Singles Mull Sexual Behavior as Fears of AIDS Intensify

I’m new at being single. I met my husband when I was 19, and I’ve just been divorced 1 1/2 years. I have a number of single women and men friends who are talking about the AIDS problem. We’re all saying that this is no time to be single. AIDS is all-consuming. People wondering who has it, who’s going to get it? It’s like being under siege. This (disease) is going to do a lot for monogamy.

--Paula Van Ness, new executive director of AIDS Project Los Angeles, December, 1985.

Because of her job, Paula Van Ness spends a lot more time than most people in dealing with the health crisis caused by AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome. But, personally, as a single heterosexual, Van Ness has the same concerns and fears as do her peers across the nation.

A Flood of Questions

Of late, single straight people everywhere--in bars and restaurants, singles groups, at Monday Night Football games and church gatherings--are asking questions. Some even call AIDS hot lines, querying:

--What is my risk of getting this deadly disease?

--How do I know, since the incubation period for AIDS can be five years or longer, who already has been exposed?

--Is AIDS so frightening that I should change my life style and sexual habits?

--Where do we go from here, from the casual sex of the ‘60s and ‘70s to no sex in the ‘80s?

They are questions similar to those that the homosexual community began asking four years ago when the AIDS epidemic zeroed in on gays and began a killing swath across the large gay populations of the country, particularly in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

There are no easy answers.

It was June, 1981, when the first five cases of AIDS were discovered among homosexual males in Los Angeles. Today, more than 14,000 people have contracted it in the United States; more than half of those have died. Scientists estimate 1.2 million to 2 million people in the United States already have been exposed to the AIDS virus.

73% of Victims Homosexuals

The majority of AIDS cases still is confined to what scientists and physicians call high-risk groups--73% are centered among the country’s gay population; 17% among heterosexual drug users, 3% among hemophiliacs or persons infected from blood transfusions.

Only 1% of heterosexuals not considered high risk have come down with AIDS, and most of those are women, who presumably contracted it through sexual contact with an infected male.

The other 6% of the diagnosed AIDS cases do not fit into any other risk groups.

But AIDS remains a puzzle: Will it continue confining itself mainly to gays, probably passed on through the common practice of anal intercourse? Or will cases in the heterosexual population begin to rise as the disease spreads, nearly doubling every year?

AIDS researchers across the country debate the issue almost weekly. Some say it will infect more and more non-high-risk heterosexuals as AIDS seems to have done in Africa; some say it won’t.

One of the major problems scientists have in trying to track AIDS is that they don’t have enough history of the disease yet, and they don’t know how to predict what course AIDS may take because of the long incubation period between the time of infection and when the symptoms of the disease show up. Some researchers even are speculating AIDS may lie dormant in a infected person for up to 14 years.

It is the unknowns of AIDS that bring the dread.

“To me, the freakiest thing about AIDS is that someone can have it for a year or five years and not know about it,” said Diane Kirkland, a 26-year-old Los Angeles fashion designer. “If that’s the case, you might as well just throw in the towel. What are you supposed to do, stop seeing people sexually forever?”

On this recent evening, Kirkland had come to meet some single girlfriends for drinks and dinner at Merlin McFly’s in Santa Monica. She goes there regularly, knows many of the customers and most of the employees.

“People have been talking about AIDS,” she said. “They’re scared, confused and don’t know what to do. I suppose the only safe sex is abstinence. But don’t you see the futility of the situation? If you let it throw so much fear into you, you’ll be a hermit. How long can you live like that? That’s not living. And we’re all here to live and be happy. You could be going with someone now, and then they come down with it on the five-year plan. What then?

“I don’t think people are as flagrant about sex as they were in the ‘60s,” added Kirkland. “We’ve had venereal diseases before, syphilis, gonorrhea, and then herpes. Herpes scared everybody. But then, you do die from AIDS. Having sex is a risk now; let’s face it. Of course, you can be more careful. But you have to decide if the risk is worth it.”

Kirkland said she has one girlfriend that she has talked with about the dangers of AIDS and having a lot of sexual partners, but her friend refuses to change her promiscuous life style.

“She says you can always die from something,” Kirkland explained. “It’s kind of like if you look at all the murders and the gang killings and you just don’t think it can happen to you.”

