A better explanation than African Monkeys
Dec. 2nd, 2003 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousapelliWe were talking about AIDS the other day in English, and I was musing about how it was really similar to Lycanthropy because it's blood-spread and all. And then today, it all coelesced into this perfectly creepy ficlet.
If anybody's interested, Ludovic Dugas and his work with dissociative patients is real, i didn't make that up.
The Most Ridiculous First Name I've Ever Heard
In Remus Lupin's Seventh Year, the first medical study on the spread of Lycanthropy was just being concluded. While Remus himself claimed indifference, Sirius Black was the first person in line for it at Flourish and Blotts, and then spent two days ignoring classes and Quidditch while he slogged through the medical terminology and scores of graphs and data that made his eyes water.
In the end he presented Remus with some grim news. While you couldn't spread Lycanthropy by casual contact, there was another way besides biting near the full moon that the virus, and it was a virus they had finally decided, could be spread.
Fluid exchange. Lycanthropy, as it turned out, was an STD.
So seventeen-year-old Remus Lupin added a vow of chastity to the laundry list of self-controls he had placed on himself. Sirius, who always had read too much, nicknamed him Dugas, after the psychologist who'd diagnosed the first case of emotional depersonalization.
This was the reason why it took Sirius three years to talk him into any kind of reluctant relationship.
This was the reason why, when Albus Dumbledore was standing in front of him and calmly explaining how the Order had thought he was the traitor all along and Remus was pretending to take it all very well, Remus was actually coming to the conclusion that he had had sex with Sirius only enough times to count on two hands and a foot.
Remus Lupin had a very sudden, very quiet, mental breakdown. A psychotic break, he learned that it was called later. He very calmly decided that if he was going to hell in a handbasket, he was taking as many people as possible with him, and then he left London without saying another word to anybody.
He traveled shiftlessly for a few months, before deciding to cross the big pond and wreak havoc in the United States, where the wizard population was negligible and thus the chance of being caught were greatly reduced. Additionally, the fools there would let you do just about anything if you had an official looking piece of paper that said you could. He charmed himself a passport and a new identity, using Sirius' old nickname for him and the most ridiculous first name he could think of.
And then he proceeded to have sex with as many people as possible.
He stayed in New York City for a little while, deciding which career would bring him into contact with the most people with cold calculation, then cheated his way through the training program so brazenly that Sirius and James were probably aflame with pride in their respective cold holes.
It wasn't hard, Remus discovered, to find men willing to fuck at the drop of a hat, not in New York or Los Angeles, or any of the dozens of places in between. It didn't hurt that Remus had always carried a supernatural kind of grace, one that was very visible on the dance floor of any club you could name, and clearly would translate to the bed (or a bathroom stall) very well.
He kept track ruthlessly at first of how many people he'd possibly infected, then lost count someplace in the three hundreds. At the end of two years, Remus figured he'd fucked about five, six hundred people, give or take.
He told them he was French-Canadian; they thought he was exotic. He used all of James' old pick-up lines; they thought he was charismatic. There was nothing he was afraid of doing, no kink too great or small; they thought he was the very embodiment of the era of sexual independence.
And then, just as suddenly, Remus woke up morning, hungover and tangled up with people he didn't know, and decided he'd simply had enough of it. He packed up his things as easily as he'd done the first time, and returned home to London. On the plane, he wondered whether he'd recovered finally from the first breakdown, or had another. He realized that he didn't care.
He told no one where he'd been or what he'd done, and after not such a long time the memories of those years faded to a sort of bright blur. A bit longer than that, and it all seemed like a bad movie Remus had watched once, when Remus fleetingly thought about it at all.
Halfway into the next decade, Remus was having tea in the Hogwarts staff lounge when Professor Flitwick struck up what seemed to be a rather random conversation.
"Do you know," he asked, waving a wizarding journal about, "about that epidemic Muggles are having over in America?"
Remus murmured that he might have heard some such thing.
"The Muggles are saying it's some sort of new virus," Flitwick continued, "but some Squib researcher is claiming it's the same virus that causes Lycanthropy!"
Is that so, Remus shrugged.
"Turns out Muggles can't be werewolves," Flitwick had worked himself up into his lecture mode, "because it takes an ungodly load of magic to transform, but they can catch the virus. Eats away at their immune systems until they just keel over from exotic diseases! Must do the same thing in werewolves, only with the accelerated healing, nobody's ever noticed before!"
Very interesting, Remus agreed.
"They think they've got a 'Patient Zero' now," Flitwick returned to the journal. "Some airline steward who slept with hundreds of people in cities across the country. Can you imagine! Says his name is," Flitwick consulted the article. "Gaetan Dugas."
