It was after 23 years of coming and going that one officer decided to check on me, to single me out as a dangerous person that should not come into one country, that I should be hanged to a line in a policy, to hang to dry. Accidents, even bureaucratic ones, are like this, unsentimental, they happen upon you and leave you panting, bleeding with a body rush. I had not time to be angry or too sad during the sworn affidavit, saying ‘yes’ to anything put before be – so this is how you get innocents to islands and remand centres on charges as thin as the air in that immigration office? I see how it works now, I hope I made your day; you certainly made mine so senselessly. There is le petite drama and emotion in the self-righteous application of the law, any law you invent to keep your false purity, the bloodlines, the protection of the state, and this is what makes it dehumanizing, its vacuity.
Today, I am banned from your country, worse that persona non grata, worse than a whore outcast, a set of fingertips pointing into the space of machines without a motive, an administrative clearance by which you deny me entry to a place where my writing exists, where I have had lovers die, and friendships born – how fucking Christian it feels, that crucified without rhyme or reason I can say that you do not know what you are doing, that one of your officers was irked by my queerness, the tattoos sticking out of my white collar, the things that I work on, the names that I have, the tropical femininity maybe that escapes like marimbas, castanets and chancletas from behind the macho 46 years old exterior that I keep. Asian stocky man, speaking slowly, barely mutters the question “are you HIV positive?”...
My HIV is a factum, a thing that means ambivalently all and nothing at the same time, that I carry up my sleeve and spills publicly, sprays in the face, like pig flu, infecting with feat at contact, especially for those who choose not to watch, to ignore…until they need some kicks, some reasons to push paper, to tell a sad story for charity, to make petty yet aggressive accusations. Saying, ‘you are inadmissible, what flows in your blood, like your colour, your accent, your values about religion and finances, makes you inadmissible, not wanted in this jingoistic soil’, saying it implies you have put hundreds of millions at peril, must quarantined your kind. This time you choose not to identify with me as a tourist, as a respectable Canadian that works and pays taxes in your land, you choose to make me alien and the effect is sobering, I recall that I am not free that stigma and injustice is what gushes freely through your uniformed veins, the disdain in the pupils of your eyes – you and I the same but protected by the fortress of your gun, your badge, and the fortress of your desk. One of us got a kick out of making the other one prostrate, right? I think it was you ‘cause I didn’t want to be there anxious a bit scared about my job there, about having to jump through expensive hoops to fly over to my birth country in Chile or to Europe, you are a big somersault I will have to pay for in the near future while I battle in that fastidious Anglo passive aggressive way that you have so set in your ways – paper cuts so deep in my irises. I will battle this one, not sure if even want to, if it is worth, people live and breathe in Canada all right without having to set foot on your feigned democracy, your out-of-control state of things.
You might have noticed I do not mention your name, the name of your land that expelled me. I am superstitious and I do not call out the name of devils in vain.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/obamas-continued-ban-on-people-with-hiv.html
Posted by: Bill Brent | June 18, 2009 at 11:29 PM