Those Damn Ads
I was thinking the other day about the really big deal the local news channels made about the fact that there were no obituaries in the Bay Area Reporter for the first time in many years. That particular issue emblazoned with the words "NO OBITS" in large letters across the front page got more air time on local and even national news than a hell of a lot of other gay related would-be news items. Granted, it was a landmark occurrence of sorts, and reason for feeling something like rejoice. I agree that it was an unusual circumstance for a community who could practically trade printed obits like baseball cards if they saved every one of their friends and acquaintances over the years who sadly graced that section. I was unsure how to react. What would the community response be? Would it be relief? Would doubts in the varied drug therapies be alleviated? Would people think about the future like there was one after all? And what about the heterosexual majority, would they suddenly feel less sympathetic, like our punishment was over? Would those who hadn’t the advantage of treatment be quietly remembered with dignity or would this spark feelings of anger and rage over the massive loss of lives already endured by all. Would cynicism ripple like a wave through the queer community or would hedonism send reptilian cruisers out in the streets screaming, "High Ho, bareback...away!"
The television news, which really hammered this story out repeatedly in a sort of "Happy-days-are-here-again" manner, attributed the gradually dwindling number of AIDS-related deaths to the effectiveness of medical advances in HIV drug therapies widely used by those who test positive and monitor their health closely, waging war within their own bodies by ingesting very expensive chemicals and combinations of medications daily to combat the progress of the enemy force. It sounds like a proper defense, the only defense actually, the right thing. Yet the words "war-torn" keep coming to mind. It’s much less simple than it sounds. It’s not the piece of cake that the advertisements on the sides of busses, billboards and every muni stop make it out to be, with smiling, happy, beautiful people and tagwords like "health management" "in control" or "quality of life." For many people on protease inhibitors, life is a battlefield, inside and out.
By now most everyone in this nation who has ever cracked open any major magazine has read a bit about the aforementioned tools of war, the salvation, protease inhibitors, drug cocktails, new medical discoveries and advancements for HIV management. You’ve seen the ads, usually two pages resembling ad campaigns for sports drinks and fuzzy-focus devotional greeting cards and be-all-that-you-can-be Armed Forces human potential-style media manipulations. They’re everywhere--lot’s of small small print, featuring a sexually desirable action figure like a mountain climber, a smartly dressed young professional (a smoldering sensuality emanating from beneath his suit and tie persona), a fit person frolicking with a perfect pet in the park, or just about any image you would have seen 10 or 15 years ago in an advertisement for Salem cigarettes, only today the product is called Crixivan, or Ritonavir, or Combivir , not Kool or Benson and Hedges. Phrases like "Simplify your combination therapies" take the place of "Alive with pleasure!" or "You’ve come a long way, Baby."
Instead of a warning from the Surgeon General that imbibing in this product may lead to lung cancer, it has a long list in the tiniest possible print of side effects this product may cause to the consumer immediately (and read that fine print sometime--the possible side effects are pretty horrible and shocking), yet nothing about what may happen to them long-term, for that information is not yet known, including if the product will effectively fight against the virus with continual use. There are no guarantees that your immune system will respond well to these drugs in the first place, with some people they do remarkably and some they don’t, and then there is the nagging back-of-your-mind thought that eventually the virus will mutate into a strain resistant to the drugs in use regularly by legions of people infected by HIV. Granted, there are people who are alive today that fully anticipated being dead years ago and it is due to these drugs, but they still live ultimately with the possibility of eventual non-responsiveness. It’s just a fact, a numbing harsh spirit-devouring cynical fucking fact.
Another point these ads aren’t very clear about, and you can scan each and every letter of the microscopic
print and find nothing about one important thing--the price. Just a pedestrian ballpark figure for a basic combination therapy of three different drugs could end up costing a person up to $45 per day. You better believe that the only ones who can logically afford these drugs are people who are professionals, those with pedigreed pets and those who can afford such expensive recreational hobbies like mountain climbing, and looking really good, sexy and vital. At close to $20,000 a year, I can see why the drug companies are putting on the hard sell. You think it’s their commitment to saving as many lives as possible? Could be, but when Spin and Rolling Stone feature multiple ads for HIV drugs don’t you just feel like the prize all eyes are on is the demographic age group with the most expendable income? It’s like that scene from one of my favorite movies, Freeway, when one prison inmate acts shocked at anothers willingness to kill any guard or official who gets in her way when she attempts to escape, and she says, "Do you think people just wake up one day and say, ‘I want to work in a prison’? No, they do it cause they’re perverts!" In other words, there’s no convincing me that the drug manufacturers and medical multi-conglomerates have their hearts and goals set on the very thing the advertisements try to depict with cheesy age-old symbolism, motivational technique and candy-coated sublime sexuality as precious--the human life. What next, Combivir Ultra-Light Menthol 100’s? Who will be the visual symbol of combination therapy, the "Marlboro Man" of HIV management, the "Joe Camel" for the growing youth market? You’ve come a long way, baby, and if you want to continue....
