Celia Farber
January, 2019
Roberto Giraldo, a Rethinking AIDS board member, recently died. We will post a formal obituary later.
I have so many memories that are like tiny films, of Roberto. When I first met him I am not certain, but in the tiny films, he is each time showing up, lending a hand (a heart,) trying to in some way help me in all my fright. That's not to say we did not also laugh, because we did.
Above all, I remember one cold night when the attacks following that stupid article I wrote for Harper's formed something like a black magic wall around me and I began to fossilize with fear. I called him and he came right away to my neighborhood and sat with me. I was shaking like a leaf. Roberto was addressing himself to my soul: "You are OK. You are not bad. Your are OK." These were not his words but the feeling I remember is that he was pulling me back from an abyss.
Roberto knew about the voodoo. He could break through to me with warm hands and voice, telling me to be brave. I was not brave. He was brave, though. Brave enough to offer humor, laughter, and wisdom no matter how bad things got. The bravest thing you can do is to withstand despair. I was never able to do this. And I'm sorry.
The conversations we had--I remember VIVIDLY certain things he said. One of them, maybe most stunning, was once when he was describing all the "HIV positive" people he tried to pull from the death trains, by telling them what to eat, what vitamins to take, how to fortify the mind against the bone-pointing. And then all of it fell away and he said as though confessing: "Celia, no matter what I do, no matter what vitamins they take, what foods, no matter if they do everything perfectly...if I can't break the fear, I can't save them."
There it was.
We were silent for a moment.
It would be another 10 years before I would clarify in my own mind why this was: Because "AIDS" is a psychological operation, coined by the CIA as "psy-op," and not an illness. Nothing to do with medicine, nothing to do with science, everything to do with spiritual warfare.
I now believe the psychological operation was and is of an occult nature. If God is life, then God's enemy is "HIV." Code written in the underworld by a pack of goats nobody ever heard of. Yet they prevailed. To address the thing by way of "the science," would be a failing strategy.
One of my fondest memories was after the whole thing had wrecked my life, or career, whatever the word is, and I was running a B n B out of my bedroom. We had an appointment to meet and I got a booking, suddenly. I explained the situation and he said, "I will help you!" Sure enough, he came over and helped me make up the beds. Laughing the whole time at this scenario--when we were finished we went and had margaritas. I remember him telling me that night that we were in the era of STEEL. Metal. That everything was now cold and hard, and that people too, were turning into metal. We went to some kind of concert at Lincoln Center I had tickets to, either that night or another night. He told me that night that he was assigned to a medical post high up in the government of Colombia. Hooray! It seemed maybe things were going to be set right.
I failed him, so many times. Like the time he arranged a party for me to celebrate the Harper's article (which I only wrote because Harvey made me do it) in Queens, at his home. Some automaton from the NY Times interviewed me that night and I got caught up on the phone with her, trying to get her to hear a single word I said. Trying to win and be heard.
Hence: As always, as always--I was late.
I would give just about anything not to have chosen like this, in that moment.
Roberto taught me about malnutrition and "AIDS," and prior to his teachings, I was illiterate. I knew nothing of B vitamins...didn't even know that, as he explained, ALL AIDS patients were clinically malnourished, which I now know means their gut is destroyed.
Once when my son had a raging fever, I recall it being around 105 degrees, I called him (as always) crying and he told me exactly what to do: Give him grape juice, baking soda in water, several capsules of B complex, and place his legs in a ice bath up to the knees. I did this and the fever broke. Roberto explained that this alkalizes the blood which breaks a fever.
When we flew back from South Africa together in 2000, I was with a guy who wanted to make a documentary and was accustomed to the high life. He refused to fly back coach and told me to enter the plane and pretend we were Roberto's children and didn't speak English, and just follow him to First Class. I asked: "How do we not speak English, when we are caucasian, Noah?" But he insisted, and lo and behold, it worked. Roberto again--laughed .
I also recall a party at my father's apartment that gathered dissidents, and ended in dancing. He tried to teach me to dance salsa. "It's in the assss, Celia!" he said in his Colombian accent.
Joan Shenton should have been his dance partner.
:)
I don't understand how we are meant to cope with this life, like an airplane flying upside down, as soon as you "deny" HIV. You can't get anything set right again, it seems.
Roberto was some kind of socialist--the right kind. So warm and self-sacrificing, I was ready to become a socialist myself. We laughed about that too.
I was the receiver and he was the giver. This morning, in tears, I am left with everything I failed to give. Not only to Roberto but to so many, fellow warriors. When I stopped being human, when I became too exhausted, too caught up in my trauma, too laden with brain fog. Debt, confusion, inability to act or move, or complete tasks. I told Roberto that in 2008 something attacked me and my brain fell down like dry-wall. Do they have weapons that go through windows? I don't know.
What, exactly did we go up against? I never got a chance to tell Roberto I thought I had figured it out. But this requires opening a Bible.
Another time I let him down yet he continued to be my friend: Some time in the 90s, he wanted me to come to Colombia with Peter Duesberg, Kary Mullis, and I forget who else. I agreed, then became afraid, and backed out. He said we were to fly over the jungle in a helicopter. I called him and said: "I don't really want to be in a helicopter with Peter Duesberg and Kary Mullis flying over the jungle. Kind of sounds like asking for it." I had a young child and was, at the time, preoccupied with staying alive.
This morning, instead of simply crying and being self-absorbed, I decided to not fail Roberto. Would I write these words NOW or "later," which means never. I would write them now. My cat Jack who is the more reserved of my two cats, jumped up on my desk and placed his head near the keyboard. (My other cat, Lewis, is named after Lewis Lapham, though he has no blue-blood origins. A barn cat tabby.)
When his daughter Diana told me Roberto was dying, recently, I refrained from writing anything about how this might be reversed, since I knew it could not be. She told me. I wished I could have heard his voice one last time. But that too would have been a form of taking, and he had given plenty.
To go back--to be on time, to get on that helicopter, to not feed the demons of fear, to dance, ass first, these are things I can't change. But I hope he knew how much I loved him.
May God rest his great soul.