Alan Britt, 26, an actor who also tends bar at Merlin’s, said that most of the customers he hears discussing AIDS are in the joking stage.

“Basically right now, they’re telling Rock Hudson jokes and they’re not at the real-scared stage, but there is definitely concern. I do hear some one-on-one conversations that are serious. The thing that is of general concern is the transfer of AIDS. The one thing that scares the straight guys is the bisexual thing. What if the female you’re involved with is also involved with a guy who’s bisexual? Is he going to tell her that? The carrier situation is scary.”

‘Can Die From Something’

Marian Hopkins, a cashier in another Santa Monica restaurant, said she thought most people were exercising a little more caution because of the AIDS fear, “but I really think there still seems to be more concern about herpes. Mostly, I feel like society, with or without sexual diseases, kind of gave up on the sexual revolution. It faded away of its own accord around 1981. Right now most of my girlfriends discuss how to be superwoman, have a career, be married and have children.”

Hopkins, 27, observed that casual sex is readily available for those who seek it “but you’re still not going to have anyone to share your life with. I think we were ready to have a reason to go back to basic values. We’re at a point when people need more permanence. If it took AIDS to make people realize the old games didn’t work--lots of relationships, but no permanent situation, then that’s something good. The change I see is men that I meet finally care. Now, it’s more who are you than what can I get. People seem to be talking more.”

Paula Van Ness sat in her West Hollywood office at AIDS Project Los Angeles the other day, discussing the serious need for educational programs for heterosexuals about AIDS in the coming year.

“More than half of the calls coming in to APLA now, are from heterosexuals,” said Van Ness, 34, who succeeded Bill Misenhimer as APLA’s executive director in October. A year ago the hot line got 400 calls a month, but today the figure has reached 3,000. She was formerly the executive director of the Family Planning Center of Greater Los Angeles. “People have been afraid to come to our office because they think we’re a gay organization. We’re doing everything we can possibly do to let them know we’re not.”

APLA, Van Ness says, has grown from a staff of 17 to 30 in just two months and become an organization serving heterosexuals as well as homosexuals. In the past APLA served mostly the homosexual community, because AIDS was centered there. But its board members and advisers were straight, as well as gay.

“But there were some concerns about APLA now that it’s grown so big,” Van Ness said. “Some people in the gay community voiced concerns that we were leaving the gay community behind. That’s not so. And we discussed whether it would be good or bad for APLA to have a straight female director.”

Van Ness said she is the only woman director in the 45 AIDS groups that make up the national AIDS Action Council.

‘Support Groups’

“You now have the heterosexual community having to turn to the gay community for help with this,” said Misenhimer, currently executive director of American Foundation for AIDS Research. “The gay community has set up the support groups (for AIDS patients) because it had to.”

Under the guidance of John Mortimer, APLA’s education director, a new educational program begins in January for multiple target groups, mostly toward the heterosexual general public.

Last year’s campaign, L.A. Cares (Los Angeles Cooperative AIDS Risk-Reduction Education Service), an educational program aimed specifically at gays and bisexuals, provided guidelines for safe sexual practices in response to the AIDS epidemic.

The L.A. Cares safe sex pamphlet was publicly criticized and labeled pornographic by Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum, but scientists, researchers, and physicians praised its efforts to educate people about safe sexual practices.

The January program, called Southern California Cares, is a collaborative effort of APLA and nine other area AIDS agencies to get information to the general public about AIDS through a campaign titled, “AIDS: Fight the Fear with the Facts.”

Agencies participating with APLA are: AIDS Response Program of Garden Grove; Desert AIDS Project in Palm Springs; AIDS Project, Long Beach Health Department; Gay and Lesbian Community Service Center in Hollywood; Los Angeles Shanti Foundation in West Hollywood; AID for AIDS in Los Angeles; Ed Slough AID for AIDS in Los Angeles; San Diego AIDS Project; Tri-County AIDS Task Force in Santa Barbara, and Inland Counties Health System Agency in Riverside.

“Education and behavior change are our only weapons,” said Mortimer, who has been with APLA for a year. He previously worked for Planned Parenthood, counseling on sexual health issues. “If there are 220,000 people in Southern California who have been exposed by this year, will it be 400,000 by next year. We need a powerful education intervention right now.”

