Oh dear God. I can't imagine your loss. I'm very, very sorry. I don't know what else to say other than I hope you feel his spirit with you.
Oh dear God. I can't imagine your loss. I'm very, very sorry. I don't know what else to say other than I hope you feel his spirit with you.
Jason, we are much in the same boat. In theory, I should have been more exposed than I actually have been. I have met guys on summer stays in the East Village in the late 80s who had advanced Kaposi's Sarcoma, but I just met them briefly and I would imagine they are long passed. I sold a house to a guy who's lover has advanced AIDS in the mid 1990s, I know he has passed. Aside from terciary relationships, the whole AIDS/HIV epidemic has really passed me by. I don't feel guilt about it...I know more than my fair share or people who have died of cancer and heart attacks. I see it as a result of the course of my life that for whatever reason...I just never came face to face with the epidemic.
We all have our own life paths. They are as individual as fingerprints. You can't fault yourself for an experience you have not yet had. I am sure you make up for it in unique experiences that you have had that others here have not had...yet.
Don't be hard on yourself. Your book is not yet fully written. :wink:
B_theOtherJJ
Expert Member
Scary thought that book thing. Reminds of Lawrence of Arabia and the story of Gassim.
No, I can't change the past and nor would I want to in that respect. Perhaps it's my other disconnections from gay society that emphasize this particular one. I have never lived in a gay ghetto, have never been out in the sense that I'm an activist of any sort, never read gay magazines or literature, and have visited gay bars maybe four times in my entire life. I didn't know what poppers were or much of the slang. I'm separate in so many ways, and the magnitude of the AIDS epidemic at its height made such an impact that I have difficulty understanding it. I've read various gay writers on the subject, seen a few AIDS-themed movies, but when I'm walking around Chelsea or the West Village, I feel like I'm an actor on set without a script. Everything else I can try to learn. The AIDS holocaust is something I may never experience and, providence willing, never will, but it definitely adds distance to a community I'm trying to appreciate and understand.
It is nice to know I'm not alone in this boat. Thank you very much for taking the time to share your experience with me.
You're most welcome Alyn. :smile:
B_Nick4444
Expert Member
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2007
- Posts
- 6,849
- Media
- 0
- Likes
- 107
- Points
- 193
- Location
- San Antonio, TX
- Sexuality
- 100% Gay, 0% Straight
- Gender
- Male
I don't personally know anyone, or of anyone
I can only imagine what it must be like to lose someone to something as meaningless as that disease
I can only imagine what it must be like to lose someone to something as meaningless as that disease
I lost my aunt who I grew up with among many other friends who I went to school with. Hence, I've been wearing this chastity belt for many years. I would never have unprotected sex unless my lover came with medical clearance in black and white. It frightened me to watch her die that way. My mate I would have to TRUST with my very life.
I have, in my lifetime buried and attended memorial services for 52 people with whom I was either working with (entertainment industry) or who where close friends.
My second Cousin and both of his relationships were buried last and this was about 1998.
I think that those who became ill early on had it the worst simply because nobody really knew what was going on.
I had someone I loved very much back in Minnesota back in the 1980's. That person was one of 12 children and of the children there were 7 males and 5 females. All of the males and two of the females in this family turned out to be gay. The Mother lost ALL of her sons one by one. Any grief I felt over the loss of my best friend Tony was nothing compared to what his Mother must have felt as she watched her sons die one by one. Tony went first and he was the youngest. She lost another son about every two years until they were all gone. She was a wonderful lady and we remained friends until she herself passed away in her early 80'. I would suspect that a broken heart played a role.
I have another good friend who is a long term survivor of HIV. He was diagnosed when the first Eliza tests were invented in the 1980's. He is alive, well and living near Palm Springs to this day. Again, I feel bad at my losses, but he is the last and only one still living of a social circle in which he ran. There are no others they are all dead. All of his friends from the 1980's are dead.
The cruelty of the disease is one thing, but the cruelty of the medical community has at times been harder to handle than the disease was. I had a freind named "Mack". Mack ended up with a malignant brain tumor towards his end. He had a great job, but his medical insurance denied treatment of the tumor placing him in a hospice and letting him die a horrible death because it was cheaper.
I watched another fellow musician from that period of my life lose his life simply because two MD's with his HMO did not bother to read a chart. He died of liver failure not from the disease process, but from liver failure due to poisoning by two MD's giving two incompatible medications at the same time. He died on December 25th, 1997. After he died, the offending MD's at the HMO flatly told his parents. "He would have died anyway, at least his suffering was lessened this way". They acted like they had done his parents a favor.
I was at Cedars Sainai Hospital in Los Angeles holding the hand of one of my very best friends as he slipped away. The opportunitistic infection involved was a condition called "P.M.L." which to me rates #1 on the cruelty scale. "P.M.L." is something you have to see to believe.
I was so very lucky to be there with him and to know if it was possible that my voice was among the three that really loved him, and was among the last he heard as he slipped away.
I am 55 years old and I had a period in my life where I could have been classified as a "he-whore" and there were a great many of us who met that definition.
The reason I am still here and probably the ONLY reason I am still here is that I had a Stepfather who was an MD. I also for that reason had a social circle that included many MD's and there was a time that HIV was a hot topic of conversation. What I figured out from listening to them and their discussions was that this was not a disease spread by casual contant and several of us drew the conclusion that it had to be body fluids. Early on I limited what I would do, and it was that act or lack of certain acts on my part that is probably responsible for my still being alive.
