Not long after I was diagnosed with early-onset
Alzheimer’s, a gay colleague of mine
invited me to have
lunch in Boston’s Italian North nd. During our lunch, I asked him if he ever
lost someone to aid to AIDS. My colleague was frank. He told me that he had
been involved with an older man who died soon quite soon after the affair. My aim was to compare Alzheimer’s
to AIDS. But the comparison struck as too
facile.
This topic almost fell into my lap. I was walking close to
where I live, and someone was giving away books. The one I took home turned out
to be a gem. Personal Dispatches:
Writers’ Confront AIDS. My favorite by far was The Fear. And why not? 1987 was the year, but know one knew when a breakthrough,
if ever. The challenge was compared to
curbing the Great Influenza in the second decade of the early twentieth
century. But there had been litle or none stigma to the flu. AIDS did. Here is
how Holleran described the scene in 1987: “The Fear among homosexuals is personal,
physical and real. It is easy enough to dismiss the idea that the CIA set out
to exterminate homosexuals; it is not easy to dismiss the fact—having lived in
New York, before during the seventies as a gay man—one can reasonably expect to
be infected.
This was the zeitgeist when this book was published. Pat
Buchanen, a longtime right-wing pundit, called for a quarantine in one
particular community in Florida, presumably with a high density of gay
residents. But as Holleran wrote at the time, “Even with the homeosexual
community, however, there was despicable behavior: men who would not go to
restaurants, hospital rooms, wakes” or other such venues. The Fear among
homosexuals is personal, physical, and real. It is easy enough to dismiss the
idea that the idea that the CIA set out to exterminate homosexuals; it is not
easy to dismiss that—having lived. In one of Holeran’s most vivid
War. At
one point in this brilliant essay, Holleran states, “The Fear is a god to which
offerings must be made before sex can commence. Sometimes it refused it…Even
safe sex leads to the question…Sex and terror are twins. Death is a hunk…and loathing…This remarkable essay ends
from an invocation from Jonathan Edwards, the eighteenCentury preacher who
wrote the sermon, under the title “Sinners in the Hands of an angry God.”
And I was glad to learn that Andrew Holleran had survived
the plague of AIDS. What a fine writer he is.
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