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

Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone (7 page)

BOOK: Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone
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The first time I saw the Quilt, a year ago in Washington, I was blown away by it. Every panel represented a human life. Some panels were created by community and social groups for all their members who had died. Now I avoid looking for specific panels, except for my good friend Glenn Person, who died in ‘86. There are two panels for Glenn.
The most painful quilts are in the center. They are blank sheets of cloth, with Magic Markers for people to leave messages. By chance, I happened to see a message written to John Tan nenbaum. “We’re sorry you didn’t know how much we loved you; we wish you hadn’t decided to go so soon.” John’s lover died last winter. He had tried to commit suicide twice. Then John came down with AIDS. He succeeded on the third try. If at first you don’t succeed ...
I don’t want to see the names of people I know anymore. I don’t want to see any more panels with “I miss you unkel” written in crayon. I don’t want to see my future in a patch of cloth, three by six feet. I don’t want to see any more panels, period.
Hard as I try to make my self cold, harsh, cynical, invincible, I break down and cry anyway. Bill hugs me to comfort me, and we end up making out.
After a bizarre nap with my boyfriend-in-training, we have dinner at a truly horrifying restaurant in DuPont Circle that specializes in exotic margaritas. Then, drawn by the ineluctable attraction of the print media, we go to the local homo bookstore. I fantasize where my soon-to-be-published novel will reside. Oh, my God, there’s someone from New York whom I’m supposed to be having an affair with. I duck to the lezzie section and am safely hidden by feminist tracts against pornography, instructional material on vaginal fisting, and home-repair manuals.
Bill tries to convince me to spend the night, but I have to be back with the radicals, and The Last Metro leaves at midnight. A peck on the cheek, an exchange of phone numbers, and I enter the endless escalator into hell.
A Virus of Unknown Origin ... DEATH: The ULTIMATE SIDE EFFECT ... A Feeding Frenzy of Lips ... More Dissension
 
Monday I show up at the rally at the Department of Health and Human Services. Rumors of dissension course through the amassed crowd like a virus of unknown origin. Word is that officials are already closing the FDA; perhaps, having accomplished our goal, we should try to take over another federal building. ACT UP/N.Y may secede from the action. My blood begins to boil again. Does anybody think that any press people will be present anywhere else? Remember our goals.
At the rally, Reagan and his administration are tried in effigy. A prostitute from COYOTE presides as judge. Several people testify for the prosecution, including the eminently inspiring and impassioned Vito Russo, my personal hero. Vito has been a radical activist since Stonewall. Vito gives a slam-dunk speech. He had been diagnosed three years ago. He says his parents think that the government is doing everything it can, and that he will die. Well, says Vito, they’re wrong about both. Vito excoriates the government for its inaction and homophobia; he blasts the far right and far left for trying to co-opt the AIDS-activist movement for its own ends. Someone tells me that was a pointed reference to the disastrous ACT NOW conference yesterday, which disintegrated into the usual brio of chaos and entropy. Vito concludes with a reminder that eventually the AIDS crisis will end; and that we must fight to change the system and ensure that the government will never fuck us over again.
After the rally concludes (the administration is judged Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!), the New York contingent meets at the flagpole. Mother Courage takes the spotlight, standing on a concrete embankment. We are here to center ourselves, she tells us. We are here to act in unity. We are here to discuss rumors that some New York affinity groups are splintering off. Representatives of each of the groups speak in support of demonstrating at the FDA, whether the facility is closed or not. One brown-haired rebel announces his intention to go to the FDA “because we made up all of these neat T-shirts” that wouldn’t make sense anywhere else.
We end our nontraditional Monday meeting with a kiss-in that devolves into a virtual feeding frenzy of lips.
The Absolutely FINAL Very Last SWEAR-TO-GOD-ALMIGHTY-ON-A-STACK-OF-GUTENBERG-BIBLES Pre-Meeting
 
