This post is excerpted from the soon to be released 25th anniversary edition of "Bi Any Other Name: Bi People Speak Out" and is available here.
The other day, a friend of mine, Jason G., came running up to me with tears pouring out of his eyes. When he calmed down enough to talk, he screamed out in anger, "It's not fair! It's just not fair! I did what you said. And it's just not fair." Jason G. is three years old. The other adults and I at his day care center have been encouraging him to stand up for himself and not to let the other children bully him. "It's his fault," he continued. "He started it first. He hit me back!"
Jason had done exactly what he thought he was supposed to do and was still in pain. He felt betrayed and enraged, and I knew how he felt.
Helping children deal with life's inequities and unfairness is easy at the day care center. Someone is always there to pick you up and wipe away the tears when life's hurts become overwhelming. You learn that falling down is part of growing up, that pain is just another part of life, and life is about learning how to deal with not getting what you want. Life is also accepting what you do get.
At the day care center your friends don't get lingering flus or come down with rare opportunistic infections. They aren't diagnosed with AIDS or die agonizing deaths on what feels like a weekly basis.
I have been desperately trying to figure out how to handle accepting that which I find totally unacceptable. Like Jason G. I feel betrayed and enraged. Sexual liberation, gay liberation, bi liberation, human liberation were tikkun olam (the repair of the world [1]). We were doing what we were supposed to do — standing up for ourselves, fighting back, and not letting others bully us or cage us with their own narrow limitations. We were building a better world. Today "the repair of the world" is about helping friends, loved ones, members of our communities, and ourselves learn how to die ahead of our time or to manage devastating amounts of grief.
I'm angry. I'm angry that there are so many lingering flus that are much more than just "lingering flus." I'm angry that as of June 1990 more than 83,000 are dead of AIDS in this country — we are still counting. I'm angry that there is so much pain and suffering, that there are so many absent friends, and that grief is my constant companion.
I am angry at the lesbian and gay communities that still find the word bisexual sticking in their throats. I am angry that they are more willing to risk lives than to acknowledge a great many dykes and faggots are having "breeder sex," because it might be politically incorrect to talk about such things. And I'm angry too at the heterosexual community that is just as willing to risk lives than acknowledge queer sex. What could be more politically incorrect than dying of AIDS ahead of our time? I'm angry at the organizers of national and international health conferences who refuse to hear the need for bi representation and must be convinced that bi people's concerns are not addressed in workshops designed for gay men's issues by tacking the word bisexual on to the presentation or seminar title.
I'm angry at the greater percentage of bis who stay comfortably hidden in their closets, giving substance to the myths and stereotypes that a handful of us are so earnestly trying to dispel. I am angry at those so trapped in the cages of their own homophobia that they can't see the need to identify and work for change from within the gay, lesbian, and heterosexual communities as out-of-the-closet bisexuals.
Most of all, I'm angry that after ten years into this epidemic there is still no national policy governing AIDS. I'm angry at the critics of the past and current presidents' commission on AIDS who don't want to accept the need for eight billion dollars more in funding and the need to declare a state of emergency over AIDS to avoid embarrassing the present administration by pointing out that they have been, at best, grossly, criminally, and purposely negligent. Thousands more will die because of a lack of adequate handling of the AIDS epidemic, but we can't embarrass the past or present administration. To hell with the past and the present administration!
For a long time now I've been in a great deal of spiritual trouble, regarding what seems today like a sophomoric journey with which some of you may be familiar. You know how it goes. How can G_d allow this to be happening? Why? Why now? Why this one or that one? Why so much pain and so little compassion? Why the false hopes? Why so many lingering flus? Why no relief in sight? What kind of G_d does not intervene? Why can't I have what I want? Do I have more compassion than G_d? Does G_d even exist?
AIDS does not have the corner on tragedy. There is Nicaragua and El Salvador. There are the Palestinians. There are the homeless. Apartheid still exists in South Africa. Thousands of women die of breast cancer every year. And there was the Holocaust. I thought that if I could get a glimpse of how people managed to exist through the worst horror I could imagine, I might gain some perspective on how to continue today.
