How and Why "Gay" Became "Queer" -- Fear

AIDS, Pandemic, Fear

All are aware of AIDS. Some have taken various stances towards it. Some of us give it lip service. Nearly all of us have feared it at one time or another. Some have even feared life itself, because of AIDS. Many have feared other men, and indeed, have come to fear the one thing most all of us want above all: Intimacy.

Fiction's Fact

No published work brought that fear to more powerful ignominy than the fantastic novel Lust written by Geoff Ryman in 2000. Readers that enjoy fantastic literature will find this novel to their liking, as its motifs parallel Adolfo Bioy Casares' delightful The Invention of Morel. (I enjoy South American fantastic fiction of the Borges and Casares kind).

The narrative I'm using is that of a HIV-neg man, who survived the AIDS pandemic's first wave, but now decades later he's literally paralyzed and impotent by fear. In one of the most viscerally grabbing moments, our protagonist Michael tells why he cannot even kiss another man, much less go beyond kissing. In Michael's head, kissing is the integral prelude to deeper human intimacy, but our protagonist cannot bring himself to kiss another man, not even his lover. As he ruminates (paraphrased):

We all brush our teeth before we go out on the hunt. Brushing teeth leads to bleeding gums. Bleeding gums leads to opening and sharing HIV, but HIV can be lethal. If I kiss, I am prone to die. Screw the "cocktail." I cannot kiss, much less, be intimate with any man -- not even my lover Henry.

Michael also has long been unable to get an erection. He also cannot be responsive to his long-term partner, a guy he tells us he "settled for" when fear of the alternatives in an AIDS-infested world told him to accept the safer option. His partner at the outset was safe. But Henry's intimacy needs are not being met by Michael's impotence and fear of contagion. So, Henry begins his liaisons with a plethora of men. In Michael's head, how is Michael to know if Henry has been "safe?" He can't be sure, because Michael has not been "safe" either, not that it matters since he's impotent.

Michael is somewhere between emotionally wrecked, mentally unbalanced, and psychotic. According to psychotic theory, Michael has begun to "imagine" he has special powers, by which he can evoke a camera-like double, wherein his doppelganger can act-out almost cinematically the real-life desires of Michael's physical, emotional, and mental yearnings. The doppelganger gets-off, but we're never very sure if our protagonist gets-off.

For my purposes, this fear is the apogee of the novel's conflict. Our character "came-out" in the pre-AIDS Sexual Seventies, went through the horrific AIDS Eighties, and now finds himself traumatized with fear everywhere he turns, looks, desires. After twenty years of being HIV-, he is still paralyzed by the chance he might become infected. Oh, he knows of the cocktails that can keep guys alive, some of whom still enjoy sex life. But, for whatever reasons, Michael cannot eliminate the pall of death hanging over himself, the loss of so many friends and strangers to a pandemic he escaped, and now to feelings of guilt that he survived the pandemic. Survive, perhaps; live, not yet.

Fear? Fear!

Anyone who was openly out and gay in the early 1980s has probably encountered the intense FEAR of the "gay plague" mysteriously taking our friends and lovers -- only a few every other week or so, then dozens every single day -- has experienced Michael's angst. Fear of the unknown. Fear that the unknown causes death. Fear that facing death is certain. Do I? Do you? What? How?

June 5, 1981, marks the inaugural of AIDS in the United States. May 1983, nearly two years later, was the first time French researchers isolated a pathogen, that Robert Gallo plagiarized and identified as HIV. May 1986, three years later, the discovery of the human immuno-deficiency retrovirus was unquestioned, and people's fear of the unknown became fear of what to do?

Within decade, scientists would proffer treatment for this nasty retroviral microbe, thanks to the generous funding of NIH and CDC by the Reagan Administration and French medical research, with no thanks to egoist Robert Gallo. But concurrently, a political movement was afoot, that surfaced initially in 1983, and became gangbusters by 1985: Quarantine. No mainstream scientist sanctioned such draconian measures, and certainly not Reagan's Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, but the Left's Fidel Castro had already quarantined all homosexuals, and many on the Right saw the totalitarian Cuban leader just the kind of leader they wanted from Reagan. Many behind the Iron and Bamboo Wall either approved or denied they had HIV.