In addition to safe sexual guideline pamphlets, Southern California Cares will sponsor public service announcements on TV and radio and do print advertising and billboards, provide written materials to community and civic groups and corporations.

APLA has a speakers bureau for groups interested in hearing about AIDS, and is publishing a list of guidelines for specific safe and unsafe sexual practices that anyone may request by telephoning the AIDS Hotline from noon to 10 p.m. Monday--Friday; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

The toll-free number in Southern California is (800) 922-AIDS; the local number is (213) 871-AIDS. Persons wishing to write for information should contact APLA, 7362 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, Calif. 90046.

Planning a Meeting

“As we know more about how the virus is transmitted we want to go back and re-evaluate what’s safe and what isn’t,” said Mortimer. He is planning a meeting in January with health educators, researchers and practitioners to update the lastest AIDS research.

“The basic concept involved here is self-protection,” Mortimer said. “You have to put it in perspective. There is probably a very, very small number of heterosexuals going to be infected. But it makes good common sense to say that limiting the number of sexual partners limits the chances of being exposed to the AIDS virus.

“The person has to decide what kind of precautions to take,” he continued. “Whether to eliminate the risk and practice safe sex all the time or to find out the person’s sexual history and decide if it’s worth the risk. Sit down and talk with the person you’re interested in and get a sexual history. Then you can decide. I don’t think too many people are willing to totally give up sex. Most are willing to live with some risk in their lives.”

Listed as groups at high risk for transmitting the AIDS virus are: individuals known or suspected to be diagnosed with ARC (AIDS Related Complex, a pre-AIDS condition), gay or bisexual men, intravenous drug users, prostitutes, hemophiliacs, any male who has had sexual contact with another male since 1977, any sexual partner of the above list, any individual whose past sexual history and current health status are not known to you.

“It’s real hard, though, for people to talk about sexual histories,” Mortimer said. “If you’ve had a monogamous relationship with someone for five years, you probably are at little or no risk and don’t have to practice safe sex. But most people in this country between the ages of 20 and 50 haven’t had a monogamous relationship for five years.

“Since AIDS, though, I always ask a woman about her sexual history if I am interested in having a sexual relationship with her,” Mortimer added. “You can start out by saying if we are going to be sexually involved, there are some things we need to talk about, birth control, accurate information about AIDS and high-risk groups that are the main concerns for both of you. You can develop a trusting relationship talking about something that’s hard to talk about. It builds a closeness, this idea of informed consent. But it is hard to get people to talk about it. It seems it’s easier for people to have sex than to talk about it. When they do talk, they want concrete answers. There are concrete guidelines for sexual partners from high-risk groups. Mostly, though, there aren’t any concrete answers.”

Iris Sterling, program chairman for the Shalom Singles group that meets at Valley Beth Shalom Temple in Encino, was surprised when so many men and women showed up for a recent lecture about AIDS that she scheduled.

Several hundred singles members came to hear Dr. Marshall Zablen, a Sherman Oaks internist, discuss the disease. At the question-and-answer period after the lecture, members asked diverse questions, ranging from ones about safe sex to should they eat in restaurants. What was the risk of getting AIDS if the chef had it?

“Women actually are worrying about how you can catch AIDS--from kissing or do you have to have had sex,” said Sterling. “They’re talking about it and they’re worried that it’s a deadly disease and what about the men? How honest are they? But the men worry, too. I think the whole thing will encourage more permanent relationships. People going back to marriage.”

Zablen recommended that people take the AIDS blood test to learn if they had HTLV-III antibodies in their blood, indicating past exposure to the AIDS virus.

However, there is still dispute in the medical and research communities about the AIDS blood test, its accuracy and the ramifications if a person tests positive or negative.

No Statement

In a separate interview, AIDS Project executive director Van Ness said she has many concerns about people taking the blood test, but has not issued a policy statement on it. “A negative result doesn’t mean you can’t get AIDS,” she said. “The result of the test is only good until your next sexual encounter. I have a concern that people will be reassured by something they shouldn’t be.”

After the lecture, Sterling summed up her feelings about the fear of AIDS: “There have been a lot of false rumors, but once you hear the facts as they are, it still all comes down to the same thing. ‘If I go to a dance and meet somebody I like, what do I do then?’ ”