AIDS Epidemic : Trauma in the Gay Community

AIDS patient Victor Bender spent days in a Manhattan hospital recently. But the 39-year-old former tour guide wasn’t getting medical treatment.

Instead, he sat at the bedside of another AIDS victim. Bender had met the homeless 35-year-old bookkeeper several months earlier at an AIDS social services center, and had opened his home to him.

What Bender remembers most vividly was the man holding desperately to his hand day after day until he died.

It was frightening, he said, because he saw himself in the patient, who had the same disease, Kaposi’s sarcoma. It was also heartening to help someone else. And now it is his turn to be comforted by fellow volunteers. Desperately ill, Bender was rushed to the same hospital two weeks ago.

Battle Continues

Like a never-ending spiral, the battle goes on.

With the number of cases doubling every 10 months, no cure in sight, and no vaccine on the horizon, the deadly acquired immune deficiency syndrome has had unparalleled and almost incomprehensible effects on the lives of the estimated 12 million gay men in America.

While the heterosexual community has increasingly been lashed by the AIDS epidemic, it is those in the gay community who are enduring the most traumatic upheaval. Every aspect of their lives has been jarred by the crisis--their relationships, self-image, life style, civil rights, sexuality. In the four years since the epidemic began in the United States, 14,288 people have been diagnosed and more than 7,000 have died. About a million people have been exposed, doctors say. While medical authorities say that AIDS is not a “homosexual disease,” the epidemic has so far remained steadily in the gay community, with nearly 75% of the victims homosexual men.

Transmitted Sexually

The syndrome, which encompasses a variety of opportunist infections, is transmitted sexually through body fluids, particularly blood and semen. Despite widespread misapprehensions, there is no evidence that it can be caught through casual contact.

In a cruel irony, the AIDS crisis hit at a time when homosexuals in America were on the verge of winning acceptance. Now, gay leaders fear that political and social gains are imperiled, but there are internal quarrels about how to fight back.

One of the keystones of the gay rights movement--that sexual orientation is inherent and not a choice--has once again come under fire. Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, for example, said recently that gays should become straight “for their own best interest and . . . best interest of public health.”

The following is the story of some of these men, men like Bender and the dying man he comforted who, aside from their sexual orientation, had little in common until they became linked by the AIDS crisis.

It has exacted a fearful emotional cost, they say, this coming to terms with the death of friends and self; the outer battles with a resurging bigotry; the inner battles with self-doubts once thought to have been put to rest.

Duane Peterson

and Jimmi Betts

In December, real estate agent Duane Peterson visited a friend in Atlanta who had AIDS. He helped him write a will. When Peterson got back home, he signed up for the “buddy” program at AIDS Project Los Angeles.

Peterson, 28, was nervous about meeting Jimmi Betts, his first client. To break the ice, he invited him to lunch and a fashion show at the Bullock’s Wilshire tea room.

When Peterson’s red convertible drove up, Betts thought, “Oh, God, they’ve stuck me with some queen from West Hollywood.”

Peterson recalls thinking when he met Betts: “He’s so young, so very young.”

Peterson, a former actor who grew up in the Midwest, now lives in a sprawling house in the hills above Hollywood Boulevard where Betts sold drugs and his body for cash.

Peterson says Betts became not only like a younger brother, but an antidote for his own confusion, pain and fear about AIDS.

In Betts’ eyes, Peterson became more than a guide through bureaucratic tangles. At times, he sees Peterson as some medieval talisman who can ward off the evils of the disease.

Betts, 26, grew up in Omaha, the son of a banker. But after his father died, his life became troubled. He robbed a pharmacy, burglarized homes, and served several jail terms. When he came to Los Angeles, he turned to prostitution and drugs.

Bathhouse Meeting

Betts met his lover, Michael, in a bathhouse in 1981. They moved in together. Two years ago they quit drugs, they say. Michael got a clerical job. Betts worked at a riding stable.

In February, Betts got a painful tightness in his chest. At the hospital they told him he had AIDS. While bedridden, he dropped from 140 pounds to 98. He had plenty of time to think about the first time he heard about AIDS. A sign in a bathhouse had said young gay men were dying.

“I guess I didn’t think they were talking to me,” he said. “I’m going to die because I played games.”

After Betts was released from the hospital, he told a friend he had AIDS. The friend didn’t call back. He told others he had cancer. It seemed easier somehow.