The Community Acts

First Step. Within months, my junior account officer (straight, btw) was processing hundreds of "phone sex" merchants unbeknownst to me. (Hey, I have a beloved, and talking to someone over the phone for a sexual interlude never crossed my mind.) It was only when the merchant facilitator manager contacted me to ask if I wanted to "override" his decision to decline a merchant that I learned of this "new" activity. Well, let's just say I laughed at the notion when its was first presented to me. I stopped laughing when I saw summaries of the card charges come through account analysis. Guys spent a fortune calling an 800 telephone number, talking to an unknown caller, gets hot and bothered, and viola, orgasm occurs -- and a hefty charge posts to one's credit card?" We had nearly a thousand of said phone merchants by 1985.

Second Step. Bruce Silberman, C. Everett Koop, and Anthony Faucci approached some of us in the community "behind the scenes" to discuss "solutions" to the pandemic that had to come from us. The data was overwhelming, the conjectures well-reasoned, and the choices rather obvious: the bath houses were legion petri dishes for STDs; HIV had to have found the baths an equally suitable venue.

Third Step. As (our deceased porn-star neighbor) Al "Goldman" Parker let be known: Fetishism would replace human intimacy, as a form of "safe sex." As he and Falcon producer (also a neighbor) increasingly began to demonstrate -- a shift from homoeroticism to paraphilias seems to have become the AIDS-aware motif de jour. He gave us a copy of his VHS porn flick, "Rangers," which seemed to be the typically gay porn until the segment with Parker in it. (I don't even know if this film is still available.)

But Parker's "segment" is notable for a variety of reasons. Filmed in the lush environs of the Russian River area, Parker nice-looking face, chest, and waist is beset by the ugliest dick, and in the film "Rangers" has Parker tie-up his scrotum and penis so that some dude can "do" this "object." Beloved and I were aghast. Welcome to fetish. Welcome to FEAR. Welcome to the Queer response to the fear from AIDS.

Fear Becomes Fetish

We were forewarned that fetishism in the age of AIDS would be porn's "safe sex." Gone is nature. In are prisons. Gone are intimacy and affection. In are lots of objects and distance. We recall one flick in which Parker took a motorcycle handle up his butt (another "safe sex") surrounded by other guys in a circle jerk. Well. I concede all these acts constitute "safe." I remember one viewer in our midst's observing something to the effect, "I'd rather die than resort to that nonsense." I believe the comment was rhetorical, not literal, but you get the gist. Fear had begotten fetishism. Fetishism begot impersonal sexual activities without personal involvement -- just the equipment one needed gratified. And porn now shows it. Lots of distance, and connected, if at all, with protection. The "other" is just an "object" in the transaction.

Fear, Loathing, Withdrawal

Fear is an extraordinary factor in our lives. Recall the day of September 11, 2001. Not only the towering infernos crumbling to the ground, but a vacancy on the president's visage -- a country under attack and his instincts are to continue reading to school children -- Bush's blank stare into a psychotic twilight, Andy Card yanking his butt off-stage, and disbelief that here was the Leader of the free world. Fear al Qaeda? Fear the Idiot in Thief! I knew what was going on in New York and Arlington, what in the fuck was going on in Bush?

A country under attack in which its leader is nowhere to be found; in which a FAA official has to act in grounding air traffic, because our "leaders" were incognito. If you can recall that fear -- put that sustained sense of fear "on" for several years. An unknown event was causing "disbelief, consternation, anxiety, incredulity, paranoia, and death. Without permission, I am sharing Les Wright's description of the sense of AIDS at its earliest cognizance, since he has captured the PANIC as well as anyone:

AIDS and Fear

San Francisco, 1980.

I first heard the rumors from my roommate "Big" Jim. Jim worked as a clerk at Dino's Liquors, on Eighteenth Street just above Castro, and thus caught all the gossip on the street. He said guys were coming into the store talking about some sort of weird "gay cancer."

Word spread like wildfire. Most men in the Castro responded with disbelief, incredulity mixed with paranoia, followed by only half-believed words of reassurance, as much to themselves as to each other. This was clearly someone's bad idea of spoiling the party that was Castro Street in those days. How could there be a gay cancer? Is this supposed to be proof of homosexual decadence? Is it a government plot? Who is making this crap up?

The unnerving part was that the rumors did not go away.

And then there were people we actually knew who got sick one day, ghastly, horribly sick, and were dead in two weeks. This was no paranoid fantasy or baseless, vicious rumor. We started to freak out, big time.

Looking back 25 years, I remember the gradual rise in the atmosphere of fear and anxiety, of horror, of "there is no escape." Life in the Castro in the early 1980s was like a dystopic sci-fi movie. Something truly monstrous had arrived, and every day meant getting up and facing the nightmare all over again.

