Some Thoughts on World AIDS Day

A few years ago I sat in on a Rhetoric of Gender Activism class. Among the assigned texts was David Wojnarowicz’s book Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration. This should be mandatory reading for all people who identify as queer, particularly those who find politics to be less relevant in their lives than cruising/chasing skirts. Published in 1991, this piece of writing reflects life during the earlier years of AIDS, when it was a more immediate death sentence; when the fear was tangible. In it, he critiques the local and national governments’ policies on AIDS:

A former city government official concerned with administering AIDS policy, in a private city meeting on housing for poor people with AIDS, said, ‘What you want is a little place; an island where you can isolate these people so they can bang each other up with this AIDS virus…’ Statements like this are not uncommon in government meetings and the city of New York is dragging its feet on this disease just like every other city and federal agency in the country–they simply don’t care–and they’re allocating just enough money so it looks good on paper; not good, but at least on paper their asses are covered so in the future when the finger of responsibility points in their direction they can say, ‘But we did something.’ The government is not only withholding money, but drugs and information. People with AIDS across the country are turning themselves into human test tubes. […] People are subjecting themselves to odd and sometimes dangerous alternative therapies–injections of viruses and consumption of certain chemicals used for gardening–all in order to live. […] I want to throw up because we’re supposed to quietly and politely make house in this killing machine called America and pay taxes to support our own slow murder and I’m amazed that we’re not running amok in the streets, and that we can still be capable of gestures of loving after lifetimes of all this. (106-108)

And another thought:

It is exhausting, living in a population where people don’t speak up if what they witness doesn’t directly threaten them. (261)