in the hall of mirrors

aargh...

it ITCHES.

Well, it did, anyway. After much rather frantic vacuuming, washing, and a happy improvement in the weather – now merely warm rather than hot – things are finally okay....

It started some years ago – must be about 1990/1991 – the summer that Steven was my roommate. It was after Paul P– moved out, after his life and job disintegrated under the impact of his introduction to drugs that were heavier than he was accustomed to. Steven lived with me for three months – an obviously, even self-evidently, sweet guy, with a serene, rather saintly demeanor. That didn't, unfortunately, make me like him – perhaps the loss of a good friend as a roommate, or perhaps that saintliness, which seemed to cover up a mild, self-absorbed shallowness, acted like a minor but endless irritation on me.

Steven had a dog, a big red setter, who came with lots and lots of fleas. And it was summer... so, when I finally decided I wasn't willing to live with the dog, or Steven, any more, I continued having the fleas as roommates. It was difficult to get them out of the floorboards; and I probably hadn't tried as hard as I could, because for most of the year you didn't notice – only at the height of summer was there inevitably a sudden burst of bites.

When I moved back to San Francisco, I assumed I'd brought them with me, in the rugs or something. And then in Hong Kong, and then later here in England... because every year, at the peak of summer, usually when I was thinking in the back of my mind that this year I would be left alone, suddenly one day I would start to itch like I was being bitten. Completely maddening; hard to sleep, restless but tired, and usually lasting several weeks. At least I thought I was being bitten... a year or two later I heard that Steven had died of AIDS – which was unexpected, as he had seemed distinctly healthier than I when we shared that apartment (or, at least, he was obsessed with his health – but I suppose that was actually the opposite signal). This was all of a piece with the peculiarity that I would live when a lot of friends and lovers didn't – even my entire HIV therapy group (three years later, only two out of six us were still around).

So last summer, I started itching again. Completely infuriated and increasingly frantic, I went to the doctor to get some clear information – was I getting bitten or not? After two visits, and some extended arguing (I must have been at my most irritating with the poor doctor – itching is not amusing, and I was certain something was biting me), the doctor convinced me that there was nothing there at all – that I was simply having a summer allergy to dust, probably to dust mites at the height of summer, a result of not vacuuming enough and needing a new mattress, etc. I went out and spent about £200 or so on new bedding, and anti-dust mite sprays....

So, when yesterday it started again, I knew what to do. And glory be, it worked.

Strange, though: it reminds me of a minor event in Gaiman's Sandman, when Delirium (the personification of madness), in irritation at a highway patrolman who is criticizing her driving, curses him with the delusion that he is covered with insects – forever.

Of course, maybe it wouldn't take such a severe curse. Just, maybe, a rather small curse: if someone, say when they're told to move out of an apartment, put a hoodoo on someone so that, every summer, they would remember the fleas, the dog – and perhaps Steven himself....

