The Early Days of HIV/AIDS - Introduction

HIV/AIDS, COVID-19, Monkeypox, Public Health vs. Politics, Opportunism, Freedom, Liberty, Media Narratives, Power, Gaetan Dugas aka 'Patient Zero' Revisited, Fauci

“I have this belief, or theory, not that there’s a big difference between those two, that AIDS is what caused gay marriage. You know, that all these astonishing changes in society’s idea of being gay. I don’t think they would have happened without AIDS.”

-Fran Liebowitz, “Killing Patient Zero” (2019 Documentary)

Way back in 2013, I was knee-deep in my research of 1960s and 70s California. Something intrigued me beyond that of the fact that this state saw so much cultural change during those two decades that not only went on to influence the rest of the country, but the entire world as well. Whether it be the rise of the Hippies and the “Summer of Love”, the Manson Family Murders, Altamont, Jim Jones and The Peoples Temple, or the various Freeway Killers, I couldn’t help but notice an underlying current of brutal violence, or even a ‘dark energy’, that bubbled under the surface of the Golden State, one that was both very prosperous and drenched in eternal sunshine.

As anyone who has conducted research can tell you, it’s very easy to get sidetracked and fall down “rabbit holes” that take you away from the core subject. This happened to me then, when I stumbled upon contemporary sources that detailed the years when the HIV crisis hit San Francisco. Making it even more interesting to me was the knowledge that French philosopher Michel Foucault was right in the middle of it. The frankness of those sources struck me as a gold mine of information, and led me down the proverbial rabbit hole, one that I still occupy to this day.

Around that time, I was explaining to others how the USA would increasingly use American cultural mores to serve foreign policy objectives, with gay rights being of the weapons in the arsenal. Many people laughed at me then. After taking my first plunge into the subject of the outbreak of HIV in San Francisco circa 1980, it immediately struck me as to just how politically powerful gays in the USA became by the early 2010s by comparison to that previous decade, one that saw gay men dying in the tens of thousands due to a plague that puzzled scientists and handed down a death sentence to those who were infected.

When I hear the word “plague”, my mind automatically associates it with two things: Albert Camus’ 1947 novel “The Plague”, and the Black Death that ravaged large parts of Eurasia in the 14th century. The latter has long stuck in my mind because historians inform us that there was a substantial increase in the living standards of the average European who managed to survive that outbreak of the Bubonic Plague. Alongside this fact is the claim that this propelled Europe into its era of global domination that began in the 15th century, most notably with its explorers and the colonies in the New World and Africa that followed. What didn’t kill them (Europe) made them stronger. I noted then that this conclusion also applied to gays in the USA, which Fran Liebowitz would go on to agree with six years later.

I went on to compile a thread composed of first hand sources that were then available to detail those first years of the HIV pandemic in San Francisco. That thread is still floating around in some corners of the internet and worked to gain me some notoriety as well. I can’t count how many times people of all political stripes and from many different countries and continents have reached out to me over the years to tell me just how informative it was, and how much of the information has either been suppressed or drowned out by media and activists ever since. Whether it be UK-based feminists sharing the thread on MumsNet, or women in the USA forwarding it to their parents to read, “The Thread” (as it is now referred to) had a not-negligible amount of impact.

For those of you who have read “The Thread”, you will be familiar with some of the material that will appear in this series of articles. Since then, I’ve amassed a larger collection of sources pertaining to that period in time, and will broaden the geography to include not just San Francisco, but also New York and Los Angeles. These three cities were by far the largest centres of infection in the early phases of the pandemic. Alongside that, there has been new material that has been published since I first compiled “The Thread”. Putting all of this together will give the reader a more robust understanding of just what exactly happened back then.

