Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone by David B. Feinberg Page B

life. It could be my problem.
    The second, closer to home, was from Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. On the envelope, scrawled in messy cursive next to my address, was the phrase “Before he died, he asked me to mail this to you.” It was from Bob Bradley, brother of the teacher from Long Island who sued Blue Cross to pay for a bone-marrow transplant that he was ultimately unable to undergo because he developed CMV during the settling of the suit. I really appreciate the thought that on his deathbed, when most people are worrying about the afterlife, having religious conversions, cutting people out of their wills, reconciling with family members, or arguing with ex-lovers, Tom Bradley summoned his last bit of strength to dictate this letter and said to send it to me, DAVID FEINBERG, personally. He even thought to specify window envelopes. He even knew my ZIP+4! I thought Death on the Installment Plan was a French novel, not the latest fund-raising tactic. I thought that Letter from a Dead Man was some obscure Joan Crawford movie from the late forties. I thought that Lambda would have a little more style than to try to raise money from the corpses of dead PWAs. Why does it read as exploitation and tapping into “survivor’s guilt” to me? Have they no shame?
    One day I’ll receive a letter that starts, “Hi, you don’t know me, but I’m dead. I died of AIDS, and indeed, this greatly improved the quality of my life. I now reside in Queens at a beautiful cemetery overlooking the East River, and could you please donate $100 to pay for my monument?” And at the bottom of the page there’ll be this note “over,” and I won’t turn the page.
    Someone from Lambda called me to apologize. He blamed an outside consultant for this appeal. It turns out that the claim was literally correct. A year earlier, Tom had authorized a fund-raising appeal. It was so successful that Lambda decided to send it again. In the interim, Tom had died.
    The Shanti Project chose to ignore my complaint. A week later I ran into a tall and slender beauty with only three visible flaws at my gym who admitted culpability. The direct-marketing company he worked for was responsible for Shanti’s letter. He said that he felt the letter accurately reflected the organization. Needless to say, I have been dropped from that particular mailing list.

Sex Tips For Boys
     
    Or, What to Do When the Guy You Met
in the Steam Room Wants to Get to
Know You Better before He Lets You
Put His Penis in Your Mouth;
Or, Dates From Hell
     
     
     
     
    Recently, I’ve had an unrelenting stream of bad dates. Indeed, were it not for my shining knight in Montreal whom I met at a bathhouse so sleazy that the dryer was broken and consequently patrons were given wet towels, I believe I would have completely lost hope in all humanity, or at least that portion of humanity with which I might possibly get laid. For some reason, nobody wants to have sex with me these days, save that occasional bulimic Adult-Child-of-Alcoholics novelty dancer who keeps calling me at odd hours. There was a rather enjoyable hour of foreplay interruptus in the hotel room of an extremely attentive young man last week, but then again, he was from L.A., which more or less negates any possibility of consummating the deed in the future, near or distant. Before that was the cute but unfortunately overly introspective neuropsychiatric resident whose ex-lover was dying of leukemia who told me that he was initially drawn to me because of his subliminal death wish and perhaps given my serostatus I could be an agent of his death, whereas I in fact preferred to be known as an instrument. And before that was the gentleman (al- though perhaps it would be a stretch to refer to him using this descriptive, since douche-bag would be more appropriate) whom I picked up at the gym, had sloppy and not particularly memorable sex with, and then two weeks later to the day when I saw him at the gym as I was doing