... The AIDS Monster Movie Marathon scrolls onward. Or backwards, depending on how you're viewing it. It's kinda like this ...The AIDS Monster Movie Marathon is a story told backwards in a car driving forward.
Confused? Don't be. You'll figure it out.
We now continue with our exclusive "Interview with the AIDS Monster," part of the AIDS Monster Movie Marathon at Randy Boyd's Blocks.
Randy Boyd: Is that enough goat blood to drink? Ready to continue now?
Count Randolpho: Thank you, I think I will. The AIDS Panic raged like a fire out of control, with waves of pandemonium and mayhem ebbing and flowing, with fumbles and advances by scientists, with awareness and lack thereof, with attention and ignorance, with funding and less funding, with news coverage and less news coverage, with meaning in the gay community and very little meaning in the gay community.
The focus and attention coincided with things like: priorities in rich communities, in black communities, in Latino communities, in Washington, in local government, in compassionate humans' hearts and minds.
Q: Is there a happy ending to this interview?
A: Stick around and find out. The AIDS Panic ended circa 1996. Scientists and the FDA unleashed the first protease inhibitor, the first class of drugs that had a new, more effective strategy in mind against the virus.
Q: Can you explain, please, Count.
A: Picture the virus as a great athlete on the basketball court. We'll call him Magic Jordan Miller. You can't stop him with what you've got right now; you can only contain him by studying his tendencies and weaknesses and adapting a good defensive strategy to minimize his damage. The team known as the Scientists released their “magical” new defensive opponent around Christmas, 1995. So 1996 is when the strategy started to show Santa had delivered—
Q: And the AIDS Panic went away.
A: Not so fast. It wasn't over. Not by a long shot. As long as Magic Jordan Miller is in the game, you got to defend it and defend it well at each and every opportunity, feel me? Sorry, I'm channeling Coach Renteria, football coach for the Dreamville Zephyrs football team in your next novel, The Bearcat Boyz, was I supposed to keep that a secret?
Q: Moving on. So the AIDS Panic subsided, the fear recessed, and The Powers That Be never released the movie posters created for America's fictional movies representing their dreams?
A: Most of them anyway. Until now.
Q: Why now?
A: You know why, you wrote about the Bareback Party craze in America. We done sexually revolted again. Since
the Panic subsided, the heat done risen again. On top of that, a whole new generation of Americans have been born and don't remember the AIDS Panic, only the current financial panic.And not only that, these new kids on the block are horny like they're supposed to be, hey, it's only natural. But kids of today have also got the Internet, the most magical toaster slash home product since the first gizmo sold to our grandparents on a black and white television.
Q: So we're talking young raging hormones on steroids, so to speak.
A: And then some. Do the math, America. Horny is as horny do. And kids are doing it. Trouble is, most kids are being horny minus real information on safer sex and how to have it. And then there's drugs, speaking of steroids, and the recreation variety, circa today. Add music, and life is one big ongoing sex party 'til you drop. Sometimes literally.
Q: Your homage to disco-era horror films, Toxic DJ Mix Monster, is a big hit today, I think, because of the music soundtrack that accompanied the campy flop.
A: A man's gotta sing sometime, eh?
Q: Have you been to any of these AIDS Monster Movie parties? I hear they're thinking about having AIDS Monster Movie conventions now.
A: Forget about that. I'm tired of talking about the sex lives of young adults. It's not like they'd touch a real-life monster like me. They'd rather put me in a box they feel comfortable with, and call themselves disease-free.
Q: Just one more thing before we move on—
A: Kids are gonna do what kids do, with or without my library of AIDS Monster images running through their minds. They know, even if only peripherally, that sex = danger, especially to your own health. What they don't know is how to navigate the sexual highways and byways, pun intended, while keeping themselves protected and minimizing the risks and the dangers.
Q: You make it sound like driving.
A: Like driving, flying, or operating any heavy machinery, if you get my drift. Which reminds me, I need to re-up my ED script, big night coming up ... but I digress.
Q: And often.
A: Whatever you do in life, other people before you have thought about it and tried it. Sometimes, that person might be your parents. Or your older sibling. Whatever the case, nothing you can think of or do is original. Too many great apes before us to be an OG anything, essentially.
Q: Do you have a point, because I thought we were really here to promote my upcoming Bearcat Boyz book series, especially Bearcat Boyz 1, due out September 2009.
A: Ignore the rude interviewer, kids, whatever you do out there, some human has done it before you.
Some have liked it. Some haven't. Some have been hurt by it. Some have been helped by it. Some have figured out how to do it safely and have lived to tell about it. And some, well, some have tried it and it didn't work out so well. We can't learn much from the dead, unless they left a note behind—Q: Which is exactly why I write my books and two blogs.
A: You have another blog besides this author blog? I did not know that.
Q: Yes, it's my own, NC-17-esque take on my sex and love life, or mostly lack thereof.
A: Fascinating.
Q: Indeed. But caution: my whole other blog, well, how do I put this? My whole other blog is not for the timid and weak when it comes to me expressing myself as a male sexual dawg. So caution to the hetero crowd that just can't bring themselves to imagine a black homo being sexual and falling in love, just like them.
A: That went over my head, among various other places. Can you run that by me once again?
Q: Look at it this way:
A: You're nothing, if not clever. If I were a younger man ...and with his body at FunkyBlackPozJock.com.
Q: Why assume I'm not into older guys?
A: You didn't let me finish. If I were a younger Count Randolpho, I could rush to the pharmacy and get that Viagra I need to order. But I thought I was here to answer questions, not ask them.
Q: Moving on.
A: I wish you would. This is Halloween weekend. I've got parties to attend. And before you ask, I'm going as the same getup I do every year: I'm going as the AIDS Monster.
