World AIDS Day 2021: 40 Years On

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Dr. Fauci has made a name for himself with a new generation in the fight against Covid-19.  But gay men of my generation have always remembered him as a hero of the fight against HIV/AIDS from the start of the plague, when damn few people in public life had the compassion or the guts to stand up for us, and we owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

News of the plague didn’t reach me and my friends in the Deep South until November of 1981 – forty years ago. I could tell the story of how we dealt with it in my neck of the woods, but as I spent much of the 1980s sequestered for work reasons in a remote small town, living like a monk (mostly), my story is not particularly interesting or eventful.  As with most other things in modern life, the plague as a distinct reality arrived down here several years later than it did on the coasts.  

It was a long time before we really knew what we were up against, and in the meantime there was fear of the unknown to live with. Eventually, having gotten a job in a city, I volunteered to work at a phone bank as an HIV/AIDS counselor for four years, so although I wasn’t on the front lines in a big city, as the era is often portrayed in movies and documentaries, I felt good about doing my small but useful bit in the fight against the plague. 

And of course, as in every war, there were the casualties. Among others, I lost my best friend to the plague; I paid someone to make a quilt with his name on it, which I sent to the National AIDS Quilt and got to see it displayed on the Mall in Washington, D.C., in 1992. That was an overwhelming experience – all those quilts, all those names, all those deaths. Around 1995, I think, the drug cocktail that effectively suppressed HIV was finally found – too late for some, but a miraculous lifesaver for others.

Another thing not always mentioned by reporters is the great support given by many lesbians to gay men who were afflicted – another collective debt of gratitude we owe. Tragic and devastating though it was, the plague in a large way unified the gay and lesbian community across the nation in a fight against a common enemy. And the just-let-them-die attitude of the Reagan Administration certainly raised the political awareness of many:

 

I guess all I want to say is that I lived through the plague years, I mourned my dead, I did my bit, and now it's History, a remote era, something schoolkids skim over in dusty books - a story already told.  Except that there still is no vaccine for HIV, let alone a cure, and I really don't understand why that is.  But the answer is probably over my head anyway. 

You still pays your money and you takes your chances - that's life, isn't it? Hope for the best, plan for the worst, and enjoy every happy moment as if it were your last, because it may never come again. There are no guarantees. That's all I can say. 

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Vito Russo's Our Time, Episode 4 - AIDS

This episode, which aired on WNYC-TV on March 3, 1983, focused on what was then the still-new epidemic of AIDS that was cutting a deadly swathe through the ranks of gay men. At this time, cases were still concentrated in big cities like New York and San Francisco, but the alarming news was filtering slowly into the hinterlands, where we were bewildered and afraid. As seen here, activists like Larry Kramer and Michael Callen were informing and organizing their brethren in the Big Apple - with the enormous help of our lesbian sisters, to whom we owe an enduring debt of gratitude - but between the coasts, rumor and confusion prevailed.

As you will see in the video, very little was known for sure about the HIV virus and how it was transmitted. Could you catch it by kissing someone? Hugging? Shaking hands? Breathing the same air? Sharing finger foods? Eating off the same plate, or drinking from the same glass? What about toilet seats? Not even the doctors were sure, and most doctors were themselves still uninformed of the latest research. News reports told of nurses and hospital staff refusing to touch or treat AIDS patients, who were sometimes flatly turned away from the hospital doors, or left to lie in hallways, unattended. Some funeral homes refused to accept the bodies of patients who died from the disease.

Politicians were starting to call for mass internment of people with HIV or AIDS, and your Head Trucker heard with his own ears the pontificating asshole and conservative pundit William F. Buckley calling for all men with HIV to be tattooed on their foreheads to warn the public to stay away from them.

All that seemed certain was that the virus was spreading among gay men, apparently like other sexually transmitted diseases. And yet, we read in the scanty, infrequent news reports, some men who had a "promiscuous lifestyle" seemed unaffected, while others who rarely had sexual partners were stricken. So what did that mean for us young gay men, newly out and relieved to be free from the soul-destroying closet of celibacy? Your Head Trucker remembers sitting in a gay rap group where this very topic was hotly discussed: some guys were ready to wall themselves away from all sexual contact, while others swore they would not change a thing they were doing until science had determined the exact cause - why go back to living like a lonely monk for no good reason?

And all this was before the concept of "safe sex," later cslled "safer sex," was really developed or publicized. The best advice the medical establishment could give in those early days, which most gay men in the provinces read in abbreviated news reports in gay porn magazines - even those were simply not available in most towns and cities or through the mail in most Southern states - was to "avoid exchanging bodily fluids" with other men. But what the hell did that mean, exactly? What is a "bodily fluid"? Blood? Cum? Piss? Spit? Sweat? Tears? For a long time, nobody bothered to clarify for us, and the national magazines and network news shows, when they did, at long intervals, mention the AIDS epidemic, were not about to descend into the gutter by specifying what was meant. Not even the word condom had ever yet been heard on American television.

Thus, many thousands of men died. It was a scary time to live through, a walk in the dark through a cemetery - no doubt unimaginable to the smartphone-toting, constantly linked-in younger generation. But important to remember.

World Aids Day 2010

President Obama:



Prime Minister Cameron:



For Tommy, and all the others:

Writing on the Restroom Wall

Apparently a French HIV campaign spot. Totally NSFW. But funny as hell.



They actually show this kind of shit on TV over there, ya think?

Obama Lifts HIV Travel Ban

Okay, here's something we can be proud of our President about:  lifting the ban on HIV+ travelers entering this country.  Andrew Sullivan:

The president just announced that as of Monday, the ban on HIV-positive visitors, tourists and immigrants will formally come to an end. There are 60 days before the new rule comes into effect. But after that, people with HIV will be treated in exactly the same way as any other person with a serious illness - according to science, not politics, and following the logic of reason, not fear.

The ban has been in existence for 22 years, pioneered by Jesse Helms, resisted by the first Bush, signed into law by Bill Clinton, legislatively repealed by George W. Bush and now administratively ended by Barack Obama. In an age when bipartisanship is out of fashion, the repeal was led by Gordon Smith and John Kerry, with backing from many Republicans and Democrats. The work of staffers - Rob Epplin and Alex Nunez, in particular - was invaluable. The support of Immigration Equality was vital. The lobbying of HRC was an important late development. . . .

For me, it is the end of 16 years of profound insecurity. Like many others, my application for permanent residence and citizenship can go forward. And I will be able to see my family again in England and know that my HIV will not force me to choose between my husband and the country I have come to call my home. There is no price to be put on that.

World Aids Day: Do Something

For Tommy, Bobby, and all the many others.

You have one life. Do something.