The death of an activist

to clarify one common misperception: I am not an activist.\nI cringe at Robert's Rules of Order, sub-committees and rubber chicken luncheons. Agendas are just what they sound like, whether personal or typed: a funeral for spontaneity.\nI make a bad activist because I don't always think the enemy is identifiable. I hear wild implausible theories for the origin of AIDS, the transmission patterns data-mined out of clinical and hospital reports, the accusations of biological warfare and selective infection and, what do I know? I'm just a guy with AIDS.\nI don't have the exalted calling of uncovering the truth or proof of anything. What I do in my limited confines is explain more often than not. I go often on the way I feel, not with the objectified clarity of a Kinsey report. \nI can't be an activist because my knowledge of chemical processes, suppressed lab data and the existence of pheromones is ephemeral, at best. Half urban legend, half life experience, sex is not the thing I know most about. Well, I know some things. I don't know fetishes per se, I'm not clear on obsession, but I'm picking up new pointers in every HIV test interview. Activists know everything and also everything that nobody else knows; it's not in my job description. \nThe plodding nature of what I do is also a disqualifying factor. Activists practice going limp, study the parameters of civil disobedience, know the local laws down to the degree where protest ends and trespass begins. Right this instant, I could barely pass a driving test. Case closed. \nOn World AIDS Day, I'm often an activist, but only because I show up, say I'm positive and answer questions. I'm not urging consumer action against anyone at the moment, so that's my most radical act. \nWhen I was much younger, I wanted to be a teacher. I thought that would be the coolest of all possible professions. And I think when the pay is equitable, the administration supportive and the facilities well-tended, it still is the coolest of all. \nI was introduced to poetry by Mr. Funnel in seventh grade, to algebra by Mr. Reid, to Shakespeare by Mrs. Steill, to Ahkmatova by Mrs. Robbins. The list could go on. \nTeachers, the good ones, are activists of the most general type. They recognize a commitment to facilitate change and not pound facts. Teaching is not the rote recitation of lists that listens for the recitation back -- it is the presentation of information for the purpose of transforming facts to knowledge. \nElin Jacobs would be proud of that last sentence -- I think I took it from her. \nMy model in writing this semester was the idea that I wanted to be a teacher, too. I think too little of facts in my own life to write of them often. The life of a person with AIDS is not filled with reports from the CDC as a matter of government policy. We aren't mailed any special alerts or instructions of any particular sort by anyone. \nLeft pretty much alone to stumble through the more arcane joys of living with AIDS, we describe our lives in strikingly similar ways when we meet. We don't spout condom commercials, we talk about the same things everyone talks about: weather, sex and real estate. \nWe teach each other about the subtle ways of the negative world around us. The dating difficulties, the disclosure problems, the meds, always the meds; we talk less about new discoveries than we do of past events, how we got here, and what it's like on the island of HIV. \nI learned this year that part of teaching is a balancing act. A yinless, yangless blend of one's beliefs and point of view with other points of view, sometimes unpleasant points of view. One presents the obtuse angle to teach the rounded curve. To teach is to believe that such a thing can really be done. \nSuch belief is the most admirable thing about teaching, and its Achilles' Heel. Contentious as we are with language, race and politics, it's hard not to step wrong, hurt someone, leave someone out. Teachers, when they love what they do, are both great correctors and self-correctors. \nIt's this last point where I fail myself as a teacher. I recognize I have a point of view and I have trouble with others. I don't always reveal this in writing or speaking as much as I should. I shouldn't freak on intravenous drug use, condomless anal sex, the idea that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, or that it is a biological warfare agent directed at Homos, Haitians, Heroin Addicts and Hustlers -- a perverted kind of Sesame Street. But I do. \nTeachers always have a last out, which is just to say we are learning, becoming better each time we stand in front of a room full of people and act like we know what we are saying. I am not an activist, I am a subversive activist -- I am a teacher. \nFor those of you who wrote me this semester, whose class I was invited to or who attended a kegger over on Mitchell Street, I have bad news for you: because we interacted in some way, you have now been deputized.\nYou have been taught the example that it's OK to fail, that failure is in the head and not in the soul, that it's perfectly fine to be attracted to, have sex with and even fall in love with the opposite sex, your own sex, or both or all. You have been taught that the last thing you have to do with HIV is sit by a window and cry like you are in a Movie of the Week on Lifetime. \nYou know HIV thrives on behavior and choice, on opportunity meeting disaster. You know, too, that the way to talk about HIV is not condom, condom, condom. If you could bottle that talk, you'd take serious market share from Sominex. \nYou have been taught to talk about respect and love, and if you are good at it, you might just convince yourself. So, get out of here, and go teach someone else.