Time After Time

Frontdesk by David Waggoner

September 11, 2001, is a day that no one old enough to remember will soon forget. I was visiting my sister, Cindy, in Houston. We all tuned in to television that tragic day, knowing that this moment in time was like no other. Surreal, time seemed frozen. Minds were numbed. Emotions were suspended. Much of it is too painful to watch five years later because some part of me was killed that morning. Perhaps it was my own innocence that was taken away.

And yet, five years later, I am mostly at a loss for words for what took place. Time may heal all wounds, but there is no set schedule. The effects are long-lasting. Especially when the one man responsible for this outrage has yet to be taken dead or alive. Osama bin Laden can’t be found. The mountains hide him, like the thick jungles of Paraguay hid fugitive Nazis all those years ago. But it seems Osama will never be found until we come out of hiding ourselves, until we emerge from the landscape of our psyches—from the caves and rainforests that shield us from our own fears of the unknown or from admitting that hate exists in the world.

That is why I am offended to hear a statement like, “I have not been personally affected by AIDS.” It’s as ludicrous to say that as to say I haven’t been personally affected by 9/11. And yet, ironically enough, that is what actor Bryce Johnson, one of this issue’s feature stories, has to say about his relationship to the AIDS problem. Of course by the end of the interview he changes his mind by recognizing how he, like so many young men and women alive today, are living in a world of constant denial. Perhaps we should call it the 9/11 syndrome: When one knows terrorism or HIV is out there but for whatever reason can’t recognize one’s own connection to the problem for what it is—paralysis.

Everyone on this planet knows someone near and dear to them who has HIV. It is statistically impossible in the twenty-first century to deny this fact. But many of us go along blissfully, hedonistically—if you will—acting as if we are not touched by AIDS. Some men (and women) are on the down low, while others are “forgetting” to wear condoms altogether, when anyone born since the mid-eighties knows that HIV is sexually transmitted. But therein lies the problem. For some, denial is a way of living one’s life. It’s like saying that what’s real is too real, so let’s sit back and let TV do the living for us. Sort of what makes reality TV such a hit these days. And if you don’t like ABC’s fare, switch to FOX, because their brand of reality might be less real, more enjoyable.

The effects of trauma may send us scrambling for the remote, but the effects of denial are worse. Dangerous AIDS stigma continues to this day, not only in African and Asian countries but in the United States. It seems like only yesterday that the first cases of AIDS were reported, but yet, a quarter of a century later, many of our national leaders continue to underfund the fight or fight with each other for funding. Once a disease that frequently afflicted members of the entertainment industry, now HIV is an affliction that has a less and less desirable zip code according to the powers that be.

My thoughts about the disenfranchisement of those living with HIV mirrors my experience at the recent international AIDS conference: hundreds of nonprofit organizations crammed together into what was quaintly called the Global Village. It was depressing and demoralizing to see that some of the same pharmaceuticals that continue to profit from the worldwide use of anti-HIV medicines didn’t even bother to show up or sponsor this important gathering. What kind of denial is going on here? Are AIDS patients being taken for granted? Or is it that HIV/AIDS is an old problem and that there are newer, more pressing concerns to think about? The 9/11 syndrome is starting to seem more and more like AIDS-fatigue. In an age of denial and paralysis, when we remember those fallen, perhaps we should also remember to remember.

September 2006