Deborah Lipp

Today is World AIDS Day.

The first friend I lost to AIDS died twenty years ago, in 1986. It was such an early date that when Steve was walking around with pneumonia for months and months, no one in our group of friends thought anything of it except that he needed antibiotics. When I visited him in the hospital, he wouldn’t accept a kiss on the cheek, afraid he would infect me.

By 1987 everyone I knew was very aware of what pneumonia might mean, but no one, I think, believed we’d still be fighting this disease in the 21st century.

I cannot think of AIDS without thinking of my dear friend Scott, gone since 1993. Scott thought he was so lucky to have AIDS when he had it, living as long as he did. AZT gave him years more than if he’d been diagnosed in 1987. Then again, had he been diagnosed just a couple of years later…

AIDS has challenged previously carefree communities to face death, and has taught adults to speak openly about sexuality. The language of safer sex forces communication. Irresponsibility looks uglier. Of course, it allows Puritans to be even more Puritan, prudes to be more prudish, and the hateful another venue by which to spew hate. But I don’t think you can judge anything by how the hateful react to it.

Now AIDS challenges us to face ethnocentrism, as Americans struggle to care about Africa, normally a place we know and care nothing about. The world is small and we can’t afford such carelessness. Time to wake up and grow up yet again.