From: jakec@ralvmm.vnet.ibm.com (Jake Coughlin)
Subject: Appendix: After the Cure, 1996
Originator: jakec@ralvmm.vnet.ibm.com
Date: Thu, 03 Sep 92 15:42:49 GMT
Organization: IBM T. J. Watson Research

[i didn't want to go to my buddy support group meeting last night.  i
had imagined a group of us sitting around swapping horror stories
about our respective PWAs, stories about medical atrocities, public
discrimination, dementia, whatever.  instead, i found a group of very
caring people, dealing well with the devastation of their adopted
human being.  after awhile, we discussed what life will become after
the cure.  we laughed in spite of our fear.

this morning, a co-worker returned my copy of _Spontaneous Combustion_
by David Feinburg, and my thoughts drift back to that group of buddies
in a dimly lit living room.  _SC_ has an appendix labeled "After The
Cure", and i've decided to share it with you.]

Appendix: After the Cure
1996

The mood of the country is jubilant as hundreds of thousands of
ecstatic fags and dykes gather spontaneously for ribald celebrations
in Golden Gate, Griffith, and Central parks, with enthusiasm unrivaled
since V-J Day at the close of the Second World War.  For several days,
the entire island of Manhattan becomes a clothing-optional zone.
Joyous lezzies block traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge with an
enormous dental dam, sewn together from all of the discarded units
that are no longer necessary for safer sex.

Investigative reports from _The New York Times_, tipped off by an
anonymous leak, discover that for the past ten years government
scientists at the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, had been formulating
possible AIDS-treatment drugs by using a random dip of a silver-plated
chromium spoon into a convection-heated vat of Campbell's alphabet
soup and then synthesizing the resultant three-letter acronyms.

The FDA had been planning on conducting fifteen years of double-blind
placebo studies testing the new cure against inert phosphorized jelly
beans when their Rockville facilities are destroyed in what the
authorities term a suspicious blaze.  ACT UP/Rockville disclaims all
responsibility.

Lambda Legal Defense initiates a class action suit against Burroughs
Wellcome for its excessive pricing of AZT.  When the books are finally
opened under the Freedom of Information Act, Lambda finds that the
main active ingredient of AZT is Flintstone vitamins.

In a gesture of good faith, William F. "Tattoo You" Buckley, Jr., who
has been held hostage at an undisclosed location for the past eighteen
months, with no reading material at all save the complete works of
Gore Vidal, is released.  ACT UP/Rhode Island disclaims all
responsibility.

Jesse Helms, John Cardinal O'Connor, Andrew Dice Clay, and Axl Rose
remain at large.  Rumors persist that they had been kidnapped and held
in a tiny cell and were being punished merely by being subjected to
one another.  ACT UP/Chelsea disclaims all responsibility.

Sexual terrorists put poppers in the air circulation of the Sears
Towers.  ACT UP/Chicago disclaims all responsibility for the action.

After the cure is announced, Charles Ortleb, publisher of the _African
Swine Fever Virus Weekly_ (formerly the _New York Native_), now
insists that ASFV causes polio and fetal alcohol syndrome.

Susan Sontag writes her twentieth sequel to _Illness as Metaphor_
following the highly acclaimed _Eczema, Seborrhea, and Psoriasis and
Their Metaphors_ and the controversial _Discourse Analysis,
Deconstructionism, and Their Metaphors_, the eagerly awaited
_Logorrhea as Metaphor_ is published.

GMHC announces that it will conduct special clinics for those who
forgot exactly how to have sex during the epidemic.

Gay activists plan on regrouping in Washington in October for the
plenary session to reassess goals and priorities.  Foremost on the
list of demands is the reclamation of the Fire Island Pines from the
breeders.  The ever-controversial Darryl Yates Rist will deliver the
keynote address, "Tearoom Sex in Mid-America: Rest Areas of Interest."

Larry Kramer forms an organization dealing with our most pressing
health concern since the AIDS epidemic: DBSU (Deadly Sperm Build Up).
Three months later he will be forcibly removed from the board of
directors, at his own request.

Louise Hay shifts her focus from healing tapes to mall and elevator
music.

Cher comes out with a new perfume: Trash.  Calvin Klein switches from
underwear to lubricant design: His ads in the glossies practically
slide out of the magazines.  Simultaneously, he licenses slightly more
graphic and extended versions of his commercials as videos, available
for purchase.

With the drastic drop in condom use, officials from the Trojan
corporation donate to the artist Christo enough leftover latex to wrap
the Empire State Building.

Enterprising capitalists convert aerosol-pentamidine nebulizers to
filtrate nitrous oxide and other recreational drugs.

Healing Circles become sites for circle jerks.

Instead of AIDS benefits, promoters sponsor events to recapitalize
unsafe-sex emporiums.  Prominent former AIDS activists mud-wrestle
wearing only jock straps.

It is nolonger necessary to be a walking pharmacopeia.  Men stop
exchanging recipes for AL 721 at the Spike.  Leather bars revert to
their former functions: aesthetic debates on current opera divas,
critiques of fashion shows, and the occasional pickup.

Throughout the country, people stop drinking their own urine for
medicinal purposes, unless they are so inclined by personal
preference.

_The Advocate_ stops running advertising for items claiming to be the
latest cures: a Chinese cucumber carved into a facsimilie of Jeff
Stryker's most notable feature, aloe-vera malt shakes, do-it-yourself
home acupuncture kits, hydrogen-peroxide enemas, macrobiotic window
boxes suitable for fire escapes, stress reduction through
ergonomically designed pornography, and so on.

Gay men, thankful for the altruistic deeds lesbians performed for them
at the height of the epidemic, return the favor by running day-care
centers at women's music festivals, donating sperm for turkey-baster
fertilization, marching for abortion, and lending their sisters their
favorite dresses.

Antibody-positives and -negatives, who had become socially stratified
during the epidemic, once again co-mingle to the pleasure of all.

There were times back in the dismal eighties when we thought that the
crisis would never end.  I remember dark hours when queens lost their
reason and fled to the subcontinent, never to be heard from again.
Were it not for the inspirational bass beat of Miss Gloria Gaynor's "I
Will Survive" reverberating through the antechambers of our collective
unconscious, many would have given up in despair.  But the nightmare
is now over.  The disease has been vanquished.  And now, if you will
excuse me, I have an engagement with an as-yet unidentified
prospective boyfriend at some unseemly cocktail lounge near the docks.
Wish me luck.

-- 
Jason Coughlin ( jakec@ralvmm.vnet.ibm.com )
Queer Without A Cause!
"I find myself suddenly in the world, and I recognize that I have one
right alone: that of demanding human behavior of the other." -- Fanon