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

It Is Tempting to Forget

Diagnosis 9 ItIsTemptingtoForget 2006. Twenty-­ five years of AIDS. It is tempting to forget the morning rituals, when you inspected your body for lesions that might have appeared during the night and signal that it had started. It is tempting to forget that when you asked,“Does this spot look purple to you?” you didn’t need to say anything else for everyone around you to know just what was on your mind, if not on your skin, and how fast your heart was racing as you uttered the words as casually as you could because sounding casual seemed to increase the chances of a reassuring response. It is tempting to forget that there was a time when gay men were hoping not to lose weight, that plump meant healthy and healthy reassuring. And reassuring, in a turnabout so shocking for us then, meant sexy. It is tempting to forget that people were dropping like flies, that many gay men in cities like New York or San Francisco were crossing out name after name from their address books, sometimes losing their entire circle of friends and sometimes being the next name to be crossed out of other people’s address books, and it is tempting to forget that many gay men who had long left their families behind in favor of friendships were now left only with mere acquaintances, no one close still living. It is tempting to forget how parents who had once expelled their faggot son now rushed to his bedside to keep the lovers and friends away, to contest the will, and to snatch the spoils of a life lived far from the tender bosom of the family. It is tempting to forget that women never “got” AIDS but somehow died of it by the thousands. It is tempting to forget that the truth could only be whispered or screamed but seldom simply told. It is tempting to forget that kids were chased out of schools by their friends’ parents and by their friends and that their houses were burned to the ground. It is tempting to forget that RyanWhite was once described as a“homophiliac ” in a newspaper. It is tempting to forget the frightened medics and undertakers and the cops’ face masks and latex gloves, as they arrested dying young men and women fighting for their lives. 10 Diagnosis It is tempting to forget ACT UP’s unforgettable chant,“They’ll see you on the news; your gloves don’t match your shoes!” It is tempting to forget angry queers screaming bloody murder and spitting out hosts in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. It is tempting to forget the pictures of Dorian Gray on TV and on the pages of magazines, the emaciated faces covered with lesions, the hollow stares, and the feeling that one might as well have been looking at a charred and contorted body hanging from a tree, like Billie Holiday’s strange fruit, as the crowd cheered. It is tempting to forget gay-­ related immune deficiency and the gay cancer and the 4-­ H club—­ homosexual, heroin addict, hemophiliac, Haitian—­ and all the conspiracy theories and miracle cures that we knew were bullshit yet couldn’t help but consider just in case, because madness could make sense. It is tempting to forget the promise of a vaccine in about five years and that it felt like such an eternity that researchers sounded almost apologetic when explaining that retroviruses are particularly treacherous foes. It is tempting to forget the calls for quarantine camps and tattoos and mass expulsions,“solutions” whose pros and cons were discussed with the sort of equanimity now applied to the debate on torture. It is tempting to forget that nobody gave a shit. It is tempting to forget that all this is still happening far, far away from here. It is tempting to forget and it is easy. ...