A friend of mine in New York City has a half-fare transit card, which means that you get on buses and subways for half price. And the other day, when he showed his card to the token attendant, the attendant asked what his disability was, and he said, āI have AIDS.ā And the attendant said, āNo, you donāt. If you had AIDS, youād be home dying.ā And so, I wanted to speak out today as a person with AIDS who is not dying.Ā
You know, for the last three years, since I was diagnosed, my family thinks two things about my situation: 1) they think Iām going to die, and 2) they think that my government is doing absolutely everything in their power to stop that. And theyāre wrong, on both counts.Ā
So, if Iām dying from anything, Iām dying from homophobia. If Iām dying from anything, Iām dying from racism. If Iām dying from anything, itās from indifference and red tape, because these are the things that are preventing an end to this crisis. If Iām dying from anything, Iām dying from Jesse Helms. If Iām dying from anything, Iām dying from the president of the United States. And, especially, if Iām dying from anything, Iām dying from the sensationalism of newspapers and magazines and television shows, which are interested in me, as a human-interest story, only as long as Iām willing to be a helpless victim, but not if Iām fighting for my life. If Iām dying from anything, Iām dying from the fact that not enough rich, white, heterosexual men have gotten AIDS for anybody to give a shit.Ā
You know, living with AIDS in this country is like living in the twilight zone. Living with AIDS is like living through a war, which is happening only for those people who happen to be in the trenches. Every time a shell explodes, you look around and you discover that youāve lost more of your friends, but nobody else notices. It isnāt happening to them. Theyāre walking the streets as though we werenāt living through some sort of nightmare. And only you can hear the screams of the people who are dying and their cries for help. No one else seems to be noticing.Ā
And itās worse than a war, because during a war people are united in a shared experience. This war has not united us; itās divided us. Itās separated those of us with AIDS and those of us who fight for people with AIDS from the rest of the population. Two and a half years ago I picked upĀ LifeĀ magazine, and I read an editorial which said, āItās time to pay attention, because this disease is now beginning to strike the rest of us.ā It was as if I wasnāt the one holding the magazine in my hand. And since then, nothing has changed to alter the perception that AIDS is not happening to the real people in this country. Itās not happening to āusā in the United States; itās happening to āthem,ā to the disposable populations of fags and junkies who deserve what they get. The media tells them that they donāt have to care, because the people who really matter are not in danger. Twice, three times, four times,Ā The New York TimesĀ has published editorials saying,Ā Donāt panic yet over AIDS. It still hasnāt entered the general population, and until it does, we donāt have to give a shit.Ā
And the days, and the months, and the years pass by, and they donāt spend those days and nights and months and years trying to figure out how to get hold of the latest experimental drug, and which dose to take it at, and in what combination with other drugs, and from what source, and how are you going to pay for it, and where are you going to get it, because it isnāt happening to them, so they donāt give a shit. And they donāt sit in television studios, surrounded by technicians who are wearing rubber gloves, who wonāt put a microphone on you, because it isnāt happening to them, so they donāt give a shit. And they donāt have their houses burned down by bigots and morons. They watch it on the news and they have dinner and they go to bed, because it isnāt happening to them, and they donāt give a shit. And they donāt spend their waking hours going from hospital room to hospital room, and watching the people that they love die slowly of neglect and bigotry, because it isnāt happening to them, and they donāt have to give a shit. They havenāt been to two funerals a week for the last three or four or five years, so they donāt give a shit, because itās not happening to them.Ā
And we read on the front page ofĀ The New York TimesĀ last Saturday that Anthony Fauci now says that all sorts of promising drugs for treatment havenāt even been tested in the last two years because he canāt afford to hire the people to test them. Weāre supposed to be grateful that this story has appeared in the newspaper after two years. Nobody wonders why some reporter didnāt dig up that story and print it 18 months ago, before Fauci got dragged before a congressional hearing. How many people are dead in the last two years who might be alive today if those drugs had been tested more quickly? Reporters all over the country are busy printing government press releases. They donāt give a shit; it isnāt happening to them, meaning that it isnāt happening to people like them: the real people, the world-famous general public we all keep hearing about. Legionnairesā disease was happening to them because it hit people who looked like them, who sounded like them, who were the same color as them. And that fucking story about a couple of dozen people hit the front page of every newspaper and magazine in this country, and it stayed there until that mystery got solved.Ā
All I read in the newspapers tells me that the mainstream, white, heterosexual population is not at risk for this disease. All the newspapers I read tell me that IV-drug users and homosexuals still account for the overwhelming majority of cases and a majority of those people at risk. And can somebody please tell me why every single penny allocated for education and prevention gets spent on ad campaigns that are directed almost exclusively to white, heterosexual teenagers, who they keep telling us are not at risk? Can somebody tell me why the only television movie ever produced by a major network in this country about the impact of this disease is not about the impact of this disease on the man who has AIDS but of the impact of AIDS on his white, straight, nuclear family? Why, for eight years, every newspaper and magazine in this country has done cover stories on AIDS only when the threat of heterosexual transmission is raised? Why, for eight years, every single educational film designed for use in high schools has eliminated any gay-positive material before being approved by the Board of Education? Why, for eight years, every single public-information pamphlet and videotape distributed by establishment sources has ignored specific homosexual content?Ā
Why is every bus and subway ad I read and every advertisement and every billboard I see in this country specifically not directed at gay men? Donāt believe the lie that the gay community has done its job and done it well and educated its people. The gay community and IV-drug users are not all politicized people living in New York and San Francisco. Members of minority populations, including so-called sophisticated gay men, are abysmally ignorant about AIDS. If it is true that gay men and IV-drug users are the populations at risk for this disease, then we have a right to demand that education and prevention be targeted specifically to these people. And it is not happening. We are being allowed to die, while low-risk populations are being panicked ā not educated, panicked ā into believing that we deserve to die.Ā
Why are we here together today? Weāre here because it is happening to us, and we do give a shit. And if there were more of us and less of them, AIDS wouldnāt be what it is at this moment in history. Itās more than just a disease, which ignorant people have turned into an excuse to exercise the bigotry they have always felt. It is more than a horror story, exploited by the tabloids. AIDS is really a test of us as a people. When future generations ask what we did in this crisis, weāre going to have to tell them that we were out here today. And we have to leave the legacy to those generations of people who will come after us.Ā
Someday, the AIDS crisis will be over. Remember that. And when that day comes, when that day has come and gone, thereāll be people alive on this Earth, gay people and straight people, men and women, black and white, who will hear the story that once there was a terrible disease in this country and all over the world, and that a brave group of people stood up and fought and, in some cases, gave their lives, so that other people might live and be free. So Iām proud to be with my friends today and the people I love, because I think youāre all heroes, and Iām glad to be part of this fight. But, to borrow a phrase from Michael Callenās song, āall we have is love right now. What we donāt have is time.āĀ
In a lot of ways, AIDS activists are like those doctors out there: Theyāre so busy putting out fires and taking care of people on respirators that they donāt have the time to take care of all the sick people. Weāre so busy putting out fires right now that we donāt have the time to talk to each other and strategize and plan for the next wave, and the next day, and next month, and the next week, and the next year. And weāre going to have to find the time to do that in the next few months. And we have to commit ourselves to doing that. And then, after we kick the shit out of this disease, weāre all going to be alive to kick the shit out of this system, so that this never happens again.
