Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone (8 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 Metro police arrest an activist who is in the process of spray-painting “SILENCE = DEATH” on the walls of the entrance to the station. There’s the usual screaming and kicking. Activists surround the police, shouting “No violence! No violence!” Our group breaks up to watch the fracas. Then we reconvene and decide to stay together in solidarity throughout the day.
There are hundreds of activists at the FDA. We form a moving picket line and circle counterclockwise, inside another, larger picket line that is moving clockwise. I hope some news agency has a helicopter, for an aerial photo. We look like the goddamned June Taylor dancers.
An actions coordinator tells our group that there’s a group by one of the entrances that needs some support, so we go over and join them. We don’t really have much of a plan: We just want to get arrested, perhaps as a diversionary tactic in support of another group. Twelve activists have effectively sealed off one of the side entrances. We shout the traditional chants, create a moving picket line. Someone hands out hard candies. Gay activists always appreciate something to suck on.
Protesting can be boring. The twelve activists are pretty much stuck in front of the door all day. What a drag. I curse my lack of foresight. I could have staged an impromptu reading! Nothing beats a captive audience.
The Psychosexual Response of Nonviolent Protest
 
“Quick! In front! They’ve arrested a busload of protesters and they’re about to leave!”
Rumor has it that someone had let the air out of the tires of the first bus an hour ago. But now the first bus is ready to go. Our affinity group dashes back to the front of the building. The bus has already started moving. Still holding on to our placards, we hurl ourselves in front of the departing bus. Twenty police clear the immediate path. The cops brush us aside like so many summer insects on their arms. I get the brilliant idea of running a few yards in front of the bus, then hurling myself in front. This is much more effective. Once again I’m dragged away. I do it again. I’m dragged away. Then, one more time. I’m probably getting the same rush you get from skydiving without a parachute. This last time, at least three affinity groups have joined to block the bus. For every foot of progress the police have to drag off at least ten protesters. The police confer and decide to wait it out.
Another activist tells me that this time it’s for real. Should I give our support person my glasses and face the rest of the interminable afternoon looking beautiful but dazed? I don’t want my glasses to get busted, but I have 20/10,000,000 vision, and that’s in my better eye. It’s so bad that I can see someone’s penis only when it‘s, say, close enough to be in my mouth. I really don’t feel like having the visual equivalent of a bad acid trip, so I stick with my specs.
I look around for my affinity-group buddy, Markie. He’s a few rows behind me. One of our signs has treadmarks on it. It’s hard to do this sort of thing with placards in hand. I’ve enjoyed the pure physicality of being dragged. I ponder on the psychosexual relationship between the errant, absent father and Mister Policeman. As I cogitate about the sociological implications of our actions, the group chants to the police, some of whom are wearing surgical gloves, “They’ll see you on the news; your gloves don’t match your shoes.” We go through the usual litany of chants: “Frank Young, Frank Young, you can’t hide; we charge you with genocide.” “Test drugs, not people.” After fifteen minutes it gradually dawns on us that we’re not going to get arrested. A new chant begins. “We’re tired, we’re bored, we want to go to jail.” Eventually the people on the bus, mainly from PISD, want us to let them go to the police station, now that we’ve made our statement. So we confer and decide to disperse.
Hours later, at the police gymnasium, I hear five women called the Delta Queens have blocked a bus for almost an hour.
“Who Do You Have to Fuck in This Town to Get Arrested?”
 
