AIDS Nostalgia....Where were you?

[bcohen7719]

Where were you when these reports began airing?

 

BC

 

[video=youtube;1LKJ5ZzzL0w]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LKJ5ZzzL0w

[imrthr]

Hi, the link is disabled and referred to Utube with no site address

[seeker630]

Hi, the link is disabled and referred to Utube with no site address

 

Did you click on the 'Watch on YouTube link' that appeared? It worked for me.

[bcohen7719]

Thanks, Seeker! In the future, I'll try to watch out for those problem videos before posting.

 

BC

[imrthr]

 

Did you click on the 'Watch on YouTube link' that appeared? It worked for me.

 

 

I tried it again and it worked. Thanks.

[leigh.bess.toad]

Well I was living in DC at the time. I was married but still playing at some of the gay movie theaters and bars in town. And those initial reports are something I remember very well.

[+ honcho]

I was, and still am, living in San Francisco.

[+ Charlie]

I was a sexually active gay man, living in Manhattan, where friends and acquaintances were getting some strange infections. Two of them had already died, cause unknown.

[josephga]

I was 14 years old

[seeker630]

I was working in the IT dept of a pharmaceutical company that developed the first drug for AIDS.

[JT Brooklyn]

I was a sexually active gay man, living in Manhattan, where friends and acquaintances were getting some strange infections. Two of them had already died, cause unknown.

 

My experience was the same. It was a very freightening situation not knowing Who or When or Where it would strike next. My First Rememberance is of a Waiter and Bartender who Passed very fast from at that time what was called a Cancer?

 

Great Progress has been made BUT I feel sad for the Younger Generation who seem to think "No Sweat I'll just take Meds" IF and When I contract it! Oh IF only it is that simple..It Ain't!

 

The Simple Solution... wear a Damn Rubber and have Safe Sex!

[leigh.bess.toad]

Great Progress has been made BUT I feel sad for the Younger Generation who seem to think "No Sweat I'll just take Meds" IF and When I contract it! Oh IF only it is that simple..It Ain't!

 

The Simple Solution... wear a Damn Rubber and have Safe Sex!

 

Well said, BG. Thank you.

[+ Axiom2001]

I was and am still living in Monterey, CA. Although I "could catch" at the time, I began to pay one hot guy who was a student at San Francisco State University for sexual pleasures. As soon as AIDS erupted, he abruptly stopped escorting. From that point on some of my closest friends had contacted full-blown AIDS and died. Unfortunately, they failed to reveal to me that they were ill with the disease. I assumed it but did not feel right in asking.

[EZEtoGRU]

My experience was the same. It was a very freightening situation not knowing Who or When or Where it would strike next. My First Rememberance is of a Waiter and Bartender who Passed very fast from at that time what was called a Cancer?

 

Great Progress has been made BUT I feel sad for the Younger Generation who seem to think "No Sweat I'll just take Meds" IF and When I contract it! Oh IF only it is that simple..It Ain't!

 

The Simple Solution... wear a Damn Rubber and have Safe Sex!

 

Yes, I remember the initial references to a strange "gay cancer" whilst I was going to university in Michigan. Within six months or so of the initial reports, panic was really setting in. It was years on that finally knew someone that was infected and sick.

[Diverdan]

I was in graduate school... studying clinical psychology... one of my fellow graduate students was dismissed from the University for "conduct unbecoming the university".... he was caught in the men's room having some fun, but there was a lot of discussion in the clinical psychology classrooms about this new disease... fortunately, I was already playing safe.

[uwsman2]

I was a young sexually active man in Manhattan. I had a boyfriend but was also hiring escorts from time to time and going to the baths and didn't get serious about starting to use condoms until the summer of 1982, when I learned that a colleague at work had been diagnosed with AIDS. (He died in January 1983). When the HIV test came along in 1985, I rushed to be tested, absolutely certain that I would test positive because I had been a big old bottom in the baths, etc., and as late as the summer of 1982 when I had some free time going out to Jones Beach and playing with the other boys in the sand dunes (playing meant sucking and getting fucked without a condom). To my shock and relief, I was negative. I have been absolutely strict since then about never getting fucked without a condom, but I've studied the odds and continue to do oral sex without. I get tested every year and have remained negative, even though my boyfriend - now husband - is positive.

