Wayne at his office? I was still in that binge mode. I mean, I couldn’t stop eating for fear of losing weight. The lessons of Hemasuction and Karen Carpenter weighed heavily on my subconscious. But eating more wasn’t necessarily the solution, because I found my stomach was becoming more and more particular. I was becoming, horror of horrors, that fifties cinematic cliché: the sensitive homosexual. I was allergic to several forms of penicillin, sulfa drugs, several nucleoside analogues, and probably bran. My diet was becoming more and more rigid: If I didn’t have exactly the same thing every day at exactly the same time (a banana, a sip of juice, and a handful of pharmaceuticals before work; a bagel, toasted, with butter and a pint of orange juice for breakfast; a turkey and provolone sandwich on a roll with a pint of apple juice and a brownie for lunch; pasta and salad and a glass of seltzer for dinner; perhaps a scoop of ice cream and a few noncaloric slurps on Binky’s penis as a bedtime snack), all havoc might break loose.
Certain rules had to be followed. Peanut butter was a dangerous thing. Salad bars were to be avoided at all costs. Bran was completely out of the question. Too much candy led to certain evacuation. I am a designated beanless area. There is only so much chocolate a body can take.
My weight remained steady, my body-fat percentage constant.
And if I had too much of some forbidden fruit, my body, demonstrating a strict homeostasis, would rectify the situation immediately, with a brief outburst. Garbage in, garbage out. And a day or two later I would return to my normal state of sylphlike beauty.
But it was not normal, this diarrhea.
My stomach was bloated. Sure, my stomach has been distended for the past twelve years. I am a human flatulence machine. I always get the machine I want at the gym. Should I want privacy, I have found that a well-placed fart can clear the entire floor—although I admit I have had a few embarrassing moments in the hallway outside my office at work, due to involuntary voluble emissions.
Sometimes I feel my system has been unalterably changed after that night I drank a gallon of Colyte flavored with Crystal-Light lemonade in preparation for my M.D. Tusch—induced colonoscopy. For months excrement came out (as if my entire intestines were unrolled) in pieces large enough to cross the English Channel.
But this was different. I had diarrhea on Friday night at two-hour intervals. After an evening of stomach gurgling and typical premenstrual cramps, I made successive visits to the porcelain palace at 1:00 A.M., 3:00 A.M., 5:00 A.M., and 7:00 A.M. Thank God it was a weekend.
And these were liquid explosions.
This was not normal.
Sometimes it feels as if I’m seeing a doctor every week. Next week it’s the dentist. I still have to make an appointment to see my ophthalmologist to make sure I haven’t been victimized by CMV retinitis. The six-month reminder card is buried in my papers. And now with these infusions, that’s three more blocks of time each month devoted to medical matters. At least I don’t have to go to my doctor for pentam inhalation anymore. That’s one less appointment.
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