AIDS, personal encounters
Ron Rizzo
In article <90094.17...@CUNYVM.BITNET> SECBH@CUNYVM writes:
>
>I agree with you. But I wasn't suggesting by a long shot
>that "all" of anybody's time should be spent talking about AIDS...
>no thanks! But it does not begin to garner the space that goes to
>Rob Lowe.....or even earrings, and that seems peculiarly lopsided.
I agree, especially after talking with another motsser about it.
AIDS is the looming uninvited guest here, the big implicit issue,
maybe even the subtext, certainly for many of the feelings that
get expressed here, but maybe even for many of the opinions and
ideas seen in soc.motss. Perhaps it's time to let the Big A into
the newsgroup?
sci.med.aids can continue to deal with the medical aspects. But
there are many other features of AIDS that are relevant to a
newsgroup such as this one. People who don't want to have to
read about it a lot or every day can skip articles. I would
guess that those of us who are queasy about "letting it in"
(I include myself) are by and large people who have so far
had little involvement with it.
My motss-friend said there seem to be two groups now among gay men:
those who deal with the AIDS crisis and those who don't/won't. A
lot of people have effectively stopped associating with friends or
boyfriends who have AIDS, ARC or are HIV+, not by deciding to drop
or shun them as such, but by finding increasing excuses NOT to see
them, to postpone or cancel visits or plans to socialize or do things
together, etc., to gradually shift their social circles to effectively
screen out direct victims of the crisis and make AIDS invisible in their
own lives.
I think this is obviously true. I can find more than a few examples
of myself doing exactly that. It's very easy to do.
I remember a very thoughtful posting by Jess Anderson last year. He
described the ubiquitous effect something as big as AIDS has on our
lives and times, how its magnitude makes it hard for us to think or
feel about it, how the seeming silence about it that occurs from time
to time does not mean we aren't all affected by or involved in the
crisis.
>Soc.motss has been referred to as a sandbox. I wouldn't prefer to see
>it as a Child's Garden of Hearses! :-)
I agree with both sentiments here. My first reaction was to value
soc.motss as one place where we could or should refuse to let AIDS
dominate everything, where we recognize that there still are other
important issues even in the midst of the crisis and insist on airing
and developing them here, a kind of correlate of carrying on with the
other business of our lives despite AIDS.
But I wonder whether this doesn't play too easily into the nearly
universal wish, by netters and others, whether lesbigay, bi or straight,
to put AIDS aside as old news. AIDS hasn't yet been demoted to a chronic
treatable condition like Victorian TB. The crisis continues as a crisis
whether we acknowledge it or not.
So maybe we should start talking about AIDS here on a regular basis?
Or at least express a willingness to explore AIDS-related issues and
try to participate when such discussions arise?
Regards,
Ron
Jack Hamilton
>I agree, especially after talking with another motsser about it.
>AIDS is the looming uninvited guest here, the big implicit issue,
>maybe even the subtext, certainly for many of the feelings that
>get expressed here, but maybe even for many of the opinions and
>ideas seen in soc.motss.
I don't agree. I think that homophobia is the big implicit issue. Also
the big explicit issue. If society at large weren't so homophobic, AIDS
would have gotten a lot more attention a lot earlier, and might not be such
a problem now.
>Perhaps it's time to let the Big A into the newsgroup?
You make it sound like there's a gatekeeper out there preventing you from
posting. That's not the case.
>I agree with both sentiments here. My first reaction was to value
>soc.motss as one place where we could or should refuse to let AIDS
>dominate everything, where we recognize that there still are other
>important issues even in the midst of the crisis and insist on airing
>and developing them here, a kind of correlate of carrying on with the
>other business of our lives despite AIDS.
My feelings exactly.
>But I wonder whether this doesn't play too easily into the nearly
>universal wish, by netters and others, whether lesbigay, bi or straight,
>to put AIDS aside as old news. AIDS hasn't yet been demoted to a chronic
>treatable condition like Victorian TB. The crisis continues as a crisis
>whether we acknowledge it or not.
To some extent, AIDS is old news. I went to a San Francisco Gay Men's
Chorus concert last weekend. The program listed all the members who had
died of AIDS. I knew 31 of them, and had sat next to about 8 of them at
rehearsal. I know 10 or so other people who have died. Three close friends
and a whole host of acquaintances are HIV+, and I see some of them
declining, or they just disappear. Just what do you expect me to say in
soc.motss that will make a difference? For my own mental health, I can't
afford to think about it all the time.
>So maybe we should start talking about AIDS here on a regular basis?
>Or at least express a willingness to explore AIDS-related issues and
>try to participate when such discussions arise?
As has been said before, USENET is an anarchy. People will talk about what
they want to talk about.
--
Jack Hamilton
j...@netcom.com
netcom!j...@apple.com
Jay Schuster
>Just what do you expect me to say in
>soc.motss that will make a difference? For my own mental health, I can't
>afford to think about it all the time.
And I wrote, not too long ago:
>I know that I like to think of motss as sort of a child's sandbox,
>not to be messied with things like omnipresent death and lingering.
>
>Also, many people caring for those so stricken have a more immediate
>support group than motss. When I have been up all night because my
>friend couldn't sleep at all, and still have to go to work the next
>day, I am not going to wait four days for some motss response, nor
>do I feel like tying up bandwidth by saying how miserable last night
>was.
Maybe I am being facile and avoiding ``problems,'' but I have cared/
am caring/will care for people with AIDS. My housemate is the
Hepatitis B coordinator for the State Department of Health, and
does a fair amount of AIDS work, including answering the AIDS
hotline and giving out test results. AIDS is a constant dinner
table topic, whether it is the Client From Hell, the Jerk Off Call
of the Day, or what happened when I went to the dentist today.
I am surrounded by AIDS, simply by being gay, and by being a caring
person towards my friends. I have been touched (slapped in the
face, brutalized, raped) by AIDS.
If you are coping with AIDS on a day to day basis, the propagation
delay time of motss make it useless as a major form of support.
What is it we should be talking about here that is AIDS related?
What last night was like caring for someone? What watching someone
decay before your eyes is like? What looking in his eyes while
he begs you to kill him is like? What it was like to deal with
his family? What the funeral was like? What we wore to the funeral?
How many of us there were fuckbuddies of the deceased? The number
of our friends who have died? The total number of people who have
died? The most recent MMWR? Our methods of coping? The politics
of AIDS? The most recent ACT-UP demonstration/fiasco? New
treatments? The reactions of local, state, and federal governments
to AIDS?
I think the last few have a place here, and we *do* discuss them
here, and in sci.med.aids. The first few are things you share with
your immediate support group, because, in my eyes, motss isn't
quick enough, close enough, or warm enough (in a physical touch
sense). Motss can't smother me with their collective bodies when
I am crying with rage and screaming drunk. Motss can't press their
warm hands and chests against mine and lean their heads on mine
and hold on to me tightly while I steel myself up for another day.
Motss *can*, on the other hand [if *'s are like quotation marks,
why do we not put the commas before the asterisks], reach out and
give strokes, tell funny stories, have hilarious flamefests, remind
you of your years-ago, and of your years-to-be. It's a great
sharing of experience, meted out in easy-to-handle doses.
--
Jay Schuster <j...@pcc.COM> uunet!uvm-gen!banzai!jay, attmail!banzai!jay
The People's Computer Company `Revolutionary Programming'