It’s an indication of my ignorance of the gay world at that time that I arrived in San Francisco two days after the Lesbian/Gay Freedom Day Parade.

Tens of thousands of out-and-proud fags and dykes partying on the streets – and I got there just in time for the hangover!

Nonetheless just being in gay Mecca was enough for me; there was nowhere in the UK that was even half as upfront and unapologetic as this place. (Although it’s very hard to look worldly and urbane when you’re standing on Castro Street gawping at the unending stream of gay men!)

It seems so trite now but for this smalltown, early 80’s gay boy the sight of seemingly endless gay enterprises – bookstores, bars, shops, clubs, cafes, newspapers, magazines, postcards, posters – was just affirming beyond belief.

Of course, as the days rolled on, I grew increasingly aware of another element of San Fran gay life – the emerging AIDS crisis. I was already aware of AIDS before I got here; there had been various articles in the UK gay and ‘quality’ papers about AIDS and also ‘the gay cancer’.  I’d even written my first article about it for my local gay rag, Gay East Midlands.

But like every other aspect of gay life in the UK at that time, it remained largely out of sight: something that happened somewhere else. And now I was in that ‘somewhere else’ where it was happening.

People were either talking about it or – presumably out of fear of the unknown – trying to trivialise it. Walking through the Castro one night we passed a group of young, drunken guys horsing around. One of them climbed atop a bus shelter and pretended to start pissing on his friends. “Look out – she’s got AIDS!” one of his friends screeched with mock hysteria.

At the other end of the spectrum, the fear was also generating a number of conspiracy theories. I regularly came across one sticker in the Castro area declaring, “It’s not your lifestyle: AIDS comes from a government lab!”

Another poster claiming an AIDS conspiracy. Photograph copyright Jerry Pritikin. Used with permission.

Unsurprisingly, it was also in the Castro that I got my first ‘serious’ information about AIDS.  As I walked down the street with my friend Rena one Saturday afternoon a well-dressed guy smiled at me and handed me a bright-orange leaflet. The cover read, “Can We Talk?”.

I smiled politely and refused it: I really wasn’t interested in evangelical Christian propaganda, Castro Street or not!

Thankfully, Rena took a copy then thrust it at me. “I think this is for you, not me!” she asserted.