We convene at All Souls’ Church at 7:00 P.M. for another endless meeting—this, the last pre-meeting before the demo. My friend David from Berkeley begs off; he has to take a nap. He’ll be having dinner with a lubricious letch from D.C. and a bespectacled wuss from N.Y.C. Michael attempts to lure me to dinner; the letch entices me to his apartment. I can’t. I’m here in a professional capacity. I need to suffer in the worst way. Frank the letch threatens me with piano bars, a well-taken point. What could be more dreadful ? Not even a ten-hour meeting of rabid radicals. If I weren’t Jimmy Olson Cub Reporter, I’d probably be in bed, buggering someone (or vice versa). So much for the sacrifices one makes for ART.
Paul Monette, famed author of
Borrowed Time
and
Love Alone,
flashes his press-release smile; he looks just as beautiful as in his jacket photo. Michael the Curmudgeon has seen him four times already: at the Quilt, at the candlelight vigil and march, on the street, and at the Smithsonian. Jersey Jon has run into Al Parker several times over the weekend, but what could he say to him? “I’ve admired many of your films. I especially liked the subtle nuances of your performance in
Fraternity Fuckholes.
”
It’s a typical meeting: logistics, logistics, and more logistics; applause at the appropriate intervals for those selfless individuals who have served the cause above and beyond the call of duty. The church is filled with angry activists. A group of extremely attractive men wear grizzled headbands like Red Cross bandages for bloodstained skull fractures, with red lettering on white stating “PWA” or “PWARC.” It appears that the evolutionary intent of the human immunodeficiency virus is to uglify the human race: All the cute guys are dying.
The highlight of the evening is when the affinity groups introduce themselves and announce their plans for tomorrow. One group will be selling unapproved drugs; another will hang a banner from the flagpole. “Well, now the police know,” remarks George the Wuss. “I guess they’ll have to try something else.” We assume the meeting has been infiltrated by members of the police and the FBI and various other subintelligence agencies. Three small affinity groups from Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada coalesce into “The Wild, Wild West.” “Rats,” I mutter. “Now they’ve got a theme song, too. We’ll have to work on a secret handshake to keep one step ahead of them.” After an hour and a half of the meeting, Saturday’s keynote-address speaker from PISD stands up and announces that PISD is leaving for a nap.
At the podium stands an exceptionally cute facilitator named Mark, either Jewish or Greek or Italian, with short, curly brown hair and the bedroom eyes of Laura Mars. Jim Hubbard, famed cinematographer, auteur of the caustic documentary
Homosexual Desire in Minnesota
(the audience rioted at the initial screening, causing a sensation unsurpassed since the premiere of Stravinsky’s
Rite of Spring;
several viewers slipped into irreversible comas, and most of the rest left in droves), tells me, “I slept with him in 1977.” Thousands of times, I’ve heard similar declarations from Jim.
At around eleven, I leave with Curious George from N.Y.C. During the meeting, having skipped dinner, I’d scarfed down the sandwich meant for tomorrow’s demonstration. But I’m still hungry. Activism is exhausting work. George and I stop off at a pizza parlor for sustenance and we run into three other rebels from California. It’s truly a gathering of the famous and the soon-to-be, homo icons of the revolution. David from L.A. had written that groundbreaking celebrated treatise on jerk-off clubs that appeared in last week’s
Advocate.
Michael D. had also slept with the cute facilitator, as had Michael L., another one of the knockouts from S.F. with the Red Cross headbands. Michael L. waxes nostalgic about the encounter with Mark. “It was exactly one year ago tonight,” he says, brushing a crocodile tear away from his eyes. I wonder whether we should form an affinity group called Former Fuck Buddies of Mark. No. That would be unmanageably large.
Michael D., looped on his seventeenth beer, expresses dissatisfaction with the New York activists using subtle nonverbal communication. He grabs me by the neck and pins me against the wall. He tells me that the Californians are pissed with New York for sending out Harvey Fierstein fund-raising letters to their communities. He tells me that at the last ACT NOW conference they had confronted ACT UP/N.Y. with this, and that we had promised to adhere to their wishes. Then, two weeks later, they get another letter. They’re also pissed at New York for various other reasons, which I won’t go into here. I figure it’s the Hollywood Wife syndrome. Larry Kramer founded ACT UP/N.Y., and we hate him; the other regional AIDS-activist organizations were inspired by ACT UP/N.Y., and now they all hate us; and so on. In Hollywood, as soon as you get successful, you drop your first wife and pick up a new one, because your ex remembers you when you were young and struggling and eating dog food, snot dribbling down your chin. Familiarity breeds contempt. Michael L. refuses to give me his phone number; I leave him with several copies of my latest press release.
Exeunt all.
Paranoid Dreams
 
