How On Earth Did Us Gay Guys Survive the Late 70's and Early 80's?!

[D_CountdeGrandePinja]

Was fortunate to be in relationship from '82-'88 - just the two of us.

Got to get the message to the young & the restless - BE SAFE!

 

[invisibleman]

I was a kid in the seventies and a teen in the eighties. And I was in a totally different mind set and mental space then. I was a Christian.

 

[Deno]

Keeping my mouth shut as well as my pants.

 

[midlifebear]

Nice post, Mr. Bbucko.

 

[Drifterwood]

Our love is the epitaph.

 

[Bbucko]

Jesus Christ. I hope all of lpsg is reading this, Bbucko. Yours, ours, is a history people are all too quickly forgetting.

Thank you.

You're welcome, sweetheart. Sometimes writing is like passing a kidney stone, sometimes more like an exceptionally good orgasm. This was somewhere in between.

Bbucko: I love your unadorned, plain-spoken writing style. I could place myself into your narrative, the prose is so evocative (like a documentary, it matter-of-factly unfolds). I could also do this with Randy Shilts' "And the Band Played On", and the HBO docudrama-like independent film "Longtime Companion".

When I write about my past, I access the part of my brain where it's stored and relive it while typing it all out. I think that accounts for the "you are there" quality people describe. I am much too close to the material to have it not affect me that way, but I'm always glad to hear that it translates.

Watching Longtime Companion was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. That final scene, where all the lost friends are reunited at a beach party still hits me in the gut. Of all the Hollywood AIDS vehicles, that one remains the best, though Angels In America is a close second.

I always preferred So Many Men, So Little Time to It's Raining Men, but that's just me. I guess I'm just that slutty :wink:

Honestly, I am a much bigger fan of the earlier stuff, like Jackie Moore or Linda Clifford. And the disco movie Thank God It's Friday came out in 1978.

Nice post, Mr. Bbucko.

Thank you, amigo mio.

Our love is the epitaph.

I try to remind myself that everything's for naught if I cannot continue to keep myself open to the possibility of new love in my life. In that regard, I'm pretty reckless. But keeping your heart from closing is a whole lotta work.

It's not by cocooning that we live our lives most fully. It's by taking the risks required to always embrace the new high-risk/high-reward possibilities that come your way.

A long boring life is like living in a mansion with three rooms of furniture: wasted potential and lots of emptiness.

As Chrissie Hynde wrote:

A wish is a shot in the dark
When your coin's down the well.

<sigh> We need a little X right about now just to keep the anarchy going.

 

[Meniscus]

Hells, Nick, Bbucko...thanks for sharing your stories.

I'm young enough to have missed everything you described, but old enough to remember the early days of the AIDS crisis. As I've said elsewhere, I hit puberty in 1984, so I was becoming aware of my sexuality about the same time AIDS was getting a lot of attention on TV. It seems like it was a frequent topic on the late afternoon talk shows (Oprah, Donahue) and made for TV movies (An Early Frost). As badly as I wanted sex, as much as I fantasized about it and longed for it, ached for it, I was too terrified to actually have it.

These may be the stupidest words I've ever written (can I get away with blaming the martini?), but in a way, I envy you guys. I envy you because you have lived.

I've never really lived, and I feel like it's too late to start. I can't be 20 again. I can't even be 30 again.

It's not by cocooning that we live our lives most fully. It's by taking the risks required to always embrace the new high-risk/high-reward possibilities that come your way.

A long boring life is like living in a mansion with three rooms of furniture: wasted potential and lots of emptiness.

I can't agree with you more...because that is the life I have lived and its the only future I see.

I am reminded of a poem I wrote in college. Please forgive the digression.

Fairies dancing pretty and quick
They delight in innocent obscenity.
I am but a man
And my life is dull and frigid.​

I'm not sure this post is a worthwhile contribution to this thread, so I'll shut up now, and close with a quote that I think you might like.

