COPULA

24 x 36 in. Mixed media:
text typed onto found photo, black and white plate Auguste Rodin "L'Enfant Prodige / Prodigal Son" detail, 2014
 

What if I were content to live by my choosing without a blanket of inherent guilt? Unlike the prodigal son, I have not come to beg for patriarchal mercy. I have no further apologies to make before my father, before god or any other. I have not come to ask for acceptance and I choose not to hide before any.. anymore. In acceptance of myself, I have come unbound from the association linking sex with death, disease, guilt, and loathing.

When my AIDS sickness became uncloaked and apparent, there was at once a heavy and savage burden to shoulder. I tried in vain to shelter from exposure, from a prying moralism and clinical lens into my conduct, character, and self. I felt naked and exposed, under oppressive surveillance, as if my sexuality and private life had become fair game for reprehensive scrutiny, study or otherwise. It was as if questions had to be asked of me, and questions had to be answered by me; explanations had to be given.

AIDS is a rude ultimatum.
Which, if at all, comes first: forgiveness of self or forgiveness of others? After all, either way there must be forgiveness. Was I to be made repentant? Anti-Sexual? Dehumanized? Criminalized? Abject?
What if I were not?
What if correction and acceptance were not bound together?
What if, in spite of myself, in spite of AIDS and in spite of others I lust freely?
What if I love and am loved in return?

*
In a grammatical function, copula serves to bind subject to predicate.
By a medical sense, copula is used to indicate a sexual union, as in: copulate.
Musically, copula describes harmony formed by distinct parts that collectively create melody.