Aids Quotes

“That’s the point. This healthy-feeling time now just feels like a tease. Like I’m in this holding pattern, flying in smooth circles within sight of the airport, in super-comfortable first class. But I can’t enjoy the in-flight movie or free chocolate chip cookies because I know that before the airport is able to make room for us, the plane is going to run out of fuel, and we’re going to crash-land into a fiery, agonizing death.”
― Jessica Verdi, My Life After Now

“You are a hole in my life, a black hole. Anything I place there cannot be returned. I miss you terribly. Ci vedremo lassu, angelo.”
― Timothy Conigrave, Holding the Man

“Some women do not masturbate for pleasure; they masturbate to make a political statement: to remind us that women do not really need men (or at least not as much and as frequently as every single male chauvinist and every single misogynist believes).”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, On Masturbation: A Satirical Essay

“I kiss [her] even though I know that if you kiss a girl before you are married to her you might get AIDS.”
― Josh Sundquist, Just Don't Fall: How I Grew Up, Conquered Illness, and Made It Down the Mountain

“[P]eople only make decisions based on what they know. You can have everyone in the country vote freely and democratically and still come up with the wrong answer - if the information they base that decision on is wrong.

People don't want the truth [when] it is complicated. They don't want to spend years debating an issue. They want it homogenized, sanitized, and above all, simplified into terms they can understand...Governments are often criticized for moving slowly, but that deliberateness, it turns out, is their strength. They take time to think through complex problems before they act. People, however, are different. People react first from the gut and then from the head...give that knee-jerk reflex real power to make its overwhelming will known as a national mandate instantly and you can cause a political riot.

Combine these sins - simplification of information and instant, visceral democratic mandates - and you lose the ability to cool down. There is no longer deliberation time between events that may or may not be true and our reaction to them. Policy becomes instinct rather than thought.”
― Tracy Hickman, The Immortals

“It was masturbation, not willpower, that made it possible for gazillions of women to walk down the aisle with their reputation and their hymen still intact.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, On Masturbation: A Satirical Essay

“What you need is a chick from Camden,' Van Patten says, after recovering from McDermott's statement.

Oh great,' I say. 'Some chick who thinks it's okay to fuck her brother.'

Yeah, but they think AIDS is a new band from England,' Price points out.

Where's dinner?' Van Patten asks, absently studying the question scrawled on his napkin. 'Where the fuck are we going?'

It's really funny that girls think guys are concerned with that, with diseases and stuff,' Van Patten says, shaking his head.

I'm not gonna wear a fucking condom,' McDermott announces.

I have read this article I've Xeroxed,' Van Patten says, 'and it says our chances of catching that are like zero zero zero zero point half a decimal percentage or something, and this no matter what kind of scumbag, slutbucket, horndog chick we end up boffing.'

Guys just cannot get it.'

Well, not white guys.”
― Bret Easton Ellis

“To engage in activism that envisions alternatives ways of organizing society and alternative ways of being is to risk membership in society, a sense of belonging, however partial it may be. Activism can make us vulnerable because it is so obviously about wanting something beyond what is, and to have a political desire often is construed as wanting too much.”
― Deborah B. Gould, Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP's Fight against AIDS

“[A] couple I had known - who were old friends - asked me what I was going to work on next. I told them I wanted to write a near future book about AIDS concentration camps. They were vehement in their response: they thought it was a terrible idea. Their words both shocked and saddened me. "Do you really want to write a book about homosexuals?" they asked me. "Won't people who read your work be influenced toward sin?"

I notice that I don't hear from them much lately.”
― Tracy Hickman, The Immortals

“Some women have been faking orgasms for so long that they sometimes fake one when they are masturbating.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, On Masturbation: A Satirical Essay

“Trite though it (used to) sound, real sexuality is about our struggles to connect with one another, to erect bridges across the chasms that separate selves. Sexuality is, finally, about imagination. Thanks to brave people's recognition of AIDS as a fact of life, we are beginning to realize that highly charged sex can take place in all sorts of ways we'd forgotten or neglected—in a conversational nuance; in a body's posture, a certain pressure in a held hand. Sex can be everywhere we are, all the time.”
― David Foster Wallace, Both Flesh and Not: Essays

