can anyone help me out here? im wondering how Prior got AIDS in the first place. is it ever clearly stated? i mean it says hes been with Louis for over 4 years so does that mean he has cheated on him? or could he have caught it 4 years previosuly and only started seeing the effects now? sorry if this post makes me sounds misinformed, im quite the simpleton lol.
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some things in there natural state have the most vivid colours.
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I'll go you one better. I was posting on an Amazon.com message board thread about stocking-stuffer books. I mentioned a small but worthy book called "On Bull___," which Amazon.com keeps in stock and lists under its unexpurgated name.
The offending word was removed from my post. But I wasn't even using the word as an expletive - it was INFORMATION, for God's sake!
I agree, sometimes the crudest word is the most appropriate one. But I'm an ex-English major, and profanity has had a long and respectable place in EVERY language. People are sheltered, I guess, and it would probably cost them more to deal with complaints from the churchladies. So I'm for anything that keeps this site free to use!
God save Donald Duck, vaudeville and variety
Okay, back to the question moron! HOW DID PRIOR GET AIDS?
shareWe're told they've been together four years, which means before that Prior had many years to have unprotected sex (before that was even a concern) and get infected. So how do you think he got infected? By touching index fingers? No...probably by unprotected anal sex.
No judgment intended here--it's just a fact. Most gay men contracted HIV through unprotected anal penetration when there was nothing to indicate that was a life-threatening prospect. (The few who contract it now by "barebacking" do so in a spirit of stupid denial I can't at all support.)
For those who might argue it's a morally judgmental disease, I'd ask: Why didn't God strike also strike dead the myriad sexually active sufferers/spreaders of herpes? Why punish the heterosexual African millions dying from HIV?
Ok honest question here. Are some of you in here saying that someone who has unprotected sex in 2009, over 2 decades after the virus appeared should get the same sympathy of someone who got in innocently getting a blood transfusion?
"... have mercy, for I've been bleeding a long time now"-Michael Jackson
Are some of you in here saying that someone who has unprotected sex in 2009, over 2 decades after the virus appeared should get the same sympathy of someone who got in innocently getting a blood transfusion?Well, since your capacity for giving sympathy and empathy to others isn't about "what they did" but whether or not you are a decent, emotionally healthy person, I would say yes. share
The quote was "I have been living with aids for 5 years, which is 6 whole months longer than I've been living with Louis." I took that to mean that he didn't let Louis back in his life for 6 months after Louis left him.
Assuming he probably found out about the virus really early in his living with Louis, he probably was still casually f0cking around with other men while he was still casually f0cking around with Louis (before he started to actually LIVE with him and take their relationship to that special place.)
I believe Prior said he'd been living with AIDS for six months longer than he lived with Louis. Which makes sense when you remember they lived together for four and a half years before the beginning of the film, and note how adamant Prior is near the end of the film from his hospital bed, that though he loves Louis, he will never take him back. No, I don't think they became a romantic item again six months after the latter scene. They simply became friends again.
shareOk honest question here. Are some of you in here saying that someone who has unprotected sex in 2009, over 2 decades after the virus appeared should get the same sympathy of someone who got in innocently getting a blood transfusion?
Boy did HE EVER sit on a strange toilet seat!
shareGood question & answer. I was wondering myself.
It's amazing that Louis didn't get infected.
everybody's working for the weekendshare
*quote*It's amazing that Louis didn't get infected.*unquote*
Erm... has it ever occurred to you that condoms might have been used by a number of responsible people (homo and hetero alike) - even in the 80s?
part of the reason AIDS was an apidemic is b/c of the lack of safe sex before it, people didn't think it was neccisary.
Wake up, time to die.
i cannot abide useless people
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Umm, some straight couples have open relationships as well. You could have just left the word "gay" right out of there.
shareErm... has it ever occurred to you that condoms might have been used by a number of responsible people (homo and hetero alike) - even in the 80s?
everybody's working for the weekendshare
I feel this somewhat of a rediculous question, with respect, and although there are several meanings in the play which are up for debate, the reason Kushner gives no energy explaining the origins of Prior's infection, is not one of them.