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is
everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical
about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking
everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you
risk even more." --Erica Jong

 

[2322]

Meniscus, my good man, if I can start living at your age, then you can too. I even know a guy in his 70s who finally came out after his wife died and is just now feeling as if he's starting life for real.

It took a mid-life crisis for me to come to terms with myself and even if I only have had, or will have, a few years of freedom, it's worth it. Don't squander the time you do have. Please don't.

 

[Bbucko]

Hells, Nick, Bbucko...thanks for sharing your stories.

I'm young enough to have missed everything you described, but old enough to remember the early days of the AIDS crisis. As I've said elsewhere, I hit puberty in 1984, so I was becoming aware of my sexuality about the same time AIDS was getting a lot of attention on TV. It seems like it was a frequent topic on the late afternoon talk shows (Oprah, Donahue) and made for TV movies (An Early Frost). As badly as I wanted sex, as much as I fantasized about it and longed for it, ached for it, I was too terrified to actually have it.

These may be the stupidest words I've ever written (can I get away with blaming the martini?), but in a way, I envy you guys. I envy you because you have lived.

It's not stupid, my friend. But it's easy to glamorize the actual day-to-day, gritty experience of living so hard, reckless and dangerous a life. I kept my writing style here as terse as possible to try and prevent that. The actual experiences were a horror, made worse because of the malignant neglect on the part of public health officials.

The beginning of the AIDS epidemic coincided with two other public health emergencies: Toxic Shock Syndrome and Legionnaire's Disease. They both received immediate blanket media coverage and fast government response. In comparison, I learned about AIDS (it was first called The Gay Cancer, then GRID: gay-related immunodeficiency disease) through an informal but very effective word-of-mouth network in December 1980. One of Larry's friends in Los Angeles worked as a nurse and told us all about it in a Christmas phone call.

By the time it was even mentioned in the papers (forget TV), it was already a spreading killer. By the time harm-reduction hysteria swept everywhere, hundreds of thousands of people were already infected. FWIW, there were no blood tests of HIV (it was called HTLV3) until 1984, at least none that I was aware of. Similarly, I learned about AZT chatting with a guy in Ty's on Christopher Street in January 1988. In the days before the internet, information passed through very different channels (though it was often of a better quality).

Because I had so many friends coping with HIV/AIDS, I learned early on that monotherapy AZT wasn't going to save anyone's life. In fact, nearly all of the long-term survivors in the US and Europe never had to go through that horror. When JM was failing, he was given a trial of DDI which was brand brand new in 1991. It was delivered in foil packages that were mixed with water or juice and was nasty smelling. Drops ffrom his glass or from the bottom of the mixing spoon ate all the lacquer finish off our coffee table.

It wasn't until 1996 that Protese Inhibitors came online and the "cocktail" concept was introduced that lives started really changing. Treatment has been greatly simplified since then, and many of the nastier medications have been retired. But I was on a variety of meds from 1996 until 2005 that are known to cause debilitating side-effects. My face is totally different now because of the wasting caused by Zerit, AZT and 3Tc, and I coped with explosive diahrea for over ten years that left me dehydrated and really fatigued.

I also experience brainfog, which is the result of a deterioration of neural matter caused by the virus itself lurking there, which causes things like depression, confusion and a lack of concentration, as well as a certain heightened emotionalism. As of now, there is only one medication proven to cross the blood-brain barrier and help arrest this deterioration, but that one (Sustiva) comes with some really weird side-effects itself. And as my early docs shuffled me through so many different treatments in the beginning, my virus has sucessfully mutated to the point where that entire class of drugs is no longer effective on me, anyway.

I've never really lived, and I feel like it's too late to start. I can't be 20 again. I can't even be 30 again...because that is the life I have lived and its the only future I see.

Life begins when you decide to start it. Jason has posted some very wise words on that subject. Listen to him: he's really smart and knows what he's talking about.

I am reminded of a poem I wrote in college. Please forgive the digression.

