© Breeze Vincinz
I was a preteen when I first heard of AIDS. By this time I had already accumulated enough “evidence” to support the theory that “faggots” were the absolute scum of the earth whom were far removed from my plebian project surroundings and I could never be one. I remember when AIDS first hit my world view; it was a moral dilemma more so than a medical one. The news wasn’t that people were mysteriously dying but that gay men were mysteriously dying and the mystery that surrounded their death in my neighborhood was automatically tethered to those guys’ sexual proclivities.
Over twenty years has passed since Gaëtan Dugas was controversially found to be Patient Zero, the initial patient who was vilified as a “mass spreader” of HIV and the original source of the HIV epidemic among gay men. But even after all of the medical information that has been gathered, investigated and tested to explain HIV, and there are now tangible medical treatment options available, its umbilical cord is still very much attached to this womb of judgment, fear and derision.
Stepping back and looking at the whole picture, it is quite disarming to realize the universal disdain the world at large still has for the HIV+. Growing up I remember the newscasts of men who were critically injured in car crashes and the emergency medical units refusing to even touch them out of fear of contracting the disease and immediately dissolving into dust on contact. I remember the kids joking about which one of us had AIDS as if it were cooties or lice. I remember when Ryan White was shunned by his friends and expelled from school once it was discovered he had acquired the disease through a blood transfusion.
But this was the 80’s, Regan was in office, I had a carefree curl, The Color Purple lost all eleven nominations at the Oscars, LaToya Jackson released six albums… it was just a fucked up time for everybody. Though we could have predicted the pandemic that it has become, no one truly believed that it would actually get this far; and we most certainly didn’t have the spiritual accoutrements to deal with watching dozens of our closest friends, family and associates wither and die right before our eyes. Not in the 80’s, not when there was so much money to be made, legal or otherwise, and so many luxuries that could be bought. It was much easier to contain the disease within a group of people who have been so universally maligned anyway.
Well, it’s 2008; America has a real possibility of having our first Black president, Whoopi Goldberg went on to win two Oscars, Oprah Winfrey is one of the most powerful people in the world and I got cornrows now… things are looking up. Though not perfectly, Latoya released four more albums and people still look at HIV/AIDS as a moral judgment, a spiritual condemnation… a gay disease.
I recently watched “Coming Out Stories” on the Logo Network. Each show focuses on a “closet homosexual” and his/her journey to tell their closest family members that they are indeed gay. The premise of it to me always seemed really mundane to me, mainly because my own coming out story was about ten seconds.”
“Mama, you totally know I’m gay right.”
“Uh huh.”
“You got any questions?”
“Yeah, when are you going to clean your fucking room?”
But there were parts of certain episodes that I found truly endearing. However, I think in 2008, there is a second coming out that happens; when you tell your friends and family that you are HIV+. It’s a tremendous task, I would think even more so than telling people that you’re gay. As socially elevated and intellectual that we as a society would like to think that we are, we still hold on to that judgment of people who are HIV+. We still believe that they are less than, or less worthy or as a friend once told me, “damaged.”
Not too long ago I had a candid discussion with a group of friends about our collective sexual practices. One of my friends said that he doesn’t use a condom with one night stands all the time because he can usually tell if the person is HIV+ or not. I asked him to explain. He basically told me that people who are HIV+ look drawn in and emaciated, don’t really smile and you can kind of smell of them.
There’s a tone that exists between a primal scream and an atomic bomb exploding… that’s the sound you’re hearing right now… it came from me weeks ago when I screamed at the top of my lungs at him.
And the sad fact of the matter is that he’s not alone in that assumption. Despite the fact an estimated 33.2 million people are living with AIDS, surprisingly enough, there is a quantifiable number of people whose inner circle has not (yet) been effected by the disease and who get their notions about carriers of the disease from some bullshit “The Birth of a Nation”-esuqe film or television show where the only Black people are the main character’s best friend and anyone who happens to be physically ill is a balding drag queen with a lisp.