Peterson calls Betts daily. He has rushed him to the hospital five times. On a recent clinic visit, Betts arrived early, but was the last waited on. When Peterson inquired, the receptionist said, “He’s got AIDS. He’ll be last in anyone’s line.” Peterson wrote to the administrator. The administrator apologized.

Peterson is helping Betts get legal aid. Betts will inherit money from a family trust fund in two years when his brother turns 21. Peterson told the bank trustee, “AIDS victims don’t survive two years.” She replied, “Rules are rules.”

Suicide Plot

In August, Betts decided he had enough--enough blood tests, enough exhaustion, enough feeling bad all over. He plotted suicide, imagined his soul floating in the cosmos. He made a pie of pills, marshmallows and graham crackers, but didn’t eat it. Peterson got a psychiatrist for him.

Michael and Betts try to keep their lives as upbeat as possible. They go to movies and play cards with Peterson. Betts gets $35 a week for groceries from the AIDS Project to help make ends meet. They no longer engage in sex. Betts is afraid of killing Michael. Instead, they hug and cuddle.

“I don’t want to die with tubes in my nose and arms. I want to die at home, with Michael holding me,” he said. “He’s promised me that.”

Betts, who has never put too much store in religion, has been thinking a lot lately about a “higher power.” A hospital worker told him recently that people can be saved if their arms are raised toward heaven when they die.

Betts thinks that might be a good idea.

Larry Kramer

It was mid-1981 when the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta began receiving reports from Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City that there was an unusually high incidence of young homosexual men afflicted with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, Kaposi’s sarcoma, and other ailments that attack the immune system.

As the medical world puzzled over this strange development, some in the alarmed gay community began to raise a red flag. One of the banner carriers was Larry Kramer, author of a novel, “Faggots,” and the screenplay of “Women in Love,” which was nominated for an Academy Award. Kramer, 50, knew well the many traumas of being homosexual. It wasn’t until after he took an overdose of pills while a freshman at Yale that he began to come to terms with his sexuality.

Kramer said that when the AIDS crisis surfaced, the politicians’ attitude was one of: “Who cares if a faggot dies?” And gays were acting like “the sissies straight men always said they were.”

“By our inability to organize, fight and educate, we have truly helped murder each other,” Kramer said one recent afternoon in his Greenwich Village apartment, slamming down a hand.

Target of Anger

His vociferous style has drawn anger from many quarters. But without his stridence, public attention to the AIDS crisis would have been even longer in coming, gay leaders agree.

In 1981, Kramer and five other men, alarmed at the number of gays dying, met in Kramer’s apartment. From those meetings was born the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the nation’s first and now largest AIDS social service center.

It took the group more than a year to persuade New York City to create an AIDS task force, Kramer says. As the months wore on and the battle with City Hall became more intense, the men fought among themselves over how best to tackle the political problem. Kramer was especially upset when one executive of the gay men’s group, fearful of losing his job, refused to allow his name to be used in connection with the group.

Later, when the growing group incorporated, Kramer, who was considered too outspoken for the sensitive political battles ahead, was not given a leadership role. He agreed to resign. The struggle is chronicled in Kramer’s off-Broadway play, “The Normal Heart,” which opens in December in Los Angeles. It is one of many such dramatic presentations now chronicling the AIDS epidemic.

Reflective Moment

The sturdy, bespectacled playwright gazed moodily down onto Washington Square where men strolled arm in arm through the fallen leaves.

“I don’t know why I am alive,” he said. “I’ve made love with strangers.” It had been a particularly bad day. Kramer had received word that one of his comrades has AIDS, a man with whom he had a violent ideological falling out during the founding of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

“He’s dying. I want to cradle him in my arms. But he doesn’t want to see me. He’s still bitter. So all I can do is write him a letter and tell him how much I love him.”

The situation, he said grimly, illustrates how bitter, stressful and sad the AIDS crisis has been.

Richard Dunn

It was anger that three years ago propelled Richard Dunn to the old brownstone that houses the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Dunn, who was named executive director in July, recalled the incident that produced his roily state.

A young man had just died of AIDS. “I knew him only casually, but a lot of his close gay friends talked in a ‘homo-phobic’ way. Before the epidemic began, he had lived in the fast track. They were talking like he deserved to die.