Going to Japan

I’ve never been to Japan before. On a crowded street corner, breathing the acid tang of the gray air, I look at the little hand-drawn map and try to figure out where north is. The oval, blank faces flow past as though they ride on swift, efficient engines, though occasionally one glances at me: gaijin, foreigner. I turn and walk through a great wooden temple, silent rows of shaved heads visible through a cloud of incense, and enter a tiny storefront bar. A karaoke machine sprays music across the narrow space; but as I dig for a red thousand-yen note for the waitress, voices come abruptly from the speakers: He’s not doing well; he hasn’t recognized me for two days, and hardly opens his eyes any more. I tune them out; it must be some American soap opera. The chef lines up sushi on a black enameled tray; the maguro is like butter, it’s so perfect. I even eat the octopus, so his feelings won’t be hurt. I leave by a different door and turn left, crossing through a quiet formal garden to the foot of the mountain, and climb to a gold and red shrine. A party of nobles has arrived just before me, and a young samurai, tattooed and carrying a vast sword, condescends to explain that they are going to view the iris fields. Idling outside in the afternoon sun, listening to the monotone chanting, I notice an intricately carved sedan chair draped with pale green silks. A delicate hand pushes the curtain aside slightly; it holds a Sony Walkman, from which come tinny voices: I can tell you, he’s not in any pain; the drugs take care of that. But there’s not much we can do at this stage. Annoyed, I turn and cross behind the shrine, push apart the great wooden doors, and take the long steel escalator down to the subway station. The crowds are dense around the car doors, but the tiny stores are nearly empty; a bookstall looks interesting, and I glance through a collection of haiku, feeling the roaring trains through the floor. A flood of uniformed children rushes past, running to get to school on time; two little girls break away from the group to stop and gaze at me. I’m surprised and can’t remember the proper address for children, but as I stand tongue-tied the smallest dashes up and pushes a tiny, carefully wrapped package into my hand, and they run away, giggling like mad. I slip the package into my pocket, smiling to myself, and turn to ask the bookseller how much for the book, but he is gone. Shrugging, I put the book on the counter and turn to the door behind the stall; as I go through it, I hear voices booming over the public address system: He didn’t want to be revived. I know it’s difficult, but you’re going to have to make a decision. Outside, the road outlines a chessboard of wet, green rice fields on the south, out to the horizon; to the north, there is a small wooden pavilion up the hill, open to the spring air. The path wanders through a patch of tiny white flowers; I pick one, sticking it in my buttonhole as I climb. Three men in the pavilion are talking quietly; they rise and bow at my entrance. We exchange many polite phrases, but finally relax and prepare to write a renga, a chain of poems. The oldest fusses, handing me paper, brush and ink while the others wrinkle their foreheads in concentration over their scrolls. Can you hear me? We’re going to turn off your respirator, forgive us please, try to show if you can understand – I turn and close the door behind me to shut out the noise. Sitting, I arrange things before me, ink on the left, scroll unrolled to the first panel. As the old man begins to snore, open-mouthed, under the enameled bowl of the sky, I chew on the end of my brush. I count syllables in my head, trying to work out the first line: something about, what it’s like, to come to Japan.

[Los Angeles, 5/10-6/1/91]

[Published in His: New Fiction by Gay Writers, edited by Robert Drake and Terry Wolverton. Boston: Faber & Faber, 1995. Translated into German as 'Reise nach Japan' by Erwin Matalla & Jörn Wolters for Aktiv, Hamburg, August 1991, and Haki Journal, Hamburg, September 1991.]

Discomfortable moment

Last night was the last HIV patient presentation of the spring/summer; it was an odd one – not like our usual casual, confident get-together with people we know well, talking easily to young students who are always fascinated and slightly appalled. This was an elaborate, rather stiff, formal presentation run by some people up from London - big graphics, business backdrop, Powerpoint, dinner afterwards ("would you like chicken or salmon?"). I think a pharmaceutical company was underwriting everything, which is why there was so much obvious and unnecessary expenditure floating about. The idea was to talk to GPs (general practitioners) about recognizing and referring patients with HIV.

Well, mostly it was fine... if, as I say, rather stiff and overproduced (and under-attended; a large area of the country with lots of GPs only resulted in 30 confirmations, and of those only 13 (!) actually showed up). A_, the new young consultant at our clinic, gave a basic introduction – bless him, he is still so young, and always a little clueless about people/emotions/communication; but he means very well, and throws lots of technical facts around. Then a more experienced, and more opinionated, GP from the Manchester area set things on a somewhat firmer social/pragmatic footing. Then Paul F– and I talked....

The weird moment came from the two guys at the back. They both seemed different than expected – didn't act like doctors, if there's a way that doctors act; I thought they both seemed more like football coaches (Paul F– said he thought they seemed like thugs). One of them weighed in about the tricky-but-familiar situation of telling partners of people diagnosed with HIV, without the patient's consent; we all leapt in, trying to offer advice, information, etc. – he was having none of it; he blustered away, treating us as fools who had no idea what we were doing. He said something like, "well, you'd call the police if someone were shooting people with a revolver, wouldn't you?" Hmm, well, haven't heard that kind of metaphor since the late 1980s (for instance, go look at Alan Bownes' sleazy but interesting play Beirut, which was a paranoia-violence-sex-end-of-the-world one-act about a grim AIDS-driven future, from 1986 – you probably won't be able to find it, though; it was trendy at the time, but we're talking underground, small publisher, etc.).