Those misjudgments are still out there, strong and proud. I remember when the brief rumor got out that Madonna had contracted AIDS, she went on the warpath defending herself saying in effect, “If I had AIDS, I would be more terrified at the judgments people would have against me than the disease itself.” It’s totally understandable. God forbid but if Lil’ Kim or Jenna Jameson by chance would contract breast cancer, I imagine this country would rally around their efforts for recovery despite their highly sexual histories. But if Lil’ Kim or Jenna Jameson by chance would contract HIV, I imagine this country would denigrate them as morality tales about the evils of sexual promiscuity to spite their highly sexual histories… as if they deserved the disease. No one deserves HIV more so than anybody deserves cancer, or lupus or sickle cell anemia (or Latoya Jackson’s eleventh album whose release date has been thankfully pushed back again).
Recently a friend of mine disclosed to me that he just received the news that he was HIV+. I do have to say that in my own personal inner circle no one has had their second “coming out” in quite some time. Emotion-wise, there is some overlap between the two events; there is a cathartic metamorphosis that takes place where everything you were before the conversation has a different glimmer to it after the conversation, your true family and friends stick by you and support you, and despite their support, you know in your heart of hearts that they are going to miss the person you were before you had the conversation because honestly… you do too.
I don’t think a cake or a party would be appropriate though with the second coming out. I don’t think it should be this dire funeral-like atmosphere but I also don’t think a Hallmark “Just-For-Laughs” card is appropriate either. With my friend’s second coming out, unfortunately, I broke down. It’s something I don’t suggest you do if someone confides their status to you but this cut threw me like a knife. It was around the anniversary of my husband’s death and also around the time where I had some post-coital worries from a recent tryst where I was just lucky enough to find a condom that exists in the 1% failure rate in the middle of intercourse… so… I was a little on edge and it was on my mind. But I eventually pulled it together and tried my best to be a rock for my friend.
Honestly speaking there was a time where a part of me believed that I was ahead of the game because I am HIV- but the truth of the matter is… it’s really fucking irrelevant in the big scheme of things. When I think about my husband, his diagnosis, his life and his death… I don’t feel… privileged. I feel sad, and angry and really pissed… because he’s not here… and my own existence is only a small consolation to help ease that pain. Sometimes, usually I after stop crying, I don’t see that line that separates the HIV+ from the HIV-… it’s all the same; we’re all in this together, and if some of us are in pain then all of us are in pain. I realized while holding my friend when they disclosed their status to me and the both of us were blubbering like two kids being sent to an orphanage that neither one of us was going to leave this moment unscathed; this… was going to hurt.
But we picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off and did what two true friends always do when one comes out (about anything) to the other… we had dinner and drinks and tried to figure out how this new information was it going to affect their love life, sex life and hairdo.
When my husband passed away I remember my mom steadfastly insisted I get counseling afterwards which I never did. In fact it was suggested that I join some HIV- support group beforehand and I never agreed to that either. However, for some reason nowadays I don’t think it would be such a bad idea to run some of my thoughts past a professional. I would be interested to know what they felt about my thoughts of people “coming out for a second time.” I still don’t think Hallmark should make a card for the occasion but I was thinking of a card that said on the front, “I heard about your diagnosis…” and in the inside it said “… dude, it totally fucking sucks. Let’ go get drunk.” Not the most uplifting of sentiments but I think it’s quite inspirational and honest.
And yeah… I’m getting professional help.
When I was younger I concocted a future for myself where I would wear some sort of all purpose uniform in my daily life that would deflect the possibility of scorn or comment from an otherwise overly fashion-obsessed public. I imagined myself to be this ghetto version of Jem and the Holograms whereas at any given moment I could touch my nipple ring and a hologram would appear over my body resembling whatever high end fashion garment just happened to be en vogue at that particular time. I never really wanted to own clothing that was particularly luxurious or trendy but I have always, even as a kid, had this insatiable need to get people to… shut the fuck up about what I happened to be wearing at the time. Holograms always seemed to be the best strategy; throw some light beams at people, have them think I have on Bugle Boy or Karl Kani, move past that immaculately-plastic-first-impression bullshit and get straight to an actual conversation while I remain the true person that I am underneath.
