Legend: The morning after a one-night
fling, a man walks into his bathroom and finds the words "WELCOME
TO THE WORLD OF AIDS" scrawled on the mirror in
lipstick.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 1994]
A guy's friends throw him a 21st birthday party. They get him drunk
and then a hotel room and a prostitute for his present. In the
morning when this guy wakes up the prostitute is gone. When he goes
to the bathroom, written on the mirror with lipstick is:
WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF AIDS!
Origins: Commonly
known as "AIDS Mary" or "AIDS Harry," this legend came into
prominence in late 1986 and was as much an expression of the fears
of that time as anything else. Though AIDS had been with us for
years before that, it was only in the late 1980s that heterosexuals
began to wake up to this Grim Reaper walking among them, not just
their gay siblings.
(A related legend has it that madmen attack the unsuspecting with
AIDS-tainted needles. See our Pin Prick Attacks page for more on
this related myth.)
AIDS is a fearsome disease: once HIV-positive, the infected lives
under a death sentence. That alone would frighten anyone, but tie
this deadly disease to the usual apprehensions about sex with
anyone (let alone strangers), and a cautionary urban legend
results.
The legend speaks to our fears; as such, it's larger than life,
complete with shocking messages of impending death callously
delivered. In the "AIDS Mary" version (woman infects man), a fellow
picks up a young lady for a one-night sexual encounter. Everything
goes swimmingly, and he's quite pleased about the whole thing,
until the next morning when he awakens to find her gone and the
words "WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF AIDS" scrawled in lipstick on his
bathroom mirror.
The "AIDS Harry" version (man infects woman) usually features a
romance of some duration taking place in a faraway place. The
depraved infector passes along his good news by way of a gift,
which he asks his victim to unwrap once she's on the plane home.
Depending upon where you hear this story, the gift will be a
minature coffin (ceramic or wooden) or a coffee mug. Whichever item
it is, it will invariably be emblazoned with the message "WELCOME
TO THE WORLD OF AIDS."
Often given as the reason for the infector's rampage through the
ranks of the previously untouched is the justification of his or
her having caught the disease from a member of the opposite sex --
now the entire gender will be made to pay. This cautionary tale
warns against the dangers of promiscuity, but it also brings into
play the fear of falling prey to a random act of violence at the
hands of a madman.
There have been actual cases of the HIV-infected engaging in
unprotected sex without first informing their partners of their
condition. In the largest documented case of its kind, Darnell
"Boss Man" McGee infected at least 18 women and girls. McGee, 28,
had more than 100 known sex partners before he was slain in 1997 in
an apparent robbery attempt. In 1998, authorities in New York said
17 people are believed to have HIV infections linked to Nushawn
Williams. Such tragedies are real, but the stuff of legends, the
deliberate infection of another as a way of exacting revenge on an
entire sex has proved elusive to pin down.
Even so, there might be one real AIDS Mary to record on the pages
of this legend's history.
In July 1998 HIV-positive Pamela Wiser of Lewisburg, Tennessee, was
picked up by police on a tip from a man she'd slept with. Under
questioning, she claimed over the previous year to have had sex
with more than 50 men in an effort to take revenge for three years
earlier having caught the disease from her then boyfriend. She
claimed to have informed each of the men of her condition prior to
engaging them in sexual activity.
Within a few days of her arrest, her story began to change. She
revised the number of men exposed down from fifty to five. By the
time her case came to trial in December, 1998, she's settled on 22
but now asserted her motivation for sleeping with them stemmed from
an inability to say no, not from any desire to cause harm.
Some of Wiser's former lovers testified she hadn't informed them
she was HIV-positive and that, moreover, she outright denied the
need for protection when directly asked. One of them has since
tested positive for the disease.
In February, 1999, Wiser was sentenced to 26-1/2 years in
prison.
Was the motivation revenge, an inability to say no, or something
altogether different? Without cracking open her head and looking
in, it's impossible to tell. Whichever way one calls the Wiser
episode, it should be noted no lipsticked mirrors or teeny ceramic
coffins played any part in the story.
The key difference between legend and real life goes to motivation.
The real-life bad guys who don't give their partners a choice by
informing them of the risks ahead of time are driven by denial (I'm
not really sick; I'm not going to die), indifference (nobody looked
out for me), or fear of loss of affection (she won't want me once
she finds out about this), whereas the storybook ones are out to
exact revenge for the wrong done them. It's the difference between
a fiendish rifle-wielding madman cold-bloodedly picking off random
freeway drivers, and a self-pitying fool carelessly weaving in and
out of traffic, oblivious to the carnage he's causing around him --
one is murdering with malice aforethought, and the other is
indifferent to harm he might or might not be causing.
