* * *
—
A more conventional version might begin the day we ran into Nick on St. Mark’s Place. It was a Sunday, late in the fall of ’81. Paulie had forced us out—who can remember why? Nick was standing over a blanket piled with back issues of Honcho, looking horrible. We hadn’t seen him in a while. Perhaps he’d finally broken up with Peter, we thought, though we wouldn’t have expected Nick to be the one looking so undone—and these are the thoughts we were indulging when we heard that Peter was in the hospital. He’d been there for three weeks. The doctors said he had the gay pneumonia.
“At least it’s not regular pneumonia,” said one of us, who would regret this line forever.
The doctors were ordering a second course of pentamidine, Nick told us; Peter’s mother was flying out tomorrow. We never considered that Peter had a mother: we’d thought maybe she was dead? But no: we hadn’t actually thought of it at all.
Nick blinked at us as from a strange distance. He’d come out to buy books for Peter, he told us, and did we have any suggestions? They weren’t either of them big readers, normally.
We stood with him awhile, debating his purchases. It was one of those excruciatingly perfect late autumn days, we noticed, the kind that used to make us sad as children. But what had we ever had to be sad about as children? We turned in circles for no reason—west to Astor Place, south to Seventh Street—and maybe Paulie gave us a look. The wind was kicking up a little—scattering detritus, riffling the fraying pages of Honcho, introducing an alterity to the moment that made us uneasy. Then the clouds moved, and down came little éclats of light; we felt reassured, somehow, and yet somehow sure we shouldn’t.
We decided on a Penguin edition of The Magic Mountain for Peter; for his newly discovered mother, a jar of lavender oil from a Senegalese man. We insisted on paying, though Nick never let us pay. He did this time, however: maybe this was the beginning.
* * *
—
Say it began with the theories.
The word was only bottoms got it.
The word was only black people got it.
The word was it came from poppers. Maybe something they were mixing in the drinks. Barroom iodizers, conceivably.
The word was it came from Haitians. Or possibly Hispanics?
The word was it came from nowhere, because it didn’t really exist, and was a conspiracy to sabotage our liberation.
The word was it came from drugs. Maybe nitrate inhalants, or maybe only butyl. Maybe don’t take Rush. Maybe don’t take Bolt. Maybe play it really safe and don’t take anything, for a while.
* * *
—
We went to clubs, to dance reluctantly to disco. We went to Central Park, to mourn John Lennon. This turned out to be the last time we saw Anders—shivering close to the bandshell, while “Imagine” played over the speakers. Five weeks later, Reagan was inaugurated. And then, all of a sudden, we began going to hospitals.
We came prepared, in the beginning. We armed ourselves with magazines and flowers. Inside, we donned robes and masks and plastic caps; we walked through doors marked WARNING.
There is nothing new under the sun—but nothing new to whom? It’s the sun that can never be surprised; the same cannot be said for people.
Inside, we braced ourselves against the smell of offal; the venous arms we tried not to look at, vowed never to remember. For the most part, we did not cry. We made bad jokes instead, then went ahead and made them again anyway. We read aloud from paperbacks. We left earlier than we’d meant to.
In our apartments, we read fliers from the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. We drafted care schedules—Nick organized Peter’s with trading-floor efficiency. We found ourselves making redundant copies in the middle of the night. We stood next to the copier thinking about Peter, and how little we’d ever thought of him before. We remembered how, through all the years of our raucous libidinousness toward Nick, he was never once afraid of us. We remembered that he’d been a veteran. We allowed ourselves to be comforted by this fact.
We sent away for vitamins advertised in the back of magazines. They cost a fortune—but an ounce of prevention, etc. etc., and that was when there was a cure. What we had were treatments. There was co-trimoxazole and Compound Q and pentamidine, supplied through a special arrangement with the government. There were vitamin “perfusions”—neologism-zero, perhaps, in what would become a secondary epidemic—and there were strategies and schemes, for those who could afford them. We knew a man who went to Sloan-Kettering every other day. We knew a man who went on disability and lived off the interest from his trust fund. We knew Peter, who’d enrolled in studies run by two doctors who each would have disqualified him if they’d known of the other. A period of subterfuge commenced—chaotic taking of cabs, slightly hysterical fear of discovery—all of it reminiscent, perversely, of a French farce. We laughed about this—with Peter before he died, and then among ourselves afterward. This was the last, best thing that Peter’s money ever bought him.
In January, he gave up, and abruptly quit both studies. Later we heard that Nick had taken him to Switzerland to have his blood recycled. We liked to imagine Peter sitting on a mountaintop, feverish and red-cheeked and straight out of Thomas Mann, which we further liked to imagine he had read. We liked to imagine him breathing the crystalline air; we liked to imagine him laughing. We liked to imagine him eyeing the youths on the ski slopes to the very last. We liked to imagine he hadn’t yet gone blind.
