The Nearness of Others: Searching for Tact and Contact in the Age of HIV

Contents

Contents Diagnosis/1 I Got Slim / 3 Footnotes / 6 RB on TB / 7 All AIDS, All the Time! / 8 It Is Tempting to Forget / 9 Nights You Can’t Sleep / 11 Depression Is Crazy / 12 Depression and Life / 14 Depression and Metaphor / 15 Passing / 16 Depression and Incongruity / 17 Depressed Thinking / 18 Making Sense / 19 Political Discomfort / 21 Thinking of Bleeding / 25 Kids Say the Darndest Things / 26 Negative Logic and a Positive Point of View / 27 “How Can Plain Curiosity Be Unkind?” / 29 Towel Stories (I) / 30 Diabetes? Cholesterol? Something Else? / 31 The AIDS Crisis Is Not Over / 33 Speaking of HIV / 34 Old Friends, New Friends / 38 Famous Last Words / 39 Tough as Nail Polish / 40 No Therapy / 41 Unspoken Knowledge / 42 From Hervé Guibert’s Hospital Diary (I) / 43 Hospital Visits / 44 From Hervé Guibert’s Hospital Diary (II) / 47 Star Entrance / 48 Star Exit / 49 The Dream Sequence / 50 I Died a Thousand Deaths (All of Them Gorgeous) / 52 Others/53 The New World / 55 Three Thousand Deaths in One Day / 56 Waiting / 57 Nearness and Neighborliness / 59 Beckoning and Appealing / 63 Incomplete Strangers / 67 Ground Zero / 68 “I’m Going to Die, Aren’t I?” / 69 Happy Hour at the Cox / 70 Naked Arab Bodies / 72 S-­ 21 / 74 The Modernity of Torture / 76 The E.R. Episode / 77 Truth and Torture / 78 Dining with French People / 80 Encountering the Strange / 87 Times Square Lost / 90 In the City and Out / 91 From Public Schools to Public Pools / 92 Particular Bodies / 94 The Falling Man / 97 Towel Stories (II) / 100 One Drop of Blood / 101 Disclosure/107 Shame and Experience / 109 The Doorstep of Shame / 110 Forget Your Health / 111 Disclosures and Surfaces / 114 Obama’s Disclosures, Forever Deferred / 115 Chat (I) / 117 Chat (II) / 118 Adventures in Online Cruising / 119 On the Question of Barebacking, Very Briefly / 127 Coda to the Story of k*** / 129 Touchiness / 131 Reason to Exclude / 132 The Stories of AIDS / 133 Academic Talk / 135 A Brief History of HIV/AIDS Disclosure / 137 Founding Mothers / 141 Look Back in Anger (When AIDS Was All the Rage) / 143 Uttering AIDS / 144 Where’s the Police When You Need ’Em? / 148 What I Said and How I Said It / 150 The Purloined Letter / 157 So Am I / 158 Small Talk / 161 The Story of the Raconteurs / 162 Compatible Discordance / 164 The Battlefield of the Body / 171 Dysclosure / 181 Towel Stories (III) / 187 Taste/189 Intimacy in Public / 191 Accounting for Taste / 193 Reembodiment and Discomfort / 197 Reentering the Movie Theater / 200 Moving in Queer Circles / 209 Spaces, People, and Actions (I) / 216 The Return of Tosca (Entr’acte) / 218 Spaces, People, and Actions (II) / 220 Again, Where Are the Police? / 225 Tact/233 My Contact in the Underground / 235 Hostile Bodies (and the People Who Love Them) / 239 Sharing: From Disclosure to Tact / 242 Tact and Delicacy (I) / 244 Tactlessness / 245 Tactful Encounters / 246 Tact and Delicacy (II) / 252 The Shower Scene / 256 Tact and Delicacy (III) / 257 Tact, Power, and the Police (I) / 259 Tact, Power, and the Police (II) / 266 Tact and Contamination / 271 Tact and Silence / 274 Tact and Failure / 278 Tact and Unreason / 280 The Kindness of Strangers / 281 Sunday in the Park with . . . ? / 283 The Yellow Star / 285 Tact as Social Music Making / 291 A Fart Joke from Proust / 297 Touch and Other Senses / 299 Immodesty / 300 Reentering the Movie Theater’s Restroom / 303 Tact and Intimation / 305 Found Objects (I): Tact and Bearing Witness as Forms of Bricolage / 306 Tactfulness to the Dead / 309 Found Objects (II): Some Beauty / 310 Contact/313 Leaving the Door Open / 315 The Unexpected Coda: May 24, 2011 / 316 Names/319 Notes/323 Bibliography/335 This page intentionally left blank ...