Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone (36 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 follow Daniel to Minneapolis.

I allowed my fear of insanity and change and strangeness to get in the way of possible relationships with promising people.

My worst nightmare came true when I realized I not only had become my mother, but I married her.

I never really fell in love, only lust.

I never got in touch with my feelings.

I never admitted I had feelings.

I didn’t call home enough.

I didn’t speak with my mother every other week.

I didn’t speak with my sister every other week.

I didn’t diligently visit my grandmother after she lost her mind.

I didn’t save any of my father’s boring letters that he wrote to me when I was a freshman in college, and he died when I was a sophomore.

I was never able to completely turn off the voice in my head I call “Mother.” No matter what I do or say, this voice always has a prompt rejoinder. It is rarely pleasant, useful, or appropriate to the situation.

I’ve hurt people intentionally and unintentionally with my writing.

I never found the proper therapist, editor, or agent.

I would have sold out and written a television situation comedy for half a piece of silver, but nobody offered.

I didn’t write every day.

I didn’t floss enough.

I never stopped biting my nails or picking my nose.

I didn’t try to file down the warts on my hands with a pumice stone every night until my palms bled.

I always hid in the bathroom when strange men came over to the apartment to fix things.

I never was assertive with salespeople.

I never learned how to make small talk to the person who was cutting my hair.

I am too shallow for words.

I was duplicitous and complained about all my friends behind their backs to my other friends.

I allowed my life to be ruled by guilt and regrets.

I allowed my life to be ruled by questionnaires found in
Ladies’ Home Journal, Family Circle,
and
Cosmopolitan.

I never lived in Europe.

I never hitchhiked across the country.

I didn’t become a full-time AIDS treatment activist.

I didn’t do anything substantive to end the AIDS crisis except whine at an unnaturally high pitch.

I didn’t go to the Montreal International AIDS Conference even though I was invited.

I didn’t go to the Cultural Festival in Vancouver coinciding with the Gay Games because I didn’t respond “yes” for a month and by then it was too late.

I made an utter fool of myself at the New York Public Library with John Weir.

I have held grudges for more than ten years.

I have thought ill of the dead.

I have said inappropriate things in a loud voice at memorial services.

I’m not going to see the coming of the new millennium.

I never had a half share on the Island.

A lot of people say they’ve lived their lives with no regrets. They’re lying.

The Last Piece

I could continue in this vein indefinitely. Future episodes could include : Davey gets a cane. Davey gets a Hickman catheter and matching bag and shoes. Davey goes blind. Davey loses all control of his limbs. Davey goes on total parenteral nutrition. Davey gets a walker. Davey gets his oxygen tube entangled with the telephone wire. Davey complains about not being able to wear a simple shift over the catheter and tubes. Davey develops Tourette’s syndrome. Davey finds religion. Davey becomes even more bitter than before.

But there comes a point when your sense of humor grows stale. It’s time for a break. Writing these essays becomes too much of a strain. I’ve lost my taste for it. I can only mask so much bitterness and anger with humor. The subject ceases to be palatable. It all gets too ugly.

I’m beginning to lose perspective. I need more distance. I cannot write about being ill when I am ill. Now I wonder more and more: Should I quit my job after my first opportunistic infection? Should I quit it after my second? Should I not even wait that long and hope my finances and health insurance hold up?

I have the sneaking suspicion that circumstances will determine the outcome and any conscious decision I make will be moot.

We can leave here with the hopeful fiction that nothing worse will happen, that the cure is just around the corner, but that would be fooling no one, least of all myself.

I could look back from the perspective of beyond the plague.

I can’t.

This is the logical stopping place.

I want to forget everything I’ve been through, everything my brave friends have gone through, dead and alive.

I want to pretend that none of this is happening.

I want to go into denial and never resurface.

I’m tired of AIDS.

Most days I find two AIDS obituaries in
The New York Times.

Last July, after Tim Bailey’s aborted political funeral, I became profoundly depressed. The world was shrouded in the heavy fog of death. Each step I took made me feel as though I were submerged in black water. The sadness was unbearable.

Life was a meaningless cycle: work, sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep, with the occasional vacation to break up the monotony. I check off items from my ridiculously inane to-do list. I make new lists. What’s the point? Why bother going on?

Does writing actually help anything?

People die every day. Eventually I will die.

I’m afraid of what the next year will bring.

I’m exhausted.

I don’t want to think about it anymore.

I fear I am repeating myself.

So this is the end, for now, of my
Trilogy ofTerror.
Thank you for indulging me in my personal
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Diseased Jew Fag Pariah.
Thank you for listening to
The Absolutely True Confessions ofa
a
Guilty AIDS Victim.
This
Briefing for a Descent into Hell
has been brought to you by many corporate sponsors, including Burroughs Wellcome, Hoffmann-La Roche, Hemasuction, LifeStyle Urns™, and the Chubb Medical Group. Special thanks go to Senator Jesse Helms, John Cardinal O‘Connor, former Representative William Dannemeyer, and the religious Right for their efforts in prolonging the epidemic. This concludes our presentation of
Chronicles of a Death Foretold.
Good-bye, and good luck.

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