AIDS at 30: this gets personal

Living in New York City in the 1980s, at once exhilarating, slowly became exhausting as friend after friend slowly succumbed to a series of horrible diseases and died.

Arriving to the eastern shores of New York City in 1980, I was given a sentimental journey by  a friend showed who showed me around the Brambles in Central Park, the piers down in the West Village, the Gaiety in midtown, The Anvil in the meat packing district—this was New York City at its wildest, with the shadowy figure of men in bushes, on delicate planks of wood, this was New York City before the storm. Fresh from the last vestiges of disco, the gay community was alive and well in 1980. By the next year, mostly through the reporting in the New York Native newspaper, weekly reports of young men succumbing to strange diseases became rampant.

It’s hard to imagine but this was a time when there was so much uncertainty that every itch, blemish, bump or sore throat was certain to lead to the grave. “You lost weight” was no longer a desired observation but a hint at your medical condition.

Certain habits were created that have remained: a daily inspection of the obituaries. In that first decade, there would usually be three or four death notices, and as it was Manhattan, a small island, so it was probable to know some of the dead and dying. As a gay man it was certain. So, when it came to close friends becoming ill, there was a stage of bewilderment and disbelief. In the 80s, there was so little information that had any certainty: kissing, that simplest and sexiest of acts was on the list of possible ways of contagion. Friends would rally. We formulated a schedule so that our friend was never alone. He was diagnosed with dementia. One evening when I arrived he shit all over himself and did not know to clean it up. I recall that I looked at my friend who was attending him and we both were embarrassed not just for our friend, but for ourselves, we hardly knew how to handle a situation like this.

Death was the easy part, dying required some greater human skill: belief. Talking to a friend who had recently been diagnosed, at age 24, he was telling me he was OK with it, he had lived a good life, he was ready. People would disappear, phones lines disconnected, only be to be found in the obituaries, often on different coasts. And it did feel like it was New York City plague, though we all understood that San Francisco was being equally demolished. Los Angeles, often visited during this time always seemed liked a city on holiday: they didn’t know what I was talking about.  It was further evidence that Los Angeles was not a city, but a landscape.

At some point, things manifested. Small white lesions in my mouth sent me to the bookstore looking up something called Thrush. A visit to the dentist only sent me packing to an oral surgeon, who cut away a slice of mouth and sent it to the laboratory. In the week that I waited I lost weight. I knew it had finally come to me; it was my turn to die. It was 1988 and I was picking out coffins.

In March of that year, Nancy Reagan, then the first lady had undergone a similar procedure and the diagnosis was something call actinic keratosis. The white spots were not Thrush, but the experience was enough to send me away from Manhattan.  Leaving the small studio apartment in the West Village, I said good by to one of the most romantic places on earth, but it had turned ripe with disease, hospital visits and most of all, fear.