In the Time of HIV/AIDS

 I had no particular reason to go to San Francisco in 1975, but a friend had moved there and was feeling very much at home, so I decided to join her.  I had dropped out of the PhD program at the University of Washington, having decided that teaching college English was a cutthroat business and not what I wanted to do. Spending some winter months in Montreal convinced me that it was not for me.  I was at loose ends, and San Francisco was as good a home as any.

My work experience up until then was editing engineering journals and law books, so I started sending out resumes to any company that was remotely connected to those fields.  I landed a job as a “technical editor” at large engineering firm, which meant I was responsible for writing proposals in response to requests from prospective clients.  The technical editing department was quite large, about a dozen of us, managed by a staid man, who I later learned was gay, and he had hired several gay men and a bunch of women and a few straight men.  The engineering company itself was conservative, but the engineers, all men, were quite tolerant of and bemused by this bunch of outliers, their resident Bohemians. 

To me, the topic of homosexuality was a complete mystery.  I may have met a couple of gay men without knowing at the time that they were gay, but beyond that, I knew nothing about homosexuality. One of the first people who befriended me was Bob, a man in his late forties, who was refreshingly open and self-aware, and I learned a lot from him.  I remember having dinner together one evening and I asked him about being gay.

“Are you just gay?” I asked.  It was a naïve question, but homosexuality was not a subject discussed openly in 1975, except in San Francisco.

He roared with laughter and repeated the question, emphasizing the “just.”

“Yes, most gay guys are just gay.  In my experience, guys who say they are bisexual are generally gay guys who haven’t quite admitted that they are.”

Bob and I became close friends and I still think of him as a mentor.  I learned a lot about living my life from him, a key lesson being that we choose the life we want to live.  It made me recall that as I child I had believed that, and along the way to maturity, had lost that conviction. Bob also taught me that instead of resisting a negative, I should give way to it, thereby depriving it of its power.  He said of the gay community, “We should call ourselves flaming faggots.  That would disarm them, wouldn’t it?”

John was another gay man that became a close friend.  His relationship with his family had been strained ever since he had declared his sexuality.  He had been married and served in the army, so they were convinced he was just rebelling or going through a phase.  We spent hours in coffee shops talking about our childhoods and what had formed us. This was a wholly new experience for me.  In my family, it was considered weak to talk about feelings, and talking about what went on within the family was considered tantamount to betrayal. It was not just a novelty to talk about myself and to compare my emotions with John’s, it was getting to know myself in a way I had never considered doing before. If there was one posture I had adopted from my English boarding school, it was the stiff upper lip.  Ironically, I was learning openness from men who had spent a good part of their lives hiding their true selves from the world.  

I loved the camaraderie of being in the technical editing department and having friendships with men without the strain of sexuality.  I marched with them in the Gay Day Parade, Janis Joplin blaring us along.  We went rafting on the Russian River, and one of them brought an enormous tray of cheeses and fruit, beautifully arranged. We dressed up for Halloween parties.  We went to concerts and hiked and ate out and generally enjoyed San Francisco.  When I had a boyfriend, he became a part of the circle and there was no posturing and competing.  It was just a relaxed circle of friends.  One time, returning from a trip, I looked down on San Francisco from the airplane and caught myself beaming at the thought that this was my home.

AIDS changed my San Francisco from a celebratory, giddy city to a somber, shell-shocked place peopled by ghosts.

The first time I saw an afflicted man in the street, I thought he looked like he had escaped Auschwitz.  He was skeletal and had sores over his face and arms. His eyes burrowed into their sockets and looked out in fear. The disease had not been identified yet, so I had no idea what I was seeing, just that whatever he had looked hopeless. 

By the time the disease was named, I was living in Denver and starting a family with a husband who was not comfortable with San Francisco’s liberality or the eccentricities of my friendships (not the boyfriend that welcomed them into his life).  We visited the city infrequently, but I stayed in touch with friends.  I started hearing of deaths from AIDS. I lost one friend and heard from others that their friends were dying.  One told me he was going to a funeral at least once a week. 

Then John was diagnosed with AIDS.  We visited San Francisco with my twin toddlers.  John held them in his lap, and I was terrified that they would get infected.  There was so little known about how the disease spread, just that it may be through bodily fluids.  Another year passed, and John was in the final stages of the disease, so I flew out to say good-bye. I stayed with him in his cramped, dark apartment and mostly watched him sleep.  We went to a doctor’s appointment at the VA hospital, but there was nothing to hope for.  We watched Separate Tables, a movie John wanted to see again, but he couldn’t stay awake through it.  We tried to go out for breakfast, and by the time we got a table, John needed to go home to sleep.  It was hard seeing the inevitable, that this was the end.  When he was awake, he talked about dying.

“You read about people being surrounded by their friends and family when they die.  But you die alone.  It doesn’t matter who is with you. I just want people to remember me once in a while. I don’t want to be forgotten.”

His mother and stepfather had come out to visit earlier and his stepfather called to check on him, but his mother didn’t want to talk to the friends who were caring for him.  It seemed to be an uneasy truce for her, but John was reconciled to honoring and loving her.  He died soon after my visit.

People were desperate to understand this disease and to find a way counter its effects, pleading for a vaccine or some other antidote.  Since it seemed mostly to infect gay men, there was some indifference to finding a cure.  Some religious groups even posited that it was God’s way of punishing these sinful men.  There was an ugly smugness about who was getting infected.  It was all right if you contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion, but not if you were gay, even though the end result was usually death.  It became clear that to get help, the gay community would have to do its own research and demand results, and over time, scientists found a “cocktail” of drugs called AZT that prolonged life. 

Looking back on the desperation that gay men felt about finding a way to live with the terror of an HIV diagnosis, I marvel at the response to today’s COVID-19 pandemic. The vaccine for COVID was developed in record time, yet more that 800,000 people in the US have died from the disease, a majority of these deaths due to a reluctance to be vaccinated. 

Many of those refusing to be vaccinated are refusing in the name of freedom. Does this not trivialize the concept of freedom? Throughout history, people have fought and died for freedom, but for a nobler idea than the freedom not to be vaccinated. People have fought to emerge from slavery, to be able to vote for those who will govern them, for equality, but does the “freedom” not to be vaccinated equate with those ideals? People who oppose vaccines, usually oppose anyone dictating what they do with their bodies. I could empathize with that sentiment, if it only affected them. But it doesn’t; it affects everyone. It is a global pandemic. It is ironic that often these self-proclaimed freedom fighters have no problem letting lawmakers dictate how and when and if women can have abortions, an emphatic assault on what we can do with our bodies, but cannot tolerate that a government can ask them to vaccinate for the good of society. (To come full cycle, it was Dr. Anthony Fauci who did much of the research into reining in HIV/AIDS and is also the leading spokesperson for preventing the spread of the COVID virus.)

The time before HIV/AIDS in San Francisco, as I remember it, was a carefree, witty, and liberating time.  HIV/AIDS turned San Francisco into a somber place.  We almost all knew someone touched by the HIV virus and like now, felt the presence of a malignancy that wasn’t confined just to the ailing. But HIV/AIDS united the gay community and propelled it in the direction of safety and solidarity.  Is it imaginable that COVID can do the same for us today?