NOTES OF A VOLUNTEER AIDS WORKER
Shoot, you don’t need to ask me(1) anything. I’ll tell you everything. Tell it straight. Every last detail. You can record what I say, then you can write it up and print the whole thing. You can even put my real name and where I used to work. I’ve ruined everything anyway, so I don’t need to worry about it anymore. My only hope is that people won’t follow in my footsteps.
I am the former head of the Economics and Trade Department of XX(2) Prefecture, XX Province. My name is XX. I’ve taken some “bosses”(3) to the whorehouse a few times, but I always used a condom, so there’s no way I got this damn disease from that. Shoot, so when did I get it? It was probably in 200X. Yeah, that it’s for sure—the National Day in October that year. Boss Zhang from Sichuan gave me a bribe of two hundred thousand yuan, and I gave him the project worth four million. He couldn’t have been happier, and he took me to the best restaurant in XX City. When we were playing mahjong he lost on purpose and gave me another 30,000-ish. After we’d had our fill of all the finest food and booze, he took me to a bathhouse. It was one of those places that’s called a bathhouse, but you don’t really go there for a wash, you go there for a prostitute. Shoot, there was this girl there—I picked her out from a lineup of three or four—she looked even younger than my youngest daughter. She was a sweet, beautiful thing, and best of all she had big, firm tits and a soft, round ass. From the look of her body, she seemed perfectly healthy. She said she was from up in the northeast, and judging from her fluent Mandarin, it seemed true. Either way, she was different from any girl, or prostitute, I’d met before. But I really don’t want to talk about that girl now. She took a shower, then she said, “Brother, you’re a handsome man, and you’re healthy looking too, so you don’t have to use a condom.”
That made me hesitate for a moment. “That guy you came in with said I had to do everything I could to satisfy you and make you happy,” she said with a grin; then she glued her lips to my crotch like a hungry baby presented with its mother’s breast and I completely forgot about the condom—and everything else. Shoot, who knew that one moment of pleasure would destroy my whole life, and even destroy my whole family line? So yes, it was that woman who infected me with this damn disease for sure.
About six or seven years later I got a fever and my joints started to ache. At first I thought it was just an ordinary flu and didn’t pay it much mind. But it got worse by the day, and the medicine and injections didn’t help in the least. Then I started to lose weight, and sores appeared all over my body. The doctors in that small town ran test after test but still couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me, so I had to go to the big hospital in the city. Shoot, it was there I finally discovered that “AIDS,” this damn disease that I’d barely heard of before, that I thought was vastly removed from me, that didn’t even have any connection to me at all, had, in fact, become a part of my body, and what’s more was in the process of killing me. For a while I didn’t believe it, and I went to an infectious diseases clinic to get a second opinion. Unfortunately, the results of their tests were exactly the same. Everything before my eyes turned dark gray and pitch black.…
It was then that I thought back and it finally occurred to me it was that bastard Boss Zhang who had thrown me into this fiery pit. And I finally realized that, even more than him, it was that goddamn prostitute who had thrown me into this hell. I was consumed by an overwhelming hatred of Boss Zhang. I was consumed by an overwhelming hatred of that prostitute. Even more than them, I was consumed by an overwhelming hatred of myself. But it’s true what they say, “There’s nothing worse than regret.” I used to think that if you had status you had money, and if you had money then you had everything. I did whatever I could to take from my subordinates and give to my superiors and to strive to keep rising through the ranks. But I was completely wrong. Now I know that even if I were the dictator of my own country and had a mountain of gold at my disposal, it wouldn’t be the slightest bit of use.
Shoot, then my throat and genitals started to … well, I don’t need to tell you this, you’re an AIDS worker, you get the idea. Anyway, my body started showing all these unimaginable symptoms, and I felt pain like I can’t even describe. There was no cure anyway, so I thought about suicide, but it became clear to me that I had neither the means nor the will to kill myself. I finally realized that the family around me, even complete strangers, in fact everything in the whole world—the mountains and rivers, the plants, the houses and highways—it was all so beautiful and dear to me. But my physical and mental suffering still made me want to end it all, the sooner the better. I’m terrified of dying, but I’m even more terrified of living. I’m forever tormented by terrible hallucinations and nightmares. Sometimes I’m being hunted down by a bunch of cops with all these cutting-edge weapons, like the kind you see in the movies. Sometimes I get caught by gangsters; they hammer nails into my body and they cut my dick off, then they take off all my clothes and throw me into a huge square full of people. Sometimes my relatives, colleagues, doctors—even volunteers like you—grow five-foot tongues and ten-inch fangs, then peel off my skin, suck my blood, eat my flesh, and chew on my bones. Or they cut up my arms and legs and all my internal organs cell by cell, then use all these machines to do experiments and tests on them. Sometimes I’m in a deserted wilderness being chased by wild beasts, and they chase me and chase me until I fall into a bottomless abyss. I grab on to the branch of a tree but don’t have the strength to pull myself up, so I have to just hang there in midair. Sometimes a bunch of girls, their bodies oozing pus and blood all over, strip me naked; then, moaning, they kiss me everywhere and suck my dick.…
Shoot, so now, as you can see, I’m living through hell on earth, neither a man nor a demon. What’s worse is, even if I die, the thing I really can’t take is that my wife too … if the next lives really do exist, then may I be born in all of them as sheep, yaks, and pigs under her butcher’s knife! And my two daughters—they can’t even show their faces in public, let alone find a man and get married. Now my family line is finished. I’ve become the enemy—the murderer, even—of my own family line.… I’ve made up my mind to do everything I can not to think about all this anymore. As it happens, the pain doesn’t give you the chance to do much thinking anyway. But sometimes I can’t help but be reminded of it all, and it torments me even more than before.
Shoot, it wasn’t until later, when I met AIDS volunteers like yourself, that I found out Tibet is full of AIDS victims just like me, and what’s more the number is getting bigger and bigger. So that’s why I’ve told you everything and held absolutely nothing back. My goal is for people not to follow in my footsteps. I hope that you’ll put out what I’ve said here just like I told it to you. Shoot, sorry, I’m really tired now. I don’t even have the energy to speak. Sorry …
Notes
1. The patient referred to here as “I” died suddenly two weeks to the day after I interviewed him. A year after that his wife also died.
2. I have substituted “XX” for place names, personal names, etc.
3. I have here translated into Tibetan the many Chinese words, such as gongtou (boss), that my interview subject made liberal use of in his speech.