"That," Remus announced calmly, "is the most ridiculous first name I've ever heard."
If anybody's interested, Ludovic Dugas and his work with dissociative patients is real, i didn't make that up.
The Most Ridiculous First Name I've Ever Heard
In Remus Lupin's Seventh Year, the first medical study on the spread of Lycanthropy was just being concluded. While Remus himself claimed indifference, Sirius Black was the first person in line for it at Flourish and Blotts, and then spent two days ignoring classes and Quidditch while he slogged through the medical terminology and scores of graphs and data that made his eyes water.
In the end he presented Remus with some grim news. While you couldn't spread Lycanthropy by casual contact, there was another way besides biting near the full moon that the virus, and it was a virus they had finally decided, could be spread.
Fluid exchange. Lycanthropy, as it turned out, was an STD.
So seventeen-year-old Remus Lupin added a vow of chastity to the laundry list of self-controls he had placed on himself. Sirius, who always had read too much, nicknamed him Dugas, after the psychologist who'd diagnosed the first case of emotional depersonalization.
This was the reason why it took Sirius three years to talk him into any kind of reluctant relationship.
This was the reason why, when Albus Dumbledore was standing in front of him and calmly explaining how the Order had thought he was the traitor all along and Remus was pretending to take it all very well, Remus was actually coming to the conclusion that he had had sex with Sirius only enough times to count on two hands and a foot.
Remus Lupin had a very sudden, very quiet, mental breakdown. A psychotic break, he learned that it was called later. He very calmly decided that if he was going to hell in a handbasket, he was taking as many people as possible with him, and then he left London without saying another word to anybody.
He traveled shiftlessly for a few months, before deciding to cross the big pond and wreak havoc in the United States, where the wizard population was negligible and thus the chance of being caught were greatly reduced. Additionally, the fools there would let you do just about anything if you had an official looking piece of paper that said you could. He charmed himself a passport and a new identity, using Sirius' old nickname for him and the most ridiculous first name he could think of.
And then he proceeded to have sex with as many people as possible.
He stayed in New York City for a little while, deciding which career would bring him into contact with the most people with cold calculation, then cheated his way through the training program so brazenly that Sirius and James were probably aflame with pride in their respective cold holes.
It wasn't hard, Remus discovered, to find men willing to fuck at the drop of a hat, not in New York or Los Angeles, or any of the dozens of places in between. It didn't hurt that Remus had always carried a supernatural kind of grace, one that was very visible on the dance floor of any club you could name, and clearly would translate to the bed (or a bathroom stall) very well.
He kept track ruthlessly at first of how many people he'd possibly infected, then lost count someplace in the three hundreds. At the end of two years, Remus figured he'd fucked about five, six hundred people, give or take.
He told them he was French-Canadian; they thought he was exotic. He used all of James' old pick-up lines; they thought he was charismatic. There was nothing he was afraid of doing, no kink too great or small; they thought he was the very embodiment of the era of sexual independence.
And then, just as suddenly, Remus woke up morning, hungover and tangled up with people he didn't know, and decided he'd simply had enough of it. He packed up his things as easily as he'd done the first time, and returned home to London. On the plane, he wondered whether he'd recovered finally from the first breakdown, or had another. He realized that he didn't care.
He told no one where he'd been or what he'd done, and after not such a long time the memories of those years faded to a sort of bright blur. A bit longer than that, and it all seemed like a bad movie Remus had watched once, when Remus fleetingly thought about it at all.
Halfway into the next decade, Remus was having tea in the Hogwarts staff lounge when Professor Flitwick struck up what seemed to be a rather random conversation.
"Do you know," he asked, waving a wizarding journal about, "about that epidemic Muggles are having over in America?"
Remus murmured that he might have heard some such thing.
"The Muggles are saying it's some sort of new virus," Flitwick continued, "but some Squib researcher is claiming it's the same virus that causes Lycanthropy!"
Is that so, Remus shrugged.
"Turns out Muggles can't be werewolves," Flitwick had worked himself up into his lecture mode, "because it takes an ungodly load of magic to transform, but they can catch the virus. Eats away at their immune systems until they just keel over from exotic diseases! Must do the same thing in werewolves, only with the accelerated healing, nobody's ever noticed before!"
Very interesting, Remus agreed.
"They think they've got a 'Patient Zero' now," Flitwick returned to the journal. "Some airline steward who slept with hundreds of people in cities across the country. Can you imagine! Says his name is," Flitwick consulted the article. "Gaetan Dugas."