Peter has climbed atop the awning and set up banners that say “FEDERAL DEATH ADMINISTRATION” and “SILENCE = DEATH.” He’s setting off smoke bombs. He can’t get arrested.
My affinity group goes to the rear of the building. We decide that we will divert police attention by stopping traffic, while another group attempts to break in the back door. We sit down in the middle of the street. Another group joins us, blocking the other lane. The police merely set up roadblocks at the traffic light a block away and divert the traffic. Hard as we try, we can’t get arrested.
It’s an odd reversal of priorities. The police are our adversaries because we want to get arrested and they don’t want to arrest us. It’s come to this: There are almost fifteen hundred of us radicals, kamikaze anarchists, lemmings with our “ARREST ME” stickers firmly stuck on our asses, just begging to get thrown into the clink.
I ask my friend Jim Hubbard, who is filming the demo for posterity, “Who do you have to fuck in this town to get arrested?”
A group of protesters break into the adjacent ethics building and hold a press conference. No one is arrested. We have a lunch break on the grass. Some of us lie down to catch some rays. It’s around noon, and it feels like five in the afternoon.
We have completely transformed the building. The “RITE AID” sign in the ground-floor mall now reads “FITE AIDS.” A “SILENCE =DEATH” banner hangs above the front-door awning. We’ve hung Reagan in effigy from the flagpole; his pants fell off to thunderous applause. An affinity group has set up a billboard showing the estimated deaths from AIDS in the U.S. Every half hour they blow a siren and the count is incremented by one.
A group is selling dextran sulfate, one of the many nontoxic drugs that the FDA hasn’t approved. The Faggots and Dykes Administration has set up an office outside: They are issuing memos to streamline procedures and set up new regulations. They wear white lab coats with blood-red handprints on the backs. Another group has gravestone placards: When they lie down to be arrested, the visual message is quite effective. Some signs say “DIED DUE TO LACK OF ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE” and “DIED FROM RED TAPE.”
At the main entrance are maybe eighty policemen.
In the building, quite a few employees spend the day glued to the windows, watching our cheap amateur theatrics. Most had gotten inside before seven. The building was sealed at around nine.
We decide to get arrested by sitting near the entrance of the building. Someone lets the air out of a cop car’s tires. George the Wuss reports another vile rumor: We are going to be held by the police for three days. We are ready for our charge, but another Michael, who has a bladder the size of a subatomic particle, has to take one last piss. On the side of the building is a broken, unguarded window. What would we do if we got inside anyway? Make long-distance phone calls? Sneak into the cafeteria and put salt in the sugar bowls?
We break into a jog along the front of the building toward the main entrance. A cop tells us to move back, brandishing his night-stick, then dashing back for reinforcements. We are at the edge of the police sawboards at the main entrance. We shout our chant, “Tell me why,” over and over again. I feel foolish. I wish we had the lyrics to the song and a voice like Jimmy Sommerville. At that point we realize that we can shout until doomsday and we won’t get arrested. The police are a thick mass inside the police line. A group of protesters are being arrested for lying down at the entrance plaza; the police have circled them. Sylvia, a feisty grandmother, joins them.
We have to do something. We continue chanting our ridiculous chants. We have to make a break for it. Mild-mannered Markie, with his well-kempt beard and even disposition, lunges forward, under the sawbucks, and I follow. Suddenly we are in their territory. The rest of our group follow. The police tell us to move. “Tell me why! Tell me why! Tell me why!” we chant. Seeing a momentary lapse of attention, Markie lunges again. A policeman, angered, tries to stomp on his foot. We scream, “No violence! No violence!” The police calm down the angered officer. Finally, resigned, an officer tells us that if we don’t move, we will be charged with loitering and obstructing passage and arrested. We go back to our “Tell me why!” chant. The warning is repeated and ignored.
I am the fourth to be arrested. A policeman tells me to get down on my stomach. I kneel, thinking he doesn’t really expect me to take him literally. “On your stomach,” he repeats. Well, if you put it that way. I comply. He handcuffs me behind the back with plastic handcuffs and asks me if I will walk to the bus. I tell him no, so two policemen drag me there. A cop takes my photo before sending me into the bus. Out of sight from any media, I walk up the ramp.
The charge is loitering and obstructing passage. It’s ludicrous. We’re sitting on the side. There are around sixty policemen blocking the entrance, and we’re obstructing passage?
Eventually the bus fills up and leaves and we ride to a police gymnasium a few miles away. The scenery is delightful. The cuffs are a little tight. One activist complains that the persistent swollen glands beneath his arms make it even more uncomfortable. A sympathetic policewoman loosens his cuffs. Another rebel manages to slip out of his cuffs. Come on, guys, we’re on the honor system here.
The entire experience feels so
punitive.
The sympathetic policewoman whom we’ve identified as Sapphic-leaning says that it’s supposed to be that way.
In the Belly of the Beast
 
