Updating the Plague and the Mass: PRAYERS FOR THE INFIDEL
October 9, 2009
Conference presentation, Concordia University
protest flag for Iraqui milita anal glue killings of homosexuals 2009
STIGMA
In 1992, when I wrote “we are all HIV positive” on my hand with a tattoo artist from Brooklyn, I said several things: One was that you may not separate the uninfected from the infected as so many so-called liberal doctors wanted to do, by putting the infected on Plum island outside of New York City. You cannot separate the uninfected from the infected by denying them access to your country. You cannot separate the uninfected from the infected by putting the infected on a separate floor that has red danger contagion signs and giving them crap to eat and instructing Catholic nurses not to administer painkillers to the guilty and allowing Catholic priests to visit them and inform them of their future in Hell if they do not confess that their entire life has been a crime. You cannot separate the infected from the uninfected by saying I do not have AIDS, I have syphillis, but most assuredly nothing to do with HIV, and then allow them to die an early death because they would rather die of the disease than the stigma, as so many did, and do, including my best friend– in 1996–who would be living today if he had not been petrified of the stigma and intentionally saw a doctor whose research was based on the option and the opinion that HIV did not cause AIDS. A second opinion, or better yet,my friend’s own research with other researchers would have been smarter. He knew better, but he told me when we first met in 1989 that he would kill himself if he were diagnosed with HIV. No matter what I said to him he continued to visit the one practitioner who would condone this denial for six years until it was too late, and the following year protease inhibitors hit the market—the year after he died. No, you cannot separate the uninfected from the infected by saying “I do not suffer from this virus: I have been spared.” Because one day, in one city, in one moment, you will learn that you suffer from some virus, some pathogen, something poisonous that will not exit from your body; and you will realize that you do not mourn the dead, you mourn the suffering of the living while they are still alive. Noone can escape death, and worse than that, no one can escape the life of anything and everything that smells your blood and lives because of it.
Many of us who have been infected with some virus already, as I was infected 20 years ago with Hepatitis C, found through Community Research Initiative in New York City, Dr. Douglas Diettrich , who was one of the first doctors treating co-infection of HIV, HCV, and HBV, two of which–Hep and HIV-require treatment at different times because each treatment is mutually contra-indicated for getting rid of the second or third virus. Many of us call for research and compassion from every individual before he or she is hit with something — and this can only be done by caring for and doing the research for, someone who is SICK. Research, caregiving, and accepting the virus that is having a blast on your bill, anger, grief and more research and completing the trials, as I did–two out of three times– the second was too toxic. The third, happily, was pegylated interferon (rebetron) , essentially chemo and hell on earth, even with vicodin and procrit, epogen to boost the hemoglobin and give me some quality of life while I was touring in Moscow, Porto, and Medellin, and paying my rent. Research is the antidote to terminal individuality and self-pity;it is, at the end of the day, a useful practice for dealing with the viruses that eventually kill us in our last years, like Alzheimers, not so dissimilar from AIDS dementia, something that ten percent of persons with Aids years back still suffer from, even after protease inhibitors– because the blood-brain barrier is not featuring the inhibitors in the brain. Those are the ones with those hideous louis vuitton handbags: you can see them a mile, away.
(Possibly Donatella’s as well; sorry, that was cruel.)
AUTUMN LEAVES
Let us speak of Autumn and the Infidel. Like the auburn of the autumn leaves, both are the symbols of Death. A woman is born, a homosexual is born, born as outlaws– keigome, keigome– born to be stalked, tortured, beaten, born to live a life of traumatic stress, of hyper-vigilance and compulsive handwashing or furniture arranging. Or calling mother every day for the rest of your life, or never again. Or you are certain that because of your actions she has had her house burned to the ground and been mutillated. My brother used to tell me that he had these horrific thoughts before he came home at night, and he would call home to make sure something terrible hadn’t happened, and now in fact this collective memory proves to be prescient– does it not?
