Sad storm

I'm sitting in my second floor office, in an old house with no air conditioning, with a type writer in the main office, and a toilet downstairs that can barely digest it's own bowl water, let alone...well, anything else.
The window is open. It's raining slightly. Weather like this makes me think of good rains in my life. Rains where I could stay inside, stare at it. Rains that I sat outside in. Rains I kissed in. Rains in other countries, rains with good friends... and now, rains at work, that I enjoy through the creeky window, that I can smell through the old and damp floor boards.
I've been interning at Chicago Women's AIDS Project this summer. It's non-profit, low budget at it's finest. After spending over a year at Howard Brown, and a little less than a year at Planned Parenthood, it's been an experience to watch the operations of a small facility that gets no research money, no big government grants. The Ryan White Act funds us, sure... but it funds our lease from a church, while PP and HB build million dollar modern structures. Our old radiators become book shelves in the summer time, and I wonder where all of these extra books and journals go to in the winter.
It's funny how sex, something that we all have built into us, hard-wired in us, is something we don't talk about. I wonder if we talked about it, if it would cause less problems. What I've seen over the last several years tells me that is the case. But I find myself omitting my stint working retail in a sex toy store from my resume, and being very careful when I tell new people what I do, where I work, what I want to do ultimatetly with me life. Because there's a rhetoric, a politic, a set of beliefs and standards behind it all, and some people don't think the things that I work on should be talked about. Or dealt with.
I say, tell that to any of the clients I've had over the years.
Now, with the toilet burbling downnstairs, and the light rainy breeze coming at me through the window by my desk, I remember the big budget operations I've worked for. Amazingly, the problems are the same. We still have an unmarked door, so our clients feel safe coming inside. We still answer the phone in code. We have plain, unassuming envelopes, address labels, and email addresses. We still fight for the same things. People are still, despite our efforts, coming up positive. Many positive people are still not able to access health care. You can still, ultimately, buy your longevity. Sure, you can live a long and rewarding life with HIV--- if you have the money. Good insurance. And I guess I just wonder, for all of the cliche politics I hear from both sides, how this happens. The Republicans say they respect life, that life is important...they call themselves PRO-LIFE, even. But when it comes to the lives of some people, people who are people and not fetuses... the free market reigns. The Democrats, especially with the advent of a black man and a women running for office, has talked a lot about equality. Yet, people of all races, gender identities, and creeds are not priviledged to the same health care as everyone else. Of course, the Dems are doing a better job than the Reps... but it's not good enough. Nowhere near it. Nowhere.
It's been over 25 years since the HIV case began coming out. And where are we? Where the hell are we?