How to Survive a Plague

Reading about a devastating plague while living in another might seem counterintuitive and I admit it wasn't exactly easy but I'm glad I did. [a:David France 198876 David France https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] can turn dry scientific talk riveting and I got some help from [a:Rory O'Malley 7080537 Rory O'Malley https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] who had me ugly crying on more than one occasion. Sometimes I felt like my heart was in a vise, I got ragey and impotent over bureaucratic incompetence, one that not only hasn't changed but has perhaps gotten worse, and had a couple of bitter laughs noticing many of the same actors that are still on the scene. The most prominent is perhaps Dr. Fauci who doesn't precisely come off smelling of roses, proof that if you hang on long enough time can iron out even the most stubborn wrinkles. All things considered this is an uplifting read in the sense that it shows how determined, persistent, and organized smart people can bring about change. The PWA (People With Aids), ACT-UP, and later TAG got knocked down innumerable times, lost more members of their community than could be properly be mourned, and yet continued what must have seemed a Sisyphean effort to save their lives. All of this in the Ginger Rogers role, doing everything Fred Astaire did but backwards and in high heels by which I mean living with naked, accepted, active, ugly, brutal homophobia not only from society but from our government, established religion and their own families while dying. No proper diagnosis, ignorant of the cause, without any effective treatment or hope and, in most cases, getting little sympathy or adequate care from the medical community. The names of Mark Harrington, Peter Staley, David Barr, Garance Franke-Ruta, Bill Bahlman, Gregg Gonsalves, Larry Kramer and so many others need to be engraved in our collective memories. However IMO, and the author agrees, two invaluable and perhaps unsung pioneers were Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz. Neither of them, very young men at the time, had any science or medical background but once they were diagnosed, early on in the Plague Years, and having been brought together by a beneficent fate got to work trying to find a way of keeping love and intimacy in male gay relationships. As Callen observed: “AIDS casts its shadow over gayness itself,” he said. “Loving another man is seen by many as an act of madness. Gay men are viewed as the Flying Wallendas of the eighties, performing death-defying high-wire acts merely by loving, while the ‘general population' below turns away in horror.” It's almost no surprise that Callen, a tender musician with a high falsetto, and Berkowitz, “a Jewish boy from New Jersey who spoke to his mother every day, was a professional sex worker.” who went by the professional name of Vinnie in his specialty as a Master within the BDSM community, were the ones to come up with a SAFE SEX MANUAL or guidance. The language of BDSM and music are precise & mathematical and won't steer you wrong. And then there's this quote from Watkins, one of the NIH directors about the situation: “We're not ready for this disease. This country is simply not ready for an emergency medical epidemic of this type, and we have to do better because we don't know what the next mutation [of the virus] is going to be.” This was late 1980s early 1990s!!! We've learned nothing. There's a companion documentary also directed by the author but it centers on the fight with Big Pharma, the NIH, NIAID, FDA, and the U.S.Government so Callen & Berkowitz don't appear as that wasn't what they focused on. I'd still recommend it.