In countries which provide listings of homosexuals to the general public, in countries where online- stalkers lure homosexuals to private places only to kill them, in countries where homophobic religious fanatics bury homosexuals into walls, arrest entire gay cruise boats, does anyone expect that a homosexual will go to a public clinic for HIV testing or treatment? Of course, there is someone at the clinic who pretends to be an assistant, and who will call someone to follow you home and kill you and write “gabur, ,giavour queer, infidel, insult to Christ, or Mohammed,” on your door or your family’s, or both. Ethiopia, Uganda, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, South Africa, Jamaica, and even Greece, home of the Spartans— after all—the greatest fighters in the world— who, knowingly, adopted lovers who would stand in front of them and take a good bullet— and on and on and on. The worst thing in the world a person can be called is not a nigger, an arab, a kyke, or a whore, but a dyke or a faggot, and the double repression of women and woman as dyke makes it much worse for lesbians. This is what is called an infidel exponent. Two times two means the train is coming, bitch, with a whole city on your back and as sure the south african dyke football player –too out, too successful, —- showing up the big man— you’ve got it coming, witch.
On a new york city domestic note, here I am not watching the MTV video awards and I log on for mail and see some larger than life picture that says a mister “Kanye West steals moment from female country western singer.” I decide to take a break from work and do not see the clip before I read twenty video blogs by pre-teenage boys and girls full of sadness, betrayal, shock, and rage. But what is more astounding to me than their mature evaluation of this imbecile are responses to their blogs from illiterate gang-bangers who write, “shut up, faggot, kanye’s the man, fuck you in your fat-ass, useless waste of a nigger= lesbo, white faggot, or maricon.” Mr. West psychologically rapes a teenage female singer on stage, and after that are the verbal rapes of pre-teenagers online by anonymous “gang-bangers.” The count of these comments in twenty blogs of preteens was, I would say, one hundred insults to all color, ethnic groups of both sexes. The ultimate insult, the ultimate disempowerment is to call a person a homo. It means, quote: you are not human anyway, but a useless piece of meat, skopithia, fuck you in your ass. Oh, do I know what I am talking about. After all, I’ve been there, and I have a problem with rage, and so when I feel and insult coming on I jump it before it jumps me, and it always comes down to someone saying, “Bitch, you think you are a man?” Very sad was that many of the kids’ worst insults in the “Mr. West situation” was to call him a, quote, stupid bitch. Even the innocent know what will hurt the man the most.
How to share HIV with your wife,”don’t ask; don’t tell,” smart boy scymbag idiot misogynistic PIG
It is autumn, and the new bitches have hit cell block D in LA, Peru, Turkey, Moscow, Bagdad — it doesn’t matter: the new pussy is in and lifers with nothing to lose are waiting to screw up some salad big time, lots of eager beavers too, and never enough pussy to satisfy all the customers. So it is a day and night of new trains running down and someone gets raped by eight guys and gets his colon ripped out too. Nobody wants a snitch, and under sodium pentathol or demerol you will talk so fuck you, bitch.
Prison rape is a funny thing. Nobody famous has ever been raped in prison. I mean who was the last famous person who ever talked about being raped in prison. What songs have been written except by no-selling, quote, lowlifes, about being raped in prison. Go into a cell with five strangers and it’s only just begun. It’s nice to see all those Chuck Norris films, but prison’s not like that. You get booked for carrying some weed, speed, coke, anything, squeezed into a jail with a lot of filthy smelly guys for two weeks, and suddenly you’re signed up for a bid of five years just so you can take a shower. Next thing you know, you’re in the pen with your end in the air and your future in the prison hospital, medicaid, or whatever you get, in whatever country of the world, which is usually none of the above, but a stabbing if anyone finds out about the new hive-ist. Let’s go to Baghdad. It is a nice night and finally there is a place your best friend told you about after it took a year to trust him. And there you are, and the music is slamming like nowhere else because it is the wildest shit ever, your own music, everyone is beautiful, and suddenly you hear a shot outside and it must be a mistake that your best friend is running in and his guts are falling out. But that’s just the beginning, because everyone is next and the club is bathed in blood.
first Turkish gay honour killing 19 July 2008
You are running down market street in san francisco, mexican boys with switchblades are screaming maricon,vamos a matarte –you fucking faggot. I am walking down the street with my girlfriends by the projects in 28th and 9th after a show and suddenly a wine bottle hits my girlfriend. I look back and see these dealers looking and I walk over and say, “so which one of you motherfuckers threw that?” “Not me.” ” Not me.” It is a bad situation, there are three of them, and two of us, and one of us is down.
