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Tuesday, February 08, 2000 Page: 3A
Young Christopher Robinson has given us one last gift.
The affable 18-year-old AIDS patient who spent years showing us that we had
nothing to fear from people like him has made his final contribution.
Robinson has shown us that AIDS still kills.
As long as our tender AIDS ambassador survived, it was easy to overlook the
AIDS deaths of the indigent and the ugly.
The poor and dispossessed have few saviors. The lost have no cheerleaders.
We had Robinson.
Granted, society’s made progress.
Since 1995, the AIDS death rate has dropped dramatically. But, despite new
drugs that prolong the inevitable, AIDS still destroys lives.
Robinson made it easy to miss the repulsive nature of terminal illness.
Robinson was our charming poster boy for a ghastly disease. Robinson was cute,
shy, lovable.
Safe, smiling and sensitive, even the most damning critics found a place in
their hearts for this special spokesman.
People who lack compassion for AIDS patients infected through unprotected
sex or intravenous drug use embraced young Robinson. People who believe AIDS
gays and AIDS junkies and AIDS hookers get what they deserve applauded his
courage.
After all, Robinson became infected as a child hemophiliac receiving
tainted blood products during a transfusion.
You know the familiar refrain: It wasn’t his fault.
Like AIDS is anybody’s fault.
Blame is always wasted energy.
That’s why my buddy Roberto Mazzeo wanted to meet Robinson in the worst
way.
Mazzeo was everything that Robinson wasn’t.
What a pair they would have made in the fight to make people aware that
we’re all in this together.
Going it alone
Half-Italian and half-Puerto Rican, Mazzeo had exchanged New York’s wild
South Bronx for a wearier Wilkes-Barre as a way to put his past behind him.
A house painter and ex-heroin addict, Mazzeo had done time in Sing Sing,
watched gunfights erupt in the streets of his neighborhood and hustled scam
after scam in a relentless pursuit of hard drugs.
I loved the guy because he was strong enough to clean up. But Mazzeo wasn’t
tough enough to beat AIDS.
In his last message to me before he died in 1997, Mazzeo said he was
feeling better and wanted to get back to his activism. Working with AIDS
babies and children with AIDS appealed to him most.
But he never made it.
Mazzeo never met Robinson, either.
Word had filtered back that some people didn’t think a friendship between
the two was a good idea. Although I understood, I’m not sure he did.
Mazzeo’s feelings were hurt.
So off he went, running a one-man campaign for mayor, finishing last and
dying at age 51.
My guess is that Robinson would have liked Mazzeo.
Flip sides of the same disease, they represented reality, truth and
courage.
In their names, we must embrace our gay, straight, young, old, male,
female, addicted and clean AIDS neighbors.
Like it or not, we’re all part of the sickness.
Call Corbett at 829-7215 or e-mail stevec@leader.net.