I live in constant regret. I spend sleepless nights, atoning for the sins I have yet to commit. A path diverged in the woods; I took the road less traveled and ended up lost in the Amazon jungle for months. I read mysteries and identify with the murderer: There is always a point where after some irreversible action everything changes for the worse. I think, if only I hadn’t poisoned my land-lord and used my Black & Decker power saw to chop him into pieces and then tossed them into my Cuisinart and pulsed fifteen times and then thrown the remains into the microwave and then disposed of the household appliances at the city dump, then I wouldn’t be in this mess today.
It’s just as bad when I watch “I Love Lucy.” I must be the only faggot in the Continental U.S. who actively hates Lucy because I have this problem of overidentifying with the protagonists of half-hour network situation comedies; my former therapist said that I do not have a strong sense of self and am constantly merging with other personalities, and I’m always screaming at Lucy because she gets me into the most embarrassing situations, and I don’t like being embarrassed.
That night I have a dream, a horrifying premonition, a mystical Shirley MacLaine out-of-body déjà-presque-post-pre-vu experience. It’s after the demo, and I’m in the hospital with a fractured skull, surrounded by fellow protesters, distorted limbs in casts, screaming for morphine and other painkillers. The doctor comes to my bed, shakes his head no, indicates that I have an inoperable anxiety. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to triage this one,” he says, stepping on the eject pedal at the foot of my bed. I wake in darkness, sweating; the strap beneath the springs on my top bunk has just snapped; my mattress could fall at any minute. I freeze. I see the headlines: “AIDS Activist and Unknown Author Plunges Three Feet to His Death, Smothering Lesbian in the Process.” I stay motionless for the next hour. Groggily, the activists awaken. It’s D Day. Markie takes a shower. I have to be peeled off the bed, clutching the frame tightly, like a hysterical cat up a tree. A slice of raisin-cinnamon bread for breakfast (no diuretic coffee), several unsuccessful visits to the john; and the grizzled, unshaven, unshowered-and-Aqua-Velva‘ed activists are off.
The State of Siege
 
We fiddle with the passcard machines until we have enough fare to make it to Twinbrooks, Maryland. The train is filled with crazed radicals. “SILENCE = DEATH” stickers abound. The cute, crazed Canadian from the conference sings rude songs on the Metro about safe sex. A few seats ahead of him, a straitlaced woman wearing gold chains, a skirt, and sensible shoes chuckles. She takes out her spiral notebook and begins to question us. Facing the media at 6:10 in the morning. She’s from the
Washington Times.
I have visions of glory and fame. Isn’t that just like
The New York Times?
I give her my name, hometown, antibody status, and a brief explanation of why we are here protesting against the FDA. Three others join in, supplying her with more quotes. Then suddenly (the origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral brain) my cognitive powers are restored and I remember that the
Washington Times
is the local Moonie paper. But it’s too late to retract! I can only hope the Koreans won’t bother me back home. I decide to get another three locks for my door.
The two-thousandth Michael arrives with our signs. Michael brings the “TELL ME WHY” armbands. Jan, who suggested arriving at the Metro station at six-thirty (a suggestion I was vehemently opposed to) so we could greet our fellow protesters at the station in solidarity, arrives five minutes before seven, having shared a forty-dollar cab fare. How incredibly glamorous. I am momentarily distracted and utterly smitten until I see the pipe-sucking playwright pass by. Our signs have questions on one side and “TELL ME WHY?” on the obverse side. I choose the sign that says “WHY HAS THE FDA RELEASED ONLY TWO OF THE 130 DRUGS THAT SHOW PROMISE AGAINST AIDS?” We line the walkway with our signs, alternating questions and “TELL ME WHY.” Periodically, we flip all our signs. After fifteen minutes, we’re bored; we decide to go to the building and join the state of siege.
BOOK: Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone
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