Back when I was a young and newly pozzed fag I thought it was my responsibility to protect everyone from my HIV. I had my two front teeth knocked out during an unfortunate dress rehearsal encounter with a pair of iron sheep shears so I needed to have them capped. I decided to disclose to the dentist who was about to perform the oral surgery because I was scared of anyone else getting infected with MY DISEASE and didn’t realize that as a medical professional, the dentist should have been trained to protect himself.
As I lay in the chair, slightly anxious about the impending procedure, he came into the office wearing 3 surgeons gowns, 4 pairs of latex gloves, 2 face masks, and a face shield (it looked like a riot cop visor). While he was poking around and filing my teeth he engaged in some dentist chair banter, asking me, “So… how did you get it? Drugs or the usual?” Choking on a bit of spit and bone, he took my gurgle for permission to keep asking things about my assumed medical and sexual history. “How long have you had it?” “Were you dating the guy who gave it to you?” “Did he tell you he had AIDS or did he lie to you?” I couldn’t answer really, only sputter uncomfortably and pray for the moment to be over. Then he began to tell me a story about how, in the 80s, a man who “was obviously dying of AIDS” came in to his office to get all his teeth capped. In a proud tone of voice, the dentist told me he had refused the man because he knew that “he would probably die and never pay his credit card back for the procedure.” At that he also thanked me for “being honest” about my AIDS and told me that I was a really good person for doing so.
Tonight, I was somewhere that people regularly share personal stories with each other. A man was talking about someone he used to know who liked “the company of other men.” He relayed how he was a nice guy but that he was presently dead, from AIDS. Now one of the rules of this space is that we are not supposed to respond to what others have shared, only listen. Therefore I found myself squirming again while biting my tongue and swallowing my feelings. Full disclosure: I have not been feeling very comfortable in my own skin lately and while my exterior seems quite strong, I am in a lot of spiritual and existential turmoil. I relayed some of my angst to the group, despite the fact that it didn’t feel like the safest environment to do so: according to the rules of the space I should be able to do so without people talking back in the circle. Well, I did share, and another individual took it upon himself to tell me how he had been through the “same turmoil” and that one of the solutions I’ve been contemplating (suicide) wasn’t an option. I wonder if he’d feel differently with the dentist down his throat and invading his body/soul with the idea that the only visible gay man is one doomed to die of a deserved fate or be killed by a world that can’t deal with his mess.
recent tumblr critiques of aesthetics and representation of the human body can be pretty fucking fascist (not to mention reductive, boring, and reactionary). instead of talking about what we don’t like based on essentialist readings of subjects, can we maybe try to think of ways to talk about modes of representation and how we might challenge those instead.
after all, ALL BODIES ARE INHERENTLY VALID.
non?
People (fellow faggots mostly) who post pictures portraying vaginas as:
Your misogyny and disgust for women’s bodies is not only hateful, it’s fucking boring as all shit.
The rhetoric of acceptance and equality obscures the realities of our experience and lives.