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

One Drop of Blood

Others 101 OneDropofBlood In 1995 the Olympic star diver Greg Louganis went on television with a book to sell and a story to tell. That evening, he didn’t just reveal that he was gay, which many people, few of whom were actual rocket scientists, had suspected long before he appeared at the 1994 Gay Games, but that he had AIDS. The news wasn’t very spectacular in itself. In the world of sports alone, Arthur Ashe and Magic Johnson, although both heterosexual, had preceded Louganis with their own disclosures, and the impact had been arguably greater in that, for a brief period at least, it raised the awareness of AIDS in the African American community.No,the really big news was that when his head hit the springboard during preliminaries at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, perhaps spilling a little blood into the pool, Louganis was HIV positive and he knew it.In other words,what got everyone talking was not the disclosure of 1995 but the nondisclosure of 1988. Even in soft focus Barbara Walters looked disturbed.“Greg!” she admonished. Remember that in 1995 the new treatments had yet to appear publicly , so the reaction was absolutely tremendous. TV show after TV show replayed the infamous dive in slow motion, freeze-­ framing it at the exact moment when the head of the homosexual with AIDS hit the springboard, and at the exact moment when the head of the homosexual with AIDS entered the pool and may have spilled infected blood in it, and at the exact moment when a doctor touched the bloody head of the homosexual with AIDS. There were scary close-­ ups of the wound and even scarier close-­ ups of ungloved fingers touching the wound. And there were pictures of the other divers, the ones who followed the homosexual with AIDS into the pool where he might have spilled infected blood without telling anyone what he knew. Louganis himself did little to stop the whole brouhaha. In fact, his autobiography opens with a step-­ by-­ step description of “The Ninth Dive” and the anguish that followed—­ doubtless at the suggestion of his editor, who must have been well aware of the book’s major selling point—­ and it contains a two-­ page photographic insert of the hit.“Ouch!” says the caption. Although“experts” immediately dispelled any fears that so little blood in such a large pool with a lot of disinfectant added to the water could possibly have put anyone at risk, the controversy raged on for days and days. But why? What could possibly explain the masochistic urge to watch again and again a moment of nonexistent risk? For a while, Louganis was not a homosexual with AIDS but a great 102 Others champion, an object of intense national pride, his medals emblems of American dominance, and his spectacular comeback to capture the gold after injuring himself the very embodiment of the country’s indomitable spirit in the face of adversity. Like every American hero, Louganis appeared both exceptional and typical.To be sure, he was far from being the only US athlete ever to triumph at the Olympics, but divers have a unique history that links them to various national narratives and visions of the world. For example, after showing athletes in all sorts of disciplines, Leni Riefenstahl chose to conclude Olympia, her film of the 1936 Games in Berlin, with the diving events. The scene starts in a fairly conventional style, showing the divers on and around the platforms, preparing, concentrating, diving finally. Before long, the pace begins to pick up. The focus soon shifts entirely to the dives, many of them staged and filmed after the actual event, as the filmmaker edited out little by little all context and contingencies, including the diving boards themselves, until all that remains is pure, unadulterated bodies, sometimes even shown in reverse motion to give the impression that they are in fact taking flight, soaring toward the sun like gods rather than crashing down to earth like mere mortals. Icarus’s revenge under the Nazi sun. As movement itself disappears, the athletes whose bodies close the film seem to be rid at last of all vicissitudes and materiality, in a reverse echo of the Greek statues that came to earthly life in the opening segment. But there is no need to turn to fascist fantasies of pure beauty in order to witness the fascination that the image of a body seemingly frozen in midair...