The AIDs epidemic was close to me in San Francisco. I didn’t have any of my closest friends die of AIDs but many of my friends either died of AIDS or a partner or child did. At the early stages no one knew what it was. It was called HIV then HIV-AIDS and then AIDS. Many public health authorities made predictions that a cure was only 10 years away. That was in 1982, just 6 months after the first AIDs cases began showing up.
My friend, Dean Echenbach an epidemiologist, advisor to Merv Silverman had the gay bathhouses shut down. I initially supported this because sex with strangers was what the bathhouses were about. On later reflection, I realized the best thing to do was to use the bathhouses to distribute condoms and information.
In the early days of AIDS the virus was very lethal. Many people died with a brief symptom period of a few months. One woman, a beautiful acquaintance of mine, spent a week in Haiti and was dead two months after she returned.
The significant memory for me, from that time, was personal. In early 1982, when we were figuring out what the AIDs issues were, two of my friends (lawyers) sat me down for drinks. It was an intervention of sorts. They told me I had too many ‘girl friends’ and that I needed to use condoms. I still appreciate that intervention by Bob and Sid.