I don’t know how it happened, I even mused about it with my mom, but somehow I grew up to be this sort of anti-capitalistic anarchist of sorts. Like most African Americans I had pretty humble beginnings (as if the middle right now is any better). I grew up in the Ida B.Wells Projects in Chicago and though we were never particularly destitute… we were pretty broke most of the time. I never remember going without, but I did always have this feeling of “the rest of the world ain’t like this.” Even still, somehow the whole capitalism isotope that usually infects preteens like public hair and menstrual cycles just never happened with me. While my comrades looked at television shows like Dynasty and Dallas and maybe saw the drug dealers on the block with flashy clothes and cars and slowly began to convolute their dreams and agendas to include such extravagancies, it just never clicked with me. I was never jealous of the bourgeoisie and I never really found it to be a more amiable way of life; which in all honesty is a pretty odd way to think of things. The majority of people who have nothing… usually want everything. It was no surprise to me when Eazy-E and 50 Cent came out to be Republicans, or in the very least, Republican sympathizers. One of the major tenets of the Republican Party has always been “fiscal first” whereas everything in this country should be built around protecting the sanctity of money and all of the accoutrements that it affords… or… “Get Rich or Die Tryin’”.
But alas, I will concede to the idea that one of my closest friends summated that I “think way too much about this stuff.” I understand that there is a good chance that the majority of people don’t do the mental gymnastics that I do when looking at someone’s clothing but I still don’t think I’m too off the mark here. Just the other day a colleague told me that when he first meets a guy the things he pays most attention to are his shoes, his watch and his car. And as much as I would like to thing of this colleague as a typical shallow, image-obsessed Hollywood starfucker, the truth of the matter is… I do the same thing; my judgment is just on the opposite end. While he might find someone wearing a smart pair of Stacy Adams and a Rolex who drives an Aston Martin the most prodigious man to have a romantic relationship with, I am similarly looking at the same man with such extravagant trappings and think that he has never been south of Wilshire Boulevard in his life and outside of us both being carbon based life forms we have nothing in common. And the truth of the matter is… my colleague and I would both be in the wrong for judging this guy solely based on his physical appearance and acquired paraphernalia.
So for me, there’s an effort being put forth where my outside does in certain ways reflect my own personal struggles, feelings and concepts and that effort in and of itself… makes it my fashion. And as I get older I am “loosening up” a bit, which in my case would mean dressing up just a little bit more. I’m wearing a lot more shirts with collars and I totally stopped ripping the arms off of my t-shirts and that has to count for something.
Awhile back I wrote about a New Years’ resolution that I had devised for myself where I would restructure my inner circle of friends. Truth be told, it’s actually been one of the very few New Years’ resolutions in my life that I have ever fully completed. I tend to think that I am happier and better off for it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t have residual bitterness and resentment over the restructuring. And while talking to my sister recently I began to honestly fear for my own future as I tried to truthfully imagine my life proceeding down the road that it’s going on in regards to friendships.
I recently saw one piece of pop culture that has shoved the concept of Teflon strength relationships down the throats of American viewers like a teenage boy with Viagra and a blow-up doll… Sex and the City: The Movie. No matter what those gals go through, their commitment to each other remained unshakable. When one of the main characters breaks up with her fiancé, they all hate the fiancé. When she gets back with him, they all love him again. It fascinating really. I saw the film with one of my closest friends and after it was over I was in the most romantic of moods. I felt so emotional and full of hope and love, both passionate and platonic. Still tasting that sweet aftertaste in my mouth after the movie was over I decided to tell my friend that I had begun to talk to my ex-boyfriend again. Just talk, nothing more, nothing romantic. I told him that he has moved on and found another boyfriend and through our talks I have successfully put to rest the immense amount of pure hatred and rage I had towards that
man. I said that we are good friends who shared some intimate moments in the past and we are finally working on a platonic relationship and that as of date, it’s working beautifully and we’re both happy. I wanted him to be happy for me, understand that this is a good thing and that we both know what we’re doing and that we’re just friends. I wanted him to welcome him back into my life as a friend as much as the gals welcomed Mr. Big back in Sex and the City. But in real life, it doesn’t work like that.
I was talking with my sister about the whole scenario and the more I talked, the more I was realizing that I am, in all actuality, turning into a bitter old man. I’m going to be that lonely old dude in a studio apartment with fifteen cats who the kids fuck with on Halloween. I told her that over the years that I have learned to play certain cards very close to my chest, there are certain aspects of my life that I rarely talk about with anyone and certain aspects I just don’t discuss at all, in print or in person, and that over the past year or so, the list has grown exponentially… because no one that I know has proven to be able to handle it with a certain level of respect or decorum.
