In The Early Days Of AIDs

[+ Gar1eth]

I am looking for information from those who have been out--or closeted but still having sex from the late 70's through the 80's.

 

I was listening to NPR late last week. Someone affiliated with the Human Rights Campaign was a guest on one of the programs. I don't remember who it was, but he had worked in SF as a young man with Harvey Milk. He mentioned what a great time it was for him, and others, as a young man being in SF in the late 1970's--referring to the sense of hope and the sexual freedom before the arrival of HIV/AIDS. Then he said that most of his close friends died in the 1980's from AIDS.

 

His statements had me thinking about something that I've thought a lot about over the years. I pretty much always knew I was gay--but never acted on it until I reached my 40's. I am now close to 50. Waiting so long to start was incredibly painful--but I was frightened. I have great admiration for those of you out there who were able to find the courage to face things much earlier in life. But I keep thinking that my reticence may very well have saved my life. If I had been active when I was younger, I am sure that I would not have used condoms on a routine basis--or perhaps ever. Because I am guessing that that condom use was not the norm back then?

 

So for those of you who have been active over the last 30 years--are my recollections correct--wasn't the early to mid 80's the time when the toll from AIDs was the highest?

 

Thank you

 

Gman

[+ Italiano]

I grew up in Milan, Italy, I became sexually active as a gay man in 1980 and spent a year unprotected sex, I had a monogamous relationship from 1981 to 1985 (no condoms), I spent another year of so of unprotected promiscuous sex and then again had one monogamous relationship (no condoms) till 1992.

After that, I always had/have casual sex with condoms.

 

Of course Milan wasn't San Francisco or New York back then, and actually I recall not to have heard about AIDS until perhaps 1984 or so, but still I had unprotected casual sex, even in 1986....

 

I knew a guy who had unprotected sex only once (yes!) in 1988, and died of AIDS in 1995.

 

And I know a few extremely promiscuous men who had unprotected wild sex throughot most of the 80s and are negative.

 

My 2 cents.

[+ Charlie]

The years in which I lost the majority of my friends and acquaintances to AIDS were the mid-80s to early 90s, after which the new drugs kept most of my HIV+ friends going (I have a few friends who were diagnosed more than 20 years ago). Of course, I had friends who died in the late 70s to mid-80s of unusual diseases which in hindsight look like they may have been AIDS-related. I think the worst years may also have been different in different places; e.g., the epidemic crested earlier on the west coast than on the east coast.

[+ deej]

So for those of you who have been active over the last 30 years--are my recollections correct--wasn't the early to mid 80's the time when the toll from AIDs was the highest?

 

It's still too high. The number of cures remains at zero.

 

I remember the peak being a little later, say mid-late 80's. Before that timeframe it was still known as "that gay cancer". In the early 80's we were just beginning to get information.

 

I was involved in planning a European tour and during a briefing on AIDS later that year, a few members of the tour squirmed uneasily on hearing that str8 prostitutes in Amsterdam were spreading the disease. It had been considered "exclusively gay" until about then. The standing joke was "if you get AIDS, how do you convince your parents you're Haitian?"

 

That would have been around '85. As a frame of reference, Rock Hudson announced his illness in July of '85 and that time frame was certainly in the thick of it.

[+ g56whiz]

I pretty much always knew I was gay--but never acted on it until I reached my 40's. I am now close to 50. Waiting so long to start was incredibly painful--but I was frightened.

,

 

Dammit Gman, why is it that you think you can live my life 20 years after me.

 

The major difference us is that my fear was one of exposure in a homophobic family and in a career in which such exposure would have ended it. I became active just as AID was identified and for a long time after that accurate information was scarce.

 

A young man recently came out to me. I replied that I was jealous of his ability to do so at his age without apparently harming his personal or public persona. I'm not sure he understood the point I share with Gman that if I had come out any earlier than my early 40's I'd no doubt have suffered the fate of so many of great men who were my friends back then.

[KMEM]

g56-

 

So there is SOME potential benefit to being in the closet?

 

deej-

 

Not to denigrate AIDS or HIV and all of the problems both mental and physical, but there are a lot of diseases that have no cure. Basically there is no "cure" for cancer, the medical community has decided by edict to say that after 5 years one is in "permanent" remission. As you know, that is subject to modification. In fact, there is no cure for "life". We all shall perish at some time or another. Some sooner than others and, in many if not most cases, too soon.

 

Here is to everyone's health.