This disease went on for YEAR(S) and people had no idea what it was or how they got it. Hundreds of people died in the early eighties with no identification made as to how they died.
After years and many deaths before the virus was actually identified and discovery made as to how a person contacted the disease, who a person contacted the virus from was of no important.
Right at the beginning when Prior is on his way to his grandmother's funeral he says, "If I hadn't been fellating you for four years, I would have sworn you were straight." So maybe they don't do bumsex. Not all gay men do, you know. Fellatio is low risk compared to the passive side of bumsex.
So, can we perhaps just say that Louis and Prior do not penetrate each other but Prior was a passive participant in penetrative sex outside their relationship. Not unusual for gay, or for that matter straight, people.
I agree with your first statement larpine. The audience can reach their own conclusions as to how Prior was infected with HIV/AIDS. One of those could be that Prior reacted to Louis' string of affairs & had an affair himself. Personally, that's my opinion.
But if a person contracts HIV, it definitely is important to know who he/she was infected by. The person who infected them could easily spread it to others without realising they're infected.
I thought he contracted the disease with the lesion, it just hasn't advanced like it has with Prior. And he in turn most likely gave it to Joe, and Joe gave it to his wife.
shareNot likely. AIDS isn't quite as easily transmitted as you think. Louis still seems uninfected five years later in the fountain scene. And by the time he got together with Joe, Louis was perfectly aware that as the partner of a man with full-blown AIDS, he needs to wrap it up carefully before engaging with a new partner, as he mentioned in the seduction scene. Then the two of them were only together for about a month.
Joe would be more likely to have caught HIV from Roy Cohn's blood, if he rubbed it on an open cut on his face or body during the bloody shirt scene, than from Louis. And Joe had sex with his wife exactly once, shortly afterwards, before any virus would have had time to multiply and build up in his blood. A single act of vaginal intercourse with no bleeding or open sores is not a fast way to become infected, even with a person who is known to be HIV-positive, which Joe was not. So his wife's almost certainly fine.
Having counseled people with HIV/AIDS for years, I have come to one major conclusion. It matters not one little bit how anyone got it. Ever. I think that may have been the point that Kushner was trying to make.
Shloma Rosenberg
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Your dead on Shloma. It's an obvious answer that one either gets, without question, or they don't.
shareMany of the people I counseled told me how much it hurt to be asked how they became positive, as if it were anything other than sex (and sometimes IV drug use) it would be OK and pity could ensue. They often felt that if they said sex or IV drugs that they would be dismissed as having "deserved it."
Shloma Rosenberg
[email protected]
Many of the people I counseled told me how much it hurt to be asked how they became positive, as if it were anything other than sex (and sometimes IV drug use) it would be OK and pity could ensue. They often felt that if they said sex or IV drugs that they would be dismissed as having "deserved it."
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It's not revealed. I don't think it's supposed to be. One of the many messages of this series is that ANYONE is prone to AIDS affliction. To describe how a character became infected would tell the viewership otherwise, and nullify the message.
shareA virus doesn't care who you're attracted to, or how it gets spread. It's only biological drive is to be spread and it'll get anyone it can.
shareWith regard to it not matter how HIV/AIDS suffers got infected, I agree... but I think the issue the OP has isn't meant to be critical, just wondering how Prior got infected if he'd been with Louis for 4 years and Louis was, as far as is known, uninfected, and if there's no reference to drug use, etc.
In real life how someone has gotten it doens't matter in a counseling session or in any circumstance really, but this is more addressing continuity in the narrative.
It's not revealed. I don't think it's supposed to be. One of the many messages of this series is that ANYONE is prone to AIDS affliction. To describe how a character became infected would tell the viewership otherwise, and nullify the message.
He probably abused nitrite inhalants (poppers) too much, just like lots of gay men did in the 80s. THe long-term effects include immune deficiency.
shareThe link between poppers and AIDS infection is believed by most medical science to be correlative, not causal--that is, poppers do not cause AIDS or make HIV transmission biologically easier, and even the effects they have on the immune system are short-lived, not long-term. But anyone high on anything is more likely to engage in risky behaviors like unsafe sex and needle-sharing, so that's how poppers (or meth, or ecstasy, or any other abusable drug) help the spread of HIV infection.
