(no subject)
Dec. 1st, 2003 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katallisonSo, December 1st, and it's World AIDS Day once again.
See, here's the weird thing; I'm one of the minority of people on LJ, people in my on-line acquaintance, who's old enough to vividly remember The World Before AIDS. The '70s' ... oh yeah, baby. That brief little glimmer of time, post-birth control, pre-AIDS, when it seemed like sex--as much as you want, wherever, however, whenever, with whomever--was natural, healthy, wholly good, as simple as air and water. And we revelled in it, god, we did, in a way that I'll likely never see again in my life.
I didn't come out of it wholly unscathed; I picked up a case of HPV, which back in those days the doctors pooh-poohed, didn't even bother treating, and which led years later to my very entertaining bout of "It looks like you have cervical cancer, oh I guess you don't after all, oopsie." But I lived through it, in other words, though I might well not have. There are many, many others who did no more than I did, who didn't live through it. I lived in San Francisco, back in the early days of the plague, and I'm certain that there are people I knew back then who are dead now, who've been dead these many years. Not that I've ever gone back to find out; it's one of those things I don't really want to know for sure.
I don't really know what it'd be like to be someone younger, who's never lived in a world without that equation of sex=possible death. To live in a wholly post-lapsarian reality is different, simpler in some fundamental ways, than being someone who had a spell of time in the Garden, and then got punted out. I think sometimes that it's left me with a permanent unease about the serpents in the garden, the dangerousness of innocent and passionate connection. The lessons you learn in adulthood, against your inclinations and wishes and beliefs, hit harder than the ones you merely grow up with as baseline reality.
Sometimes I think that what we do as slash writers is a way of working against that reality, a way of trying to imagine ourselves past that sex=death equation. And for all that I'm usually a hard-core realist, I don't mind that; if anything, it makes me nostalgic for a time when sex was a simple good, a way of connecting whose costs were only emotional and could therefore be dealt with, overcome, transcended.
And of course AIDS is about far more than sex, I know that, but that's the way it's been construed in popular awareness, here in the US. It's the way I construe it, since that's how it came into my own awareness; it was like the price tag on the ticket for that incredible ride we took.
Gah. I don't know where I'm going with this. Well, I will say that a good story to read at this time of year (by which I mean winter solstice, as much as anything, the darkest time of year) is torch's In Heavenly Peace, a beautiful and heartbreaking story that I reread every year in midwinter.
Take care of yourselves, everyone. Be well.
See, here's the weird thing; I'm one of the minority of people on LJ, people in my on-line acquaintance, who's old enough to vividly remember The World Before AIDS. The '70s' ... oh yeah, baby. That brief little glimmer of time, post-birth control, pre-AIDS, when it seemed like sex--as much as you want, wherever, however, whenever, with whomever--was natural, healthy, wholly good, as simple as air and water. And we revelled in it, god, we did, in a way that I'll likely never see again in my life.
I didn't come out of it wholly unscathed; I picked up a case of HPV, which back in those days the doctors pooh-poohed, didn't even bother treating, and which led years later to my very entertaining bout of "It looks like you have cervical cancer, oh I guess you don't after all, oopsie." But I lived through it, in other words, though I might well not have. There are many, many others who did no more than I did, who didn't live through it. I lived in San Francisco, back in the early days of the plague, and I'm certain that there are people I knew back then who are dead now, who've been dead these many years. Not that I've ever gone back to find out; it's one of those things I don't really want to know for sure.
I don't really know what it'd be like to be someone younger, who's never lived in a world without that equation of sex=possible death. To live in a wholly post-lapsarian reality is different, simpler in some fundamental ways, than being someone who had a spell of time in the Garden, and then got punted out. I think sometimes that it's left me with a permanent unease about the serpents in the garden, the dangerousness of innocent and passionate connection. The lessons you learn in adulthood, against your inclinations and wishes and beliefs, hit harder than the ones you merely grow up with as baseline reality.
Sometimes I think that what we do as slash writers is a way of working against that reality, a way of trying to imagine ourselves past that sex=death equation. And for all that I'm usually a hard-core realist, I don't mind that; if anything, it makes me nostalgic for a time when sex was a simple good, a way of connecting whose costs were only emotional and could therefore be dealt with, overcome, transcended.
And of course AIDS is about far more than sex, I know that, but that's the way it's been construed in popular awareness, here in the US. It's the way I construe it, since that's how it came into my own awareness; it was like the price tag on the ticket for that incredible ride we took.
Gah. I don't know where I'm going with this. Well, I will say that a good story to read at this time of year (by which I mean winter solstice, as much as anything, the darkest time of year) is torch's In Heavenly Peace, a beautiful and heartbreaking story that I reread every year in midwinter.
Take care of yourselves, everyone. Be well.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-01 11:06 pm (UTC)I worry about the whole 'sex equals possible death' tagline, because I wonder what it does to the human psyche. One effect seems to be that there is *more* guilt associated with sex, that it's *harder* to talk about, and thus harder for people to make sensible decisions.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-02 06:55 pm (UTC)And yes, the point you make about guilt and secrecy is very acute. Again (as in my response to Beth above) I find myself making an analogy to my smoking; I really have a hard time talking with doctors openly about the fact that I smoke, or how much, because it's like anyone with a *brain* would know exactly how stupid this is, and wouldn't be doing it in the first place, and so I tend not to seek out help with cutting back or quitting, because it's hard to even bring up the subject.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-02 11:50 pm (UTC)If it is, I think it's pretty rare. When I was a teenager my girlfriends got on the pill even though they knew the health risks and even though they weren't even doing it yet or even had a boyfriend. They wanted to because if they *did* meet a guy they would sort of want to use condoms, but fully expected to be too chicken to be the one to bring it up, so if *he* didn't...
Me, being trivia!girl, I memorized the incidence of death per method of birth control. Allow me to say, 'Yay, barrier methods!' The only other one with a big fat zero attached to it is a vasectomy for guys.
and yet it also leaves me a bit wistful, because the whole thing with sex back in the pre-AIDS days was that it was OK to be totally irrational, to throw aside all the guidelines and constraints.
I understand the wistfulness, and even though I never lived that time, I get it too. Then I remind myself that there were guidelines and constraints in your day too: Be religious about birth control, get checked for asymptomatic STDs regularly. Hell, getting checked for *symptomatic* STDs often takes a lot of sanity and resolve, and a lot of people don't. The guidelines and constraints have changed, but the biggest real change is that they can't be taken care of by one person on their own, 'privately' anymore. It's imperative that one talks openly to one's partner. This seems to be the huge obstacle for many people. It makes me sad that it's easier to abstain or take risks (with all the anguish associated with both) than it is to learn to talk about sex.
and so I tend not to seek out help with cutting back or quitting, because it's hard to even bring up the subject.
To take the analogy a little further, isn't there something in a plain brown wrapper you can mail-order, or something? If you can't immediately break out of the logical conundrum, at least you can bypass it, maybe. :)
Also, from another comment you made in response to someone else:
I know how ineffectual and often counterproductive the rational public-health hectoring can be. Wish I knew what to do about all that.
If you have some spare change earmarked for a good cause, these gals seem to do a better job then most.