Not Thinking Straight

So what do we care?

by Madelyn Arnold - SGN Contributing Writer These days I frequent a sort of clinic-cum-social club with the same perverse dedication I once gave the bars. And I learn perverse things - just like I always did. Time was, I learned that Queers were as crazy as the rest of creation; now I'm being told that a diagnosis of HIV is no big deal - while learning that AIDS (HIV) and its many manifestations is still bloody awful. And I'm learning that having it is still a drag, in spite of what you read and hear. Man, do people lie about this disease. Oops. I mean, boy, is this disease ever given a good swing by whomever has an ax to grind.... Medical sneerage Anyone breathing regularly at the beginning of the '80s was probably aware that the dreaded Queers had come up with the even more dreaded AIDS and let it loose upon the world. It was a little confusing, however, that they weren't just aiming it at hemophiliacs and junkies & and surgical patients and child-bearers (and the entire nation of Haiti); they were doing a bang-up job of erasing themselves. Eventually, it was mostly Gay men who were selected as endangering the public, although it was most often they themselves who were horrendously sick - closely followed by Haitians. Suddenly the acceptance being felt by both groups fell flat on its face. Hundreds of Haitians lost their jobs and lodgings. So did Gay men. And, after a while, black women. The medical community came up with the term "The 4-H Club" for the people it considers guilty of AIDS: Haitians, Heroin boosters, Homos and Hemophiliacs. The American way The American Way of Notice goes from denial to panic to abnegation. We're American and we do this up proud... It seems to me that the US AND the Gay community in particular, went through certain steps in noticing (and coping with) this pandemic: 1) Nothing is wrong, these people don't eat right, use poppers, have too much sex, etc. They're wearing themselves out. 2) They are poisoning us (or our diets are wrong, etc.). They're calling it "The Gay Disease." 3) Proof (HIV test, various theories); Gay males go to isolation in hospitals and face personnel in moon-man suits (and so did I! It was scary). 4) Complicated gradations of HIV; charts of who has AIDS vs. merely has HIV. 5) Cool to know someone who has HIV; you "belong" by (romantically) barebacking, acquiring HIV, romantic movies and TV with AIDS. 6) The cocktail exists, so HIV isn't romantic any more, many young people think they don't know of anyone with HIV. AZT and a few others exist. 7) HIV? Hah - nothing is wrong, HIV exists in gradations and is less a concern than cat allergies (except to one's vet and one's physician). Various (safer) drugs and cocktails exist. HIV blues Yup, AIDS is nothing, again - unless you get it. Almost all of us here are kind of pitiful. Now that AIDS is nothing again, we can't talk about it. And most of us sure don't feel good enough for the bars - where we used to chat, and drink, and maybe more than that.... But we certainly haven't stopped lying to ourselves (and others) about it. Here in the clinic are folks who cannot handle work of any kind, tend toward fatigue, have moderate to severe neuropathy, causing mild to severe pain. Neuropathy can punch your stomach - anywhere nerves can go, nerves can hurt or cause incorrect action. We come to the clinic with various needs, some of which are filled and others go begging; they try to direct us to other agencies for help of various kinds. And both the hired and the volunteer staff LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN. Better than any social worker invented. May be because no one else will. After all, AIDS is cured, right? It's nothing now. Or is it nothing now, because of who gets it most often.... A fair number of us are Gay, perhaps once we were even middle-class, but more than a third of this packed day clinic is black and straight; there are Latinas, but nowhere another white-looking woman. Four or 5 people speak only Spanish or Creole; one lonely Haitian man speaks only French. Most of us you don't ask how they got HIV, but you may hear it anyway; one woman talked about the many transfusions she got - so did an older man. It's all in our heads Many HIV+ folks are out working in the world. Most of the people here, too, used to work with the HIV around their necks. Then - it's not that they got really sick, most of them - it's memory loss. Neuropathy. Little sicknesses knock us down. And we're embarrassed, because AIDS doesn't exist anymore, right? Everybody out in the world takes their meds and they're just dandy. We stump around on the dead feet of neuropathy, like Frankenstein's monster. Our cholesterol and triglycerides are screwy, leading to early heart attacks, etc. Our stomachs don't work quite right. Our bowels don't work quite right. We go in and out of hospitals. We go from a fixed bronchitis to pneumonia, or somehow we get cancer - one of the smelly types, like Kaposi's. One worker here blurted out that it's common for us, even those with great lab values, to develop dementia. The bugs grow well on brain tissue. Some of us are homeless now (some of us always were); those come in as soon as the doors open at 8:00 a.m. They may stay until 4:00 p.m. A light breakfast is served; some folks come in and sleep in sleeper chairs (or on their folded arms, at the tables). A dinner is served around noon. The people are kind; the nurses are sharp; the food is terrific. But dammit, after all the drugs in the world, this is still AIDS. And it'll get you.