WINTER
2024
Dimitris Papaioannou - Alexis Bistikas

The red marks on your skin

It was spring. A soothing time for the soul. TV screens glowed inside living rooms, imitating the sky. Birds were in fashion, and during sales season, plastic bags rustled with the sound of feathers on busy streets. “Now that the outdoor cinemas are blooming,” the healthy lovers said, “let’s go to the corner and get a hotdog and a hotdog.“

  

Patterns appeared on fabrics. They blinked in wonder.

But Billy, the rebel bug-catcher, had nowhere to go.

  

Soothing spring was not for him. His expiration date was printed on his sleeve.

He went by the highway where drunk boys were selling themselves and heard the truck drivers pull down their zippers and say, “No condom. I no believe this AIDS. Is propagada”.

  

And he saw the famous “Cavity Sisters” beat them up with their wigs and spray their unconscious bodies.

  

The rebel bug-catcher shook his head in sadness and remembered a place he could go. “There’s a café for bums and thieves,” they had once told him. He sadly headed for the port. When he got there, he made his own coffee because everyone was out working.
After drinking that horrible brew, he left without shutting the door.

  

He walked the empty streets until he found a cryground with tire swings and entered.

  

While he was on the seesaw alone, a man appeared, a sight for sore eyes.

He approached Billy and grabbed him tight, and just before he got scared, he looked deep into his eyes and said:

  

“I’m like you. My name is Argyris, the Hot Bug-Catcher. My mum was a phychic and my dad a smithy. Meeting you on the cryground, all alone on the seesaw, was pure destiny. Your terror will scare away my terror, and together we can be brave. Fuck their good health, fuck them and their safe sex. We can do each other raw. Our orgasms will be bloodbaths. The red marks on your skin will become healing patterns in my eyes, and the fear of impending death merely a cigarette burn on my arm.”

  

Billy, the rebel bug-catcher, caught his breath and asked:

“So, you’re saying we can dip our syringes in the same blood orange? And let new infections become our colorful children?”

  

“And that we might even think that HIV3 is an animal that has rights and cannot survive outside our bloodstream?”

  

“Yes,” replied Argyris, the Hot Bug-Catcher, and they became blood brothers with an expiration date as they went down the slide.

 

The End.

  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dimitris Papaioannou is an Athenian, born in 1964. He is an internationally acclaimed Greek avant-garde theatre director, choreographer, and visual artist. His works have been commissioned, co-produced, and presented by some of the world’s most prestigious festivals and theaters, enjoying sold out runs in extensive world tours. He was a student of the iconic Greek painter Yannis Tsarouchis. He has published over 40 comics, and was the first Greek comics creator featuring homosexual stories. He was co-editor and art director of the queer-punk fanzine Kontrosol sto Chaos (1986–1992) together with Alexis Bistikas. In 1995, he created One Moment of Silence, a Requiem dedicated to all who lost their lives to AIDS. This work marked the first Greek performance creation about AIDS. In 2004, Papaioannou was the creator of the Opening Ceremony of the Athens Olympics.

Alexis Bistikas (1964 – 1995) was a Greek film director and screenwriter. He directed nine short films and one feature film, To Harama (1994). He died of AIDS on September 29, 1995. In 2005 he was posthumously awarded the Golden Alexander Award for his entire body of work.