The AIDS crisis happened. Millions of people died. Some of
them I knew.
Farrell.
Stephen.
Don.
Steve.
Greg.
AIDS overshadowed my coming out process. Fear of death kept
me from any period of sowing my wild oats. There were options, of course, but I
always read “safe sex” as safer sex. And I was never much of a risk-taker.
I’d first heard of it watching a report by Geraldo Rivera on
ABC’s “20/20”. At the time, it was called GRID, Gay-Related Immune Deficiency.
Some rapid-moving disease was afflicting gay men, radically transforming their
appearance and killing them. I watched the report while sitting uncomfortably
alongside my parents in my family’s den in East Texas. At the time, I was
conflicted and closeted. Concrete walls. Dozens of padlocks. I’d told my
college roommate that I’d decided to be celibate for reasons I bumbled through.
College and celibacy made for an odd cocktail. Innately, I was a survivalist.
This was Texas. To be gay was to be a sinner, a pervert, a future pedophile. (It
was a package deal.) And now it looked to be the target of a new holocaust.
It would not be much of an overstatement to say AIDS was
always on my mind from 1985 to 1995. The first gay book I ever read was E.M.
Forster’s posthumously published Maurice (1971).
(Forster finished the first draft in 1914 but deemed the topic too taboo for
publication.) It was a magical read that captured the fear in acknowledging my
homosexuality but also the hope that love could come. The second gay book I
ever read and the first I ever owned was And
the Band Played on: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy
Shilts. This read offered no hope, only frustration, deep sadness and intense
anger. I still tear up just looking at the cover of a book that informed me but
also helped embolden me to remove one or two of those padlocks. My copy of the
book found a place on a bookshelf instead of finding cover in the sock drawer.
I read every article I could find in newspapers. I scanned
pamphlets from the Dallas AIDS Resource Center. I followed television reports
and eventually began looking in professional journals. There seemed to be no
hope in terms of treatment. If there was any feel-good element at the time, it
was that AIDS was experiencing its own coming out. Anytime a politician spoke
the word AIDS, it made headlines. Researchers began sharing findings at global
conferences. And sometimes a prominent person had the gumption to tell Jesse
Helms to shut up. It seemed there were little battles to be won in what was
still overwhelmingly a lost cause.
It’s weird to think that AIDS helped me come out. It got me
out of the bars in West Hollywood and allowed me to establish my first gay
friendships that didn’t evolve from failed pickup lines. I even found love for
the first time in my life after being introduced at an AIDS volunteer
appreciation gathering. My AIDS buddy group facilitator dragged me onto the
dancefloor, told me to stay put and then dragged out a certain AIDS Project Los
Angeles employee. “You two should get to know each other.” And so we did.
At some point in the mid- to late-1990s, I began reading
less about AIDS. At first, I’d skim the first paragraphs of an article, then I’d
just glance at a headline. There had been some hopeful signs, but I’d hit AIDS
overload. And then I received the news of my Dallas friend Farrell’s death
through a Return to Sender stamp on a returned card I’d mailed him shortly
after my move to Vancouver. Reason for Return: Deceased. He’d never dared to
confide in me that he had AIDS. Living in Texas, the stigma remained too great.
I think that’s when hope died within me. This extraordinarily kind, gentle
soul, ultra-conscientious and responsible, a man with no family and few
friends, likely died alone at the ripe old age of thirty-five. There was no
answer to “Why?” I pulled away.
And almost at the moment I stepped back, real progress
started to happen. People I knew who were HIV positive stayed like that. They
averted what was supposed to be the imminent AIDS diagnosis. I still see them
in passing today, twenty years later. No cure, but something that can be
managed.
Wonderful, wonderful progress. It’s what we all yearned for
so impatiently in the late 1980s and early 1990s and what most of us probably
became resigned to not happening. Not in our lifetimes, however stunted they
may turn out to be.
Maybe it’s because improvements in managing HIV and AIDS
happened over time that there was never a time to celebrate as with the end of
a war. It took so long and yet seemed to happen quietly overnight.
For the most part, these are good times to be gay, at least
in a growing number of countries. The euphoria and expressions of Facebook
support that came with last month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision on same-sex
marriage have no doubt made this summer’s procession of Pride Festivals in
North America all the more festive. Let us indeed feel the joy.