"That," Remus announced calmly, "is the most ridiculous first name I've ever heard."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 02:54 am (UTC)nice job.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 03:06 am (UTC)That made me happy and mad and sad all at once. Yeesh. Coincidentally, the first AIDS death of someone I knew happened 15 years ago today, too, so this is all very timely for me.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 04:04 am (UTC)I read Paul Monet's Borrowed Time for a class several years ago, and the quiet desperation and just the lack of knowledge really stuck with me. Nobody is about quiet desperation so much as Remus is. It's all disturbingly plausible.
(no subject)
From:no subject
You're great. *friends you*
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 04:09 am (UTC)I have to tell you that this is a very t00by moment for me, because I've read "Fairy Boys" about a zillion times. It's what inspired the whole glam rock band story that I ended up spending two months on and posting just last week. Being Friended by you is sort of like having Curt Wild lean down from the stage and ask "do you want to sing a verse or what?"
*Friends you Back*
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 03:36 am (UTC)I mean, since PoA first came out, I've been equating Remus as metaphorically HIV+ (it could be anyone! And we don't want him teaching our kids! It doesn't matter that he's only dangerous if bodily fluids are exchanged, and he's taking medicine for it now!), but this is just... creepy and so very sad.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 04:12 am (UTC)BTW--your icon is really hot
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 04:00 am (UTC)Second, this was incredibly creepy- and what Renus does in the fic is simply horrifying. And you kept one aspect of Remus' character in check- his reluctance to take responsibilty. Very, very telling indeed.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 05:05 am (UTC)And wow, excellent idea by the way. And also excellent execution, as seems to be rather common for you. ^_^
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:30 pm (UTC)can't go wrong with Ian McKellan, can you?
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 05:17 am (UTC)*boggle*
Good, and scary.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 06:13 am (UTC)On a lighter note, do we need to chain Lupin up and say, "Bad doggie, no biscuit?" ;)
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 06:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:06 am (UTC)Wow. That is ... sock-knockingly disturbing and I love it.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:55 am (UTC)*mindbend*
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 10:03 am (UTC)Really, really, really creepy. Makes you think, though.
Here through the
Right?
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:35 pm (UTC)As to the other, I'm just happy people are reading it and commenting *preens* and it's really hot that some people are making it here via remusxsirius, which I glance at from time to time but never participate in.
PS--your username? totally hot. My nickname at school is Dazzler, i went as her for halloween last year.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 10:07 am (UTC)Oh man.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:36 pm (UTC)Thanks for the rec too, people have been wandering over via it and dropping your name *blushes*
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 10:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:42 pm (UTC)as for canon-consistent...*shrugs* Does a mental breakdown make you act differently, or make you more like yourself in a very extreme way? Remus is so controlled, so calm all the time...his reaction to Sirius' death in OotP really chilled me, and I think some of that sort of exorcised itself with this.
You should publish this
Date: 2003-12-03 11:16 am (UTC)Maureen
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 11:22 am (UTC):: ponders fic ::
good one!
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 11:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 12:13 pm (UTC)That is the most disturbing thing I've read in a long time, and that includes the cannibal doctor who drilled a hole in Snape's sternum to fuck him there.
Good job, I think.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 06:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:OMG!
From:no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:47 pm (UTC)Remus is so indifferent to everything and detached in canon, I think it's creepy.There's something just a little too plausible about the idea that he just takes it and takes it and takes it...and then he slips off somewhere where nobody knows him and kills a few dozen people.
Then he comes back and starts all over.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
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From:I think I went a bit overboard...
From:Re: I think I went a bit overboard...
From:Re: I think I went a bit overboard...
From:Re: I think I went a bit overboard...
From:Meep indeed.
From:Re: Meep indeed.
From:Re: I think I went a bit overboard...
From:Re: I think I went a bit overboard...
From:years later, now that you've all forgotten about the discussion..
From:Re: years later, now that you've all forgotten about the discussion..
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 03:18 pm (UTC)Worth repeating again and again. Whoa. This is so scary I can see it. I can really see it.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 04:04 pm (UTC)That's all, I think.
*slaps Sirius* Why did you tell him, you prat?
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:50 pm (UTC)then to turn around and sort of indirectly point the finger at him...I can't decide if that's more disturbing or not.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 06:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 07:53 pm (UTC)hee, thanks for the praise. Glad you enjoyed it.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-04 01:15 am (UTC)PS--Julie's baby is due like any second now, she's going to go during my finals week, i just KNOW it
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2003-12-04 01:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-04 08:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-04 04:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-04 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-04 05:00 pm (UTC)