Fairies dancing pretty and quick
They delight in innocent obscenity.
I am but a man
And my life is dull and frigid.​

I'm not sure this post is a worthwhile contribution to this thread, so I'll shut up now, and close with a quote that I think you might like.

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is
everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical
about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking
everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you
risk even more." --Erica Jong

I actually like the bit of poem, and I'm not a huge poetry fan. Thank you for posting it.

 

[D_Rod Staffinbone]

that's me in 1992. i was bi, lived the straight family guy life till late 2007.
i feel like i was honest to myself and to my wife at the time we married.
maybe i haven't paid my dues but do feel like i dodged a bullet.
go ahead lay into me, i know everyone hates bisexuals. after the wife, no more women in my foreseeable future.

had my first HIV test in the 80's in west hollywood when i was 23. i'll never forget how they, at the gay and lesbian center, swore they would die rather than hand over test results with our identities over to the government.
(then the center was just off highland near santa monica blvd. and was a one story building with a lot of rough hewn wood, in that 70's california look)
ronald reagan was still president. they were running their own show at that time with no affiliation with any other organizations. a bunch of gay radicals with noble ideals and compassion, for whom i still have the utmost respect.

i'm still HIV-

 

[B_Nick8]

Hells, Nick, Bbucko...thanks for sharing your stories.

I'm young enough to have missed everything you described, but old enough to remember the early days of the AIDS crisis. As I've said elsewhere, I hit puberty in 1984, so I was becoming aware of my sexuality about the same time AIDS was getting a lot of attention on TV. It seems like it was a frequent topic on the late afternoon talk shows (Oprah, Donahue) and made for TV movies (An Early Frost). As badly as I wanted sex, as much as I fantasized about it and longed for it, ached for it, I was too terrified to actually have it.

These may be the stupidest words I've ever written (can I get away with blaming the martini?), but in a way, I envy you guys. I envy you because you have lived.

I've never really lived, and I feel like it's too late to start. I can't be 20 again. I can't even be 30 again.



I can't agree with you more...because that is the life I have lived and its the only future I see.

I am reminded of a poem I wrote in college. Please forgive the digression.

Fairies dancing pretty and quick
They delight in innocent obscenity.
I am but a man
And my life is dull and frigid.​

I'm not sure this post is a worthwhile contribution to this thread, so I'll shut up now, and close with a quote that I think you might like.

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is
everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical
about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking
everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you
risk even more." --Erica Jong

You're not very much younger than me at all. And the only difference is that I can vaguely remember a time when I didn't have to worry about--or even think about--equating sex and dying but of course who knew? so we took it all for granted.

In my particular case, I never lived the kind of lifestyle that (I believed) lent itself to becoming infected either and I'm a trusting soul. And while I've had a surprisingly high number of partners (for me, I think. A lot of gay men would probably laugh) I've been in love with a lot of them so I had this Pollyanna thing going on. Even when my partner were picking up a third for a dildo with a body it was always about the relationship.

I'm not sure you mean or how you'd define "living" but the idea that you missed out on something other than a time period is just silly. My bf now, and we've been together 5 years, didn't come out until he was 42 after 12 years of marriage and had never had any sexual contact with a man before. He wasn't exactly unhappy with his wife and adores his kids and would probably have stayed married if she'd actually liked sex but once freed from that he realized women weren't what really made him happy. He even tried to make up for "lost" time but after a couple of years knew that he was more relationship-oriented than a player.

He often asks me about my days at the Saint and Fire Island and what recreational drugs were like and did I ever have threesomes. I never lie to him but I occasionally hedge a little or play down the details because it's difficult to know where he falls on the scale of genuine curiosity, getting off on the stories and judgmentality. I don't think he's sure sometimes because it's so foreign to him. To some degree he's a gay adolescent and when he's in New York we often do things that to me are very been-there-done-that but to him, an Ohio boy, very fun.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that you can't have what you weren't there for but it's never "too late" to start living. Regrets couldn't be more counterproductive in that all they'll do is prevent you from living now . If you missed out on something good, you missed out on a lot of pretty painful things as well. The important thing is that what you're experiencing now is all the joy in the world that's possible. Please, spend every moment of the rest of your life trying to do that.

