Whose Disease Is It, Anyway?

Even though I don't have HIV, I have lived with this disease for more than 20 years, and it has shaped my life. This disease has killed my friends and my heroes. And in a weird way, it has killed a huge hunk of me.

But it's not my disease anymore. And in some ways I don't feel like it's really my problem, so why do I need to revisit an old wound?

You see, after years of decimating the gay community like so many dirty bombs, this awful scourge has moved on. AIDS is now the leading killer of African Americans between the ages of 25 and 44. Among women with HIV, African-American women make up 72 percent of new HIV cases. On top of all that bad news, the number of people worldwide estimated to be living with HIV is 38 million, 65 percent of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa.

No matter how many times you see them, these mind-numbing numbers seem impossible to fathom. And no matter how many one-named superstars, like Bono and Oprah, attempt to turn their klieg-lit celebrity status onto the problem, the disease just seems to grow bigger and bigger.

But this isn't my disease anymore, and I don't want to write about it again.

Back in its beginning stages--when AIDS was just that "gay disease"--this generation's greatest plague was rooted within the community of queer men. We took the heat for being the host culture of a disease that was blamed on our collective promiscuity. We felt ashamed of those indignities that we supposedly inflicted on an unsuspecting public.

OK, maybe the "they" in this case were partly right. Maybe if we all weren't such horn dogs, fewer of us would have died. But to quote Dolly Parton, there's this: "If 'if and buts' were candy and nuts, we'd all have a merry Christmas."

But back in the late 1980s and early '90s, gay men picked their raggedy asses up off the ground and rallied. We became political activists. We held parties. We raised money. We made it fashionable to fight such an unfashionable cause.

I don't see that happening now. One of the most perplexing phenomena of our modern times is this: Once AIDS moved out of the gay closet and into the mainstream, the disease became less important to the body politic. Of course, maybe this has something to do with the fact that, through the power of a handful of drugs, we have a way to live with the disease, not just die from it.

Medical cocktails aside, AIDS continues to spread rapidly. It scares me to think about how many people with AIDS have no access to expensive medications. No matter how numb all of us in the AIDS generation might feel after years of fighting this disease, I know we won't be content to be remembered as the generation who later forgot about it.

We know what to do, because we've done it before. We can attend parties, donate money for research and treatment, and start paying attention. Again.

Africa AIDS Response's "Hope Is Vital" benefit for PDX sister city Mutare, Zimbabwe, in its efforts to fight AIDSCrystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047. 7:30 pm Wednesday, Dec. 1. $25-$30. All ages..