Sex and the City boldly proclaims that it wants to shatter the myth of fairytale romances but I think that what it does in turn is enable the myth of fairytale adult friendships. I think you would be hard pressed to find a group of four non related people over 30 who are that consistently dedicated to each other (outside of maybe members of fraternities and sororities which is a whole other story because those motherfuckers are nuts). In real life, relationships come and go, but so do friendships really. The only things that are real are your family, your God and yourself. And if you have a couple of really good friends around to share those things with, I think you’re ahead of the curve. With that said, right now, I do think I have some absolutely excellent friends, flaws and all. They’re not perfect friendships but I dropped that little slice of delusional hell back in my twenties. What I do have are a couple of highly earnest people who are, in all actuality, there for me when I truly need them to be. The trick, for lack of a better term, is to determine when do you really need them, and can you be there for them when they really need you. In that, I got a couple of genuine people who would most definitely check to see if the cats have eaten my face off, will wipe my front door of splattered egg… tell tales about how I deserved my lot in life because I was a filthy whore who went to the bathhouse and started talking to his ex-boyfriend back in his thirties…
More than not, I am usually disappointed with the way movies depict their geographical locations, especially if I have lived there for a particular amount of time. I can only think of a handful of movies that actually did Chicago justice for example, The Blues Brothers and Adventures in Babysitting being the most true to the spirit of my hometown. I have yet to see that with Los Angeles or more specifically Hollywood. I will admit that “My” Hollywood is quite biased considering my demographic… I am African American, I am male, I am in my late thirties, I am homosexual, I am most definitely lowerclass as far as income, I am morbidly obese. I can see how my Hollywood would differ from that of… oh let’s say… Charlize Theron. But there are still aspects of our Hollywood that I think overlap and I think it is these attributes that should be acknowledged as the true flavor of Hollywood.
The nightlife here is also something to be desired. I’m pretty sure that you could do some deep research as to why things close so early in this town but all inquires would lead to… everything closes early in this town. Usually around 2:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m. on Saturday but still… last call is at 2:00 a.m. This was a huge culture shock for me considering the fact that I usually didn’t leave the house until 1:00 a.m. back in Chicago. There is also no “Circuit Party” scene here in Los Angeles. Circuit Parties are when you go to club to club to club, drinking and partying all along the way. A good friend of mine explained the reason why. Clubs in Los Angeles are spread out pretty far… and as Missing Persons so eloquently chimed in the eighties…”No one walks in L.A.”, you drive everywhere, and you will have more of a chance in finding a gay guy not into oral sex than you would finding a parking space here. So you drive to a club and you drive around from anywhere from forty five minutes to an hour and a half before you find a spot or you just give up and pay $20 for valet parking. Once the car is taken care of, you wait for another hour behind the infamous velvet rope. After that wait is over, and it is determined that you won’t disrupt the guy/girl ratio within the club and that you are in the very least remotely fashionable and attractive enough to get in, you finally cross the threshold to realize that… there are only about twenty people in this joint. And you only got about thirty minutes before they call last call for alcohol. So… no… there is no Circuit Party scene, no human would intentionally inflect that kind of pain on themselves more than once a night.
In “My” movie of Hollywood I would definitely have to mention the residential areas. Most people think of Hollywood as that long strip of land on Hollywood Boulevard with the Star Walk of Fame. It is by far one of the worlds most famous landmarks and even though I have walked that thing a million times and have seen a countless number of both human and animal excrement slopped all over those golden stars, there is still a bit of awe walking past a star and realizing that once upon time Lucille Ball stood right there. It’s a little off putting to see some homeless dude scratching his nads over it but still… I do love Lucy, I really do. And the thing about the Hollywood Walk of Fame is that, while it is essentially the yellow brick road that leads you through Hollywood, it is also eclipsed by several residential units whose occupants predictably enough tire from the constant amusement park outside. Waking up on Monday morning and dragging yourself to work is bad enough. Waking up on Monday morning and having to walk behind a gaggle of I heart Los Angeles t-shirt clad tourists slowly dredging down the street to catch a glimpse of the Jon Edwards star that was adorned with the plumpest pile of dog shit you’ve ever seen in your life a day prior doesn’t do anything to help your commute.
