1983. HIV/AIDS: 1,112 and Counting
I want to make a point about what happens if we don’t get angry about AIDS. There are the obvious losses, of course: Little of what I’ve written about here is likely to be rectified with the speed necessary to help the growing number of victims. But something worse will happen, and is already happening. Increasingly, we are being blamed for AIDS, for this epidemic; we are being called its perpetrators, through our blood, through our “promiscuity,” through just being the gay men so much of the rest of the world has learned to hate. We can point out until we are blue in the face that we are not the cause of AIDS but its victims, that AIDS has landed among us first, as it could have landed among them first. But other frightened populations are going to drown out these truths by playing on the worst bigoted fears of the straight world, and send the status of gays right back to the Dark Ages. Not all Jews are blamed for Meyer Lansky, Rabbis Bergman and Kahane, or for money-lending. All Chinese aren’t blamed for the recent Seattle slaughters. But all gays are blamed for John Gacy, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, and AIDS.
Enough. I am told this is one of the longest articles the Native has ever run. I hope I have not been guilty of saying ineffectively in five thousand words what I could have said in five: we must fight to live.
I am angry and frustrated almost beyond the bound my skin and bones and body and brain can encompass. My sleep is tormented by nightmares and visions of lost friends, and my days are flooded by the tears of funerals and memorial services and seeing my sick friends. How many of us must die before all of us living fight back?
I know that unless I fight with every ounce of my energy I will hate myself. I hope, I pray, I implore you to feel the same.
I am going to close by doing what Dr. Ron Grossman did at GMHC’s second Open Forum last November at Julia Richman High School. He listed the names of the patients he had lost to AIDS. Here is a list of twenty dead men I knew:
Nick Rock
Rick Wellikoff
Jack Nau
Shelly
Donald Krintzman
Jerry Green
Michael Maletta
Paul Graham
Toby
Harry Blumenthal
Stephen Sperry
Brian O’Hara
Barry
David
Jeffrey Croland
Z.
David Jackson
Tony Rappa
Robert Christian
Ron Doud
And one more, who will be dead by the time these words appear in print.
If we don’t act immediately, then we face our approaching doom.
* * *
Kramer was enormously influential in the community, while not particularly loved. The article roused many, I’m sure. I remember sitting in a coffee house in L.A. absolutely floored by the raw emotion and honesty. I had been covering the outbreak with growing alarm for the gay radio collective at left-wing station KPFK. By the summer of 1982, just a year into our weekly coverage, our news team could already see that the epidemic was the most significant crisis the movement had ever faced, with no end in sight. Kramer helped frame the issue for the community in a way that cut through the BS. I know many, including prominent movement activists, felt he was sex-negative and shrill. Big personalities are hardly unknown in our community. Say what you will. Kramer happened to be right.