I couldn’t sit down for a week, after the way the police brutalized me with their nightsticks and other similar large appendages. There I lay, making my one legal phone call to my dear friend Pussy in New York City to check up on gossip. “Hey, guys, I don’t care if you brutally gang-rape me. Just could you keep it quiet? I’m talking to my dear friend Pussy.” Okay, I’m lying again. We get processed. It’s quite straightforward: There’s no strip-search, no erections to hide. One cop gives me a satisfying pat on the stomach for reasons unknown. Yes, I realize I’m in shape.
After an endless wait on the bus (first the protesters on the bus in front of us have to be processed, and then we are called, one at a time), I walk down the ramp, accompanied by two escorts (as if I were going to escape), and enter a glass hallway lined with desks.
It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. Sitting on the bus, I muttered, “I hope there’s a salad bar.” I had heard horror stories about bologna sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise! I hope they brought in some brie for us.
At the desks, we are asked some basic questions to identify ourselves. The cops take another Polaroid of us. Then a policeman cuts off our handcuffs with wire clippers and we are ushered into the gymnasium.
We quickly set up a Genetian system, even though we’re only in stir for about an hour. We figure out who the bosses are and who the punks are. I practice dropping the soap in the showers. I hope they requisition rubbers in the state of Delaware.
Fat Michael stumbles in ten minutes later. He tells us that the police wanted him to remove his nipple rings because they could have been misconstrued as weapons, but when he challenged them to take them off themselves, they deferred. It was all too horrifying.
I answer only to number 124, my plastic-handcuff arrest number (124 out of 175, like a limited-edition print). The terribly self-absorbed playwright does a Feiffer-like dance in the gym, ending in a balletic swoon. I adore him and his pipe: It’s so cute and pretentious to be under thirty with such freakish habits. I meet another gorgeous radical, an actor-slash-fashion-leader-slash-all-around-glamour-queen. I press my lips against him, hoping maybe to neck and pet above the waist at our next demo. I decide we will become lovers as septuagenarians, if we last that long.
Jan shows up on the next busload of cons. The gym floor is freshly waxed and gleaming. My wrists are red. Radical faeries do their celebratory and healing dances. Include me out. Me, I’m the one with the poison blow-dart for Tinkerbelle at the Peter Pan matinee.
We can drink all the water we want from paper cups by a cooler. Outside there are some Portosan toilets, behind a temporary chain-link fence set up for our benefit. We lie down on the gym mats. We’re tired. It’s around three in the afternoon and it feels like midnight. All I want to do is go to sleep.
Eventually, we are called by number to the exit. There we are given a violation form, and our possessions in a plastic Baggie. Outside, support people have pizza for us. The police provide a bus back to the Metro station. We ride back to the church. I shower and pack in fifteen minutes; then we grab a cab to DuPont Circle, where we’ll catch the bus back to New York.
Return to Civilization and Its Discontents
 
After scarfing down a meal at Afterwords, Markie and I, laden with luggage, dash to DuPont Circle. The first bus has already left. Half an hour later, at eight-thirty, a bus arrives, careens to the curb. The crowd scatters. Transportation Michael (as opposed to Housing Michael) tells us to watch out for him: He’s dangerous. There’s absolutely no smoking on the vehicle with the bus driver from hell. Markie and I climb aboard. I pass around my Halloween snack packs of M&Ms and Snickers mini-bars. Below us, Mary Jane wafts through the aisles.
Again, we’re in snooze mode for the trip home. Thank God, most of the bus is comatose. No one is singing show tunes or (worse yet) TV theme songs. Yet, three rows behind Markie and me, a horrifying gabfest of enlightened teenagers ensues, the general subject being the meaning of life. A guileless boy admits his desire to become a lesbian. Michael mentions that these are the same ones who tortured us on the way down.

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