“I thought, my God, the issue is that many of America’s young men are dying. If this kind of lack of sympathy and self-loathing is coming from gay men, imagine what the rest of the world is thinking,” Dunn, 41, said.

Dunn, who at the time was controller of the nation’s largest city agency--New York’s Human Resources Agency--had never publicly acknowledged his homosexuality or been involved in gay politics. He did both when the AIDS crisis hit.

“It was a life-and-death cause worth coming out over,” he said.

He became a crisis counselor to AIDS patients at the gay men’s health center.

“I wondered if I would be up to the challenge of helping them die. It hits you hard, especially when the person is the same age and sexual orientation. It is easy to see yourself in their place.”

In those early months at the center, before scientists concluded that casual contact did not spread the disease, he was fearful. All three of the clients assigned to him died.

He reread Albert Camus’ novel “The Plague.”

He eventually found that all of his rewards were coming from the volunteer work. He quit his job.

Mother Withdraws

Now when he appears on TV programs with other AIDS experts, his mother refuses to watch. “If it had been a conventional disease, she would think what I’m doing is wonderful,” Dunn said.

Today, Dunn is in a monogamous relationship. The question of AIDS and how to conduct sex safely was easy to breach because he and his boyfriend both work at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis center.

But for many gay men seeking relationships, it has been difficult, he said. The center has produced a video movie on how to negotiate and conduct a safe sex romance.

While many heterosexuals seem to have erroneous notions that gay sex is one continuous round of orgies in back room bars, there is no denying that there was a great deal of experimenting. Bathhouses catering to anonymous sex became the exaggerated trappings of one gay life style.

‘We had been denied holding hands, being recognized as couples legally and socially,” Dunn said. “It is no surprise that we focused on our sexuality because that was what made us different from other people.”

The sexuality issue became a paradox of the AIDS crisis. Some gay men favored closing bathhouses, promoting celibacy and safe sex. Others believed that even talking about gay sexual practices would bring loathing down on the community.

Most now agree that straightforward sex information is crucial. One of the problems has been squeamishness in explaining exactly how the disease is caught, said Dr. Neil Schram, head of the Los Angeles City/County AIDS Task Force.

Blunt Facts

“The correct message is that AIDS is often spread when there is tearing of the rectal lining through anal sex. Use a condom in anal or vaginal intercourse. Don’t swallow semen. Avoid contact with blood during sexual intercourse,” Schram said.

Trying to get the message across has upset some public officials.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum called for review of county contracts with gay groups because he thought that one AIDS prevention pamphlet was “hard-core pornography.” Said Schram: “In essence (he was) saying it is better for gay men to die than to put out information that is offensive to some people.”

AIDS crisis health centers such as the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, which has limited funds and a staff of 34, have found themselves facing the massive task of caring for the sick and trying to educate the public.

“I have 1,000 clients this year. I will have 2,000 next year. It’s staggering,” Dunn said wearily. “If this had been written as science fiction, nobody would have believed it.”

Jerry Clark

“Some come in thinking the job is going to be beautiful and spiritual, and filled with the great truths,” said Jerry Clark, an actor who coordinates buddy program volunteers at AIDS Project Los Angeles. “But the clients are not dying (beautifully). It’s slow. It’s ugly.”

During four weekends of classes, he tells volunteers exactly what the program entails.

Managing Fear

“It’s gritty, but for people who can handle it, the program can be an extraordinary experience. You either give in to the fear of AIDS,” he said, “or plow through it.”

Clark recalls his first client. The man, a well-known actor and author, lived in a beautiful house in the Hollywood Hills. “It was so sad to watch him become a prisoner of that house. He dreaded leaving, because the climb from his driveway to the house became too hard for him.”

“It was like watching a caged animal.”

Many of the man’s friends did not visit, afraid they would catch the disease.

The man then contracted a brain infection. “Here was a man who had been smart as a whip and could no longer function. He was dead in three weeks. I think he just gave up.”

One of the hardest moments for Clark was the memorial party.

“I knew which of his family and friends had called sparingly or not at all. And it was those who were beating their breasts and crying the loudest who had abandoned him. I politely wanted to take a machete to the crowd.”

Eric Bjorklund

Eric Bjorklund, a former executive at Edelman Health Center, recently planned a badly needed vacation. He looked forward to seeing his brother’s year-old baby.