I remember the relentlessness of it. I remember the sheer terror and confusion, the uncertainty. I remember people arguing about whether you got "it" through kissing or breathing the air, using someone else's toothbrush, whether we all needed to stop having sex now. I remember the anguished struggle of men trying to stop having sex and failing. I remember other men who stopped having sex, holed up and never came out. I remember the street party that was Castro Street 24/7 evaporating overnight. Castro became a ghost town.

I was having lots of sex, with lots of men. As a neighborhood T-shirt put it, "So many men, so little time." (Little did we know what a cosmically dark joke that would turn out to be.) Men I had had sex with--no one "dated" in those days--suddenly turned up dead. Phone calls went unanswered; someone who knew the man I had tricked with the weekend before would pass on the news. Big Jim would come home from the liquor store each day with a list of names, men he'd heard had died.

Both of my roommates of that time, "Big" Jim and "Little" Jim, eventually died of AIDS. I would go on to have another 42 roommates over the next four years in that house, and nearly all of them are now dead, mostly from AIDS-related causes. At least two downstairs neighbors also died of AIDS, including one whose fundamentalist parents showed up from the Midwest to deal with a very sick and berserk, drug-addicted little boy. Our landlord also died from AIDS.

In the middle of this horror I got sober. That had nothing to do with AIDS. That had to do with a seriously declining trajectory, with binges that were lasting several days at a time. It had to do with my realizing I was going to die, within months if not weeks, if I did not stop drinking.

In the deepest trough of that first wave of AIDS, some guys actually thought giving up drugs and alcohol would save them. Because maybe the "gay lifestyle"--staying up all night on drugs, having countless sex partners at the bath houses, doing poppers on the dance floor every night--was causing AIDS. All of a sudden, gay AA, a fairly small undertaking, exploded, and gay men started showing up in hordes, getting sober to stay alive, using sobriety almost as a talisman to ward off AIDS.

There was a lot of sharing in the meetings about AIDS--and a lot of angry debate over whether AA was the proper place to discuss this "outside" issue. Of course the sharing went on, and I found community, commonality, and support with my fellow recovering drunks and addicts. We all talked about our fears of AIDS, every single day. And we talked about our grief, the loss of one friend after another. We talked about being so totally overwhelmed by the immensity of our losses, which continued to grow. We talked about surviving and staying sane and not picking up the next drink--even as we despaired that there would ever be a day when everyone was no longer dying of AIDS. It was horrible beyond description to live through. Imagine everyone you know, your entire community--your generation, your culture, your gay "civilization"--getting sick and dying.

All of this happened while Ronald Reagan was still refusing to even say the word AIDS. By the time he did, in 1985, it seemed nearly everyone I knew had died or was sick. The gay AIDS epidemic had destroyed my world, and straight America was still completely clueless. AIDS was just some weird shit happening to nasty people, who probably deserved it. We had become unmentionable, our existence denied, the horror of our daily life something we would do better to keep silent about.

I have photos of the group of guys I went through alcoholism treatment with. All of them--Dennis, Mark, Charlie, Rick, Dan--are now dead, all of AIDS. The only survivors are myself and our counselor, John Beeman, who retired to Sonoma County in the 1990s. Most of the friends I ran around with in early sobriety, my boyfriends and my boyfriends' exes, died from AIDS.

Dino's had closed by 1982, but "Big Jim" was known throughout the Castro. The fact of the matter is that AIDS consciousness did not begin as starkly as Les suggests in 1980 -- it was not until 1983, actually. Oh, there had been "buzz" in the press and on the streets, and one of the first AIDS casualties was a colleague who worked in Hibernia's private banking trust division. By 1984, AIDS was a lethal presence in every gay man's consciousness.

Fear, Uncertainty, Confusion

As of May, 1983, my staff was so despondent from consoling our customers, friends, families, and others over the deaths from AIDS. My friend and client Richard Jongordon responded by opening a Neptune Society cremation service (people forget funeral homes would not bury us). I roped my company's personnel into grief counseling -- first, for my own employees, and then second, for them to counsel the community who did business with us. I know of no other major company to act in this manner. The pall of death, the loss of friends, the fear had a name, it was called AIDS.

Fear and Hate Exponentially

Our community tends to forget the tremendous pressure being pressed on the Reagan Administration to quarantine anyone suspect of this pandemic (as Fidel Castro had already done in Cuba), and thus President Reagan's "silence" (unbeknownst to most of the Larry Kramer Queers) was deliberate calculation on the part of the Administration to juxtapose two despised antagonists. (Weinberger, Schultz, and most of the Administration were "gay" aware, even if Kramer was not. Charlotte and Nancy are friends of Dorothy.)

