Gloom, Despair and Agony On Me

"...Deep, dark depression; excessive misery. If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. Gloom, despair, and agony on me."

AIDS is not over. People are still dying. And those of us not in death's throes woke up with the certainty that someone had taken a shit in our mouth. Or the new meds have turned our tongue to a wasteland of City Dump flavors. "General Malaise", the bottle says. Bullshit. Specific Malaise. Definitely, specifically MY malaise. We are so deep in Malaise, we should be Malaysian.

Last night brought a rare sober and sobering call from What's-Her-Name-In-NYC. Pneumonia. Not the killer kind, but the kind that causes your average bi-polar queen to cleave to the wrong pole. Not pretty. Having woken up with nearly every man on the island of Manhattan in her time, now she wakes up with pneumonia on a Saturday morning. If that were the direct result of being easy, we would write something catty about it. Oh, we did! Good for us. Malaise and all.

She called to report that People Are Still Dying and a certain blogger should tell people as much. We assumed she only referred to herself, which we thought to be a tad over-the-top for bacterial pneumonia - given the alternatives. Then we woke up with this atrocious taste attached to our tongue that no amount of brushing, rinsing, Mountain Dew or nutrition drink can quell. NOW we understand. Death's sure calling card is either pneumonia or a bad taste in the mouth. And more likely the latter, since it is the one affecting us. Malaise, malaise, malaise.

Mustard or Malaise? I'll have the malaise, please. Hellman's malaise,to be specific. Save the Miracle Whip for S&M Jesus. He'll be here soon.

She was right, though. People are still dying hand over fist. With medicine in their fist, usually. There are a couple dozen HIV-specific medications on the market and another half-dozen in the pipeline nearing approval (including the one we're swallowing). That Old Gang Of Mine quit dying, lived long enough to regret running up the credit cards and selling the life insurance policy for pennies on the dollar, and now are sliding back down Pharmacy Hill to the Valley Of The Shadow Of Death. Some with pneumonia. Others with a bad taste in their mouths.

In my own little circle, in my own little world, I can be whatever I want... Wait. That's a line from something. In my own little circle, 8 have died in the last few years. I don't live in San Francisco anymore, or Chicago, or any of the other places with large concentrations of HIV+ people. These are guys I met in Kansas City after moving to the area. Eight. And I wasn't collecting friends in the Intensive Care Unit.

The meds fail, whether you take them or not, for most people over time. The med combos are a finite group. That means you run out of options and end up in clinical trials praying for more life and less of a bad taste in your mouth. It means you live long enough to have a reasonably normal heart attack, but it also means that you keel over from pneumonia because your immune system is shot. Or you don't wake up because your liver went to be with the Lord in your sleep. Or your brain invites The Virus in for tea and winds up demented because the guest won't leave. Then it fucks around and tells your heart to stop beating or something demented like that.

The fat in your face wastes away, as does the fat in your arms and legs. It collects in your gut, like you have a beer fetish, or between your shoulder blades, like you just came from a costume fitting for your role as Quasi Modo in the local community theatre. Big belly, no arms, no legs, no face. A very pregnant Nicole Richie, in other words. Your ability to stand or sit or walk or lift or simply stay awake falls prey to It. You can't work. Your six-figure lifestyle suddenly morphs into life in The System. Not because you were sick of 6-figure living, but because you got too sick to live in the 6-figure world.

You wind up proving not how smart you are, but how sick you are every 6 months for the insurance company or the gals at Social Security or the State or Medicare or somebody else who would love to help lower your self-esteem if you can only prove how little you can do. They don't ask whether you shit yourself in broad daylight because of what your medicine does. They also don't ask whether you have to move from the bed to the couch to the floor every night to avoid the wet spots that once were evidence of A Good Time Had By All and now are simply the result of drenching night sweats.

You drag yourself to memorial services at an increasing pace and suddenly catch a vision of all the Aidsy folks lined up single file at a cliff. When the one at the front of the line jumps off, everybody takes one step forward. You don't know where in the line you are. You only know that the line is moving a lot faster than it used to. The new medicines aren't slowing it down, they're just letting us march in Depends, or with an oxygen mask, or with a very, very bad taste in our mouths.

President Clinton has gotten the cost to treat AIDS in Africa down to $1 a month by brow-beating the pharmaceutical industry. We don't begrudge Africans a goddamn thing, but when, pray-tell, do we make our own a priority? What's-Her-Name and I could spend our allowance on something better than co-pays if anyone thought to lower the cost to treat AIDS in the U.S. to $1 a day.

Helping the folks in Africa live is a grand gesture of kindness.

Helping the folks at home, though, would be socialism. Bastards.