I obviously experienced nothing of it, but I can recommend Colm Toibin's Story of the Night as an excellent work from the era. It got nommed for the Booker Prize, and is the best published novel or story I've read that deals explicitly with gays and gayness in modernity. Just thought I'd drop a note here. Your stories, btw, are a great read, at least what I've read so far.

Your stories, btw, are a great read, at least what I've read so far.

Well thank you very much. So are yours, which makes your compliment that much better!

It is certainly interesting reading a story like "Man in Motion," because it takes place right around the same time I was born.

Don't hit me, I'm going somewhere with that.

To people of Brad's, Stephen's, and JP's age group from what I've read it was like a slap out of nowhere. To my age group and the people a bit older (the tail end of Generation X), it was more the Sword of Damocles. Growing up we knew it wasn't a gay only disease, but there was still the warning given by our parents and teachers that having sex can kill you, and that gay sex specifically WILL kill you. I remember in high school there was this day when a couple AIDS patients came in to speak with my class. Both were Gay males in their thirties, probably the first time any of us had met an openly homosexual person face to face, and they both had the soft bruise like lesions we'd come to associate with AIDS. Even the one who said, "You know, I never really cared for the sex. I'm gay, yes, but it was more than sex to me, which makes me getting this disease even more ironic" seemed to be reinforcing the idea that Gay sex = death.

Of course, we all got over that, but I look at stories from the "plague years," I look at the world today, and I wonder, without AIDS, would homosexuality have come out of the closet? It seems to me that this disease, more than anything, brought the fact that there were Gay men among us home to every household. It, for a while at least, slowed the orgies and promiscuity, and made the idea of couples lasting for decades not so far fetched. That a Gay married couple might actually work. I realize that these trends were already happening, that it was always a matter of when, not if, but I study the history of the late 80's and television from the 90's and you can see that "someday" becoming "now."

I'm not trying to say that AIDS is a good thing. It did, however, have farther reaching consequences than just widespread availability of condoms, and you already seem to be addressing that in your story.

Off the top of my head, the closing chapters of "Sea Change," Almost Like Being in Love, and A Boy I Once Knew all have stories about the advent of AIDS and its effects on Gay society.

It is certainly interesting reading a story like "Man in Motion," because it takes place right around the same time I was born.

 

Don't hit me, I'm going somewhere with that.

 

To people of Brad's, Stephen's, and JP's age group from what I've read it was like a slap out of nowhere. To my age group and the people a bit older (the tail end of Generation X), it was more the Sword of Damocles. Growing up we knew it wasn't a gay only disease, but there was still the warning given by our parents and teachers that having sex can kill you, and that gay sex specifically WILL kill you. I remember in high school there was this day when a couple AIDS patients came in to speak with my class. Both were Gay males in their thirties, probably the first time any of us had met an openly homosexual person face to face, and they both had the soft bruise like lesions we'd come to associate with AIDS. Even the one who said, "You know, I never really cared for the sex. I'm gay, yes, but it was more than sex to me, which makes me getting this disease even more ironic" seemed to be reinforcing the idea that Gay sex = death.

 

Of course, we all got over that, but I look at stories from the "plague years," I look at the world today, and I wonder, without AIDS, would homosexuality have come out of the closet? It seems to me that this disease, more than anything, brought the fact that there were Gay men among us home to every household. It, for a while at least, slowed the orgies and promiscuity, and made the idea of couples lasting for decades not so far fetched. That a Gay married couple might actually work. I realize that these trends were already happening, that it was always a matter of when, not if, but I study the history of the late 80's and television from the 90's and you can see that "someday" becoming "now."

 

I'm not trying to say that AIDS is a good thing. It did, however, have farther reaching consequences than just widespread availability of condoms, and you already seem to be addressing that in your story.

 

Off the top of my head, the closing chapters of "Sea Change," Almost Like Being in Love, and A Boy I Once Knew all have stories about the advent of AIDS and its effects on Gay society.

Very insightful comments.

I guess I always viewed AIDS as a real setback, because the disease was seen as a gay plague, and gay men were seen by some as being responsible for its onslaught and the havoc it wreaked.

I assumed that without it, acceptance of homosexuality would have been easier, that people would say "who does it really hurt?" So what if Joey takes it up the ass? Does it really hurt me? I think AIDS gave those people a reason to say "yes, it could hurt me," and to give their bigotry a different drum to bang.

But maybe that's wrong. Maybe the compassion and suffering, and the publicity, aroused public sympathy.

I don't know. Gotta think about that one.

I assumed that without it, acceptance of homosexuality would have been easier, that people would say "who does it really hurt?" So what if Joey takes it up the ass? Does it really hurt me? I think AIDS gave those people a reason to say "yes, it could hurt me," and to give their bigotry a different drum to bang.

I believe this to be true, although it was hard for me but on a whole the gay commuinity possibly would have been farther in conquest for equal rights if it was not for the devastation of AIDS in our culture. Gay men were the scapegoats for the reasoning this disease became such a horror. Our society has still has not forgiven gays for the loss and suffering that AIDS has inflicted on us and the world.