Those today who treat this retrovirus as if it was no big deal were not around to see what those of us in "the old guard" witnessed. There was a time you could walk around the streets in San Francisco and see men in their 20's looking like they were in their 80's and obviously dying. Many of us who had remained healthy got to the point that we couldn't take San Francisco for years.
The best way to deal with HIV is to attack it head on and take an active role in prevention. There are still hospices with HIV victims in them dying right and left. The difference is that the protease and reverse transcriptease inhibitors have slowed the progress and a few newer things have had positive benefits.
The highest honor we can pay to those we have lost is to retain the love we have had for them and to honor and retain their memory.
My second Cousin and both of his relationships were buried last and this was about 1998.
I think that those who became ill early on had it the worst simply because nobody really knew what was going on.
I had someone I loved very much back in Minnesota back in the 1980's. That person was one of 12 children and of the children there were 7 males and 5 females. All of the males and two of the females in this family turned out to be gay. The Mother lost ALL of her sons one by one. Any grief I felt over the loss of my best friend Tony was nothing compared to what his Mother must have felt as she watched her sons die one by one. Tony went first and he was the youngest. She lost another son about every two years until they were all gone. She was a wonderful lady and we remained friends until she herself passed away in her early 80'. I would suspect that a broken heart played a role.
I have another good friend who is a long term survivor of HIV. He was diagnosed when the first Eliza tests were invented in the 1980's. He is alive, well and living near Palm Springs to this day. Again, I feel bad at my losses, but he is the last and only one still living of a social circle in which he ran. There are no others they are all dead. All of his friends from the 1980's are dead.
The cruelty of the disease is one thing, but the cruelty of the medical community has at times been harder to handle than the disease was. I had a freind named "Mack". Mack ended up with a malignant brain tumor towards his end. He had a great job, but his medical insurance denied treatment of the tumor placing him in a hospice and letting him die a horrible death because it was cheaper.
I watched another fellow musician from that period of my life lose his life simply because two MD's with his HMO did not bother to read a chart. He died of liver failure not from the disease process, but from liver failure due to poisoning by two MD's giving two incompatible medications at the same time. He died on December 25th, 1997. After he died, the offending MD's at the HMO flatly told his parents. "He would have died anyway, at least his suffering was lessened this way". They acted like they had done his parents a favor.
I was at Cedars Sainai Hospital in Los Angeles holding the hand of one of my very best friends as he slipped away. The opportunitistic infection involved was a condition called "P.M.L." which to me rates #1 on the cruelty scale. "P.M.L." is something you have to see to believe.
I was so very lucky to be there with him and to know if it was possible that my voice was among the three that really loved him, and was among the last he heard as he slipped away.
I am 55 years old and I had a period in my life where I could have been classified as a "he-whore" and there were a great many of us who met that definition.
The reason I am still here and probably the ONLY reason I am still here is that I had a Stepfather who was an MD. I also for that reason had a social circle that included many MD's and there was a time that HIV was a hot topic of conversation. What I figured out from listening to them and their discussions was that this was not a disease spread by casual contant and several of us drew the conclusion that it had to be body fluids. Early on I limited what I would do, and it was that act or lack of certain acts on my part that is probably responsible for my still being alive.
Those today who treat this retrovirus as if it was no big deal were not around to see what those of us in "the old guard" witnessed. There was a time you could walk around the streets in San Francisco and see men in their 20's looking like they were in their 80's and obviously dying. Many of us who had remained healthy got to the point that we couldn't take San Francisco for years.
The best way to deal with HIV is to attack it head on and take an active role in prevention. There are still hospices with HIV victims in them dying right and left. The difference is that the protease and reverse transcriptease inhibitors have slowed the progress and a few newer things have had positive benefits.
The highest honor we can pay to those we have lost is to retain the love we have had for them and to honor and retain their memory.
Eddie, and CJ, bost are missed
You all have my sympathies.
Do you have any good stories about these people? Particular ways you remember them? Did the fact that they died of AIDS change your opinion of the disease or what was/is being done to combat it? Does AIDS color your memory of them in any way you can detect?
When I first read this comment, I was almost offended by reading the word, "meaningless." It then occurred to me that indeed, the virus is simply an error in a genetic code, possibly not even a living thing as some scientists claim. People die of dread diseases all the time: cancer, heart disease, liver failure, strokes, typhus... what was it like in the early 20th century when the Spanish flu took 20,000,000 lives?
Oh wait. We're there. If WHO's figures are accurate, then there are about 35 million people in the world living with HIV. 70% of those people live in Africa, another 15% live in Asia. Only 7% of HIV infected people live in an industrialized country where people have the best hope to get palliative care.
HIV has killed more people than the Black Death. It is the deadliest plague in human history. That's as if the population of Iraq or Tokyo has been killed by it, and the population of Kenya is infected with it. Taken together, the population of the United Kingdom either has HIV or has died from it.
I wondered if there was any meaning to the deaths. If, "meaningless," caused me trepidation, perhaps there was an unexamined reason for it. Perhaps I thought that their deaths had meaning without consciously realizing it. Taken as a whole, the number is staggering, surely it must mean something.
Are they martyrs to bigotry, racism, homophobia, and greed? Will they be cited as examples of a dark age when neither capitalism nor socialism provided ways to devote resources to saving these lives? What does it say about us when a virus that has killed more people than any other doesn't make the newspaper every day?
I can't simply categorize 60,000,000 people as existential angst. It seems immoral to do so.