[dcguy20]

I was finishing up my freshman year of college. Moved to NYC about 2 years after graduation. Was even afraid to kiss a guy back then.

[+ sam.fitzpatrick]

I was a freshman in college. I think that being that age and all of the unknowns around the disease at the time kept me from acting on my interest in men.

[Zapped]

I turned 24 in 1982. I was living in Baltimore, where I was pretty sexually active. The reports were very concerning. And it was just about then that I got date raped and didn't have anal sex--which I wasn't all that crazy about, especially bottoming--again until the 1990s. I'm often struck by the irony that getting raped--or my reaction to it--may well have saved my life.

 

What a horrible time it was.

[nate_sf]

I remember first reading about it in a magazine at the pediatrician's office when I was a kid in Arizona. Could it have been People magazine? The article described the strange new phenomena, how it was baffling the medical community, and how for some men it was prompting them to come out to their families for the first time. This was all so far from my knowledge and experience, I had a hard time making sense of it but it definitely left an impression. By the time I got to high school they had the safe sex protocol figured out and it was a part of sex ed.

[Guest Wetnwildbear]

Trying to Raise Money

 

Where were you when these reports began airing?

 

BC

 

[video=youtube;1LKJ5ZzzL0w]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LKJ5ZzzL0w

 

I was in South Florida - Organizing Benefits and trying to raise money to help care for people

 

with a disease that most people had never heard of, with a name that kept changing. Gay Cancer, GRID - Gay

 

Related Immune Deficiency.

 

One of my close friends was amongst the first wave of victims, before the disease even had a name.

 

The hospital visits and funeral parades continued for many years and still do, just lesss often.

 

In those early days most people were still worried only about Herpes - and were in denial.

 

 

The stigma was so great even in 1987, that even my dearest friend in the world whom I considered the

 

Big Brother/Big Gay Sister I never had - didn't reveal his condition to me, insisting the pills were for his blood pressure.

 

 

Other friends died of neglect in Hospitals due to fear, ignorance and predjudice of those presenting themselves as

 

doctors and nurses. In 1987, I saw the picture of a casual friend of mine on the cover of Newsweek Magazine along

 

with dozens of thumbnails for a story entitled "The Faces of AIDS" - According to reports from the magazine and

 

employees at the hospital - the county hospital he was in threw him out, with nothing but a blanket on a rare frigid

 

January night in South Florida. The "doctor" reportedly told him "Go die somewhere else faggot" and gave him $20

 

and the blanket. He died that night of exposure, on a bus bench within sight of the Hospital and its employee parking

 

lot.

 

The inhumanity many of us witnessed/experienced and fought against to help save our friends and loved ones

 

is still raw in our hearts and minds as to this day politicians and religious zealots (often one and the same) use our lives and

 

existence as a political football to create fear, raise dollars, further division in the country and as a lever to acquire or

 

retain power.

 

 

AIDS was the gamechanger that brought the Religious Right to its initial prominence and power.

[+ Tygerscent]

I was still dating the same girl I had been dating for years. We dated for 17 years and parted ways in 1990.

I was in college working on a bach, just beginning my work in genetics and immunology. My girlfriend was studying cardio~

My grandfather had died from a viral cancer he got when his glove was cut/compromised while performing surgery. Hence my interest in cancer and inquiry into retro-virus'. That led me to other retro virus studies in hep and HIV research.

I didn't venture into the gay scene until 1990, (and having been in long term monogamous hetero relationships all my life), was not promiscuous. I was nervous and shy to say the least.

I got into a gay relationship long term and while I had four relationships total male to male up to 2002, I was not single until November 2002.

I was not a bar person and very uncomfortable with the whole idea of cruising. Awkward at best. Partnership type relationships always felt more comfortable for me.

Ways I have advocated safer sex was running a homeless outreach program handing out rubbers, providing "On Street Location" testing, needle exchange program and developing safer sex awareness programs for high schoolers.

Then worked on hep C research and taught HIV dietary and fitness programs for guys with HIV.

My current goal is to go to Africa, (thru a program I am working with), and go to the deeper source both for developing contacts to develop programs here and learn/update my skills.

I've worked with Will Clark doing the Bad Boys events and Porn Bingo and helped raise nearly 100K towards HIV programs and resource outreach.