I tried to explain, unsuccessfully, about the whole we-and-them thing – that thinking of the situation that way was based on thinking of AIDS as something that was brought in by Them (fags, furriners, bad people who had sex and shot up all the time) to infect and destroy Us (you know. Good people. Us. Me, my wife and kids. Normal people who vote Republican, and make immigration laws). He still thought we were all full of horseshit. He didn't talk to anybody (except his friend in the back row), and at the end of the meeting wolfed down dinner and left without having anything to do with anybody else.

Yuck... well... hmm. I suppose it's better that he was there at all. It was rather strange....

***

On coming home, located Patrick and Catherine, who have been discussing the possibility that he will move in downstairs. They were both looking good; summer does treat people well, and they wear stylish clothes and lighten up generallly. Then dragged everyone to a bar that was filled by the gang associated with the Latin American music festival; a very good DJ, and a very sexy, cheerful, beefily gym-built young black guy from Brasil, who was playing guitar and singing (Patrick was entranced). R– was there, handsome as usual (he does look older these days, though – the ravages of time and the dancer; but that merely adds to his potential attraction as partner material).

Talked again to J– and his girlfriend, the tiny, exquisitely charming lawyer. She was again charming and fun, and said the perfect thing that made the whole 'revolver' moment mentioned above all right – when they left (they'll get on a plane early in the morning) she said, "Keep up the good fight." Nice of her, it helps to think like that...

One day

Overlapping experiences, overlapping responses to them: last night's relaxed social dinner with colleagues and friends, today's anxious management of some administration in a frantically brief time before going to the hospital to do another HIV presentation, then went to the nearby Indian grocery, then off to a festive department dinner, then a brief visit to some final student rock band performances...

and home to see part one of 'The Age of AIDS,' a television documentary that spends about four hours on the news, politics, medicine, etc. of the past twenty-five years. Perhaps this is some underlying, hidden response to the fact that I spend so much of my time so casually telling people about AIDS, teaching about it, making offhand references to medical things. No big deal. Not a problem really. Been doing this for years, not upsetting at all.

But seeing that history, especially those vile videotapes of Reagan waffling about it, the nasty memos from White House staff that deleted planned mentions of the disease, that avoided questions of funding, that so screwed up so many things for so many years... and helped kill so many people.... well I suppose one can always hope those politicians have gone to their just, and hopefully fiery, reward.

Painful, really. Beneath the apparent actions of living is what is really happening: dinner with friends, catching the bus, shopping for produce – none of that feels very real: what is real, endlessly so, is having been involved with, having witnessed, having lived through, this terrible foolishness, this appalling, hideously mismanaged eruption of tragedy.

I don't know how I can even expect myself to keep on, day after day, with that behind everything....

Betwixt / between

The trick with posting to a blog: one wants a given post to have a certain integral focus.

What, then, if "fate keeps on happening" (Loos)?

This weekend, friends of Spurious in town; had an amusing time with them. My beloved friend P–– is doing very well. Had varying news from doctor, either bad or bad-ish. Today I give a presentation on 'Art & AIDS' to a bunch of doctors – hmm, a tough audience – then this evening a performance, my first in a long time, of a piece I've always wanted to do, in a probably mildly scruffy venue with a mildly well-prepared student ensemble. Many transient thoughts on the journey through all of this.

Not, admittedly, the liveliest of lives. But for me it represents more activity than I usually have since moving here – yet it remains difficult to parse it into manageable, 'writeable' blocks of reflection....

Oh well. Even fragmented experiences are perhaps like other things we take in – as our parents used to tell us about eating: it all goes to the same place.

•••

Later: the presentation went well enough – the usual tech glitches, of course – but I received a small gift: the pharmaceutical company representative gave me a 128MB flash drive. It has the name of one of my major anti-HIV medications engraved on it... which makes it a rather bizarre, and even slightly disturbing, addition to my computer peripherals. I should be grateful, I suppose - from several angles....

