I knew about GRID (gay related immunity disorder) in the mid70s. I was writing with my penfriend and academic mentor, Mark Freedman, at Berkeley. He thought it might be recreational drug use impairing the immune system. I met him late in 1976 when he came to London and Europe for coordination meetings about a cross-cultural piece queer r…
I knew about GRID (gay related immunity disorder) in the mid70s. I was writing with my penfriend and academic mentor, Mark Freedman, at Berkeley. He thought it might be recreational drug use impairing the immune system. I met him late in 1976 when he came to London and Europe for coordination meetings about a cross-cultural piece queer research. He was severely breathless. "You have GRID" "I haven't used a fraction of poppers and other drugs as most bathhouse users in SF. It must be a viral chest infection" "Then, in that case, it must be a viral infection that is causing GRID." He died in early 1977.
I went to California in 1981 to finish and present my doctoral research on (roughly - how men decide that they are gay, straight, bi or whatever). I was in SF when GRID had previously been translated into AIDS and they had found in SFGeneral Hospital a virus they named HTLV3. (Human T lymphotropic virus type 3). Very soon after they named it HIV. Being right in my belief that AIDS was due to a viral infection gave me no satisdaction because of the problem of AIDS in SF at that early date.
I came home to the UK and tried to mobilise an educational program to inform queer people in the UK to prevent AIDS in the UK. It wasn't well received. I wqas attacked for suggesting that gaysex was the cause of people dying. I tried countering this with the fact that sex is good but that viral infection could be passed unless people used a barrier. No one wanted use condoms, gatsex didn't lead to pregnancy and who wants to wear a condom anyway.
Cases were appearing in the UK and some people were feeling personal concern and my core group increased. We formed a telephone support team to answer people's concerns confidentially on the phone.
By 1987 the UK government was taking AIDS as serious risk and played the tombstones and funerals approach to make people fearful. By this time, some of our volunteers had become ill and died of AIDS. The Civil Service of the British Government contacted me and said that they were "aware of my interest in this health problem".. They wondered if I would advise tham about creating National AIDS Counselling Training Units to train doctors, nurses, social workers, proson officers, outeach workers to drug users and sex workers. I wrote a job description and the necessary wxperience and qualities to appoint people as Clinical Directors or Consultant Directors of such national training units. They set up three such units and asked me to apply for the directorship of one of them. This is what I did. I chose to focus on attitudes and feelings much more than clinical facts. Thus it followed a personal transfomational model of education. They were given the factual information but I constructed my courses to dissolve homophobia, to sissolve negative attitudes about drug use and sex workers. Doctors and other healthworkers see death as their failure so I wanted them to see death as part of life, a release from suffering, and to see the role of healthworkers to make the dying process as comfortable as possible. Of course, my team and I dealt with testing and feeding back on test results but I also set up courses to train people in counselling skills do that they could help partners and AIDS patients deal with homophobic parents, damily members etc.
I had clinical time built into this to do supportive work with those affected (not only those infected) by HIV. I heard about the deaths of some of my ex-sex partners, amy of whom I still oved. I have colleagues in the HIV workers world who 'came out" as HIV+ and then died. The average time between being diagnosed and dying was as short as 3 or 4 months. I had 3 deaths per week on average to deal with at work, sometimes with me holding a person's hand as they took their final breath and no one else od significance to be with them. I went to SF again and met HIV workers who were facing the deaths of 30 or more people each week of people that they knew in one capacity or another.
I had previously "adopted" a young teenager of 14 years of age as my gay baby brother. I told him how to protect hijmself and others from HIV. He went to London when he was 20 years old to join the showbiz crowd. He was a minor actor, an accomphlished musician in several instruments and a perfect pitched baritone. He had jobs in musical theatre and also became an assistant theatre manager in the West End. We remained in touch and his biolofical older brother had become a theatre lighting technician. I had little or no contact with his brother until he contacted me by phone to say that his brother was in hospital with an opportunistic infection. I went ot London see my gay baby brother when he came out of hospital. He was feeling that he had let me down. He had drunk a lot of alcohol, used a number of recreational and sexual enhancing drugs. It was part and parcel of the theatre culture. These actions had clouded his judgement and he had unprotected sex on many occasions. It wasn't necessary for me but he needed me to forgive him. His death came when he was 27 yers old and I was 46 and six years into my role as Consultant Director of a antional AIDS training unit. His death hit me hard, harder than the death of my mother three years earlier. It was like me, as a parent, losing one of my sons to HIV. I honour all of my triumphs and losses each World AIDS Day. I end this account of part of my personal journey in a flood of tears and heartache. Thank you for reading this. Much love and much hope.
I read your comments as I went to bed and was a little breathless. The love and pain in your experiences were palpable. My condolences for all the loss and grief, Ray. I’m sure you realize your gay brother wanted you to bear witness as much as anything to his life and humanity, the good, bad, and sometimes ugly sides of it. It sounds like there was much love and much respect between you both. Unsurprising, based on my limited and virtual experiences with you. Thank you for sharing this. So many for too long have run from the grief and trauma those years caused. While it would be nice to “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” most of it, mankind doesn’t work like that…and no matter how fast we run or how hard we try, grief usually catches up and finds us. In my book, it’s not a bad thing at all. It’s what helps us heal if we’re willing to sit with it and make friends with our past. At least I hope so. You know far better than I about how our brains work—or don’t—but I wanted to share my thoughts on the matter. To your continued physical and emotional healing….