Speaking to the second variety, the 1992 the case of Roy Cornes
captured worldwide attention. Dubbed the "AIDS Timebomb," he was
accused of knowingly infecting at least four women (one of whom has
since died, as has he). He maintained harming others was not his
intent, his partners knew of his condition (a claim some of them
disputed), and that in a couple of early cases he passed along the
virus because he didn't yet understand what precautions to take,
while in a later case, he and his fiancee were trying for a baby
and she took the risks willingly.
We're tempted to dismiss his claims of how all this infecting came
about, but then we're left scrambling for a reasonable explanation
for his actions. Revenge on all women for one particular woman
having given him the virus couldn't have been his motive, because
he contracted HIV from blood tranfusions. (He was a hemophiliac).
Depraved indifference, then?
Hardest of all to classify are the motivations of Gaetan Dugas,
AIDS "Patient Zero." In 1980 this charming and handsome Canadian
airline attendant was diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma (a type of
skin cancer). Until his death in 1984, he continued to engage in
episodes of unprotected sex with a variety of partners. These were
the early days of AIDS (which incidentally didn't get its name
until 1982), and what was going on, let alone how it was being
transmitted, wasn't at all clear. Back then there was no strong
central authority braying out messages that unprotected sex could
kill or even that AIDS was communicated through sexual contact. In
the absence of that, those with a mind to could well ignore what
was slowly surfacing in the press or dismiss it as so much
hooey.
Dugas appeared to move between denial that whatever he had could be
transmitted sexually ("Of course I'm going to have sex. Nobody's
proven to me that you can spread cancer"), depraved indifference to
his partners' wellbeing ("It's their duty to protect themselves.
They know what's going on out there. They've heard about this
disease"), and a desire to take others with him ("I've got gay
cancer. I'm going to die and so are you"). Possibly his rationale
came down to something much simpler -- he loved sex, if not his
partners. Living under a death sentence, perhaps he was determined
to enjoy his last moments on earth, and consequences be
damned.
The spectre of the vengeful AIDS carrier looms far larger than the
real cases of those whose indifference led them to infect others.
In 1995 an Irish priest shocked his congregation with the tale of
an HIV-positive woman who had slept with up to 80 young men across
four southern Irish counties in a deliberate attempt to infect as
many as possible with the deadly AIDS virus. The priest said he had
personally traced about 25 of the men, and that five had tested
positive for HIV. Scary stuff indeed, and who would doubt the word
of a priest?
Months went by, and although parishioners continued to take the
roman-collared vector's word as gospel, health officials could find
nothing to substantiate the priest's claims. Indeed, speaking to
his credibility, a follow-up article about this man made mention of
another improbable tale he was now spreading:
Six months later, he is still the local hero. The latest story
about Father Michael Kennedy, curate of Dungarvan, Co Waterford, is
that he saved a woman's life recently. Apparently, he made a late
night house call to an elderly woman. There was no reply at the
door and he called the gardai. They broke in and found her
collapsed on the floor with hypothermia.
It did not make the papers but most people in town have heard about
it. The gardai in Dungarvan have no record of it, but that does not
mean it did not happen, they say.
In other words, this is one yarn spinner of a holy man.
At least one criminal tried to use the gist of the 'AIDS Mary'
legend as part of his legal defence. In his trial for the 1990
murder of Linda Hoberg, Jeffrey Hengehold claimed he'd met the
victim in a bar and had sex with her later that night; as they were
parting, she said, "Welcome to the world of AIDS." He then
proceeded to beat her to death.
Though Hengehold claimed this was his motive for the murder, there
was no evidence to prove it one way or the other. Hengehold had
cremated Hoberg's body, making it impossible to determine if she'd
had AIDS, and he himself never tested positive for HIV.
The laws of most countries are inadequate when it comes to
assessing and penalizing the crime of knowingly transmitting a
deadly disease, but at least one of them is moving in the right
direction. Britain is even now trying to reform laws to cover this
form of assault. Changes are in the works that would result in an
HIV-infected person who tried to pass on the virus out of malice
being charged with grievous bodily harm with intent, and those who
simply failed to take proper precautions charged under the lesser
offence of causing grievous bodily harm.
Barbara "AID'd and abetted" Mikkelson
Sightings: Scary legends also make great movie plots, so it should
come as no surprise this legend showed up as the plot of the 1992
German movie Via Appia. (An airline steward has a one-night fling.
He wakes the next morning to find his partner gone and "Welcome to
the AIDS Club" written in soap on his mirror.) The plot of an
HIV-positive man deliberately trying to infect as many women as
possible was also used for an episode of TV's Law & Order
("Carrier", originally broadcast 1 April 199
.