Bjorklund, 32, called his brother with his arrival date. He then chatted about the AIDS screening program at the Los Angeles-based clinic, part of the Gay and Lesbian Social Services. The center, with a paid staff of 28 and 300 volunteers, provides health services to about 150 clients daily.

A few days later, his brother called back, telling him their family doctor suggested that Bjorklund wear gloves and a mask while visiting the child. He decided not to see the child.

“You know, more people were stoned to death during the London plague than died of the disease,” said Bjorklund, a registered nurse.

AIDS telephone hot lines are flooded with fearful calls: Can I get it from door knobs? Can I shake hands? AIDS victims have been fired, evicted from apartments, abandoned by family. Children with AIDS have been barred from school. The Screen Actors Guild wants assurances that actors can refuse open-mouthed kissing scenes. There has been talk of a quarantine.

While the heterosexual community suffers from AIDS anxiety, it doesn’t compare to the “war zone,” as one psychologist describes the gay community. With an incubation period of up to five years and possibly longer, many gay men think of themselves as time bombs.

Understands the Fear

Bjorklund understands that fear.

He recalls when men first began visiting the venereal disease clinic with immune system ailments. “My first reaction was denial--I didn’t want this to be the problem that it looked like it was going to be.”

The fear exists on a more personal level, too. Recently he met a man at a lecture whom he wanted to ask out. He didn’t.

Bjorklund says some of his friends are now celibate. And like many men, he finds himself both fearing and desiring a long-term relationship.

“You fear that if you don’t you will get sick,” he said, “and you fear that if you do you will get sick.”

Doug Sadownick

and Tim Miller

Photos of four scantily clad men stare off the page. “Play Safe . . . Play With Us,” reads an advertisement in the Advocate, a national gay news magazine.

The ad is for telephone sex, in which callers pay for erotic conversations. These calls have become trendy alternatives to real-life encounters. So too have X-rated video movies, classes in non-orgasmic sex and massage and masturbation parties.

“The only thing you can get from the telephone is a wrong number,” said Lenny Giteck, the Advocate editor.

Recent studies have found that many gay men are having less sex and safer sex with fewer partners. A survey of 300 gay and bisexual men in San Francisco found that the number who said they were monogamous, celibate or performed unsafe sex practices only with a steady partner rose from 69% to 81%.

Venereal disease, while remaining steady in the heterosexual population, has dropped 80% among homosexuals during the last four years in New York. Many bathhouses have closed. Gay restaurants and bars report business is down. Gay men have become more health-oriented, exercising more, swearing off drugs and alcohol.

No Longer Liberating

“We’re part of a generation of gay men who see the health crisis, not Stonewall, as the historical force shaping their identity,” said Doug Sadownick, a 26-year-old Manhattan college instructor. “Today, looking for love is more frightening than it is liberating.”

Sadownick lives with Tim Miller, 27, a founder of Performance Space 122, a variety arts theater. They met at a Christmas party three years ago. “We were charmed by each other, “ Miller said. But in the early months, they believe that AIDS, not commitment, made them monogamous.

“It was only later that our relationship evolved into something that was more than a way to ward off disease,” Sadownick said.

They live in an East Village loft. They have a dog, a joint bank account and divide the household chores. In the evening, Sadownick works on his column for the New York Native, a gay newspaper. When Miller gets home, they go over his scripts and rehearse.

Both men acknowledged their gayness in their late teens. Miller’s family has accepted their relationship easier than Sadownick’s.

“For a long time I think my mother entertained the idea that someday I would get married in the traditional sense,” Sadownick said. “The other day she said she was too nervous about AIDS and wanted reassurance that I was all right. Then she said, ‘Give my love to Tim.’ I think she realized our relationship is a good thing in light of everything.”

Clippings From Home

Every month Miller’s mother, who lives in Whittier where he grew up, sends him newspaper clippings about AIDS.

The two men have never talked to each other about what would happen if one contracted the disease. But Sadownick said that sometimes he looks at Miller and thinks, “Wow, you are this wonderful human being. How could I not take care of you?”

But while both men are in what doctors call a “low-risk” group (no drugs, no promiscuity), they still worry.

Last summer Miller had the flu for 10 days.

“I woke up in the middle of the night listening to him cough and thought, “Oh, God, take me, not him,” Sadownick said. “I could deal with that easier than watching him die.”