Love me like there's no tomorrow

"Three years ago I got a fever and it never went away"

It is afternoon. I open the window and a gust of cold wind enters brutally. Many shops have their shutters down. The surviving restaurants are already closed. The few passers walk with their faces covered, touching the walls. The covid has made the city ill. The virus has expanded so much that, like a skilled magician, it has made other diseases disappear. But it is not real magic, the other diseases still exist. They chase us, they haunt us, they torment our bodies.

"Three years ago I got a fever and it never went away"

HIV, a demonized disease, ghettoized and then forgotten. Yet, it is a very serious disease, today still present in all our territory.

“Three years ago I got a fever and it never went away” so Jonathan Bazzi begins his autobiographical novel Fever. Debut novel, reconstruction of a fragmented identity starting from the discovery of his HIV status. The writing reflects this fragmentation with short sentences, isolated words. A dance that evokes raw images that come to us in broken sequences.

"I meet this doctor with the air of a priest and immediately he knows a lot of things about me.
Tell me doctor, tell me: I'm ready. I prefer this to another. HIV today is kept under control, I know, I have read it: to feel bad and die, one day, like everyone else, we will see. But not now, not immediately, that's what interests me. But he doesn't seem prepared for my reaction. Did he expect a cry, some grimace, at least a hint of despair?
Do you want more?
You can do better.

When I happen to tell people, friends, my family doctor, the way I reacted to the diagnosis, no one understands how it is possible. Perplexity, confused looks. Yes, the moment I discover I have HIV, I am happy. Lifted up"

HIV, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, once you acquire it, you can no longer separate from it. You don't die anymore, at least not in large numbers. But you have to live with it for life. A disease that makes you aware every day of the fallibility of your body. Medicines always with you, woe to forget them. And tell your possible partner about your HIV status, when perhaps you have not yet exchanged a caress, a kiss.
The existence of HIV was only recognized in 1981 even though it had been around since the 1970s. It quickly became a global pandemic and the diagnosis was a certainty of death. Sex and drugs were linked to the transmission of the disease thus making the infected patient discriminated against for transgressive behavior. Finally, in 1996, researchers were able to produce a drug that "immobilizes" the virus. Today there are many infected, too many even in Italy and they have to live with the disease by stuffing themselves with drugs that inhibit HIV.

Love me like there's no tomorrow
Hold me in your arms, tell me you mean it
This is our last goodbye, and, very soon, it will be over
But today just love me like there's no tomorrow
The great Freddy Mercury sang in the 1980s when contracting HIV meant dying.
He was living in San Francisco when the virus began to infiltrate his friends. Illness first, then
death, one after another the young people around him fell.
Then his turn came and Freddie fell too.
"Thank You. Good Night ..." he told the audience in his last appearance.
Love me like there's no tomorrow.

Sylvie Freddi

I am a writer of short stories and novels with my hands in the earth and my head in the stories. I live in the Roman countryside where I hoe and write. I have published for Stampa Alternativa Caffè Paszkowsky and Q502; for Ensemble editions La Madre e il meteorite.