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AIDS TAUGHT ME HOW TO SCREAM

(NOT YODEL!)
by

w.

Wayne Karr

AIDS has not taught me how to yodel, dance or

love myself the way I am.
It has not made my
life infinitisimally better nor has it shed
any terribly revealing lights on me. AIDS
sucks and AIDS taught me how to scream.
I scream in pain in the middle of the night
terrified
and
alone
with this monster
devouring my body and fairly effectively
breaking my spirit too.
I scream when yet
another friend succumbs.
I scream at the
television and newspapers when someone lies
about yet another cure or when someone starts
morali lng about the plague.
I scream at a
govern~ent
and people who sat back and
watchea as my comrades were systematically
eliminated.
I scream at genocide.
I scream
at sexism as scores and scores of women die
who cannot even access treatment.
I scream
at homophobia and heterosexism that fuel the
fires of this pandemic.
I scream at all of
this and much, much more.
I'm not saying life -all of life including
AIDS and death
shouldn't be a learning
experience for of course it is.
I just find
it so selfish and thoughtless to proclaim to
anyone
much less the world - the wondrous
benefits to be reaped by suffering this vile
illness!
There is a cold selfishness and
some degree of judgement of others as one
goes expounding the virtuous achievements and
changes AIDS has brought to their life.
Usually these are people who for the most
part are relatively asymptomatic and have yet
to experience their first ass-kicking, buttbeating opportunistic infection; rarely are
~hese
AIDS-bl~~sed
types coye~ed in lesions

or writhing in pain as their insides are

cryptosporidiosis or
being
devoured
by
mycobacterium atypical intracellular or some
other disease you can produce more easily
than you can endure!
Has AIDS changed my life? You bet!
I lost
my career and for the most part have given up
dreaming.
Or
my
dreams
have
AIDS
restrictions on them ... you know well no you
can't go to the jungle for 6 months but a few
days
wouldn't hurt or I can insert my
sheathed cock in your butt but I will never
again
experience
the wonderfully erotic
sensation of me naked and unsheathed inside
of you ... and on and on and on.
The damage done by those who sing praise to
the
Lord-God-Life-Taker-Almighty-AIDS
is
immeasurable.
Everytime an uninfected bimbo
reads one of those stories every person who
has
ever suffered from this disease is
instantly ivalidated & forgotten. Wouldn't
you rather remember a sunny afternoon at the
beach than a cold and dreary and wet evening
spent locked in the fruit cellar? Of course
you would and of cou~se you do.
If I wanted to yodel I wouldn't sit around
waiting for AIDS to teach me.
I won't learn
to dance because of AIDS & AIDS certainly
won't teach me to love myself the way I am ..
You see ... I have always loved myself the way
I am ... even before AIDS!
END