So I borrowed a copy of Rabbi Allen Bennett's "Out of the Whirlwind," [2] a reader of Holocaust literature, and went off to the Russian River to decide whether G_d existed or not, over a Memorial Day weekend. Cynthia, a close friend, companion, mentor, student, occasional lover, playmate, and member of my adopted family for the past fourteen years, had just been told that her "lingering flu" was diagnosed, as we all feared, as pneumocystis. She was in the hospital, and it didn't look good for G_d. The painful accounts I read assaulted my senses. Even though they were not anything I hadn't heard before, they reaffirmed the importance of bearing witness to the realities of the horrors I experience today; they inflamed the intensity of my Jewish identity — but they did not give answers. Instead they only seemed to ask more questions. One chapter in particular was especially disturbing: "The Concept of G_d after Auschwitz" by Hans Jonas. In it he asks whether, after Auschwitz, there can be a G_d who is all powerful, all just, and at the same time, comprehensible. Well, that one's easy, I thought. I'd been letting G_d slide by for years with the rationale that any entity that could be responsible for quantum physics and an ever-expanding universe (not to mention all those black holes out there) was far beyond my ability to comprehend, and it was the height of arrogance for me to imagine I could. But Jonas points out that the idea of an incomprehensible G_d is not compatible to the concept of Judaism. I knew that it wasn't G_d I was letting off the hook, but myself. I didn't want to have to contemplate the distressing possibilities — to challenge the comfort of my complacency concerning the judgment of the Almighty. I didn't want to have to renegotiate my concept of the Creator.
Harold Kushner suggests in "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" [3] that G_d might not be all powerful, that there is chaos in the world over which G_d has no control. Great! So does that mean if Judaism represents the victory of time over space, we have the possibility of spending infinity with a kindly, just, but somewhat bumbling deity? Could AIDS, the Holocaust, or worse, exist in an eternity over which the Supreme Being has no control? No, I need a higher power more powerful than that.
So I returned home from the Russian River with no questions answered and to more bad news. Jerry was in the hospital with pneumocystis, and Mark was in a coma and would die two days later. I still had not responded to Wesley's beautiful and touching letter letting me know of his diagnosis. Enough! Hasn't G_d ever heard of a safe word?[4]
Then I realized one of the problems of being raised as a Jewish prince is that you develop the notion that all you have to do to get what you want is want it bad enough. And what if the Almighty did eliminate the AIDS virus? Shouldn't a heavenly being also do something about the atrocities happening every day in South America; get rid of breast cancer, lung cancer — all cancer, all diseases — house the homeless; remove hate and bigotry, anti-Semitism and racism, homophobia and sexism from our hearts?
The absurdity of the idea began to dawn on me. Like the children in the day care center there would be no end to the list of corrections G_d needed to make. I too must learn to deal with not getting everything I want and how to accept what I do receive. Life outside the day care center is not that different. And as for prayer and wanting, Kushner suggests that the purpose of prayer is not to get G_d to alter the laws of the universe in order to grant our personal wish list but rather to gain the strength to handle whatever life has in store for us.
So I took a walk to clear my head and noticed that the sun felt warm and good on my hands and face. The trees were green, the sky was blue and, whether by an act of divine creation or accident of evolution, it felt good to be alive. Yes, even in the age of AIDS. And it seems to me that there really is a lot to be grateful for. While it doesn't mean I have to deny my anger at all the things that are wrong with this world, it is important for me to acknowledge my gratitude. Even if my friends or I do not survive, even if bisexuals are never recognized, even if the whole human race fails, the universe is a pretty amazing place.
Jerry died six weeks ago. Cynthia's been gone for more than eight months. Wesley can no longer manage to beat the statistics. Billy's flu won't go away. I would like to believe that my rapidly diminishing T cells count and persistent fungus infections do not indicate what I know they do. I still haven't cast my vote as to the existence or nonexistence of a supreme being, but I am sure, if there is a G_d, that it is just fine that Jason G. and I are angry today.
Notes
1. Tikkun olam is a Hebrew term meaning repair of the world. This piece was originally given as a sermon at Ahavat Shalom, a lesbian/gay/bisexual synagogue in San Francisco.
2. Albert Friedlander, ed., Out of the Whirlwind, Schocken, 1989.
3. Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, G.K. Hall, 1988.
4. Safe word, a term from the S/M scene, means an already-agreed upon code word between people that signals "enough," that a limit has been reached which cannot and should not be crossed.
~~~~
Dr. David Lourea, EdD (1945-1992) served on The Bisexual Center board 1976-84 and in 1981 began presenting safer sex education in San Francisco bathhouses and BDSM clubs. He served on the Mayor’s AIDS Education Advisory Committee and helped develop the first eroticizing safer sex certification program, pressuring the SF Dept. of Public Health to include bisexual men in its weekly “New AIDS Cases and Mortality Statistics” report. This model was then used by other DPH offices around the country. David was a therapist, an early childhood educator, and a leather daddy.