As for your supposition that Prior "probably" abused poppers, there is absolutely nothing in the text of the play or the movie to suggest or support that.
During the play, Louis literally says, "I *beep* around a whole lot more than he (Prior) did." The relationship was either open, or they cheated on each other.
It's true that it doesn't really matter much at all; what matters are the devastating concequences of the disease.
A flood's not the answer, people just float.
During the play, Louis literally says, "I *beep* around a whole lot more than he (Prior) did." The relationship was either open, or they cheated on each other.
Could Louis not be referring to the time before their relationship/before they met? I have only seen the film, not the play, so excuse me if I'm going on something taken out of context.
I agree that it doesn't matter too much in regard to the film's overall themes, but considering that one of the plotlines in the film is Louis' abandonment of Prior after a long term relationship, surely how Prior contracted the disease is an issue?
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That sounds reasonable. I think we'll never really know (unless you'd ask Tony Kushner), and it's open for interpretation.
A flood's not the answer, people just float.
Do you mean the scene on the bench right after the grandmother's funeral at the beginning? I've always been curious if that was the first time Louis found out about Prior having AIDS, or if he had known already and became upset because the KS on Prior's chest was showing that the disease in him was starting to get serious.
"Do they speak English in What?"
The HIV virus (or is it AIDS? sorry not sure) can take up to 10 years after infection to show up in someone's system. So it's most likely that Prior got the virus from someone he'd been with before Louis. (As another poster said, that's why it spread so easily -- these guys got infected before anyone knew about the disease, before there was a test for HIV.)
And since people knew about the importance of condom use when AIDS started showing up in the early 80's (when he and Louis got together), they probably always used condoms.
This entire conversation got a little redic. Listen, all it takes is for the virus to infect one person. That's it. If that person happens to be gay, only has sex with men, then only gay men are going to contract the virus. The same with a drug user, it only takes one to be infected, share a needle and infect others. It can be anyone. There are people who have contracted HIV from prostitutes...did the female hookers get it from gay men? Doubt it. The point is, no matter how you got it, it spreads and it's no more or less a tragedy for each individual case. A deathly disease is a threat to us ALL and our sympathy should be given to anyone who must struggle with such pain and despair.
share"could easily spread it to others without realising"
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"no more or less a tragedy for each individual"
Well yes and no. If that goes against the film's theme so be it. Once the word got out in the early '80's, the infection rate should have dropped significantly among non-drug abusing gay men. And it did. But not enough. It required restraint that didn't seem to be as prevalent as it should have been.
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That is... horrifying.
To just play with your life, and the lives of others... I can't even imagine the thought process that makes that ok.
In answer to the OP's question, I myself have wondered that too. Of course, Prior could have contracted it from an earlier relationship/fling, which raises the question of the sex life between him and Louis, or it could be that as an 80's gay man, he slept around even though he was in a relationship. Before anyone bashes me, I am the most pro-equality person I know, given that I was raised by my mother, a lesbian, and I have it on good authority (gay men who are my "uncles") that monogamy was *generally* seen as a "hetro" lifestyle choice. I say "generally" as I also know men who have been in monogamous relationships since before I was even born (1984), but the majority lived the clubland lifestyle, and fidelity meant you didn't swap names. I also know that alot of gay men were scared of the disease, but never thought it would happen to them, so continued living dangerously as they always had.
It's far more common to think, in any given situation, that to think *just won't happen to YOU* rather than actively make sure it DOESN'T. We've all been guilty of it, at least once, regardless of the problem. Sometimes the most scary thoughts are processed away as *won't happen*.
Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution. - Mae West
Simple things that people don't seem to know:
1. The virus can be dormant for ten years or more. Any exposure that Prior had in the last ten or more years could have infected him.
2. Safer sex as a precaution wasn't understood, or widely recommended, until around 1986.
I should be able to love my country and still love justice. —Camus
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