* * *
—
We went to GMHC study groups. We went to meetups. We went to see Tootsie.
Arguments were advanced and rebutted, mischaracterized and willfully misunderstood.
It was said that closing bathhouses was a slippery slope. Today the tubs, tomorrow your bedroom!
It was said that you were more likely to die in a car crash than of AIDS. (Brookie said: “In Manhattan?”)
It was said that an obsession with promiscuity was blaming the victim.
It was said that the newfound devotion to monogamist hand-wringing was a form of complicity in a sexual fascism masquerading as public health concern—which was all the more threatening precisely because it deployed the vocabulary of reason. This was one of the most efficient ways to affect widespread evil, as the Nazis knew too well.
It was said, by Stephen: “Here we go again with the Nazis.”
It was said, by Brookie: “You’ll see.”
* * *
—
Certain symptoms were semaphores.
KS bumps behind the ears. White fungi blooming around fingernails. Weight loss so violent it could only be the first phase of decomposition. These were suddenly everywhere—on the subway, at the parties. On the body of a man you’d fucked, when you flipped on the lights.
But there were subtler, more ambiguous tells, if you knew where to look.
There was the riddle of swollen lymph nodes. (But if your immune system is fighting, doesn’t it mean you still have one?) There was the question of small, seemingly inconsequential maladies—a bad tooth, an anal fissure. There was the epistemological conundrum posed by fucking psoriasis—which could be caused by stress, meaning you could actually give yourself some of the symptoms just by worrying about whether or not you had them.
And what if this extended to the whole thing? What if we were in a panic—a mass hysteria, a run on the banks? What if we were fleeing a phantom, and dying in the terrified stampede?
It was said that underneath the hospitals, there were bodies unclaimed in the morgues.
* * *
—
The dying began at the margins. The very first funeral might have been for someone we’d never even met. The deceased was a man who’d been casually fucking someone we used to casually fuck, perhaps, back when anybody did anything casually. We were still innocent enough to be impressed
by the awkwardness of this: our friend had been fucking this guy, and then he fucking died. It was still novel, that musical-chairs quality of death—the time comes up and we must sit where we stand, with all our contingencies reified (date on headstone, photo in obituary, cause of death on autopsy). There is no guarantee that this freeze-frame will happen to capture the most conclusive version of one’s life.
This is how our friend came to be sitting in a dingy funeral parlor on the Lower East Side, making terrorized small talk with the maiden aunts of a man he’d never loved—had perhaps not even particularly liked, we considered now with some horror. The boy in the coffin, we saw, was very young—a little too young for our friend, we thought, even if he was apparently not too young to die. We wondered what the thing between them had been; we wondered if, after all, it hadn’t been a little predatory. We glanced nervously at the dead boy—at his criminal, newly permanent fragility—and then at our friend, still talking to the aunts. We’d never known this man to be cruel—really, we’d hardly known him at all. But then, here was this boy, dead in the box, while our friend remained blatantly, almost tastelessly alive. It was hard not to have suspicions.
But this, we knew, was unfair. We could not blame our friend for being alive; were we not alive ourselves? Theirs had probably been a typical sort of thing, uncomplicatedly carnal, maybe getting just a bit embarrassing in its final lap. Maybe our friend had already been looking forward to forgetting the details. But then the boy went and died, and there was no forgetting anything. Because what could any of it matter—love or lust or searing indifference or destructively inchoate desire? When you had been alive with someone for a time, all other distinctions became negligible.
We were realizing that we did not really belong at this funeral. We’d gone out of curiosity—we knew that even then—and then got bored, and began telling ourselves a story. It was disrespectful; we understood that. Our punishment is to be able to recall the whole thing now with idiotic precision, when there are other funerals we’d rather remember better. Due to sheer volume, this eventually became impossible; the memories melted down and averaged out, the specifics collapsed into prototype, and recalling them feels as lonely as visiting a mass grave.
But we had no idea how many funerals we’d go to in the end. We didn’t know they’d wind up blurring into an endless sensory loop—cloying smell of lilies, cheap hum of dirge—like the most tedious of recurring nightmares. We didn’t know that, while we were coming up with some interesting new ways to die, there are really only so many ways to grieve. We couldn’t have imagined that, before long, we’d know them all.
* * *
—
It was during the Black Plague that they first started marking the dead. We’d heard this from somebody once, and maybe it was true. For a time, we kept a running tally of our own. There was Peter, his ashes scattered off in Switzerland. The guy who worked at the video store on University Place; we’d been taking his recommendations for years. A kid we’d nicknamed the Butterfly, though no one remembered why: once, we’d seen him everywhere. His real name, we read in the paper, was Martin. One actor from the company, then another—by the end there would be four, two of them quite good, as well as the sour-faced stage manager we’d never even dreamed was gay.
“And all along I thought I was shocking him,” said Paulie, and this was one of the last things he ever said.
* * *
—
And yet let it be said that we still went to parties!
