Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone by David B. Feinberg

AIDS four years ago; his current lover’s former lover died of AIDS three years ago; his current lover has ARC. Love among the ruins. If only I had an attention span sufficiently long enough to have a lover. As an act of social disobedience we make out on the Quilt.
    The Names Quilt covers the equivalent of seven football fields on the Ellipse. Three-by-six panels—ranging from simple, touching, and heartbreaking to campy and outrageous—memorialize the dead. They range from a plain sheet of fabric with a Perry Ellis label to an elaborate sequined piano for “Watermelon Diet” Liberace. Even Roy Cohn, the most evil queen who ever lived, is remembered with several panels.
    The first time I saw the Quilt, a year ago in Washington, I was blown away by it. Every panel represented a human life. Some panels were created by community and social groups for all their members who had died. Now I avoid looking for specific panels, except for my good friend Glenn Person, who died in ‘86. There are two panels for Glenn.
    The most painful quilts are in the center. They are blank sheets of cloth, with Magic Markers for people to leave messages. By chance, I happened to see a message written to John Tan nenbaum. “We’re sorry you didn’t know how much we loved you; we wish you hadn’t decided to go so soon.” John’s lover died last winter. He had tried to commit suicide twice. Then John came down with AIDS. He succeeded on the third try. If at first you don’t succeed ...
    I don’t want to see the names of people I know anymore. I don’t want to see any more panels with “I miss you unkel” written in crayon. I don’t want to see my future in a patch of cloth, three by six feet. I don’t want to see any more panels, period.
    Hard as I try to make my self cold, harsh, cynical, invincible, I break down and cry anyway. Bill hugs me to comfort me, and we end up making out.
    After a bizarre nap with my boyfriend-in-training, we have dinner at a truly horrifying restaurant in DuPont Circle that specializes in exotic margaritas. Then, drawn by the ineluctable attraction of the print media, we go to the local homo bookstore. I fantasize where my soon-to-be-published novel will reside. Oh, my God, there’s someone from New York whom I’m supposed to be having an affair with. I duck to the lezzie section and am safely hidden by feminist tracts against pornography, instructional material on vaginal fisting, and home-repair manuals.
    Bill tries to convince me to spend the night, but I have to be back with the radicals, and The Last Metro leaves at midnight. A peck on the cheek, an exchange of phone numbers, and I enter the endless escalator into hell.

A Virus of Unknown Origin ... DEATH: The ULTIMATE SIDE EFFECT ... A Feeding Frenzy of Lips ... More Dissension
     
    Monday I show up at the rally at the Department of Health and Human Services. Rumors of dissension course through the amassed crowd like a virus of unknown origin. Word is that officials are already closing the FDA; perhaps, having accomplished our goal, we should try to take over another federal building. ACT UP/N.Y may secede from the action. My blood begins to boil again. Does anybody think that any press people will be present anywhere else? Remember our goals.
    At the rally, Reagan and his administration are tried in effigy. A prostitute from COYOTE presides as judge. Several people testify for the prosecution, including the eminently inspiring and impassioned Vito Russo, my personal hero. Vito has been a radical activist since Stonewall. Vito gives a slam-dunk speech. He had been diagnosed three years ago. He says his parents think that the government is doing everything it can, and that he will die. Well, says Vito, they’re wrong about both. Vito excoriates the government for its inaction and homophobia; he blasts the far right and far left for trying to co-opt the AIDS-activist movement for its own ends. Someone tells me that was a pointed reference to the