 

Best regards,

KMEM

[+ Axiom2001]

I am looking for information from those who have been out--or closeted but still having sex from the late 70's through the 80's.

 

I was listening to NPR late last week. Someone affiliated with the Human Rights Campaign was a guest on one of the programs. I don't remember who it was, but he had worked in SF as a young man with Harvey Milk. He mentioned what a great time it was for him, and others, as a young man being in SF in the late 1970's--referring to the sense of hope and the sexual freedom before the arrival of HIV/AIDS. Then he said that most of his close friends died in the 1980's from AIDS.

 

His statements had me thinking about something that I've thought a lot about over the years. I pretty much always knew I was gay--but never acted on it until I reached my 40's. I am now close to 50. Waiting so long to start was incredibly painful--but I was frightened. I have great admiration for those of you out there who were able to find the courage to face things much earlier in life. But I keep thinking that my reticence may very well have saved my life. If I had been active when I was younger, I am sure that I would not have used condoms on a routine basis--or perhaps ever. Because I am guessing that that condom use was not the norm back then?

 

So for those of you who have been active over the last 30 years--are my recollections correct--wasn't the early to mid 80's the time when the toll from AIDs was the highest?

 

Thank you

 

Gman

 

"...wasn't the early to mid 80s the time when the toll from AIDS was the highest?" Your assessment is accurate, but the death rate of individuals who had AIDS escalated from '84 until about '93 or '94.

 

I was out and having sex without the use of condoms prior to '85. Afterwards, if I did have sex, which was rare, I used condoms in my safer practices.

[+ Axiom2001]

"...wasn't the early to mid 80s the time when the toll from AIDS was the highest?" Your assessment is accurate, but the death rate of individuals who had AIDS escalated from '84 until about '93 or '94.

 

I was out and having sex without the use of condoms prior to '85. Afterwards, if I did have sex, which was rare, I used condoms in my safer practices.

 

 

The man whom you probably heard on NPR or PBS was Clive Jones, the originator of the AIDS Quilt. He and the late Harvey Milk were apparently friends and colleagues.

[+ Axiom2001]

As a volunteer with three non profit AIDS organizations in my area and being on their Boards since 1996, I've seen and learned a lot locally, nationally, and internationally regarding HIV/AIDS.

 

As one writer here noted, the rates of infection is still far too high in this world of ours! An abundance of education regarding prevention still has to be promoted in all arenas.

 

Thanks for your thread, but for a more accurate response to your query about the death rates, do a google search as well as consult the information that the CDC has.

[justaguy]

history

 

I'm beginning to wonder about the shortness of memory. It was a great time to be alive. But. Does anyone else object to current attitudes about barebaking?

[KMEM]

I'm beginning to wonder about the shortness of memory. It was a great time to be alive. But. Does anyone else object to current attitudes about barebaking?

 

I do. Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

 

Best regards,

KMEM

[Guest Tristan]

The man whom you probably heard on NPR or PBS was Clive Jones, the originator of the AIDS Quilt. He and the late Harvey Milk were apparently friends and colleagues.

 

In the film about Harvey Milk, Milk sees Cleve Jones on the street, who is a young runaway hustler. He befriends him and gets him to work for gay rights in his office in SF. In 1983, Cleve Jones co-founded the San Francisco Aids Foundation. In 1987, he created the first Quilt panel in memorial to a friend.

[Boston Guy]

I am of the right generation to have been out before AIDS and in the thick of it throughout the worst of times.

 

Before AIDS (and "gay cancer" and all the other names), life was very different for out gay men. The sense of freedom and fun was palpable and real. The fact that I was in my 20s contributed to my view of the world but it was a very exciting time to be gay.

 

Fast forward a few years and I was organizing buddy teams to help friends live with AIDS and die with dignity. I watched far too many friends in fetal positions, saw far too many truly beautiful men die miserable, prolonged deaths. Many of the gay friends I had in the early 80s have been dead for 20 years or more. I lost some of my best friends and my lover, who was the love of my life. I still talk to these people, when I'm alone. They don't talk back to me, at least not yet, so that's a good thing. And through it all, even as I was engaging in as much of the risky sex as anyone else, I remained HIV-. There were days of survivor's guilt -- hell, there were years of survivor's guilt -- but you learn to get past that. For me, HIV was my generation's war and it certainly felt like a war in the midst of it.

 

It used to make me crazy when I saw signs of people having parties to get infected or just abandoning safe sex practices. I used to want to be able to show these young men some of my memories for if I could surely they would not do what they were doing. But I learned that I cannot keep people from themselves and each generation needs to learn its own lessons.