The obvious question that I will be asked is “why are you doing this?” There are a few reasons, so allow me to list them:

1. the outbreak of Monkeypox (see this excellent primer on it by Donald G. McNeil Jr.) is eerily reminiscent of those early days of HIV in that they were heavily centered around the gay male community (98% of those positive for Monkeypox in the USA as of this date are gay men)

2. the vectors for transmission are repeating the same pattern e.g. bathhouses, where gay men have sex with multiple partners

3. the media narrative being created that we should not insist on promiscuous gay men cutting down on their sexual activity/number of partners, as that would be ‘homophobic’

4. how public health is a hostage to politics on all sides when it should be the primary focus

5. the collapse of public trust in governing institutions thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and how the politicized response to it alienated so many people worldwide (Anthony Fauci had a huge role in combating HIV/AIDS, btw)

6. and most importantly, to inform people by way of credible sources just what was happening at that time that led to the HIV outbreak in the USA

In doing this, my hope is that you will be better-armed in understanding the history of that era and will be able to apply it to our current viral threats. Thankfully, COVID-19 and Monkeypox (for now) are not the death sentences that HIV/AIDS was back then. But who knows what can happen in the near future? Viruses mutate, as we’ve all learned during the two hellish years of COVID-19.

Gay men weren’t the only ones to succumb to AIDS in the USA in the early 80s. Hemophiliacs were victims, alongside intravenous drug users. However, we will limit our focus to the gay community in the USA because of just how disproportionately they were impacted to the rest of that country’s population. The story of HIV/AIDS in Africa is an altogether different story, and just as important (if not more important) as this one is, but I will leave it either for another time or to others to explore.

This is a story that has both heroes and villains, with the overwhelming majority of those stuck somewhere in between these two poles. To take a page out of Edward J. Watts’ excellent, excellent “The Final Pagan Generation”, I will tell parts of this story using Watts’ device of tracking contemporary figures of that era. I’ve settled on five of them: all gay white males, four of whom died from complications arising from AIDS, each representing different currents, whether they be political, cultural, or psychological. It’s through their behaviours, actions, words, recollections, etc. that we can understand better the diversity of thoughts and reactions from those most impacted by the pandemic. Combined, they also cover NYC/LA/SF. Not all groups of people are monolithic, despite stereotypes often being correct. This includes gay men. They are as follows:

1. Gaetan Dugas aka ‘Patient Zero’ (1953-1984) - a French-Canadian/Quebecois flight attendant who traveled all over North America and embraced the sexual freedom of the 70s as much as humanly possible. He went on to become villifed in the media for being responsible for introducing HIV into the USA. This was shown to be erroneous later on.

2. Michael Callen (1955-1993) - a singer born in the Midwest who moved to New York City and embraced the sexual freedom on display just like Gaetan Dugas did. Unlike Dugas, he immediately recognized that this was a sexually transmitted disease, and that their libertine and cavalier attitude towards sex and STDs allowed HIV an open door to enter and devastate. He went on to become an AIDS activist, and together with Richard Berkowitz wrote the first material promoting “safe sex”.

3. Matthew John Polchert Congelosi aka Beau Matthews (1957-1986) - LA-based gay porn actor and hustler (gay male prostitute), he was riven by feelings of guilt, alienation, abandonment, anger, suicidal intent, self-pity and blame. His is probably the saddest story of the group.

4. Larry Kramer (1935-2020) - acclaimed playwright, author, film producer, and AIDS activist. Think Larry David, but angry instead of funny. A New Yorker, he was part of the group that set up the first organization (GMHC) to respond to the AIDS crisis. Radical and alienating, he was kicked out but went on to form ACT UP later in the decade.

5. Randy Shilts (1951-1994) - a reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle, Randy was the first journalist to cover HIV/AIDS as a regular beat. He went on to write “And the Band Played On”, the most important book covering that first decade of the pandemic.

These five men will be popping up throughout this series, whether through their own words, or when mentioned by others, particularly in the oral histories that I will quote (sometimes at length).

There will be plenty of salacious details in this history, and they cannot be avoided as they play a central role in understanding how HIV/AIDS found such an easy entrance to exploit. This might not be to everyone’s reading tastes, but it is gonna be one hell of a ride. I will strive my best to be as dispassionate and respectful as possible for a Balkan Caveman.

This introduction is not paywalled, but the following pieces will be. There is a lot of interest in this subject, and I receive a constant stream of requests to talk about it, reference it, and share it as well.

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