 

[D_Rod Staffinbone]

thought i'd throw this into the musical mix regarding how we survived.
i'm a life lover, that's me.

always kindof liked this song, and heard it driving home tonight so....


Weezer - "Troublemaker"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETa47DdZwHg


there was something like a private "social group" they invited me to be a part called "LIFEGUARD" after testing HIV-
in west hollywood in the late 80s, only open to other guys who tested negative, someone who worked at the gay and lesbian center pulled me aside to tell me about it, so i don't think it was really endorsed by the gay and lesbian center,
i never signed up 'cause i was skeptical. does anyone know anything about what happened to the "LIFEGUARD" program? i realize i'm not the recruit they'd be looking for at this point. just curious as to the stats on that.


yeah, a couple of really risky bareback encounters in the late 80s. what was i thinking? super safe now.
they're starting to hate me at the clinic.

 

[2322]

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is
everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical
about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking
everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you
risk even more." --Erica Jong

That breaks my heart like you wouldn't believe.

 

[D_Rod Staffinbone]

this one goes out to meniscus-
i saw this a couple of years ago on youtube.
love is the strongest power, our only hope. it's never too late.

YouTube - Love Reign O'er Me

btw, i don't know these guys. just remembered the clip and was surprised to still find it.


meniscus-
37 isn't OLD. trust me on that. adventures lie ahead. have self-confidence.

 

[Meniscus]

Jason, Bbucko, Nick--you guys are the best.

Here are some rather random and disconnected replies to some of the stuff y'all have written.

You're not very much younger than me at all.

I didn't think I was. I didn't mean to imply that you were old or anything. It's just that you've got a lot more experience than me, both with relationships and AIDS. My longest "relationship" was on and off for a few months and I was never deeply invested in it emotionally. Although I've met people with HIV/AIDS, I've never personally known anyone who is living with it, or has died of it.

...it's easy to glamorize the actual day-to-day, gritty experience of living so hard, reckless and dangerous a life. I kept my writing style here as terse as possible to try and prevent that.

And I think you succeeded quite well, but thanks for the additional reality check of your reply to my post. I knew a little about AZT, but not the details of the other early treatments (and some of the current treatments) and their side effects. I think there are a lot of young guys out there who really should read stories like yours.

My bf now...He often asks me about my days at the Saint and Fire Island and what recreational drugs were like...it's so foreign to him. To some degree he's a gay adolescent...

Well, unlike your boyfriend I've been out for 20 years, but the things you describe are just as foreign to me as they are to your bf, and in many ways I also feel very much like a "gay adolescent." I didn't start going to clubs until I was 29...well, just the one club really...I live in Western Mass. after all...and it's mostly lesbian...no drugs, very little sexual behavior, and the people there aren't very friendly--everyone pretty much sticks to their clique, at best ignoring anyone they don't know and at worst eyeing each other suspiciously or contemptuously. Hook ups seem pretty rare.

Regrets couldn't be more counterproductive in that all they'll do is prevent you from living now...The important thing is that what you're experiencing now is all the joy in the world that's possible. Please, spend every moment of the rest of your life trying to do that.

I know, I know. I'm trying. It's hard.

Sex in the late 80s was very dry, almost medical. It wasn't sexy at all.

That's what sex has always been like for me. I remember the first time I ever fingered another guy's ass, I put latex gloves on and apologized for the experience seeming so clinical. The 2nd (and last) time I fingered a guy, I completely forgot to use gloves, but I think we both enjoyed it a lot more. Then he started guiding my cock inside him. I said, "Whoa, hold on a sec, let me put a condom on." (As I said that it occured to me that I probably should have been wearing gloves.) He seemed a bit perturbed that I wouldn't bareback him. [On a side note, I've really got to stop hooking up with 22 year olds.* I'm too old for them and they're too boring and stupid for me.] Anyway, the point is I've never had the kind of hot, nasty, raw, intense, exciting, totally uninhibited sex I've always fantasized about. I've had way better masturbation than actual sex with another human being.

