20 March 2021
You may not want to read this. This post is a downer. I interrupt my Coast Guard days to deal with an issue that has bothered me for years and years. HBO Max recently produced a series called “It’s A Sin” about the AIDS crisis in England during the 80’s and early 90’s. It hit too close to home for me. In particular, the last episode reminded me so much of my life in Broward County in the mid 1980’s.
In the early 80’s, I left Itawamba Junior College because of a difference of more than opinion with the Dean of Academic Affairs. He was a Christian zealot and I was not. I enrolled at the Microbiology Department at the University of Mississippi Medical School in Jackson to work on a PhD. I had this idea I could contribute to the research on AIDS.
That didn’t work out. However, it gave me the impetus to go back to teaching. When I eventually arrived at Broward Community College in 1985, I looked for a way to contribute to the AIDS epidemic and decided to volunteer to go around to Broward General Hospital to visit AIDS patients. It was a horror story.
A person was assigned to me to council me on what I should do. I followed him around on his rounds at Broward General and then assigned to do that on my own It was a time that being HIV positive was a stigma. I found out very quickly doctors would not even enter the room of AIDS patients. My job was to simply visit, ask if they needed anything and do what I could to help them and in many cases be there for them because their families had abandoned them.
Some appreciated the offer and others cursed and demanded you leave because they were embarrassed by the disease .
At Broward General, no one was listed as an AIDS patient. You relied on sympathetic nurses who would tell you on the sly to visit a certain room. You had to dress up in in hospital gowns, masks, and booties. The garb was not to protect you from AIDS. It was to keep you from giving the AIDS patient secondary infections.
There were a lot of nurses at Broward General who put their necks on the line to steer you to someone who had AIDS. I would walk down the corridor and a nurse would whisper to me as I passed to check room number so-and-s0. Some nurses were cruel and wouldn’t speak to you if you asked about isolation patients. The real heroes were the ones who knew what you were doing and did everything to make sure you could help the patient.
There were roofers who were straight that had gotten it from a s exual partner. There were gay guys who had been disowned by their families. There were women who got it from their sexual partner. There were people who didn’t want to see you because of their condition. A lot of people were ashamed.
One particular case stood out. His family had disowned him because he was a drag queen. He wouldn’t talk to me at all. I kept going to visit him every weekly round. Even though he wouldn’t talk, I would sit there for 30 minutes per visit never saying a word. He eventually responded to me after the seventh or eighth visit. I finally got him to talk and once he asked me to go get him a pack of cigarettes – y0u could smoke in the hospital rooms at that time. This was in the mid 1980’s.
He finally warmed up enough to me where he would actually hold conversations with me and we would talk for an hour or two and he got to where he would look forward to my visits.
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He later called me about another AIDS patient I had seen who lived a few blocks from me. I remember the AIDS patient coming to see me at my garage apartment in Hollywood and him insisting to thoroughly wash the glass of water he had at my place. I must have had an impression on him when I told him it was not necessary. I knew enough about AIDS to know it was not casually transmitted. Later, my mentor called me and asked me to go to his place and meet his parents.
He had died and specifically asked that I go into his place and remove any objects that his parents might find objectionable or embarrassing. I met his parents at the apartment and removed several sex toys he had and told them it was OK to go in and remove the rest of his things. My mentor later told me that his parents never wanted me to contact them for any reason. They were totally embarrassed about their son.
Later, I was at graduate school at Florida State University in Library and Information Science during summer session when I received a phone call from my mentor and I was told that the guy I had visited at Broward General who at first refused to speak to me had passed away. I was really devastated. I had finally broken through to the guy.
Another guy I visited at Broward General never had a lover. He later died. However, one visit I made with him he looked me in the eyes and grabbed my hand and kissed my hand. He was the one that the doctors would never enter his room to examine him. He died alone and forgotten except for me.
I never went back to volunteer at Broward General. It was too emotionally devastating to meet with covert AIDS patients only to see them die a few weeks later. I too easily formed bonds with them and it played on my emotional well being.
There are several similarities I can draw with AIDS and COVID. AIDS was considered for may years to be a “gay” disease. I see some of the same with COVID in that some of the conservative element of the nation think that they are not susceptible to the disease. I’ve read stories of people who refused to admit they had COVID because they didn’t believe in the disease. Then there are those obituaries that list anything as the cause of death except COVID because they didn’t want friends and relatives to know. Both were common reactions during the AIDS epidemic.
I remember ministers preaching hate about AIDS and said it was God’s punishment visited upon homosexuals for their deviant lifestyle. I used to tell my students that it was evident that God was obviously endorsing lesbianism since lesbians didn’t get AIDS. By the way, “It’s A Sin” has a very strong female character that leads the way in the fight for recognition of AIDS in Britain.
AIDS was a defining moment in my life. It prepared me, in a sense, for the COVID pandemic. At least the rest of the nation now has some idea of what the gay community went through in the 1980’s and 1990’s. I survived the AIDS epidemic of that time period, but at what cost to me? If I survive the COVID pandemic, again at what cost?
If you get a chance to see “It’s A Sin” I recommend it. It is well done. All the cast are gay. It gives you a glimpse into what went on in the 80’s. There but for the grace of god go I.