It’s all so amazing to me, and in so many ways much of the knowledge and advancements in treatment, the hard truths of the situation, a deadly sexually transmissible disease that has been with us now for going on two decades, is presented to the masses in such an unusually twisted irresponsible way--riddled by extremes, bred by fear, distorted by greed, tempered based on ethics and morals so illogical people are put in mortal danger by taking the "high road", hopes are lifted up then plunged and diminished simply by way of careless syntax and biased media inflection, and who really knows for what reasons? The gay community is so beaten by year after year of tremendous loss, years of heated protest and fighting for the same rights over and over, false hopes, political in-fighting, self-preservation through restrictions, alienation from each other, character judgment on lifestyle choices, elitism based on the presence of a micro-organism in ones bloodstream, and loads of other humbling struggles, and the results? People just don’t seem to care about life or death as much any more. One comes inevitably and the other costs a great deal of money, endurance of a pain the rest of the world will never really understand or feel, and behavioral and medical adherences that pose some very real "quality of life" questions to the individual. People have been beaten into a form of complacency. When was the last time you unquestionably took to the streets in demonstration against a political injustice thrust upon the gay community? Probably not near as often as you’ve debated with a few friends in a far too expensive flat which local chapter of Act-up threw kitty litter or which one had cruelty issues over methods of harvesting baboon bone marrow? It seems to me that people don’t fight against injustice as much as they run a race as far away from this disease as a healthy checking account, metabolic steroids and personal trainers can allow them to appear. The appearance--normal, the act itself--assimilation. The days of rage are over. People who live removed from or unfamiliar with the gay community who were watching the news that day when the B.A.R. had no obituaries could possibly think that this AIDS thing is over now, the ridiculously irresponsible way they pollyanna-ed their way through the report all smiles and good cheer, like their teleprompter flashed "FEEL GOOD SEGMENT" just prior to delivery. Boy, what a relief. Yet all the while, how many Gays are aware that San Francisco General’s pharmacy is soon due to shut down, putting many in peril whose lives truly depend on the facility and it’s services? Haven’t seen any news segments on that story. No demonstrations either. I wondered why the following weeks B.A.R. didn’t run the headline, "They’re Baaaaaack!", because they are.
Now the community is again turning inwards to inspect another issue, a real tough one, and one I was taken to task over for my insensitive treatment of, and that is barebacking--having unprotected anal sex. I brought it up in my column because it’s fully going on--building like a movement almost, and I just wanted to bring it to light. I didn’t condone it, just acknowledged it’s growing prevalence in an effort to inform. It’s shocking and it’s not humorous and it shouldn’t be ignored. It has deep implications of suicide, freedom, elitism, irresponsibility, fraternity, and now, looming in our political future, even criminal charges punishable by prison sentence. It also is another issue set to dilute strength by dividing the community--bareback murderer pigs Vs safe sex crusaders. Then of course there’s that other option for all queers to consider also--curing your gayness altogether. As soon as you are all better, a source of pride and proof that God saved your soul, please do your duty in the eyes of God and reproduce your ugly pea-brains out. There is one part of Gayness that can’t be cured yet, and it’s coming soon to a Born Again Christian parish near you. Wrap it in swaddling clothes, it’s your little miracle now.
Finally, while writing this column a particular song kept going through my head, and in a way it sums it all up. It’s called "Nowhere Fast" by The Smiths. Morrissey whines out the lines, "And when I’m lying in my bed/ I think about life and I think about death/ And neither one particularly appeals to me." I don’t think it’s supremely maudlin and dramatic, I think it’s funny...and the truth.
One last note, while running spellcheck, it stopped on the word "barebacking", not recognizing the word and suggesting a replacement, which was "barbecuing."