And, yet, let us remember as well. Like the Holocaust,
remembering is somber and many people don’t want to go there. Why do they keep bringing THAT up? According
to amfAR (American Foundation for AIDS Research), nearly 39 million people have died of AIDS-related causes and more than a million people each year continue to die. Much remains to be done in
less developed areas of the world. But even in places where treatments to
manage HIV are accessible, there remains stigma and managing it comes at financial,
physical, mental and emotional costs.
I’ve lamented before, but I fear we’ve become complacent.
And I sense that the generation younger than us lacks perspective or any real
appreciation about the decimating impact of AIDS on gay life and culture. Being
back in Vancouver, I can access events that never made it to my rural area. A
case in point was the screening of the 2012 Oscar-nominated documentary “How to
Survive a Plague” which played at a branch of the Vancouver Public Library two
nights ago. I had read about the film when it was first released but there was no
possibility to see it. A friend of mine thinks it may have had a few showings
in Vancouver shortly after its release. Its total box office take was a paltry $132,055.
I saw a poster for the screening two weeks prior and
excitedly photographed it and texted it to a friend. “Want to go?” It took him
a day to respond but, yes, he was in. Being a free event, we knew seats would
fill early. The day of the screening, my friend went online and learned that
tokens for the screening would be given out an hour ahead of time. We were
there even earlier. (There proved to be an added benefit as my friend shocked
me in saying, “I haven’t been in a library in years.” He did some important
sightseeing—“Wow. I thought all the books would be old and smelly.”—while I
returned some books and used the internet to post a blog entry.)
With our tokens in hand—Victory!—we grabbed dinner at a
nearby Thai joint and returned fifteen minutes before the 6:30 screening. We
were the first to claim our seats. To my shock, there were less than fifteen
people in attendance when the documentary rolled. (Three teens with fast food
sodas popped in half an hour later, talking loudly and shuffling about. Two
ducked out after three minutes; one stayed for a solid ten.)
It’s an important film, one that chronicles the efforts—some
might say antics—of ACT UP and offers insightful perspective from those in the
archival footage who indeed survived. It also shows us real heroes—people like
Mark Harrington, Iris Long and Peter Staley. And it brings back the always
agitated Larry Kramer—the world needs Larry Kramers, as polarizing as they may
be—and Dr. Anthony Fauci, a man whom I’d once pinned so much of my hope on facilitating
an early breakthrough. It reminds us of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, now warehoused
in Atlanta, and not displayed in its entirety since, shockingly, 1996. Wouldn’t
this be a fitting year to bring it back into public consciousness?
Where were all the other viewers? Maybe there’s a way to
download it online. I could only find trailers for it on YouTube. (And how sad
that as I began to type the film’s name, the prediction device offered “How to
Survive a Zombie Apocalypse” first.) Clearly, the library expected a big turnout as
did I. It seemed like a sad joke when the librarian collected our tokens before
pressing Play on the laptop. I suppose I’m becoming an elder statesmen,
fretting that the young will be unaware of our past, but I am also alarmed
about my contemporaries. I don’t see them at AIDS Walks and they were no-shows once
again. (The other audience members seemed to be straight couples and an
emotional sixty-year-old woman sitting behind me who frantically flicked some clicking
device each time the film reached an intense moment.) It’s a gripping movie
that has played to too few.
“Plague!” Larry Kramer shouts at one point. “Plague! This is
a plague!” More than 6,000,000 had died by the film’s focused period ending in
1995. Holocaust numbers. There are active groups that help us remember the
ravages and injustices of wars past. What about the AIDS crisis? Are there not
others who feel it is critical that we remember, that we honor and that we pass
on our own narratives?
It is my sincere hope that others connect forget as well.
2 comments:
Beautifully written, James. I well remember my own experiences during the era you invoke -- AIDS project volunteer work in Boulder, CO, my first partner (met in that forum), all the co-volunteers and friends who passed away, how eager I was to escape my AIDs-related fear of intimacy. Such times. It would be a shame to forget them. Thank you for reminding me.
Thanks for the comment, Jack. For so many of us, it was a defining time. I am grateful that I was able to connect with truly wonderful people and that we were able to rally behind more than just the Sunday beer busts at Motherlode in West Hollywood. Still, we lost so much in the millions of lives that were cut short. Just as I believe that coming out stories still need to be told, I feel we need to continue to talk about this period of time and all the people who didn't make it through the worst years of the crisis.
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