“His friends will decline in their numbers as his needs increase. The inverse, or perverse, mathematics ay life.”
― Irvine Welsh

“Conservatives, who have presumed that the key to preventing AIDS is abstinence-only education, and liberals, who have focused on distribution of condoms, should both note that the intervention that has tested most cost-effective in Africa is neither... Secular bleeding hearts and religious bleeding hearts will have to forge a common cause.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof

“The worst of all of this is the lie that condoms really protect against AIDS. The condom failure rate can be as high as 20 percent. Would you get on a plane — or put your children on a plane — if one of five passengers would be killed on the flight? Well, the statistic holds for condoms, folks.”
― Rush Limbaugh, The Way Things Ought to Be

“Darla shook her head, a small smirk on her lips. “You’re such a mom,” she told Katherine.
Katherine stared at her, puzzled. “You’re a mom, too,” she said softly.
“No, I gave birth. That doesn’t make me a mom. Not like you.”
A look passed between the two women like none they had ever shared before. For a split second, Katherine felt a slight connection. “Well, you rest. I’ll check on you later.” She turned and left the room, a funny, unexplainable feeling inside her.”
― Deanna Lynn Sletten, Widow, Virgin, Whore

“Kuamini (mbali na imani, ambayo ni nia ya kujua kisichoweza kujulikana) ni kwa ajili ya vitu usivyoweza kuvielezea. Unaamini kwamba siku moja dawa ya UKIMWI au saratani itapatikana mahali fulani, ilhali huwezi kufanya majaribio ya kisayansi kulithibitisha hilo. Unaweza kusubiri hata miaka mia, lakini kama bado dawa haijapatikana, unaweza kusubiri hata miaka mingine mia. Kuamini ni kujifanya kujua (na mara nyingi kujifanya kujua ni uongo) na kuamini hakuhitaji maarifa. Kujua kunahitaji maarifa na ni kuamini unakoweza kukuthibitisha. Ukiniuliza kama simu yangu ipo mfukoni nitakwambia ndiyo ipo, kwa sababu nitaingiza mkono mfukoni na kuitoa na kuiona. Siamini kama ipo mfukoni, najua.”
― Enock Maregesi

“Don’t offend the gays and don’t inflame the homophobes. These were the twin horns on which the handling of this epidemic would be torn from the first day of the epidemic. Inspired by the best intentions, such arguments paved the road toward the destination good intentions inevitably lead.”
― Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

“HIV prevalence is an abstraction. the time-lag between infection with HIV and illness with AIDS is so long - eight to ten years - that a new epidemic consists mostly of symptom-less HIV infection rather than visible sickness and death from AIDS”
― Alex de Waal, AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet

“there is a missing link. people overwhelmingly acknowledge that there is an AIDS epidemic, but do not take the next step of accepting the consequences. this is familiar territory for those concerned with trying to change risky sexual behaviour: knowledge about how HIV is transmitted and the dangers of certain kinds of practices does not seem to translate into behavioural change.”
― Alex de Waal, AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet

“in the higher stages of denial, ever-more-complex mechanisms are developed for explaining the unacceptable while maintaining a façade of social and moral normality.”
― Alex de Waal, AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet

“the AIDS pandemic is a disaster with few parallels, because it is so easy to make it invisible or to pretend it is something else. an earthquake, flood or famine is dramatically visible and politically salient, because it affects entire communities in a spectacular fashion, including their leaders and spokespeople. AIDS is more like climate change, an incremental process manifest in a quickening drumbeat of ‘normal’ events.”
― Alex de Waal, AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet

“the most sophisticated form of denial is ‘normalization’. the intolerable becomes ‘no longer news’ and people invest in ‘not having an inquiring mind about these matters’.”
― Alex de Waal, AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet

“the study of socio-political denial is the study of how appearances are kept up, the moral order is sustained, and necessary changes are pressed up into the service of existing interests. this can be seen at the family and community level, and in the way that national and international politics is managed.”
― Alex de Waal, AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet

“for the women [sex-workers], all poor and competing in an oversupplied market for sexual services, the ‘choice’ of unprotected sex is simply a financial trade-off between less money today (and the threat of physical violence from a dissatisfied client) and the far-off danger of developing AIDS. this has echoes, too, of the risk of a ‘bad reputation’ weighed by women [in the area] who too rarely insist on condom use to protect themselves.”
― Alex de Waal, AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet

“if spiritual forces operate in a different sphere to the rule of law and human rights, then democratic politics is failing to deal with a fundamental problem in people’s lives and after-lives. the repercussions of AIDS for the moral cosmology are profound indeed. the secular frameworks of epidemiology and public policy will not by themselves be enough to make sense of the virus and epidemic. we need to develop and deploy metaphors that speak to the social world, constructed around moral imaginings which are impacted by AIDS and which in turn constrain social capabilities to respond to AIDS. we should also be alert to the fact that scholars and policy makers themselves are unable to think about the crisis that is AIDS without using language and imagery borrowed from another realm of human experience. how we think about the AIDS epidemic becomes its own reality. yet we must not lose sight of the virus and the disease. (…) AIDS represents the ordinary workings of biology, not an irrational or diabolical plague with moral meaning. HIV transmission is preventable and medication is available that can extend a healthy life for those living with HIV. science can triumph, given resources, policies and the right social and political context.”
― Alex de Waal, AIDS and Power: Why there is no Political Crisis - Yet by Waal, Alex de [Zed Books, 2006] ( Paperback ) [Paperback]

“in the run-up to South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994, Nelson Mandela was reportedly advised not to make AIDS into a campaign issue for fear of offending culturally conservative constituencies. ‘I wanted to win,’ said Mandela, ‘and I did not talk about AIDS.”
― Alex de Waal, AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet

“it is from such diverse sources with varied networks and linkages that the response to HIV / AIDS has been patched together. it is an NGO model of response, uneven in coverage and quality, responsive to the particularities of local circumstance, the character of local leaders, and the availability and types of funds available.”
― Alex de Waal, AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet

“the philanthropic NGO has long been decried by the left as a means of addressing only the symptoms of poverty and thus obscuring the political strategies needed to overcome it. NGOs are criticised for creating Potemkin villages not replicable at scale. their limits are often painfully apparent. some are ‘briefcase’ NGOs, to give their founders income or profit.”
― Alex de Waal, AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet

“the Cold War thaw brought a rising tide: a series of waves that swept in and receded, slowly and unevenly bringing new political waterlines”
― Alex de Waal, AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet

“The Lottery by Stewart Stafford

It was New York, 1984,
The AIDS tsunami roared in,
Friends, old overnight, no more,
Breathless, I went for a check-up.

A freezing winter's dawn,
A solitary figure before me,
What we called a drag queen,
White heels trembled in the cold.

"Hi, are you here to get tested?"
Gum chewed, brown eyes stared.
This was not my type of person,
I turned heel and walked away.

At month's end, a crippling flu,
The grey testing centre called,
Two hundred people ahead of me;
A waking nightmare all too real.

I gave up and turned to leave,
But a familiar voice called out:
"Hey, you there, come back!"
I stopped and turned around.

The drag queen stood there in furs,
But sicker, I didn't recognise them,
"Stand with me in the line, honey."
"Nah, I'm fine, I'll come back again."

"Support an old broad before she faints?"
A voice no longer frail but pin-sharp.
I got in line to impatient murmurs:
"If anyone has a problem, see me!"

Sylvester on boombox, graveyard choir.
My pal's stage name was Carol DaRaunch,
(After the Ted Bundy female survivor)
Their real name was Ernesto Rodriguez.

After seeing the doctor, Carol hugged me,
Writing down their number on some paper,
With their alias not their real name on it:
"Is this the number of where you work?"

"THAT is my home number to call me on.
THAT'S my autograph, for when I'm famous!"
"I was wrong about you, Carol," I said.
"Baby, it takes time to get to know me!"

A hug, shimmy, the threadbare blonde left.
A silent chorus of shuffling dead men walking,
Spartan results, a young man's death sentence.
Real words faded rehearsal, my eyes watered.

Two weeks on, I cautiously phoned up Carol.
The receiver was picked up, dragging sounds,
Like furniture being moved: "Is Carol there?"
"That person is dead." They hung up on me.

All my life's harsh judgements, dumped on Carol,
Who was I to win life's lottery over a guardian angel?
I still keep that old phone number forty years on,
Crumpled, faded, portable guilt lives on in my wallet.

© Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford