I’m halfway through spring rolls at Dee’s on Armitage when I get this warm dripping sensation inside my head that, nine times out of ten, tells me I’m about to get a torrential bloody nose. I make an invisible check mark in the air for the waiter. He brings the bill. The blood is running out of my nostrils down to my lips and tastes a little salty. I pinch my nose with a thick cotton napkin to stop the flow, and a suburban-looking couple just across the aisle shifts nervously at the sight. They’d really shift if they knew it was AIDS blood.
People love to know how I got the virus. They want to know if I’m gay or a drug addict or a gay drug addict. They lust for details. Sometimes they’re too polite to ask, but they always somehow get around to the topic. I turn things around by asking why they want to know. But I already know the answer. It’s the same thing that makes us gape at highway accidents.
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For better or worse, I’ve been around the HIV community for a long time. I can’t help but notice things that don’t get vocalized, issues that don’t make the papers, feelings that don’t get discussed. For instance, my fantasy about holding up a liquor store with my own blood makes terrible cocktail conversation, but it’s a thought I’d bet many people with HIV entertain.
During the past decade mainstream society has vilified people with HIV. At some level they think we deserve what we got. AIDS organizations and people with HIV have countered with a kind of public-relations campaign to change the image of people with HIV, to present them in a positive, nonthreatening light. Already ashamed of having the virus, many people with HIV feel even further pressured to hold back unattractive emotions like anger or envy. They won’t openly discuss sex, even though unsafe sex happens all the time. I know many people with the virus who’ve thought of taking a swan dive off the top floor of Watertower Place, yet open discussion of suicide is subtly discouraged. In fact, the whole topic of death tends to be avoided.
[V.C.] had extensive KS and a CD4+ count of 56/4 percent at this time. Records indicate that he had been prescribed [AZT] 300 mg daily but he was not compliant and preferred complementary therapies including a whole food diet, visualization, meditation, and a range of vitamins and minerals, and Chinese herbs. He was taking dapsone 100 mg every other day as well as acyclovir 600 mg for control of refractory Herpes simplex stomatitis. In February 1991, he stopped taking all medications and began using an experimental therapy called Cancell which he claimed would cure him of the KS and the HIV infection too.
This is my retraction. Clean living has nothing to do with the progression of the disease. I wish it were true, but it isn’t. Attitude may enhance quality of life, but it won’t extend it. Clinical studies have consistently failed to support the notion that “healthy” life-styles–exercise, stress reduction, reducing recreational drug use–after infection can significantly influence the course of the disease.
On July 7, 1991, [V.C.] pulled the feathers out of a budgie belonging to his parents, adopted a puppy from the local humane society, and left his city residence. He purchased airplane tickets to Australia, a $48,000 car, as well as other items of clothing and accessories. He was arrested by police for failing to pay for purchases at a gas station and returned to his parents.