I turned 18 about the same time I first heard of GRID and gay cancer.

As a person who was interested in and studying the sciences, I followed the story very carefully. I knew that by the way people were f-ing around, if it was a contagious virus, we were in big trouble.

The scientests didn't know what it was. We heard all sorts of stories like it was caused by poppers, the interaction of syphylus and herpes, drugs or even just the plain old wrath of God and the end of the world was at hand. It looked like a virus but it took them years to isolate it.

Here in Mississippi many gay people more or less ignored it until it was too late. It was a long way to San Fransisco to New York. I believed that if we didn't change the way things were we were in for a lot of trouble. In fact, when I asked my long term boyfriend to be monomogous, it broke us up.

When I told people I only do safe sex they looked at me like I was crazy.

Then it hit like an atomic bomb in the late eighties. You would quit seeing someone around and then they would pop up in the obituary page in a month or two.

Was it that many? Gay people usually hit the border running when they turn 18 in Mississippi. The community that stays behind generally knows a good many others. Maybe its because I knew so many it seems like it was so damn many.

Every year it got a little worse. The worst year: 1996. People that had been hanging on on the old drugs were running out of time. The drug cocktails were still in trials. I lost my best friend, love of my life and several other friends. It was a real shitty year.

Thinking about it- late at night when I'm wondering how I won the lottery and am still alive, was what I wrote the following.

___________________________________________

1996

I have seen the fire

Destroying everything in it path

In its blazing wrath

I have seen the fire

Bringing terror as its might

As it consumes the night

I have seen the fire

Slaying friends and lovers

Strangers and brothers

I have seen the fire.

Out of control consumning souls

Hell on earth a mass funeral pyre

I have been burned by the fire

With scars that don't show

The loss it still burns and stings

Friends and lovers I can not replace

I am haunted by their familiar faces

ashes and memories that I hold dear

Are all thats left of those times and places

I have seen the fire and the funeral pyre

When I saw the lights go out on my generation

And horror and confusion gripped the nation

Consumed in a viral conflagration

I look to my right and look to my left

at the lonely, empty spaces

I walk where we walked and talk where we talked

in the lonely empty places

and wonder to my self why am I still here

the smoke it still stings my eyes

Someone must be left to remember

The year that innocence died.

Beautiful, dark, and intense James. Just like you.

you are 45, that means you were about 20 in 1984. Shouldn't I suppose you have some memories about the first years of AIDS ?

I haven't read till now "Man in Motion" but I will.

"How green was my valley".... No AIDS but Peace and Love till 1984 ! No fear, no condom, no bad memories during the first 50 years of my life !

Later, with 2 bis and 1 gay in my family, and with a gay son active since 1984 in fighting for the gay rights, with me backing him, my experiences about AIDS in Switzerland and around cannt be compared with what your characters had to endure in the States in the same years.

We were aware of the necessity to protect ourselves, we helped and sustained seropositive friends, and fortunately AZT and other medicaments came soon on the market. I was myself well introduced in medical circles (as a former manager of a clinic) and was well informed of the new means to cure AIDS. My son was a leading member of one of the first gay organisation in Switzerland to support gay AIDS-patients. So, apparently, we knew how to behave and nothing could happen.

Unfortunately, my daughter, travelling a lot, in different countries and with different partners, didnt care enough and got AIDS somewhere between Spain and Argentina. So AIDS becam a part of our family. She was well cured, lived with us her fight against the plague during 19 years, but gave away at the end and died 2003.

So my experiences went up and down. I could summarize them with an advice, to you and your characters : protect yourself, choose well your partners, check regularly, and if it happens, use all the means as quickly as possible to control your health.

And another important point : never fear, life is still wonderful.

James,

Your poem moved me deeply, and I appreciate all of the comments shared by others as well. This is not an easy subject. I came out in the 80's when I was in my late 20's. I was euphoric about coming out and finding a whole gay world of friends waiting for me after years of loneliness and fear, and then I was devastated as I watched many of these people die. I watched my first boyfriend (who had been thrown out of the house at age 16 by his father for being gay) as he seemed to age decades in a few months and then die. Like many young gay men of that period, I became an activist and made community action a big part of my life for years. We can never know how gay rights would have progressed without AIDS, but I know that many were moved to come out and fight for gay rights and AIDS victims because of what this disease was doing to our community. We simply had to do something - it was too horrible to watch and do nothing. We felt that this was a cause so important that our jobs and family relationships could be sacrificed if that was what it would take to get treatment and acceptance for our friends and ourselves as we grieved.

I like to think that the advancement of gay rights was accelerated by our reaction to AIDS, by so many people coming out and destroying stereotypes, but maybe I just think that so that all of my friends' deaths will have some meaning. No way to know. I wondered how I would react to this issue after so many years, and I think I am actually finding it therapeutic to revisit the pain and anger, and to remember the determination that came from those feelings. It is part of our community, and me, and it shaped who we are today.