Fear of AIDS Alters Gay Men’s Social, Buying Traits

It’s a subdued happy hour at the Wellington, a gay bar in North Hollywood. About 15 well-dressed men are having a drink amid the warm, quiet wash of conversation.

The bartender, a wiry young man with short brown hair, breaks the weeknight rhythm and asks one of the men about Greg.

He is still in critical condition. “Might not make it,” says Greg’s lover.

The bartender shakes his head, pours himself a brandy, and the two men exchange a secret gaze of grief.

The sickening, fear-striking specter of acquired immune deficiency syndrome--the incurable and deadly disease whose victims are mostly male homosexuals and bisexuals--has made another visit to the Wellington.

‘Alley Cat Bars’

Jim Kerlian and his friend, Jeffrey, agree to dine at home this night and discuss the wine they’ll share together.

“We’ve left the alley cat bars and those god-awful bathhouses,” Kerlian later tells a man seated next to him. “I mean, if Rock (Hudson) can’t kill it, nobody can.”

A few miles away, One Way Bar owner Larry Tagney talks about how he recently put up the “Fight AIDS” posters the former proprietor tore down, thinking them too depressing.

“Business here is down, way down,” Tagney said. “People’s friends are dying. It’s getting to the point where we’re looking at each other and saying, ‘Who’s next?’

“AIDS, that’s all anyone here is talking about. But, I’ll tell you one thing. It’s not good for business.”

“Everyone is suffering now,” said Melinda Tremaglio, owner of Englebert’s, a trendy gay restaurant in West Hollywood. “The guys aren’t partying or drinking as much now. The beer distributors tell me most of the bars have gone from 100 cases to 60 cases.

“The guys aren’t coming out and I don’t blame them. No amount of advertising will change that either.”

The virtual hysteria that today envelops AIDS, believed transmitted by sexual contact, has altered the living and spending habits of gay America, perhaps permanently.

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation’s recent survey of 500 gay and bisexual men revealed that since August, 1984, respondents having more than one sex partner declined from 49% to 36%.

Further, the number of two-income gay couples has increased from 52% to 61% in the last year, according to the Gay Market Report, a quarterly financial survey conducted by the The Advocate, the nation’s largest gay magazine.

A surge in the numbers of men in “committed relationships” has sparked changing spending patterns, the report concluded.

“Travel, entertainment, real estate and home entertaining are only a few of the market sectors in which . . . gay couples are concentrating their relatively high discretionary incomes,” the report says.

Monogamy in Vogue

With male monogamy in vogue and “safe sex” the new exhortation from the medical community, the gay economy has witnessed some strange twists and turns.

“Some kind of community response to AIDS, I believe, is underlying all the changes in patterns, the way people conduct relationships, the way people see relationships,” said Ed Nicholas, president of the Greater Gotham Business Council in New York City, which has more than 200 gay-owned firms as members.

Although bathhouses are shuttered and gay bars are sagging, male dating services catering to “long-term relationships” are gathering momentum, and telephone sex services are on the rise.

“Business is up, way up, and AIDS is definitely a factor,” said Mark King, owner of Tele-Erotic, a homosexual phone sex firm in Hollywood.

The service costs $36.60, for which the client secures an erotic 20-minute conversation with another man.

“The most common comment we get is, ‘With this AIDS scare going on, I figure this is a better idea than going out tonight,’ ” King said.

Condom Sales Increase

At the same time, manufacturers of prophylactics have reported a brisk increase in sales over the past six months. The increase is credited to warnings against the exchange of potentially infective bodily fluids.

“This (AIDS) has given us a real shot in the arm. We’re up 7 1/2% in sales over this time last year,” said Milt Bryson, director of marketing for the largest condom producer in the nation, Young Drugs Product Co. in Piscataway, N.J.

Beachgoers in New Jersey and Long Island, regularly accosted by airborne advertisements plugging soft drinks and suntan oil, this summer watched planes tugging “Plan Ahead With Ramses” banners. They are sponsored by Schmid Laboratories Inc. of Little Falls, N.J., the country’s second-largest manufacturer of condoms.

Some health insurance companies are considering special supplemental AIDS coverage while others, like Nationwide Insurance Co., have started extra screenings of single male applicants from New York, New Jersey, California and Florida in an effort to avoid financial losses from the spread of AIDS.

Coastal Insurance Co. in Santa Monica began offering last January a supplemental policy, advertising extensively in gay publications and medical journals.

800 Policies Sold

About 800 policies have been sold at $194 a year, Coastal Vice President Jim Hotinger said. One policyholder has died, and two other AIDS claims are pending.

“Gays are spending their money in other ways now,” said Robert Silver, managing editor of The Advocate.

“Our readership survey shows gays are coupling like never before and spending money on home videos, home furnishings, food--couple-type things--rather than going to bars, movies and stuff,” Silver said.

The Gay Market Report noted that 55% of the 500 men it interviewed owned video recorders and that half of the remaining 45% plan to buy one in the next 12 months.

Advocate sales director Larry Kaufman said the magazine has had a large increase in vitamin, nutrition and health club advertising, while nightclub and restaurant ads have dwindled.

“And the Club Baths that are in every major city are now calling themselves Club Body Centers,” Kaufman said.

‘Aren’t Socializing’

“People just aren’t socializing now. I just had lunch in a gay restaurant, and it was me and another table,” said Gerry Goulet, owner of the Hollywood Spa, a once renowned bathhouse now being marketed as a health club like many other bathhouses across the country.

“No more group sex. It’s just a place to meet now or get in shape,” Goulet said.

“Gays are much more health conscious now,” San Francisco AIDS Foundation Director Tim Wolfred said. “The real popular gay bars are really losing business, but in the Castro District (a gay stronghold in San Francisco) we’re seeing lots of vitamin stores popping up, and the gyms are doing a strong business.”

Harry Boyman, owner of The Ambush, a gay bar near San Francisco’s Haight Street, said his business is down 20% over the last three months. “Ever since the Rock Hudson thing, it’s really gotten bad,” Boyman said.

Gregg’s, a bar in Hollywood, instituted a “straight night” last month.

“We needed to do something to improve sales,” said owner David Esses, who purchased the bar when its former owner committed suicide three months ago after learning he had AIDS.

Boom for Dating Services

Dating services are apparently picking up some of the lost bar business.

“The people that come to me don’t have sex right away. They’re more careful, wanting to be more monogamous,” said David Kulman, owner of David the Match Mater in Los Angeles.

Although there is a $400 annual fee attached, Kulman said his business has grown steadily the last two years because his AIDS-frightened gay clients are serious about finding the right person.

“AIDS had to change the way we look at ourselves because it’s such a serious thing,” Nicholas said. “It’s a threat to the health and well-being of so many people that I don’t see how it could not have changed us. And it has.”