2001-08-10 11:19 p.m.
medical burn

I'm exhausted.

I just got through watching my second video of the day (the first two episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion (decent series, horrible dub), after Sam Raimi's "The Quick and the Dead"), and I realize now how tiring being excessively critical is.

One of my professors in college spoke about me as a wide-eyed kid sometimes, that I still have a "gee whiz" quality to my personality, a fascination with good stories and storytelling that can transcend the faults of a piece and hone in on the good to learn from it. Criticism has its place, but not when you can't enjoy the good parts of a film/play/cartoon (if there are any).

I get worn out sometimes by D's self-centered viewpoint on how everything should be.

Combine that with my experience earlier today, and it's no wonder I'm tired.

left turn:

I went to a NYC free clinic for regular STD/HIV testing, as I don't have health insurance (being unemployed).

For medical purposes, I'm sure these clinics do the job of keeping people informed about their own bodies.

I, on the other hand, walked away feeling both amused and brutalized.

I had the whole battery of tests, from having blood drawn to an unspeakable procedure that I can only consider punishment for having been born a man.

The results will come in due time (and I wasn't worried to begin with), but I got thinking today about the whole STD premise:

— STDs are considered a sign of sexual promiscuity;

— if you have one, you're obviously a slut/gigolo who deserves it, but these clinics will cure you anyway, begrudgingly;

— the employees of these clinics, whether you've done anything deserving, find you objectionable by virtue of simply being there (being tested because you want to take care of yourself);

— and the main piece of advice they have to offer about not catching anything is...you guessed it, who's-at-home...abstinence.

It's not much of a stretch to imagine the religious right of this country releasing these virii into the sex pool as pleasure control. If people get paranoid enough, they won't fool around except after marriage, when they're (supposedly) monogamous. If they don't get paranoid, they'll die or wither away from something nasty that they catch...or at least be rendered sterile, which is the intended effect on the gene pool anyway.

I know it's not true, but if STDs are really diseases, this country needs to learn how to deal with the afflicted with compassion, or at least indifference. Looking down your nose at someone who may very well have a retrovirus in his/her bloodstream that'll cause that person's immune system to short out isn't exactly helping the psychic health of the patient...which Chinese medicine claims is the primary factor in whether or not disease progresses throughout the body.

food for thought? I goddamn well hope so.

respect each other, people. that's all we've got when you drop the rest of life's illusions about civilization.