There were many times I wanted so much to let my friend Randy Shilts know of the "behind the scenes," but FEAR was overflowing in spades.

Randy's And the Band Played On remains an extraordinary testament to one man's conviction to truth. Randy began his career as a journalist on KQED's "Newsroom," the youngest gay man to tell the truth about Vietnam in the Sixties. (I was a young teen when I began watching him.) The DeYoung's of the Chronicle prized Randy's abilities, as they had for Armistead's Tales of the City, and both repaid their confidants in spades (DeYoungs and Tobins are interconnected). Recently, I heard some revisionist queen on LOGO claim Randy's alerts were immediately accepted by the gay community. Bullshit. LOGO, fact check. Randy was given more grief by the bathhouse queers because their cock-sucking and ass-fucking on demand was their entitlement -- for FOUR YEARS -- until public health demanded our response.

Gay Drama? Queer Fear?

Larry Kramer, one of the first Queers (and of the class above), was the epitome of the "faggot" that many of us had come to loathe. Such a self-absorbed sexually-addicted hypocrite, whose self-interest spread the contagion in NYC's bathhouses, while demanding answers to the unknown questions and answers of a worldwide pandemic, proved to be useful to the Administration. Since Kramer was famous for a few pathetic Hollywood scripts, and a terrible novel, the "B-Actor's" team used Kramer as their FOIL (since it was easy), since he was, and continues to be, such a loathsome character -- even to the gay community.

But the FEAR was palpable on every side. Gay men had no clue as to this disease. The Bath Queens just learned of Kramer demanding unfettered spread of the contagion, while demanding "someone" solve it. What we learned only made us more confused. We lacked leadership everywhere we turned. We simply wanted answers, and there were none. Dianne Feinstein, running for re-election (and Mondale's vice president), could not commit, especially since she persuaded Democrats to hold their convention in the underground hell-hole of Moscone Center (at least the street holes got filled that summer).

When Gay Lost Its Moorings

At a dinner party in 1984, our guests offered all sorts of "theories" about this "gay plague," none of which was consistent. Three gay physicians could not pin down this disease that bubbled in the recesses of the gay community (or as we'd soon discover, in those who frequented the baths predominately). Two public health officials raised the "problem" of the bathhouses -- those filthy dark sex clubs where self-loathing homosexual men meet to have anonymous sex without questions or respect for anyone. The places one finds Larry Kramer and his ACT-UP crowd.

Except: Bruce Silberman (an angel), Anthony Faucci, and C. Everett Koop (the only Evangelical I've met with a heart and a mind) worked with the gay community in averting quarantine. With quarantine being demanded on the Right, with the Left's Fidel having already quarantined gays in Cuba, with unfettered sexual abandon being demanded by Kramer and his Bathhouse Queers in La-La Land, somebody needed to find the middle ground.

We Cannot Live in Fear

Fear. I repeat was ubiquitous. Fear, is what one does when the world ignores one's questions. Fear is what One's eyes refuse to see, when the obvious happens without explanation. Fear happens when obituaries are inexplicable, when the Quilt goes on and on, and answers are not to be found. Fear, is what people in despair hold onto, when they have nothing. It's how Queers morph into Queers from gay antecedents. Fear is the blanket elixir that clouds all peronal intimacy and earnest desire for another.

I'm still troubled by Reagan choosing silence as his anti-quarantine strategy, but given the Falwells and their right wing demands for fenced-off quarantines and pink triangles, vis-a-vis the Larry Kramers who wanted irresponsible sex on demand without responsibility, calmer heads worked within the community as these two actors staged a diversionary show. Unfortunately, the Queers demonstrated an approach that they could not lose. Self-destruction.

The Pink Elephant Was RED

Not before, since, or after 9/11, have I seen more people frozen by anger, then by fear. Fear of intimacy. Fear of its lethal consequences. Fear even to kiss -- especially to kiss a guy on lips of a just-freshly brushed mouth. That microbe known as HIV1 and HIV2 may not be visible to the naked eye, but its presence occupies center stage when any two guys meet. Latex covers the penis. Kissing on the lips is forfeited. Dildos will have to be the substitute -- even dildos with condoms over them. Strawberry-flavored condoms for fellatio. And the least amount of contact the "safer." So safe, it's not quite worth getting aroused for. So feared, it's good that one cannot be aroused and tempted.

