This month's column includes a bit of introspective rambling, as I read through and process Randy Shilts' monumental epic of the AIDS crisis. I'm curious to hear what you think about my column and selections - and if I'm getting any of you down to the Diversity Center to check out the ever increasing selection. Write me at thomasleavitt@hotmail.com with your thoughts.
And The Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, by Randy Shilts, 1988, ISBN 0 14 01.1369 X
One of the great works of modern journalism. A book that almost everyone has at least heard of, if not read. And, now I see why - Randy Shilts turns the dry stuff of politics, policy and bureaucratic infighting, into a compelling drama of Rome burning as Nero fiddles... closing each chapter with a summary rendition of the epidemic's latest geometrically increasing ravages, filling each page with a frantic fury over the lives being lost with each moment of delay, rentlessly chronicling the decline of one life after another after another... the structure of the book propels you onward, faster and faster towards the oncoming maelstrom about to overwhelm the world and America's gay community.
It will leave you baffled, infuriated, angry, and deeply moved.
Reading this book took me straight (sic) back to my teenage years, which were haunted by the spectre of AIDS... the classic slogan, "Silence = Death" always had a companion slogan: "Sex = Death". Even in the earliest stages of the epidemic, I knew something terrible was going on. There was never a "Before" for me, as Randy Shilts puts it... only an "After", haunted by the vision of a death terrible beyond comprehension if I was less than perfectly safe in bed.
Fear of AIDS still shadows every sexual encounter (with either gender) and leaves me wondering what might have been, if I wasn't responsible for respecting and honoring the memory of the multitudes of dead who never had the opportunity to be safe.
The resurgence of the epidemic among young twentysomethings, barebacking clubs and casual unprotected sex, leave me baffled and horrified... don't they KNOW what the price of this behavior is? Did an entire generation die for naught? Have we learned nothing?
Then the rational adult in me speaks--the one whose idealism is tempered by experience and awareness of my own hypocrisies. The answer to the question above addresses perhaps the great weakness of this book--indeed, of our entire culture's failure to effectively address AIDS and the topic of sex--the relentless criticism Randy Shilts' heaps upon the queer community's sexual hedonism.
When a doctor responds to the question "What would you as a gay man do to keep from getting this?" with "Stop having sex", I immediately think "no wonder it didn't work".
The answer isn't demonizing sex, it is eroticizing and educating about safer sex, as documented in an article on Lani Ka'ahumanu's "Safer Sex Sluts" San Francisco AIDS education/prevention brigade that I recently in a back issue of Anything That Moves. Sex and the self-validation, physical gratification, and emotional intimacy that comes along with it, is a stronger force than even death. Until we acknowledge this and react appropriately, AIDS will never be conquered.
Strongly recommended... and don't just settle for the movie, read the book.
A Country of Old Men - A Dave Brandstetter Mystery, by Joseph Hansen, 1992, ISBN 0-452-26805-2
Hardboiled detective fiction. The best the genre has to offer - a diverse set of compellingly human characters; clear, crisp prose; action scenes that keep things moving; and an intricately woven plot that gives nothing away until the very end... all these, alone, would be enough to make this novel a good read, but what propells this to the status of the classic, is how well the author renders his main character, Dave Brandstetter, an aging gay private investigator who is beginning to feel his mortality, but whose simple human decency drives him to solve one last case - his weariness, both in body, and when confronted by the boundless limits of human culpability (straight and gay alike), is palpable.
Strongly recommended.
In the wings:
The Gay Crusaders by Kay Tobin and Randy Wicker
Another historical selection - this one dating from 1972. "In-depth interviews with 15 homosexuals--men and women who are shaping America's newest sexual revolution." says the front cover. I can't wait to read it.
Faggots, a novel by Larry Kramer
I picked this up because he is such a pivotal character in Randy Shilt's book, and this book is referenced several times.
A More Perfect Union: Why Straight America Must Stand Up For Gay Rights, Richard D. Mohr, 1994
Culture Clash: The Making of A Gay Sensibility, Michael Bronski, 1984