Days of Mourning: How the Death of Arthur Ashe Changed My Perspective on AIDS
Let us pretend AIDS is only a statistic. Let us not.
The most powerful element of AIDS is that it is so much a part of us; it grew up and matured right with us. It has, through its deadlines and survival, become inevitably draped over the window of our generation. And so, if we are to say that AIDS is a data table; if we are to believe that the godliness of this whole epidemic is an airtight waiting room with three hundred patients, beds, and unconsumed hospital pudding; if we are to deceive ourselves with a retractable briefcase of threats and graphs that closes when we want it to; if we are to think that AIDS is for "them" and for "there," then let us deliver our own mourner's prayer.
So, you ask, "how are you a part of the experience?" I instinctively respond, I am a child of the 1980's- how can I not be? Or so, I level-heatedly respond, I am as much a warrior for the future as any other living being is, how can I not be? Or so, I tearfully respond, my hero died of AIDS. Or so, I quietly and demurely respond, what does it mean to be a part of the experience? Does it mean salted farewells and an obsolete immune system? Does is mean plaintive whispers under medical masks and red-ribboned lapels? Or can it be a stoic African-American with glasses and a wood-framed racquet who developed a disease largely treated with taboo by a blood transfusion?
Arthur Ashe died of AIDS in 1992. He had contracted the disease in the mid-1980's as a result of a blood transfusion that at the time was not tested for HIV. After reading Days of Grace, his autobiography, I had for the first time become entangled in the frightening Doppler effect of the AIDS tragedy. I still felt and feel out of touch with pale nightgowns that count T-cells like check-offs to execution. This too is frightening, considering the message and anecdote of "anybody, anytime" is universal. It is frightening that people my own age, with everyone semblance of good health and humor, await the sweat and shrouds in a cruel monotony; that a healthy mountain of a celebrity christened Magic, memorialized as the yellow-jerseyed legend, could have fallen prey to the Web.
I will tell a story of a hero, and you will tell me you have heard the story before. The hero dies; I'll tell you that from the start. He was smart and pacifistic, and so well-prepared, so well-ironed that he made your mother's laundry proud. He avoided the behavioral dangers of infection, he called baseline shots to his opponent's advantage, he had heart disease and a daughter and HIV, and he preferred justice and equality and tranquillity of the spirit to strawberries and cream with the green.
I will tell you the story of a disease. The disease lives, I'll tell you that from the start. You will ask me, which disease? I'll tell you, but you already know. The disease chooses its victims. It chooses them with unqualified precision and terrific randomness and a strong affinity for heroes, drawn magnetically and most convincingly to those men and women we feel are most capable of making dogmeat out of a virus. The disease is undefeated, awesome, and has a wicked forehand shot.
I will tell you the story of yourself, the reader, who grew distanced from the disease. And I will tell you this from the start- the reader thinks he is the steward of some holy truth, keeper of idle wisdom; that AIDS if far away. The reader feels alienated from the hero and the disease. And I tell you, the reader, walk many miles, live many years. May your days be filled with grace. Claim victory. Raise your Wimbledon trophy high.
AIDS is the defending champ.
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