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Thursday, December 2, 2004

Clarification

Jason put up an entry in response to my previous posting on World AIDS Day. He makes points that are worth thinking about. Below is a clarification of the point I was attempting to make.

I haven’t wiped the ass of a lover dying of AIDS. Nor have I sat by a friend’s bedside and cleaned the lesions on their skin.

Jason is right in that I’m not an “expert,” and for that I’m thankful. He is right that the majority of us are — or at least seem to be — unscathed by HIV and AIDS.

But the ways I’ve seen the effects of AIDS are significant because they are insignificant. That is the point of the previous entry. It’s a disease that, growing up in the ’80s, was on the very periphery. It was spoken of with whispers and mystery. Though family members died of the disease, I knew nothing of that because it wasn’t discussed. I learned of AIDS not through personal experience, but through media portrayals two decades after the disease first appeared. Former roommates and current friends who are HIV positive rarely talk about it. I have been insulated from the reality of it all, which, though disease freaks me out, I don’t think is good. Not because I’m nostalgic, or because I desire a “lump in my throat” or a painful experience to validate my existence as a gay man and all that entails, but because I think much of the gay community is oblivious to HIV and AIDS, thinking it doesn’t really affect them. We have been insulated from the disease by communities that don’t recognize it as a true social problem. And as gay men, we have insulated ourselves from it because we don’t want to deal with the stuff.

Today, medical advances haven’t cured AIDS but they have allowed it to be nearly invisible — a Catch 22. For those living with HIV and AIDS, new medications and treatments offer a normal life. For those without, today’s treatments keep the disease hidden, fooling us into thinking it’s no longer a threat.

I spend usually one night a week at the Minnesota AIDS Project. Why? Because those inexperiences — those people who live silently with HIV, those who have died without teaching me a damn thing about their life or the cause of their death, those media portrayals that were the only available means of learning about AIDS — may have been insignificant, but they were enough to get me to do something instead of simply complaining that I don’t REALLY understand the disease or have any REAL experiences with it. And honestly, I hope I never have to really experience it, though I suppose the statistics are not in favor of that. Someday I will likely watch a friend, lover or family member die of AIDS. I don’t think I have to wait until then, though, to say that HIV and AIDS have affected my life, even by their apparent absence.

Posted by Aaron on December 2, 2004 1:58 PM