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Legends have been characterized as elastic, evolving, or emergent in nature, and a wealth of studies have explored how such stories may share a narrative core, yet can be elaborated in diverse ways that reflect the varied socio-cultural milieus as well as personal predilections, creative impulses, and idiosyncratic experiences of different tellers and audiences (Bennett 1984; Goldstein 1992; Jones 1988; Mullen 1971; Mullen 1972:98; Tangherlini 1990:377-78). This study joins that scholarship. In particular, it contributes to the literature on what Gillian Bennett has referred to as "AIDS Aggressor" legends (Bennett 2005:104-141). In it I consider how rumors and legends about culprits who are attempting to infect others with HIV-infected needles flourish and evolve as they take on different meanings and functions.1 I begin by looking at some of the recurrent narrative devices that promote the widespread dissemination of stories about needle attacks, namely: delocalization, seriality, and subjunctivity. I then show how such legends are inflected in ways that express and comment on a range of individual and local concerns such as gender roles, sexual promiscuity, licentious dress and dancing, intoxication, and intergroup conflict-themes that have received little attention in the analysis of AIDS-needle legends to date.
While instructing an introduction to American folklore class at UCLA in 1998-99, I noted that legends about HIV-tainted needles were widely known among students. I circulated questionnaires on the subject to students, in response to which I received 53 replies that contain outlines of narratives, details of the context in which they occurred, and biographical information about tellers and audience members. I subsequently conducted a search of the UCLA Folklore and Mythology Archives that turned up 16 student essays about AIDS-needle attacks that are reports of narrative events: that is, post hoc descriptions of legend performances, and commentary by the collectors, as well as narrators, of such stories.2 In 2004, I passed out a questionnaire to students in a Harvard Extension School folklore class, to which I received 15 replies. I have also located or personally received 11 e-mail warnings concerning HIV- needle attacks. Further narratives were gleaned from newspaper articles that presented information about localized renditions of needle legends. The various texts that I have compiled are less than ideal in that they fail to capture verbatim performances...