"HIV won't kill me, your indifference will."
By @LucasFauno Photo: Marianella Pietraccone ONE - CAUSE OF DEATH I am exhausted by society's need for me to be "the AIDS patient." My positive body is a comfort to the most fascist right wing. They revel in a Catholic guilt they know how to impose on us. If I am the one who carries the cross, they can walk lightly…
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By @LucasFauno
Photo: Marianella Pietraccone
ONE - CAUSE OF DEATH
I'm exhausted by society's need for me to be "the one with AIDS." My positive body is a comfort to the most fascist right wing. They revel in a Catholic guilt they know how to impose on us. If I'm the one who carries the cross, they can walk lightly. I'm more likely to die of sadness than from any HIV/AIDS-related illness. Don't blame HIV or AIDS for your desire to see me guilty and dead so you can live another day in your holy tranquility.
In high school, I aced all my HIV/AIDS assignments. Today, I live with the virus. Perhaps sex education in this country is still held hostage by a Catholic, Apostolic, and decidedly unromantic state. A meat grinder that vomits up scapegoats. Uneducate us, and you'll defeat us. Neither my mother will pamper me when she finds out I have sex without a condom, nor will my father love me when he learns I'm gay.
I was miseducated in the nineties. An infamous decade in which AIDS was a major theme in novels and films. To the rhythm of neoliberalism and Cancun t-shirts, for a kid who didn't even know his own sexuality, the issue was very much "beyond the General Paz highway": it didn't happen here. In that same era, the National AIDS Law was passed: Law 23.798, which today seems outdated, obsolete. It demonstrates a lack of approach to human rights issues. An antiquated law that doesn't consider the young people who grew up, because of course, in that era of MTV and Ferraris, nobody imagined they would. A law with as much of a stale smell as all the congressmen who recently stood up and refused to vote for the new National AIDS Law. One that addresses other STIs (sexually transmitted infections), that addresses the workplace, that focuses on the fact that death from HIV and AIDS isn't always physical: we are murdered socially. But for the members of parliament, we are not an emergency.
TWO - CULTURE OF HEALING
If I suffer from depression due to the side effects of my medication and decide to commit suicide, from the hell I hope to go to—paradise seems like a farce to me—I will hold each and every one of those who remained silent about what happens when we are medicated responsible. Do I decide? Hardly. I am a commodified body. A hostage of fear and corporations, certainly. But I want to live. And for that, I want my medication. The one I'm entitled to, not the one that's most profitable for them. And today, in the beautiful reports on HIV and AIDS, no one mentions the shortage of reagents. There are no official statements from the government. It is the organizations that open the dialogue, that accompany these exhausted bodies going from hospital to hospital. The virus isn't killing me; the anguish of being treated like a criminal is. We should be tested three or four times a year, but there are no reagents. There is silence.
And for the media, the only thing that matters here is the cure. Every two months, my Facebook wall is flooded with friends happily waving a false flag of victory. Thousands of times, a headline is shared saying that it's here, that the cure comes from a bee or a radioactive citizen, and I don't know what else. Why do they care so much? For me? I don't think so, allow me to doubt it. A cure means that if one day they have to cross the threshold of shame and end up on my side, with this one in place, it won't be so bad. They celebrate their future salvation, not my health. And why do I say this? Because when there's news like a lack of medication or condom deliveries, it's shared infinitely less. They're not in a hurry for my life, because, of course, they still think we have "the pill" to live. What kind of life are we talking about? What quality of life? If I shit myself or get dizzy every day, if I'm depressed, if I don't dare have sex in front of my boyfriend because of the stigma, I don't see that on any wall. That's all in the closet. In the outside world, I'm still an "AIDS carrier"... AIDS... because they keep using nineties terminology. Maybe it's less noticeable because we're experiencing a neoliberal resurgence, but what can I say, it still hurts.
