"Interview with the AIDS Monster," a Randy Boyd Blocks exclusive, continues as part of the AIDS Monster Movie Marathon, a blog special celebrating Halloween 2008.Now, more of the interview:
Randy: Sex changed while America was celebrating its independence?
Count Randolpho: To fuck, yes. On July 4, 1981, Americans were celebrating their independence to fuck. People were having sex, some were making babies. Unbeknown to most, the day before, the New York Times had served the world written-notice: on the radar was a grimmer, more gruesome-told-you-so-worst-case-nightmarish-way-to-die-scenario than all the teen horror flicks combined. A thing we would later come to call AIDS.
Q: Is it true you once compared that article to the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, only on the radar in certain circles.
A: A lot of people didn't take the initial AIDS warnings too seriously, for one reason or another. Then four years later, on another July day in America, the so-called Sexual Revolution received its 9/11 wake-up call in 1985.
Q: Is it true you were the one who first called it AIDS Night in America?
A: And so what if I did? It was a sobering day of epic proportions in American and world history.
Q: Enlighten us.
A: In a time when the number of celebrities and access to them was a great deal less than that of today, Rock Hudson's announcement that he was being treated for AIDS shocked the world. The images of the famous actor struggling to and from airports in the US and France, his beloved female co-star Doris Day by his side. The visions of a frail, fading, emaciated Rock, a man who represented masculinity, virility, and acceptable heterosexual behavior (as seen on TV and in movies).
Q: Mind talking about something else? This is starting to be a downer.
A: Why? You can't run from the AIDS Monster, fool. The beast has a lot to bitch about.
