Venus Rising

Scott Thode

Freelance

Venus Williams is one of 10% of women who now comprise the fastest growing category of HIV infection. In New York, where AIDS is now the primary cause of death in women age 25 to 44, 61% became infected through I.V. drug use. During the last four years, she has gone from a methodone program to a shooting gallery, from hospital bed to sidewalk, from the streets to a room of her own. She is capable of making jokes about her own death one minute and crying about the death of a friend the next. She has spanned the socioeconomic worlds she grew up in to a shooting gallery in East Harlem. She has worked in a library and stripped in aTimes Square burlesque house. This diverse life fascinates and repels those who know and love her. It is her intensity, her tremendous loving and caring which grabs people and refuses to let go. Venus, a 37 year old homeless woman who is an I.V. drug user with AIDS.

Scott Thode, "Venus Rising," in POYi Archive, Item #21546, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/21546 (accessed May 5, 2024).