THREE - RAISED VOICE
And while you're reading this and thinking, "What a bitter bastard," or "If he has it, it's because he wasn't careful," I'll share (not confess) that this health situation is my responsibility, my mistake, without a doubt. But I also invite you to reflect on this. It wasn't a lack of education because I memorized everything I needed to. I'm sure what I lacked was confidence and information. I'll leave the pleasure of pointing the finger to you; I'm not going to name the person who instilled this in me. I keep thinking that if I hadn't thought I was an ugly, unlovable faggot, maybe I could have talked to my partner and suggested we get tested before we stopped using protection. But of course, when a penis chooses you as the baptismal font of its flow at night, someone—whose blood is flowing from all the aggression—isn't going to care much about what might happen. I felt chosen, loved. In the drawer remained the condom, and also all the classmates who called me "faggot," all the boxer shorts ads that called me "fucking skinny," all the casual hookups who didn't even want to know my name or my horoscope. I left a lot in that drawer. Today I bury it all. Everything. The metaphors are served.
Today I cease to be just a statistic and I put a face to HIV. My pride is not a virus, but the visibility that allows me to speak and frees me from death. Today I discover my pleasure in the thousand ways you all assume you can forbid me. And when I say "you," let each saint take responsibility for who I'm speaking to. And don't forget on December 2nd that we live with the virus all year round, not just on this date.
Today I invite you to dialogue, to revel in language, both in our genitals and in our raised voices. In our raised hands. In our raised libidos. I despise that matryoshka doll of closets where they try to hide our sexuality. Because both teenagers and older adults become infected by default, by not being the center of the phallocentric, macho universe. Because information is scarce, or worse, silenced. Here, no one will be silenced anymore. Our voices and our bodies, our tears and our pleasure, will not be silenced. There are many positive voices that need to question and speak out, but for fear of being humiliated, we remain in the mold. And with total impunity, they will say: “AIDS killed him/her.” No. AIDS does not force us to remain silent, nor does it deny you information, nor does it profit from your body. That is what governments and corporations do.
FOUR- NO
HIV and AIDS won't kill me; your indifference will.
Well, I'm not going to allow it. Not to me, not to anyone.
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Dear Lucas… Indifference is a terrible form of mistreatment because it is abandonment. Beyond religions and religious people, when we are abandoned and the loneliness is so unbearable that it terrifies us, the only one who extends a hand is God. To clarify: I disbelieve in religions and religious people, but not in God, because I understand that for all creation—and that is what we are—there is a creator.
I am one of those “saints” who takes responsibility for the person you are talking about because I judge homosexuals not based on their condition, but on their decision, understanding that the decision shapes the condition in the same way that opportunity shapes the thief. You know very well that as adults we are what we decide: kings or slaves, heroes or villains, gods or devils, and we have to take responsibility for those decisions, knowing that every reproach we make is an attempt to hold the other person responsible for what was our decision. This has nothing to do with a state of weakness (depression) where someone else takes advantage to dominate us, or a state of helplessness (childhood) where someone else takes advantage to abuse us; these are situations beyond our control. But it's also true that "every dog has its day," and when that moment arrives, it will be our decision to seek justice.
I'm not writing to reproach you. I'm going to raise my banner for your cause because the state cannot abandon you, or anyone else. That's what it's there for: to help, assist, and intercede for its citizens. It should be like blood, rushing to the wound without waiting to be called. And when it doesn't come, we—you, me, the infection—will demand it, under threat of throwing our corpses onto its soil if it doesn't respond appropriately, without handouts, demagoguery, or self-promotion. Approachably! But that's as far as it goes… I'm not going to cry for you. I don't want you to live in suffering, filled with indignation and resentment, abandoned by those who should help you but don't. I don't want the side effects of your medication. I WANT YOU TO HEAL!
I believe in the body's self-repair (animals and plants do it, so why not humans?), in alternative options rejected by medicine, such as RPI (Induced Deep Relaxation) by neuroscientist John C. Lilly, M. Cavagnaugh's hydrogen peroxide, Dr. Masaru Emoto's water healing harmonized with high frequency, Dr. Hulda Clark's electronic bactericidal square-wave zapper, and veganism, a practice that rejects the use and consumption of animal products and services as a healing behavioral reorganization of food. I believe in myself! I believe in God!
I DON'T PROMISE OR SELL ANYTHING for the simple reason that I cannot create false expectations. Many of the things I've mentioned were developed by scientists (that's how they identify themselves), and I base my conviction on the reports of Dr. Guylaine Lanctôt. I'm just saying that I believe in these alternatives more than anything else. As the song says… Who said all is lost? I come to offer my heart. As I said at the beginning, I maintain at the end… We are what we decide, and the decisions are ours. Best regards.