*Don't get me wrong, it doesn't happen a lot--about once every 2 or 3 years. It never ceases to amaze me that some young guys really do like older guys...but it also becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that they also want someone to take care of them, which I have no interest in doing--I don't need the pressure. If anything, I want someone to take care of me!

But keeping your heart from closing is a whole lotta work.

Tell me about it.

Sometimes...
I'm terrified of my heart.
Of it's constant hunger
for whatever it is it wants.
Of the way it stops...
...and starts.
--Poe
​

 

[B_Nick8]

I live in Western Mass. after all...and it's mostly lesbian...

You must live in Northampton; now I feel your pain. :tongue:

 

[Bbucko]

You know, Meniscus, there really isn't a slippery slope from ungloved fingering to unprotected buttfucking. I have worn condoms many times but never used a glove. That sounds like a one-way trip to the proctologist's office to me.

We've never discussed what it is that you feel binds you to W Mass, but you do understand that both NYC and Boston are close enough for you to get back in a couple of hours if need be. Maybe it's time to spread out your possibilities somewhat: just an idea.

 

[B_Lightkeeper]

Moving to Birmingham in the late 60's, there were several gay bars however we were in constant fear of the "vice squad." They would try entrapment and I knew of several gays who were arrested just by a simple touch on a leg or crotch area. They'd start up a conversation and give the impression they were open for a later sexual situation.

Even bartenders in the clubs were warned not to "expose" any known vice as they could be arrested for "obstruction of justice!"

They were also known to find out where an after-hours party was being held and get an invitatikon in.

I'll have to admit some of them were very good looking.

We use to have occasional Sunday parties and kept a police monitor radio nearby to see if any calls went out.

I would imagine growing up gay now would be much easier although there are still many homophobes all over. Just look at some of our politicians and so-called religious leaders.

 

[Careym]

Guys,
I hardly know where to start with my reply, so I guess I will give a very heartfelt "thank you" for the stories and replies you have all written here.
I lived in Mississippi for my entire adult life. If you think that you have experienced oppression, think again. Like many of you, I thought that I wanted the openly sexual lifestyle that I read about, but the fact that it was and is virtually non-existent here is probably what saved me from HIV. I have only known three or four guys who were HIV+. All but one of them have died.
In the early 80's, I met a guy that I was totally infatuated with. We lived together for the next 25 years. Our relationship was mostly monogamous except for a couple of flings that I had. I was totally immersed in my job and building my life and home, so I didn't really think about what I might be missing.
Around 2003, I realized that I was not happy in my relationship and I decided that I would not have a chance to meet the right guy unless I got out of my relationship. So I moved back to the Memphis area.
I dated a few guys and although we did have unprotected sex, I felt fairly safe. I went out to the bars here, but did not drink. I began to spend a lot of time online in groups like LPSG chatting with other guys. I met my lover online. We will soon celebrate our 4th year together.
I was raised in a home where there was no outward display of affection. I know that my mother loved me, but she could not express that. I have longed for affection all of my life. But I realized that the guys that I was attracted to were completely opposite. For 25 years I lived with a guy who seemed to get off on using that against me.
My partner now is the most incredibly affectionate person that you can imagine and I am living the life I really wanted. I was 48 when we met. I do believe that the right person is out there for everyone, you have to learn to be true to yourself and never settle for less. Sex is great but when you combine sex with love, it becomes a gift.

Anyway, the point is I've never had the kind of hot, nasty, raw, intense, exciting, totally uninhibited sex I've always fantasized about. I've had way better masturbation than actual sex with another human being.

I actually felt the same way until I met my lover. I have realized that being in love is what makes the sexual fantasies become real.

 

[Careym]

Posted twice in error