WITCH BURNING
In South Africa, two or more women have been raped today, and one of them’s grandmother has had shots fired at her for raising a filthy lesbian. A man says,” Of course we raped her. We raped her to teach her what is right, to teach her to do right, what she does is wrong.” Of course one of every four women is raped in South Africa, and babies are raped everyday to purge the aids virus from the loins of the infected. The rapes are committed by men carrying the virus who frequent whores and will not use condoms– and infect their wives. Who uses condoms in South Africa? Women don’t get to ask. That is a joke.
South African woman mourn an insurmountable battle thus far.
Imagine a country where a lesbian walks around bald–a famous footballer. She should be shot just for trying to dis the men by exceeding her station in life, which is to have babies as goat sacrifices for the sperm of HIV-infected men. Anyway, everybody knew she was a butchie. This is a man’s world, a real man. Not a butchie, like the soccer player, a tranny, a fag, a down-low, or the baby who was split in half and stitched up to live like a vegetable for the rest of her life.
The face of corrective lesbian rape in South Africa 2010
Film festival in South Africa. Most posters ripped off the walls before the festival could begin.
Come on man, we kill faggots in Ethiopia because those homos are the ones who have been influenced by the West and that is why they are running all of the businesses in town, telling us what to do, trying to bring the corrupt morals of the West to Ethiopia, says the ethiopian orthodox and catholic and protestant clergy and muslim clerics. It is extremely amusing to the Ethiopians that rastas still worship the man who wished to be Nero– Haile Selassi– with all his Byzantine gold, finery, and ornaments.
Haile Selassie
My father was part Egyptian as well as Greek and in North Africa there used to be many ethnic groups who learned from each other until Nasser cleared out the Levantines finally for the same reason most Greeks were finally assassinated by the Turks, but to continue– Ethiopan Coptic, Assyrian and Greek orthodox churches are visited by Palestinians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Ethiopians together for service. Important, I saw beautiful Ethioipian parishoners in long white robes and smiling during the Greek Orthodox service. The gay-bashing rasta thinks black is black. He is thinking about color.
“I have promoted the murder of homosexuals since the beginning of my career.”
“rasta” singer Buju Banton 2010
We are thinking about our ancient shared cultures, about our shared love, about our martyrs who fought against forcible conversion by Islam- and the kidnapping of our boys whose Coptic Egyptian wives are now kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists, converted to Islam, and when trying to escape back to their families are disemboweled as infidels and are left in the street like skopithia, or trash. The rasta thinks he knows all about his spiritual home. Ethiopia is a land of the original black man. Listen to the music of Ethiopia and the songs of the great orthodox martyrs who refused to give up their faith, even when tortured. This is not about western religion; this is an ancient religion of the East and little is known of it. As little is known about the destruction of Assyrian culture every day in Iraq, and that, in the wake of every major power’s invasion is the destruction of groups of no power, of no importance, like the Armenians or the Assyrians, like the Iraqui faggots, like the rape of Cypriot mental patients upon the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, or the forced circumcision of Greek Orthodox priests in Istanbul after disinformation was spread by Attaturk, saying that the Greeks had burned his house to the ground.
How to win a war. Ask the Spartans. Greece is now one of the most homophobic countries in the world. Only the trannies, as usual, own the road.
There is a cellular need for the burning of a witch. If you don’t see one, then you find one. It is a commandment by fundamentalists worldwide, and dictators,who become jealous of successful minority ethnic groups, or sexual groups, who appear to be overachieving and humiliating the true culture of a country whether it be Germany, Turkey, Iraq, Uganda, South Africa, or Jamaica. The only answer is ethnic or sexual cleansing of the infidel. The word means nonbeliever. To a dictator it means that this person is not sufficiently subservient and could threaten his dominion. The dictator is made rabid by jealousy, one of the venal sins, like that victim of hydroencephalitis, “elephant man,” whose songs are all about killing faggots– whom he offers to the crocodile, the machete, or the anal spike– like the Spanish Inquisition: this is a real man, alright. This is the kind of man I’d like to have it out with—with two bulldykes holding him down, and a toolkit to experiment with.
In another cell block the girls are shooting up because there’s nothing else to do at all. No books, only letters, pictures of loved ones, and you are with whoever who is keeping you safe, unless you are lucky enough to be too old or too tough. You don’t need me to tell you this; we have Lifetime, the channel for women.