When I first moved here this happened about two or three times a year, usually during the summer months. That was until we experienced the wonderful world of gentrification. In no time flat, several homes that housed several Mexican families were razed in order to built these beautiful high rise condominiums for whi-, no, I can’t say that they built them specifically for white people (but it’s nothing but white folks up in there). Once they went up I can only remember one time I saw graffiti, some on my building and some on the ground in front of the condos. They were both covered up the next day never to be seen again, neither has the requisite post candle vigil returned.
I wonder when they eventually tear down my building to accommodate the “new excellence of living” as detailed in Town & Country magazine, what of our stories would remain in those neatly manicured lawns. Would they remember the one legged guy who tirelessly cleans those stars on the walk of fame everyday, the skunks, raccoons and oversized cats that run rampart through the streets late at night, those corny inspirational sayings on the marquee of the Henry Ford Theater that are so syrupy sweet that sometimes I cry at the thought of something existing in this pin prick of a world that still has such pure amiable intentions, the since abandoned Vine movie theatre where you could catch two movies for $5 in a warm, funky, dimly lit catacomb of a theater. I wonder if anyone will look at those guys on Hollywood and Highland dressed as movie characters as guys looking to pay their rent and not some idle entertainment solely their to humiliate themselves for a couple bucks. Or that the prostitutes that have absconded to Sunset Boulevard aren’t walking the streets looking for the meaning of life or their one true love, they’re looking to pay their rent also.
Probably the most effeminate thing about my character, outside of my predilection to fellatio, is my undying affection towards all things Madonna. I would tend to believe that I am on a slightly higher phase of existence than those silly school girls who used to scream at Beatles concerts but the truth of the matter is that I have often thought about what I would truly do if I ever did meet her and truthfully speaking I’m almost positive that I would scream at the top of my lungs until my eyes welled up with tears and then faint soon after.
I got this same feeling when I read Rich Cohen’s interview in the May issue of Vanity Fair whereas he spent a lot of page space theorizing the idea of Madonna as opposed to actually presenting these theories to the woman herself and having her speak for herself or even in the very least, asking her about her music… you know… the shit that got her here in the first place.
There is overlap in the roles of teachers, journalists, critics and bloggers. The ultimate goal of all them is to communicate information to a group of people. I think the differences lie within their intentions. I think teachers communicate to enlighten. Journalists communicate for the sake of communication. Bloggers communicate to self medicate. And critics, well… I think critics communicate to self congratulate, because it’s not really about enlightening people, or enlightening themselves really… it’s more about finding the wittiest ways to frame the most vile of intentions in the most urbane language and being congratulated for it (Rex Reed… I’m lookin’ at you...)
So as teachers, journalists, bloggers and critics alike rattle on with great fervor, anger and passion about the significant insignificance (or the insignificant significance as the case me be) of a little lady named Madonna, she just keeps going and going to her own beat. And I in turn keep going and going listening to her music every morning on the treadmill, on the exercise bikes on the lat pull machines. In my mind I imagine a brood of teachers, journalists, bloggers and critics chasing after her as fast as they can, and she is always in front of them running as fast as she can, but not to get away from them, she doesn’t even know they’re there. She’s just running because she likes running and she has her own goal to get to.
I thought it was an interesting concept considering the fact that as of date both my heart and soul have been taking an immense pounding and the little bit of love that I had left stashed away like an “emergency cigarette” encased in glass with Break in Case of Emergency emblazoned on the front has been smashed open and smoked up by some hollow, codependent coward with really pretty hazel eyes. I wondered of a life without the words love, heart, and soul. Not particularly the concepts, just the terms.
I think it’s because those words can be so succinct in their meanings that their simplicity can make people embarrassed by the amount of weight they can hold. When you consider yourself to be a highly educated individual, I think it might be humbling to find yourself taken aback by words with only one syllable. I’ve noticed in this workshop of enlightened/elitist poets and writers that what gets them off are words like entanglement, disillusion, allegory, barnacle, zephyr, melancholy, sociological… I’ve been trying to come up with a piece that uses extranoematic or supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.