That's all good but...

The epidemic that has taken two of my guy partners and many of my gay acquaintances has been meth, which I am completely apprehensive about.

While I have not known the massive impact of loss due to HIV that many experienced and struggled through during the 70's and 80's, I've seen the tragedies of meth in my gay experience and others in my gay community and liken, in some ways, the sense of loss to it, (even though the circumstances and experience are different on political and social grounds).

Both impact our community.

Side note: It's interesting that you note the religious right "take" on all this given that "Gods curse to being gay...." actually is incident to heterosexual couples/individuals predominantly world wide more... and incidentally, gay people come from the consummate sexual relations of heterosexual procreation. Gay people come from straight sex. To date, my understanding is that neither two men nor two women can make a baby by themselves... there needs to be sperm and egg~

It's a truthful addition to US sexual history but one that defines the ambiguities and misinformed antics and paradigm of extremist button pushing groups that distract us from the healthy exemplification of the more real contributing attributes of our community. Religious paradigm is not the point though unless we allow it to be~ Advocating the real point of our community is perhaps more the point then defending some slighting from some offended sector~?

That happened though...

While the USA made the HIV plague a gay thing here... the reality is that it's the str8t plague globally in comparison~ ...and affects women even more so~

Some info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_pandemic http://www.avert.org/america.htm http://www.avert.org/women-hiv-aids.htm http://www.avert.org/women-hiv-aids.htm

HIV is a human issue...

I wonder why HIV is a gay thing in the USA and a hetero thing elsewhere~ I have no answers there~ Some of you others may have some insight to that?

I compare the stats of gay acceptance to gay unacceptance versus HIV prevalence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_territory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HIV_Epidem.png (2008/2010).

It's not about gay acceptance... perhaps where situations are dictated by least acceptance, personally by self, religion, government, by community, by state, country?

The USA is unique with HIV issues~?

Oddly enough, HIV in the USA holds more the stigma then other things that take our lives... heart disease, diabetes, cancer, as contributed by our food industry, or even meth which contributes to HIV and other STD risk~ (meth: first synthesized from ephedrine by Nagai Nagayoshi 1893 and then chrystalized by Akira Ogata in the mid 1900's. In spite of Japan banning it in the 50's, the US picked up their stock pile and sold it here~ US FDA approved it for treatment of ADHD and exogenous obesity, dispensed as Desoxyn.)

With the exception of meth, I guess the rest are somehow beside the point~ Neither HIV nor the other things should hold stigma~

While seemingly unrelated, meth use also correlates with the transmittion of sexually transmitted disease in the MSM community, (Male Sex with Male).

Recent article link: (current as of june to august 2011, JAMA etc...). http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110801173018.htm

Granted the article is about youth... I observe meth use in ages 30 and above~

The online cruising tags are: PNP, Ice, Clouds, pump, bump, lights... etc., and when at events like pride and white parties etc., that weird smell on their breath and lips. Big turn off... I've learned to avoid those events to avoid even the contact buzz from kissing~ Hot guys BUT...(Residual on lips and in mouth still gives you the buzz~).

What I see plaguing and continuing the HIV tag is this party issue~ I'm not downplaying the HIV issue of the 70's or 80's. Just wondering about today and tomorrow~ Is meth the new plague??? Does it lead us back to ground zero status?

Does anyone else see that?

Tyger!

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971.400.2633

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[Guest Bauer]

I was growing up with security all around me when the first people began to fall.

 

I had my cell phone and was listening to the music of Soft Cell's Tainted Love (my straight mother's favorite song as it happens).

 

Cruising mainly.

 

Running with English punks (with their shiny little aluminum foil packages) and a regular at the Four Seasons dining room.

[bobchitown]

I was living in North Carolina, and remember reading reports from the Duke Medical Center which was beginning to see instances of this bizarre new disease...

[Steven_Draker]

I have no recollection of hearing it referenced as a "new cancer" ... I was much younger. The very first time I've heard about AIDS and HIV I was a teenager and way before I had my first sexual experience. My parents called me one night to watch a special edition of a TV magazine explaining about a new disease. I believe it was well after the virus was first discovered. I was profoundly shocked by what I saw and marked for a lifetime.