THE AGE OF AIDS
I was at my doctors the other the day for my regular checkup and blood work and he and I were talking about advances in HIV meds.
The convo got around to what it was like living in New York in the 1980s — my doctor is 32 years old and I’ve had more friends die of AIDS than he’s had patients with AIDS {or HIV for that matter} in his entire career — and he was astonished when I was describing what it was like around 1988 or ‘89.
Back then you’d be out to dinner at a popular gay restaurant like Claire’s on 7th Avenue South or Trilogy on Christopher street and all the patrons meds beepers and alarms would start going off around the restaurant at about the same time.
And tables full of gay men would pull out their pill containers and start rooting through them for the dozen or more pills that they had to take with their dinner.
It wasn’t unusual to see an entire table of four, each with their pill containers in front of them, trying to figure out which of the meds they had to take.
Good times!
March 9th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Now you don’t see the meds, but more and more of us are taking them.
I worry that others’ not seeing them is contributing to a false sense of ‘it’s over’ in our community.
March 9th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
I really can’t imagine what it must have been like in those days. You and a few others bloggers sometimes tell stories, and they always make me want to cry. How you guys lived through it without going nuts, I don’t know.
March 9th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
Scott
I depend on your active and brilliant collection and curation of the news, politics and porn to keep me thinking and boning properly ( for an old country dude ). Thanks for devoting so much time and thought to one of the best, most stimulating, and right-on-bro political commentary that is available.
It is so rare to find an outspoken voice that I agree with whole heartedly. OK, maybe we differ on a few points but your eye is so clear and your heart and mind so connected, it is a pleasure to “know” you.
Thanks for all you do. It means a lot to me to know there is a brain out there who sees the truth and is not afraid to share.
Tim Heitzman
Longbranch, Washington
tim@heitzmancreative.com
March 10th, 2010 at 4:21 am
Bill, the saddest part of those days I remember were friends jumping on the rent controlled apartments that became available when other friends died. There was a scramble for choice apartments as people dropped like flies. A loss for some and a gain for others.
March 10th, 2010 at 4:27 am
I remember a whole local bar shut down because everyone who ran the bar was dead or sick and moving back home. It was that overwhelming. That was one of the reasons I joined the Navy in 88 believe it or not. I had all these friends in San Francisco and I could not take another funeral so I figured I could stay where I was and feel helpless or do something different.
With two generations of Army in the family “the different” part has always meant enlisting.
March 10th, 2010 at 5:22 am
And back then the sick often were turned away if they tried to go home. I managed a home in Lexington, KY that for years was packed with people with all those pills and no where to go but the clinic once a week! At least somethings in the public perception have changed for the better.
March 10th, 2010 at 6:22 am
Oh little Darlin’ but we did go nuts. My faves -(NYC) watching a friend wash two bulgin ziplock sandwich bags of pills down with a diet coke. – (Boston) boys being burned out from the inside by AZT megadoses.
March 10th, 2010 at 6:55 am
It ain’t over yet, and the heartache still arises.
March 10th, 2010 at 7:05 am
Most of Cherry Grove got bought by the lesbians during this time – for pennies, and a ton of properties turned over in the Pines, Provincetown and the West Village for that matter. Reading the obits to get a jump on real estate is a reality that knows no social bounderies. If you can get a cheap apartment -good for you. I’m pretty sure everyone one of those dead queens would have understood and not minded.
March 10th, 2010 at 9:22 am
It was a terrible time, God bless you guys for making it better for all of the human race. Just think now they want to put Ronald Reagan on the fifty dollar bill it makes my skin crawl. We all need to remember. Scott do you remember ACT UP. Do they still exist. I saw Larry Kramer on some show last week, and I think he was part of ACT UP he did not mention it.
March 10th, 2010 at 9:27 am
Larry, I was actually in Act Up {and I’ve still got the t-shirt}. In fact, it was Bill who got me to join.
Larry Kramer was its founder but he broke with it over policy disputes and went on to start Queer Nation with other Act Up members. Queer Nation was another, more militant if you can believe, direct action group.
March 10th, 2010 at 10:57 pm
A friend here said he had to explain what KS was to someone the other day. He wasn’t sure if that was a good sign that it’s so rare again or a bad sign that we’ve forgotten.
March 12th, 2010 at 3:08 am
It was surreal, to be sure, to have lived through those days and I wonder myself now how we ever managed it. I remember constantly examining myself for signs of KS lesions or swellings. Once I felt my groin area and thought I detected some sort of swelling that indicated the onset of the disease and fainted dead to the floor. It turned out to be nothing.
March 23rd, 2010 at 7:47 am
I still think back to ‘83 when one guy I knew (a hairdresser) suddenly got deathly ill and lost half his weight… the doctors said it was the chemicals at his salon… we figured it out a year later.
Lost a few dying friends in my arms… I still don’t know how I managed to get through the 80’s in NYC. My mantra remains “health is wealth”.