Blog Response #12

For this blog post I'm going to talk about a story in essay packet 2 - Living Close to the Knives. I think this essay did an excellent job of explaining what it is like to be a homosexual, more specifically a homosexual with HIV/AIDS. The narrator of the story gives the audience some insight in to what emotions are involved with feeling like an outsider and not fitting in with societies norm. The following passage gives a glimpse into how the narrator feels "Ever since my teenage years, I've experienced the sensation of seeing myself from miles above the earth, as if from the clouds. I see the tiny human form of myself from overhead either sitting or moving through this clockwork of civilization." This passage explained how the narrator felt, since a young age, as if he is not being himself. This was one of the first clues that the narrator and the man in the hospital were partners.

I think the little breaks with facts about whales were random thoughts by the narrator as he was seeing his partner falling apart from AIDS. seeing his partner struggle to survive made him think of a sharply contrasted situation of a healthy, powerful animal and the feats they can attain. I hope that makes sense.

The most shocking part of the story was the lengths AIDS victims go in attempting to cure the disease. One part from the story explains how vaccines, developed from human feces and typhoid shots that have side effects of extremely high fevers, are administered to hopeful AIDS victims. Maybe it's a monetary issue? Basketball legend Magic Johnson was HIV positive 20 years ago and he seems to be healthy today.

The end of this essay gives you a feeling of how many people hate, simply because of the differences in people. The narrator refers to a quote by a politician he read in a newspaper "To solve the problem of AIDS just shoot the queers..." He also remembered reading a quote from another government official saying "What you want is a little place; an island where you can isolate these people so they can bang each other up with this AIDS virus..."

I don't know if this essay is fiction or non-fiction, but i do know that there are people around the world that chose to hate people based on any possible reason they can find. This story brings up two controversial issues that humans continue to face in the 21st century, from the eyes of the gay community and the many people infected with AIDS.