How to Survive a Plague by David France

Author:David France
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-11-28T16:00:00+00:00

4

Against Nature

Peter Staley’s health didn’t improve after his failure with AZT, and the markets continued to vex him following Black Monday. It seemed that his whole life was off track. His bonus that year would be minuscule. He recriminated himself for changing jobs, and for having the hubris to ignore the death sentence hanging over him. The environment at CRT Government Securities, run by self-described born-again Christians, was even more hostile to gays than it had been at J. P. Morgan, something he had thought wasn’t possible. The mounting weight of his predicament finally caught up to him one weekend night in February. He had only just arrived at the Bar, the popular gay tavern in the East Village. The closeness of the room—where cigarette smoke hung heavy and marijuana was passed hand to hand—turned his stomach. Was it something he had eaten? The flu? He looped back through the fog and tides of men, desperate for the door and a breath of air.

The next thing he knew, he was flat on the floor with a stranger tugging at his elbow. He had passed out. Later in the month, his CD4 count hit an all-time low of 171, signaling that his disease was so far advanced that opportunistic infections would follow shortly. His time had come. He discussed his circumstances with his psychologist, who began the sobering work of helping him reconcile with a limited future. He decided that whatever time he had left he wished to spend with his comrades at ACT UP, not battling the vagaries of the bond market. Six months to the day after joining the firm, Staley filed for disability leave.

It did not go well. The man who had hired him felt betrayed by Staley’s news, accusing him of duplicity and even fraud for not disclosing during his interviews that he was marked for death. What’s more, he sent over paperwork from the company’s long-term disability insurance carrier showing a one-year exclusion for preexisting conditions. This came as a total surprise. Staley had studied the paperwork they’d given him previously, which did not contain that clause. He threatened to sue CRT. CRT threatened to sue him. The struggle cost him even more CD4s, pushing his number down to a perilous 103 and forcing him to capitulate. The best he could get was an out-of-court offer of $125,000, payable in five yearly installments of $25,000—assuming he was alive to receive them; his death would immediately end the payments. Everyone including his doctor believed the money would see him to the grave.

In March, marking the first anniversary of ACT UP’s inaugural protest on Wall Street, the group returned to the financial district, this time with Staley among them for the first time. Freed from the corporate world, he had no further need for the closet.

The picketers were not as cordial as they had been the year before, when Staley first encountered them. Now there were more than three hundred of them, organized into dozens of semi-autonomous “affinity

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.