When the saints begin to speak

Every whisper sounds like thunder
Everybody stares in wonder
When the saints begin to speak
[Manhattan Transfer, 'Brasil']

Yesterday was the usual AIDS/HIV patient group presentation to medical students. ("Usual" – this is one of the things I do here, in this otherwise rather isolated place – it is both my claim to actually do something useful in my life, and my attempt to make contact.) Four patients, plus two professionals framing us; everyone in a particularly reasonable, undramatic, slightly distracted mood. The stories were frankly a bit incoherent this time, but not at all nonsensical – our dramatically tattooed ex-con straight guy hectoring everyone on the Coming Plague, our relaxed mother of two explaining the details of her pregnancy and childbirth, and the rather clueless Belgian professional stumbling through the discussion from time to time with one or another insensitive comment. (He rarely attends – I must confess I won't miss him when he goes.) But it was, as usual, a deeply powerful connection, even with its minor and fragmentary appearance – these presentations are apparently the high point in a year of teaching for these students (according to their evaluations), and they are always fairly amazed at our everyday humanity, and probably simply that we're alive.

It's a saintly act, really. It doesn't sound like one, I'm sure – questions of sex, guilt, the personal mistakes we've made and the professional mistakes made upon us – but it is the closest thing in my life to an unafraid confrontation with being, to real and undemonstrative courage. There are glints of that in teaching, of course, but they are rare – perhaps because of academic egos, perhaps because the students are young and selfish, perhaps because I teach in a discipline that doesn't really have the quality of necessity (as would medicine, perhaps, or engineering in a poor country). Perhaps it's just because I'm so self-involved in my academic work, obsessed with my own productivity above all.

But the privilege, the luck, of being able to remind myself of these confrontations, of this being, on a regular basis - a very good thing; otherwise I would undoubtedly forget about everything that mattered....

Sunshine and queasiness

Frankly, I'm worried. The past couple of years, my experiences of free time – including those lovely, long Easter breaks we get here in the UK, and summers, with their long high-latitude days – have been characterized by mild illness, by an inertia that is ultimately frightening. Frightening because that inertia is the demon that threatens my view of myself, of my time: it is clear to me that the remaining and best purposes of my life, and the actions/productions that would make me happiest, are to write various things – and that inertia is the greatest threat to those. It would be all too plausible for my remaining days, and years, to fizzle into nothing; there are, after all, legions of mildly failed intellectuals in the history of the world, all stuttering into blurry silences. It's confusing to thus overlay the pleasure of summer, of that amazingly bright sun cutting into my front room around the corners of the curtains, with feeling rather wonky...

Mild illness: that is to say, endless digestive upset sometimes, the tsetse sleepiness of my sub-functional thyroid. Or, that which now threatens, again: taking interferon to fight my liver problems - and interferon unfortunately has many unhappy side effects, including a broad-spectrum psychological and physical depression. I've done different kinds of interferon twice over the past five years, and both were times of long, dragging misery.

What perhaps makes it worse is my own awareness that none of these illnesses is really incapacitating: that, if I could only make myself do so, I could take care of myself enough to both do my job and get writing done, every day. There is, after all, little else left in my life, and little prospect for anything else happening; the truth is, the chaos of my life over the past decade has actually landed me in a place of comfort and security, an environment that supports me in pretty much whatever I want to do.

That way lies guilt, of course, but perhaps a productive guilt: if grieving leaves me simply nowhere, and trying to generate desire/ambition devolves into rather weak puffs of air at this late stage of my life, perhaps the sense of duty to myself, to what I've been given in my life, will drive me onwards...

Abruptness

Wakened by the phone. The doctor wants blood tests redone – liver functions awry, apparently; no surprise. And an argument over the many vitamins I take: we already had a rather boring and inconclusive squabble over this last week – it's not exactly that he disapproves, but clearly he has latched on to them as something to be managed, preferably by him. Rather pointless, as I've been taking them for years - probably about 25 years now, in fact, in relatively large amounts. Ah well... might have to drop some for a while...

Off to school to teach the last class of the year, and the last until early October – which will represent at least four months of relative calm and quiet.