 

HIV spared me, at least so far, but diminished my life in ways that are almost impossible to overestimate. And as for Clive Jones and the quilt, I know dozens of people who have squares in that quilt. Were it ever to be laid out in full again, if that were even possible, I'd be unable to avoid going to see it. But I know that were I to do so, I would be unable to avoid crying throughout the entire experience.

 

BG

[justaguy]

Survivor's guilt. Until you said it, I hadn't made that connection. It does explain the strength of my reactions.

[+ Gar1eth]

I want to thank all of you who posted.

 

Gman

[uwsman2]

when it hit

 

I came out as a student in Boston in the mid-1970s, but "out" only in the sense of dipping my toe in the sex waters.... but never using condoms in those days. Moved to NYC in 1977 and continued to play without condoms as late as 1982. Started using condoms after encountering my first AIDS case, a colleague who died in January 1983. I had been visiting him in the hospital (that was in the days when you needed gowns and masks to visit an AIDS patient in the hospital) and was scared into using condoms. I was stunned when HIV testing came around in 1985 and I tested negative. I couldn't understand it. I'd done the bathhouse scene and was always mainly a bottom and got fucked numerous times during the high exposure years, but somehow escaped getting infected. Thank my lucky stars. Have never been fucked bareback since then, although I just will not suck on a condom and I LOVED to suck cock.

 

I still remember attending a GMHC forum - I think at Hunter College - in the mid-1980s where Casey Donovan, early gay porn star, was a speaker. He basically said if you are going to play around, play around with escorts who know what they're doing and won't infect you. He died a few years later from AIDS....

 

In my experience, the peak death years from AIDS were from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s - then protease inhibitors were introduced and the death rate fell sharply. I lost scores of acquaintances and friends during that peak period and went to quite a few funerals. Nothing was more persuasive in getting me to stick to my resolve against bareback sex than attending many funerals of contemporaries as a young man.

[+ Lucky]

I don't cook at all, so barebaking is just not my thing. But I did live in San Francisco throughout the worst of the AIDS epidemic. The first we heard was a sign in the window of the Star Pharmacy (now, of course, a Walgreen's) It had pictures of Kaposi's Sarcoma lesions and asked anyone having them to see their doctors, pronto.

There was quite a bit of denial as these epidemics only happened in Africa, not to white men in America. At first we were told that the cause was too many partners. Then some idiot tried to claim it was poppers and got them banned in San Francisco. Then someone else got the baths closed, as if that would stop men from having sex. (In my opinion, the baths were an ideal place to educate men on the risks of AIDS).

Nonetheless, people started to get very sick and die horrible deaths. My friends started falling and we were all freaked out. Do not underestimate the fear and grief being caused by so many deaths. Psychologically we were a community living through hell.

The deaths continued well into the 1990's. By then a test had been developed so men could learn if they were infected. An apartheid developed wherein negative men would not have sex with positive men, even after it was learned that condoms could prevent the disease. And there were bugchasers- people who wanted to get infected.

Gay men organized on a scale not to be dreamed of. We fought, we protested, we marched, and we got the FDA to stop their practice of taking years to allow promising drugs to be used. AZT came along and even though the original doses were horribly wrong, it did save many men so they were still alive when the so-called HIV cocktails came along.

That began the end of the worst part of the epidemic. But, as we know, people forget, and young people think they are immortal. So new cases continue to develop, and barebacking contributes mightily to this problem.

In my opinion, it is so sad to see a young man seroconvert today when he knows just how to avoid the disease. It's careless, it's cruel, and it's encouraged by crystal meth and the porn industry.

So there, that's what I think.

[+ Charlie]

LOL, Casey Donovan was the last person I would have gone to for advice on avoiding AIDS. He was a total slut. I fucked him on the boardwalk on Fire Island one night in 1977, and I know I was only one of a string of men he had sex with that night.

[+ Lucky]

An interesting look at the history of HIV in Los Angeles:

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-aids-study16-2009oct16,0,809470.story?page=2

[Guest DuchessIvanaKizznhugg]

Subtle homour........

 

I don't cook at all, so barebaking is just not my thing.

 

LOL! I must have read this line 20 times before the penny dropped. So I guess that's a "no" to nude frying as well!?

[Guest greatness]

oh

 

I just love nude sushi... Rice outside.. They are so tasty...

 

LOL! I must have read this line 20 times before the penny dropped. So I guess that's a "no" to nude frying as well!?[/color][/size]