Who am I
to have escaped this plague
except perhaps by chance
thanks to ancient ancestors
having survived bubonic curse
passing immunity over time
(or so science now says)
to us undeserving infidels,
brothers and sisters lost
but remembered.
Easy to think
that was long ago
when it wasn¹t.
Hard to remember
whoever cared
once upon a time.
——————————————————————————–
This poem came spontaneously to me late in my own San Juan de la Cruz Dark Night of the Soul as I was watching the 24-hour loop of the televised reading in West Hollywood of names of people who have died of AIDS.
A few readers have asked what the last few lines were intended to mean.
Thanks to those who posed that good question. What it means is:
It’s hard to remember now that until late 80s any talk of what came to be called AIDS was taboo among many, vilified by another many, and generally ignored as a “gay disease” whose “victims” deserved it. The compassion that evolved took lots of work (some unpleasant and confrontational), the irony being that AIDS was instrumental in forcing LGBT issues to the forefront of national conversation. These days there is this drug called PrEP which in trials was shown to block HIV transmission. But many of us see that as a commercial scam which is not foolproof and gives impression to youth that HIV does not really exist, while also ignoring that certain unprotected sexual acts still carry risk of other STDs which are in fact on the rise.
My partner James Rosen, he and I together now going on 40 years since meeting at an Upper Westside gay bar just as that strange illness was emerging (first called GRID – Gay Related Immune Deficiency, then running the acronym course to Acquired – as if found on a shopping spree – Immune Deficiency Syndrome, AIDS). James and I then found him to be HIV+ and me HIV- after moving to LA in 1986 though not having “tested” until there seemed to be any (as it turned out to be worthless and even dangerous) interventions (AZT, for example).
Before all the waves of later meds came around James tried every “alternative” therapy including bitter melon anal infusions. All this as we became active in ACT UP/LA, investigating local public healthcare facilities, clinical drug trials, and getting arrested around the country. Our best action having been the 1991 shutting down the Loop and next day opening of Cook County Chicago AIDS ward to women previously denied for what was even then categorized as Gay Men’s Disease.
Ty & James, 1992
We both know that anyone to whom the poem speaks cared then and cares now, as we also do, not for this one issue. The struggle was always deeper and it’s still all about healthcare as a right.
Note
“The Queer Nation Acts Up: Health Care, Politics, and Sexual Diversity in the County of Angels,” Society and Space, v. 10, n. 6 (London, 1992), pp. 609-50; repr. Queers in Space, ed. Gordon Brent Ingram (Seattle: Bay Press, 1997), pp. 233-74. Lambda Literary Award, best anthology 1997. [Reviews: Sexualities Journal, v. 1, n. 3, 1998,; Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, v. 5, n.1, 1998, pp. 44-5; Gender & Society, v. 12, n. 2, 1998; Theatre Journal, v. 55, n. 3, 2003, pp. 395-412].