World AIDS Day 2010

I remember the days without art when we’d darken the gallery and play dirges. We wore red ribbons and felt like maybe this would be the last year without a cure or vaccine. Those were years of when hope outshone misery. They weren’t like the early days when Gay Cancer was killing all the right people. Star wore red ribbon on their lapels and gowns at awards shows, and everyone felt a sense of pride that we were on the right track.

Then we got complacent. Some new cause celebre came of the scene, and people continued to die. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (cause by the human immunodeficiency virus) doesn’t just kill gays, or intravenous drug users, or black men on the down low, or prostitues. It kills children, wives, fathers. It’s estimated that 88% of the population of Africa is infected with the virus, and there are more AIDS deaths in Africa than anywhere else on the planet.

I let myself be scared into the closet when the Regan Administration, essentially, ignored the problem. I stayed in a sexual identity limbo while the Clinton Administration got on with the business of creating Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell. I got vocal in Bush II’s administration. I started putting my checkbook and my shoe leather to various AIDS causes. And while I’m happy to donate and take part each and every year, I’ll be fuckin’ glad when we no longer need the Louisville AIDS Walk because we’ve cured the disease.

Again this year, I adorn my blog, with the AIDS Ribbon. I remember those who lost the battle against AIDS and those who live with the disease daily. And I pray, in on my own time and in my own space for an end to the pandemic. May it be so.

Remember Me

World AIDS day is Saturday, December 1st.

Picture it, 1985: I was 20 years old. Regan was in the Oval Office. The Cold War was pretty hot, and Gay Cancer was killing all the right people — homosexual men, drug addicts, and black men. I was ready to come out. Then I was promptly scared, not into the closet, but into a limbo of being non-sexual. It’s twenty-two years later, and I’m obviously over it. After all, a life lived in fear is a life half lived.

Not willing to buy into the convention wisdom of the day that HIV/AIDS is God’s retribution on the Sodomites (Silver Star and otherwise), I got the facts. I learned to protect myself and others. But I wonder why there’s neither cure nor vaccine. I try to find some rationale. I know that science isn’t the fastest process in the Universe. But why did people who took a trial vaccine recently got AIDS at a higher rate than those who didn’t? I want to believe there was a scientific reason. Hell, I’ll even buy that it was Fated if someone presents it well enough. But there’s a part of me going for the conspiracy theory. I hope I’m being foolish.

Every day my wrist bears a very battered Until There’s a Cure cuff (www.until.org). I write checks to causes dedicated to curing the disease or caring for those who have it. I speak out. But most of all, I will remember everyone who has been touched by AIDS.

I bid you peace.