The forgotten virus – NRC

Do not panic! This is not going to be another piece about Covid-19, the Spanish Flu or the Black Death in the US Decamerone from Boccaccio. Still, I want to talk about a killer virus. Because I was jumped with flashes of memory and regret. Why are there so few traces in our literature – or, no, in the entire collective memory of the Low Countries – of the fear psychosis, the apocalyptic debates and the scapegoat accusations that dominated the press and public life during the outbreak of AIDS? Come on, Memory! Do your chaotic and unreliable work.

Popularly, the new disease was known as slow bubonic plague for cousins ​​only: The Gay Cancer. That sinister pet name often conveyed a grin of satisfaction: death as a deserved wages for filth. That verdict was fueled worldwide by vengeful religious fanatics and patriarchs who were able to get their beloved sex ban curses back at bay.

They weren’t even always men with beards. In 1987 British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced ‘Section 28‘finished. A law against all so-called propaganda “which is deliberately to promote or encourage homosexuality”. Or “that teaches the admissibility of homosexuality as a so-called family relationship.” Yes, those are real quotes from real legal texts, coming from someone who is still uncritically revered by right-wing Europe as if she were Mother Teresa and Greta Thunberg united in one person.

With this difference: Maggie’s words had more consequences then than Greta’s now. Schools and libraries cleaned their own bookshelves so as not to lose government support. Interest groups, even at universities, rose in fear of reprisals, the heavy-handed Section 28 would not be abolished until 2003. Anyone today who wants to accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of making homophobia law in order to perpetuate his power must realize that the man does not only get his mustard from the Russian Orthodox Church or Islamic Chechnya.

Everywhere, very different from now with Covid-19, shame and denial lurked, with unnecessary dramas on top

One of the popular misunderstandings in those days was that AIDS could only develop as a direct result of hundreds if not thousands of sexual contacts. The craziest sandwich monkey stories circulated about this, never free from a certain morbid jealousy. Wherever death, sex and blood mix, the imagination runs wild. I once even discussed with an art friend who claimed high and low that the HIV virus arose by itself from the friction during prolonged anal contact, like a flame that rises when you rub two dry sticks together. Yes, I once really discussed that in all seriousness.

Drug addicts and sufferers of diabetes or bleeding disease would also become risk groups. And blacks, not because they were black, but predominantly lived in poverty and corresponding ignorance, both in Africa and in the US. In both cases also without adequate care for the sick. That social component would only reinforce and even weigh more and more prejudices. How much have nots would soon be able to pay for the necessary hygiene and nursing? The first drugs were very expensive experimental pill cocktails.

Different and giggly

At first I had remained indifferent to the news, even a little giggly. Maybe out of self-protection? I do not know anymore. I do remember – besides a lot of confusion everywhere – a lot of crazy parties everywhere. This may be due to the youthful age that I still enjoyed. Or because of the eternal reason for excessive partying. Repression.

Reality soon opened up like a gate to hell. I will never forget the photos of patients abandoned in clinics because no one dared to touch them. Some dentists quit the job for fear of the possible haze of blood droplets when drilling into someone else’s gums. Crying parents called on the radio: couldn’t their child at sports camp be infected by a greedy mosquito that would buzz from a sneaky patient to the apple of their eye? “Malaria is also transmitted by mosquitoes, isn’t it?” Often there were no answers yet, or they were only half believed or completely laughed off.

And everywhere, very unlike now with Covid-19, shame and denial lurked, with unnecessary dramas on top. Disinheritance. Rejection. Loved ones who have been denied access to the hospital by the decently-mad family of their non-legal spouse who was themselves too weakened to chase his relatives away. Why, ‘the blood creeps where it cannot go’? In those days, blood spewed at anything that could stain the name and fame of their own clan.

Also read: Far fewer HIV infections in the Netherlands than ten years ago

Poor Rock Hudson, the first famous victim of the New Plague, according to his biography, knew the diagnosis of his illness, but not yet the true cause of the transmission. He was contractually obliged to kiss Doris Day on the mouth again for one feelgood-comedy. The poor wretch brushed his teeth for hours beforehand, gargling with disinfectants in between, barely bleaching. And yet, one take long, as short as possible: exchange a kiss with the Queen of Innocence. Immediately afterwards: a hangover from guilt and self-blame. Later still: the humiliation of his forced coming out. The sad calling card of his untimely death.

It is unjust to the countless unnamed AIDS deaths, but the scale of the catastrophe becomes chillingly tangible when you read the lists of known victims, many torn away in the glory of their existence. Freddie Mercury, of course, but also – I’ll name just a handful – Keith Haring, Tom Fogerty, Michel Foucault, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Ashe, Liberace, Brad Davis, Anthony Perkins, Rudolf Nureyev, Bruce Chatwin, Klaus Nomi … Actually also comedian Kenny Everett and Cookie Müller, the delightful absurdist writer from the entourage of Divine and John Waters. And Frans Kellendonk, of course, not yet forty, author of Mystical body. Which masterpieces could he still have written?

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Gnawing remorse

In my direct circle of friends and distant acquaintances I also come across a dozen deaths. I now realize I did not take a proper goodbye to most of them. Because of my clumsiness and obsessive self-reliance. Even then ‘busy, busy, busy’. Was it just that? Repression of fear has many faces. No remorse. It gnaws, but it is irreparable.

The virus itself? Nobody speaks of an epidemic anymore. Whoever turns up the numbers wonders why. The last year surveyed, 2019, still claimed 690,000 deaths worldwide. This brings the total to nearly 33 million. In total, there are 40 million infected mortals on the planet and more than 1.5 million more are added each year. It is true in corners that interest us only moderately. North Africa, the fringes of former Eastern Europe, the interior of China.

And with us? We watch talk shows in which experts and conspiracy thinkers argue about mouth masks. We are strangely convinced that AIDS has actually been overcome for a long time, because we, in our parts of the world, can pay the bills of our rashness, for inhibiting drugs that are abundantly available here. The rest of the world is apparently ready to go.