The text presents a double interpretation (homoerotic and homophobic) of a commercial image of the “renaissance youth” set in the context of the 1980s and the twilight of Communist Poland. The subversive potential of homoerotic reading of the image, on which somewhere in the late 1980s someone wrote AIDS, is presented against the background of its history. The hand-made inscription is here interpreted not only as a homophobic act but fi rst and foremost as an operation aiming at establishing the sense of the image in such a way so that the subversion founded on homoerotic reading is cancelled and the “renaissance youth” becomes a “sick faggot.” As a result of this operation, the image starts to create the only legitimate view of homosexuality, with connotations of sickness, very similar to images of AIDS that appeared in the homophobic public discourse of the Reagan era in the USA