Life Feared to Death: Loss of Reason

Rather than become acquainted with the facts of HIV transmission, rather than develop techniques by which to incorporate safe-sex into homoeroticism, too many men chose the queer route.

(1) Bug-chasers. Deliberately become infected and get it "over with." Fatalistic that one will become infected anyway, just become infected and be done with it.
(2) Drug Denial. Instead of cocktails, take several hits of crystal meth, all your censors and good judgments are negated, and now you can invite the whole orgy room to test-drive your butt without protection and dribble cum all over one's body, and hope to gawd the critter finds its way to infection.
(3) Anxious ridden user. The anxiety over becoming infected is so great, arousal is met with fear's impotence -- so a little uninihibiting agent is used, until more is needed, until all caution is tossed to the winds.
(4) Don't Ask, Don't Tell. If neither knows, no one will know. It works for the government, maybe it will work for us.
(5) Serosorting. In negotiating the tryst, the status arises (poz/neg) and based on what one is told, one sorts to a go or to a no-go. Oops! He lied. (Oops. I lied.) Oops. It's been three months since my last test, and a lot of guys have passed my way.
(6) Dare the microbe. Several couples "dare" to become infected, confident that their bodies are "unique" and "immune" from ordinary microbiological assault. One boasts he got syphilis and gonorhea in a year, but was still negative -- evidence his body is naturally immune from HIV infection.
(7) Obsess over objects, use surrogates, avoid intimacy, become a fetisher, enter fisting, enter sado-masochism, circle-jerks, glory holes, or take motorcycle handlebars up the ass.

Fear Deadens, AIDS Kills

All of these responses to the fear of HIV infection are less than ideal strategies, frankly. But to know that, one has to read about it, not listen to your "acquaintance" who has the latest dirt. Why not stop the fear and face the known facts: San Francisco's AIDS Foundation and many other organizations offer suggestions.

Unsafe sex has a high risk of spreading HIV. The greatest risk is when blood or sexual fluid touches the soft, moist areas (mucous membrane) inside the rectum, vagina, mouth, nose, or at the tip of the penis. These can be damaged easily, which gives HIV a way to get into the body. Vaginal or rectal intercourse without protection is very unsafe.

Our protagonist Michael in the novel Lust [supra.] has suffered impotence and denied himself kissing and intimacy and a lover because he falsely assumed that saliva and brushing teeth was a "sure way" to infection. But those who have become fearful have responded in the Queer way -- denial or fabricate mythological alternatives. Gay men have recognized that SCIENCE, not the myth purveyors, are the best resource for reliable health and safe behavior. One need not be transgressive at all, just educated about nature and its kindred and not-so kindred critters. Then, and only then, can others be more than an object of lust and fear -- but a person of extraordinary intimacy, pleasure, and joy. A "little knowledge" can lead to bad decisions and worse outcomes.

The Solution: Get Intimate

Here it is almost 30 years later, and we have anti-retrovirals. They'll keep individuals alive, but the quality of life is sure to deteriorate. We also have the HPV vaccine, which every sexually-active individual should receive before becoming active (it's too late after infection). Homoerotic intimacy remains extraordinary, and no individual should deprive himself of one of life's central pleasures for "irrational fear." But this does mean we act prudently. Using a condom for anal intercourse is absolutely requisite (until you and a beloved become solid). Anytime you, your beloved, or other parties "dalliance," the promise we make is to "slip on, rather than slip up." A lifetime of HIV simply is not worth the alternative.

Oral sex can and does transmit HIV, although it is statistically far less of a risk than anal intercourse. Any fluids (including pre-cum and cum) that enters a "moist, warm, dark environment" is potentially infective. If one has bleeding gums or poor dental integrity, your risks escalate significantly. The best option is initially -- at least -- not take cum and pre-cum into your mouth with "trysts." And, for heaven's sake, DON'T brush your teeth before oral homoeroticism (fellatio).

Finally, the practice of anilingus ("rimming") has never been healthy, and can cause serious, although rarely fatal, disease. If YOU must eat ass, be sure it has been washed thoroughly after defecation with either Hibiclens or Betadine (according to instructions; usually two minutes). Never take a cock into the mouth that just came from the ass. The ass is delightful, but respect it, and it will respect you. Lastly, some men develop hemmeroids; if so, "rimming" is forbidden, as not only STDs, enteric disorders, hepatitis, but also HIV lurk.

Now that we have the "science" to correct any confusion, wrap it up, and enjoy homoerotic intimacy. It's what we're made for.