There were never any AIDS “patients” in attendance; we spoke with a new, final enlightenment of “People with AIDS.” We were living in an era of acronym—GRID, A-I-D-S, AIDS, PWAs, FUO, PCP, KS, OI, ARC—and dense, ever-evolving jargon. Conversation was euphemism without subtext. We embraced all updates to the dialectic, believing in the progress soon to follow.
Though this was not the only theoretical model on offer; from other corners, stranger voices whispered.
It was said to be an invention of the government—something conjured in a lab by the right wing, or maybe the Pentagon.
It was said to be a Cold War initiative. It was said the Russians thought so, too.
It was said to be real, but mystical in its origins. It was said to be a curse from King Tut’s tomb.
It was said to have been spread by a French flight attendant who traveled the world, sleeping with men under cover of darkness, announcing when the lights came on that he was dying of the gay cancer and that now they would, too.
“Oh please,” said Paulie. “Does he wear a cape?”
“And does he slash teenage lovers with a hook?”
“And does he tie damsels to the tracks while twirling his mustache?”
“And is he calling from inside the house?”
It was said to be real, but metaphorical—conjured by the sheer force of American puritanism. It was said that when Foucault received his diagnosis, he laughed.
It was said that the flight attendant was not French, but French Canadian. Or French Guianan? French something, anyway. This seemed right, which did not make it true.
“Who’s gonna make their sexy folk devil German?” said Brookie, tapping his head. “I mean, think about it.”
It was said that the media weren’t talking about it enough, and where the hell was The New York Times?
It was said that the media were talking about it too much, and where the hell were they for the good news?
It was said that the media had actually invented it, when you really thought about it. Because illness was a universal human problem; the special specter we called AIDS was nothing but moralism and yellow journalism and tabloid paranoia—a form of highly literal blood libel. It was said that to accept the prevailing narrative was to participate in this.
It was said (by Stephen) to be real, but psychological: a somatic manifestation of the death wish. It was said that those who died were the ones who’d hated themselves the most.
It was said by Brookie—once, and only once—“Then why the hell are you still here?”
* * *
—
Causes of death, proximate:
Suicide, in ones or twos.
Homicide, like the man in Italy who shot his family because they’d come down with what turned out to be the flu.
Failure of the pancreas.
Aspiration of mucus into the lungs.
Organ failure, complete.
* * *
—
Causes of death, stated:
Sleeping sickness (Perry Ellis).
Liver cancer (Roy Cohn).
Encephalitis (on our death certificates).
A long illness (in our obituaries: this was the single ailment almost no one ever got).
* * *
—
Cause of death, ultimate: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
We knew our enemy’s name now; we had even given it an acronym.
* * *
—
The word was that hope, like life, was elsewhere.
As ever, optimism centered on Europe. It was said that the American government expected a cure from France; it was said the Germans expected it from America. (And only thirty years after the Marshall Plan! sniffed the ghost of someone’s grandmother from somewhere.) Auden went to Oxford. Santayana went to see some Roman nuns. There was a feeling that if Europe could not cure you, it could at least let you die reasonably. It was said that in France, you got psych counseling with your diagnosis.
San Francisco was spoken of with new reverence. They had a community, an organized political presence; they had the gestures of an improvisational, pre-apocalyptic culture. It wasn’t all bingo and Gay AA and canasta clubs, either; we’d heard of themed J.O. nights, inspired by the sexual ordeals of youth (we imagined Boy Scouts, summer camp, that outdoor theater where we had to play opposite
Maximilian Snyder in a toga every night for three weeks, trying to deliver lines while suppressing onstage erection). Yes, out in San Francisco, they were making the best of things. Everyone was threatening to move there, which is maybe why Brookie finally stopped.
Yes, we told ourselves: this was why.
* * *
—
It was said by Larry Kramer that we should stop screwing.
It was said by the CDC that we should limit our screwing.
It was said that we could keep screwing, just as long our partners were healthy.
It was said that we could keep screwing, just as long as what we did did not cause bleeding.
It was said that celibacy was unhealthy.
It was said that giving advice about safe sex was to collaborate with the death regime.
It was said a star had it. Someone you wouldn’t think of, someone kind of butch.
It was said interferon might be the new best hope.
It was said the incubation period might be up to eighteen months.
It was said that Liberace was suffering complications from a watermelon diet.
It was said the star might be Burt Reynolds.
It was said that airtight seals should be placed on our coffins.
It was said by the New York State Funeral Directors Association that its members should not embalm our bodies.
It was said by Pat Buchanan that gay teachers should be fired.
It was said by bathroom graffiti: STOP NIGGERS SPREADING AIDS.
It was said by William F. Buckley, Jr., that we should have our HIV statuses tattooed on our arms.
It was said you could still get a drink at the Lion’s Head, even if they could tell you were sick.
It was said by Ronald Reagan: nothing.
The Spectators Page 20