HIV, well it is a drag, but getting clean needles isn’t that easy either, and maybe it is not easy to get whaetever you need to disinfect them. Oh well, at least like the Russian prostitutes maybe you will get some hospital time. Who cares anyway? Not if you’re doing over ten years. But you know, it must be true, about the terrible influence of those African- Americans on the otherwise pure culture of Africa. After all, there was no homosexuality in Africa before the opportunistic infection of American television. Especially that nasty hip hop, say the Muslim imams, in Somalia. It is all that down-lowing that makes these cows go mad. Of course anyone with a working brain knows that the down- low has nothing to do with homosexuality, or when it does, it uses the power ritual for a closet. Many of us know that the hip- hopper who takes a tranny home gets fucked in the ass while the tranny says, “Girl, now that we know that you are the man, can I please take off this wig? It is one hundred degrees in here.” And this is where Quadaffi’s supposed affair with a high official in Uganda outed by the notorious fag-bashing Ugandan magazine Red Pepper. created a situation which must make me laugh. Streets filled with Muslim imams hysterically collecting and burning Red Pepper, which demands its right to free speech even though it outs and prints the fates of homosexuals who will be murdered.
The ever effervescent RED PEPPER literally spews out of the can
“quaddafi-fabulous” oh yes baby we can see THAT
“But this is the murder of animals: and it is not unlawful. Homos aren’t considered to be human beings, therefore they have no rights. Infidel, non-believer, what are you doing for your country? Where are your progeny, non-breeder? You are unnatural and must be eliminated for the public good! Practitioner of treason!”
Homophobia: Fear of, aversion to, and discrimination of homosexuals
SYMPATHY FOR THE DOPE FIEND
Interjection: sympathy for the “dope fiend.” Are you the gay man who insulted my friend Carla while she stood in line in 1988 at the clinical trials for HIV that she got from shooting dope and turning tricks? “You’re not like us. You brought it on yourself,” she used to hear. Every world culture has had its drugs, its alcohol. Greeks, who are notorious for being hedonists, mete out our liquor better than other cultures, and so what is wrong with hashish, opium, or our American- refined morphine– heroin, etc, etc. If you can’t handle your shit, well then don’t take it. Don’t blame it on the drug. Why the moral disgust at the “dope fiend?” The problem for the dope fiend is her problem and nobody else’s. People murder children every day, and drinks are served a million times a day. So let’s cut to the chase, let’s have some sympathy for the dope fiend. Women who are nurturers, the caregivers, rape victims, the scapegoats, those without any entitlement whatsoever, who bleed every month for forty years, get diseases that men give them (except for prostate cancer), who die in childbirth after giving birth to endless children– we don’t deserve a morphine weekend? Don’t give me that motherfucking Tylenol,you sanctimonious prick. Or Vicodin or Oxycontin. I am over that cheap crap, it’s bad for my stomach. And how about that methedrine-tenofovir combination for the bathhouse I’ve been talking about for years. Why not? Don’t blame the drug, mix and match! And deny only one thing: the judgement of God.
The Concordia University Community Lecture Series on HIV/AIDS has a mandate to develop awareness of social, scientific and cultural aspects of the HIV/AIDS Pandemic, through community education, internal dialogue in the academy, social criticism and the encouragement of volunteering and citizenship participation. The program works to inspire the next generation of AIDS researchers, activists and educators within today’s population.
Diamanda Galás, Singer, HIV/AIDS Activist
Greek-American avant-garde singer and HIV/AIDS activist Diamanda Galás is internationally known for her unique styles of musical performance. Joining the HIV/AIDS movement in its first decade, Galás’s efforts deepened when her brother died of HIV complications. Her famously blasphemous and sacred Plague Mass (1990) was the result.
*This conference is presented in partnership with Pop Montréal Music Festival.”
Master of Ceremonies:
Roch Thibault
Presenters:
Aaron Pollard & Steve Lawson
Respondent:
Lloyd Whitesell, Ph.D.
Chair, Department of Music Research
Schulich School of Music, McGill University
This lecture was brought to you in partnership with:
FASA: Fine Art Student Alliance
And
Pop Montréal
Friends of the Lecture Series:
Aids Community Care Montreal
Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network
Fugues
SéroZéro
Radio Centre-ville
For more information please contact:
Aaron Capar
Coordinator, HIV/AIDS Lecture Series
(514) 848-2424 ext. 7998
[email protected]
aids.concordia.ca
