ballast for the storms that lay ahead.
By this point in his life, Mike had had lots of sex, but never a lover. For brief periods, he’d had a boyfriend—the psychologist Richard Pillard in Boston, and in New York City a cop named George. With Richard, sex became something of an issue. Labeled terminally ill due to sexually transmitted infection, Mike now began to associate sex with disease and death, not love. He also had very specific health issues, like anal fissures, which in these early days of AIDS and the widespread fear of contagion, doctors were reluctant to treat surgically. The result, as Richard put it, was that “our sex life was not everything I wished it could be.” Mike said the same and more to close friends like Abby Tallmer, a young lesbian and recent graduate of Vassar who began working full-time in Sonnabend’s office in May 1983. She became especially close to Mike, with whom she shared a campy wit, a relish for sexual candor and gossip, and a deep concern for social justice. According to Abby, Mike expressed sadness and regret that he and Richard couldn’t indulge fully in the anal sex both preferred.
Adding to the problem was Mike’s image of himself as essentially nonmonogamous. “I’m really a whore,” he told Abby. “I am built to be a whore—or fate and circumstance made me a whore. Once a whore—always a whore.” Richard seemed to be exactly the sort of man he thought he’d been looking for: “He’s really nice, he likes to fuck, and he’s a musician, and there are all these reasons why I should stay with him. But I also was on the lookout for reasons to not stay with him.” Mike decided that the problem was his, and he had “a couple of intense weeks—almost psychotic—of ‘I don’t really love him.’ ” But the feeling passed.
Besides, Mike was dumbfounded that Richard, who was in good health, would choose to get sexually involved with someone possibly contagious and probably fatally ill. With typical directness, Mike simply asked him—and was amazed at Richard’s matter-of-fact response: “I’m a gay man living in New York City. I’m going to have to deal with this disease sooner or later. I may as well begin now.” Richard, too, had had numerous partners in the past—though he couldn’t match Mike’s high numbers—yet he’d had few sexually transmitted diseases and didn’t have a compromised immune system.
It was at just this critical juncture—July 1982—that the CDC released new findings that further muddied the waters. Within a two-week period the CDC announced three cases of PCP among hemophiliacs and thirty-four cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma among Haitians living in the United States. The CDC offered no commentary to accompany the figures, but obviously the “gay disease” had now been found in several other populations and wasn’t strictly confined to gay people. Reactions ranged from excitement to rage. The excitement was mostly felt by gay men relieved of the singular onus for the plague (the term “GRID” quickly gave way to acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS) and hopeful that a substantial rise in federal funding and research would follow. The rage was felt among hemophiliacs who had previously assumed that the blood supply was uncontaminated, and among Haitians for being unfairly singled out for discrimination. AIDS had also been found in Denmark in 1981, but that was all but unmentioned, as Haiti—in a clear case of racism—was highlighted. Within a few months, the Haitian Coalition on AIDS was founded to challenge, successfully, the designation of Haitians as a risk group. 10
With Mike’s health improved, he and Rich Berkowitz set to work on the Sonnabend-inspired article. It took three months to complete and Mike, ever the perfectionist, was ready for yet another rewrite until Rich called a halt by pointing out that the number of diagnosed cases in New York City had doubled from three hundred to six hundred during the
By this point in his life, Mike had had lots of sex, but never a lover. For brief periods, he’d had a boyfriend—the psychologist Richard Pillard in Boston, and in New York City a cop named George. With Richard, sex became something of an issue. Labeled terminally ill due to sexually transmitted infection, Mike now began to associate sex with disease and death, not love. He also had very specific health issues, like anal fissures, which in these early days of AIDS and the widespread fear of contagion, doctors were reluctant to treat surgically. The result, as Richard put it, was that “our sex life was not everything I wished it could be.” Mike said the same and more to close friends like Abby Tallmer, a young lesbian and recent graduate of Vassar who began working full-time in Sonnabend’s office in May 1983. She became especially close to Mike, with whom she shared a campy wit, a relish for sexual candor and gossip, and a deep concern for social justice. According to Abby, Mike expressed sadness and regret that he and Richard couldn’t indulge fully in the anal sex both preferred.
Adding to the problem was Mike’s image of himself as essentially nonmonogamous. “I’m really a whore,” he told Abby. “I am built to be a whore—or fate and circumstance made me a whore. Once a whore—always a whore.” Richard seemed to be exactly the sort of man he thought he’d been looking for: “He’s really nice, he likes to fuck, and he’s a musician, and there are all these reasons why I should stay with him. But I also was on the lookout for reasons to not stay with him.” Mike decided that the problem was his, and he had “a couple of intense weeks—almost psychotic—of ‘I don’t really love him.’ ” But the feeling passed.
Besides, Mike was dumbfounded that Richard, who was in good health, would choose to get sexually involved with someone possibly contagious and probably fatally ill. With typical directness, Mike simply asked him—and was amazed at Richard’s matter-of-fact response: “I’m a gay man living in New York City. I’m going to have to deal with this disease sooner or later. I may as well begin now.” Richard, too, had had numerous partners in the past—though he couldn’t match Mike’s high numbers—yet he’d had few sexually transmitted diseases and didn’t have a compromised immune system.
It was at just this critical juncture—July 1982—that the CDC released new findings that further muddied the waters. Within a two-week period the CDC announced three cases of PCP among hemophiliacs and thirty-four cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma among Haitians living in the United States. The CDC offered no commentary to accompany the figures, but obviously the “gay disease” had now been found in several other populations and wasn’t strictly confined to gay people. Reactions ranged from excitement to rage. The excitement was mostly felt by gay men relieved of the singular onus for the plague (the term “GRID” quickly gave way to acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS) and hopeful that a substantial rise in federal funding and research would follow. The rage was felt among hemophiliacs who had previously assumed that the blood supply was uncontaminated, and among Haitians for being unfairly singled out for discrimination. AIDS had also been found in Denmark in 1981, but that was all but unmentioned, as Haiti—in a clear case of racism—was highlighted. Within a few months, the Haitian Coalition on AIDS was founded to challenge, successfully, the designation of Haitians as a risk group. 10
With Mike’s health improved, he and Rich Berkowitz set to work on the Sonnabend-inspired article. It took three months to complete and Mike, ever the perfectionist, was ready for yet another rewrite until Rich called a halt by pointing out that the number of diagnosed cases in New York City had doubled from three hundred to six hundred during the
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