I knew about GRID (gay related immunity disorder) in the mid70s. I was writing with my penfriend and academic mentor, Mark Freedman, at Berkeley. He thought it might be recreational drug use impairing the immune system. I met him late in 1976 when he came to London and Europe for coordination meetings about a cross-cultural piece queer research. He was severely breathless. "You have GRID" "I haven't used a fraction of poppers and other drugs as most bathhouse users in SF. It must be a viral chest infection" "Then, in that case, it must be a viral infection that is causing GRID." He died in early 1977.
I went to California in 1981 to finish and present my doctoral research on (roughly - how men decide that they are gay, straight, bi or whatever). I was in SF when GRID had previously been translated into AIDS and they had found in SFGeneral Hospital a virus they named HTLV3. (Human T lymphotropic virus type 3). Very soon after they named it HIV. Being right in my belief that AIDS was due to a viral infection gave me no satisdaction because of the problem of AIDS in SF at that early date.
I came home to the UK and tried to mobilise an educational program to inform queer people in the UK to prevent AIDS in the UK. It wasn't well received. I wqas attacked for suggesting that gaysex was the cause of people dying. I tried countering this with the fact that sex is good but that viral infection could be passed unless people used a barrier. No one wanted use condoms, gatsex didn't lead to pregnancy and who wants to wear a condom anyway.
Cases were appearing in the UK and some people were feeling personal concern and my core group increased. We formed a telephone support team to answer people's concerns confidentially on the phone.
By 1987 the UK government was taking AIDS as serious risk and played the tombstones and funerals approach to make people fearful. By this time, some of our volunteers had become ill and died of AIDS. The Civil Service of the British Government contacted me and said that they were "aware of my interest in this health problem".. They wondered if I would advise tham about creating National AIDS Counselling Training Units to train doctors, nurses, social workers, proson officers, outeach workers to drug users and sex workers. I wrote a job description and the necessary wxperience and qualities to appoint people as Clinical Directors or Consultant Directors of such national training units. They set up three such units and asked me to apply for the directorship of one of them. This is what I did. I chose to focus on attitudes and feelings much more than clinical facts. Thus it followed a personal transfomational model of education. They were given the factual information but I constructed my courses to dissolve homophobia, to sissolve negative attitudes about drug use and sex workers. Doctors and other healthworkers see death as their failure so I wanted them to see death as part of life, a release from suffering, and to see the role of healthworkers to make the dying process as comfortable as possible. Of course, my team and I dealt with testing and feeding back on test results but I also set up courses to train people in counselling skills do that they could help partners and AIDS patients deal with homophobic parents, damily members etc.
I had clinical time built into this to do supportive work with those affected (not only those infected) by HIV. I heard about the deaths of some of my ex-sex partners, amy of whom I still oved. I have colleagues in the HIV workers world who 'came out" as HIV+ and then died. The average time between being diagnosed and dying was as short as 3 or 4 months. I had 3 deaths per week on average to deal with at work, sometimes with me holding a person's hand as they took their final breath and no one else od significance to be with them. I went to SF again and met HIV workers who were facing the deaths of 30 or more people each week of people that they knew in one capacity or another.
I had previously "adopted" a young teenager of 14 years of age as my gay baby brother. I told him how to protect hijmself and others from HIV. He went to London when he was 20 years old to join the showbiz crowd. He was a minor actor, an accomphlished musician in several instruments and a perfect pitched baritone. He had jobs in musical theatre and also became an assistant theatre manager in the West End. We remained in touch and his biolofical older brother had become a theatre lighting technician. I had little or no contact with his brother until he contacted me by phone to say that his brother was in hospital with an opportunistic infection. I went ot London see my gay baby brother when he came out of hospital. He was feeling that he had let me down. He had drunk a lot of alcohol, used a number of recreational and sexual enhancing drugs. It was part and parcel of the theatre culture. These actions had clouded his judgement and he had unprotected sex on many occasions. It wasn't necessary for me but he needed me to forgive him. His death came when he was 27 yers old and I was 46 and six years into my role as Consultant Director of a antional AIDS training unit. His death hit me hard, harder than the death of my mother three years earlier. It was like me, as a parent, losing one of my sons to HIV. I honour all of my triumphs and losses each World AIDS Day. I end this account of part of my personal journey in a flood of tears and heartache. Thank you for reading this. Much love and much hope.
I read your comments as I went to bed and was a little breathless. The love and pain in your experiences were palpable. My condolences for all the loss and grief, Ray. I’m sure you realize your gay brother wanted you to bear witness as much as anything to his life and humanity, the good, bad, and sometimes ugly sides of it. It sounds like there was much love and much respect between you both. Unsurprising, based on my limited and virtual experiences with you. Thank you for sharing this. So many for too long have run from the grief and trauma those years caused. While it would be nice to “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” most of it, mankind doesn’t work like that…and no matter how fast we run or how hard we try, grief usually catches up and finds us. In my book, it’s not a bad thing at all. It’s what helps us heal if we’re willing to sit with it and make friends with our past. At least I hope so. You know far better than I about how our brains work—or don’t—but I wanted to share my thoughts on the matter. To your continued physical and emotional healing….