Salon.com > Alysia Abbott

My AIDS memoir soundtrack

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 18:00:00 +0000

In the spring of 1972, the sexual culture was cracking open. David Bowie released "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust" and Lou Reed released "Transformer." Openly bisexual, the two musicians infused pop culture with a kaleidoscope of strange beauty. Along with Iggy Pop, they were an androgynous space-age force in silver lamé and black nail polish. Listening to "Ziggy Stardust" and later "Transformer" — on which Reed sang, “We’re coming out … out of our closets” — Dad was energized by the possibilities of post-Stonewall homosexuality. He didn’t see his wife and small baby girl as an impediment to sexual liberation. As the student government president at Emory University in Atlanta, he wrote a column for the student paper in which he publicly came out and urged his straight brothers and sisters to join the cause for gay rights as they had joined to fight the war. My mother supported him. Both took lovers on the side. They were living the revolution.

What ever happened to safe sex?

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 18:23:00 +0000

A week after the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene announced the discovery of a deadly new strain of HIV -- a discovery later questioned by AIDS researchers -- the initial alarm heard around New York City has died down. It has been replaced by an intense public debate among activists and health officials, as well as serious soul searching among New York City's gay community. Interviews with 15 gay men this week found that while these New Yorkers were worried about being exposed to the potential new strain, they were more concerned with the decline of safe sex and AIDS awareness in their community, especially among those most at risk.

For those old enough to remember the early days of the AIDS crisis in 1981-84, last week's headlines prompted a feeling of déjà vu. "There's a sense of, Goddamn it, why are people still doing this?" says Dan Cherubin, a 39-year-old librarian who works for a Dutch Agricultural Bank. "Seeing the news," he says by telephone, "made me think of Patient Zero in 'And the Band Played On,'" the first case of the "gay cancer" chronicled in Randy Shilts' landmark history of the AIDS crisis.

Lost and found

Wed, 21 Jun 2000 19:35:00 +0000

My parents were pretty wild once. I found this photograph with fold marks on each side of the image indicating that it might have been kept in someone's wallet or back pocket.