HIV and Me

    I've always had gay men in my life. In high school in Phoenix in the early sixties I was friends with just about the only openly gay student. As far as I know he never made a pass at me, or perhaps he just wasn't attracted to me. In any case he never seemed to have much trouble getting dates, most often with older guys from the local community college or the university in the next city over. He and I hung out together, much to my stepfather's chagrin. We double dated a few times, me with a high school girl and him with a college guy. One such date I remember distinctly; we went to a club in Scottsdale to see a relatively unknown country singer named Waylon Jennings. He even had more success with high school girls than I did, although not overtlty sexually. He was, among other artistic pursuits, a painter, and he had nude paintings of a number of our classmates. I never knew if they had posed for him or if he simply used his powerful imagination, but it pleased me to assume I had seen good representations of more of the boobs of my classmates than most of the boys our age. Ted graduated in 1965, went on to college, had a moderately successful career as a painter and printmaker, and died of AIDS in the early nineties. I didn't find out about it until many years later.

    In college as a theatre major I knew more than my share of gay men. Many if not most of them made passes at me, and I became quite skilled at turning them down gently. This was the late sixties and there was a sexual revolution going on. I was for the most part a noncombatant, although not for want of trying. There were lots of young women who would have been available but I wasn't interested in them at the time. And the women I was interested in either weren't interested in me or had other things going on in their lives. Still, though, I wasn't interested in men. Some of the gay men I knew in those days died uncommonly young, and in retrospect the cause must have been HIV/AIDS in many cases. The lifestyle many if not most of them lived during the sixties continued into the seventies and even the eighties, and for so many that was the end of things.

    In graduate school there were fewer gay men than might have been expected given the numbers we all knew as undergraduates. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me even now, more gay men than straight men tried for professional acting careers right out of college, and more of them were successful, especially in musical theatre. But graduate students in theatre continued to have contact with undergraduates, both gay and straight, primarily because of our involvement in theatre productions. Many of us were directors, and the actors we worked with were primarily undergraduates. Then, too, the gay male grad students tended to find partners more readily among the undergrads, if for no other reason than there were so many of them. So while we didn't have classes with them we would interact with them in rehearsals and socially. So it was that I came to know a couple of young gay men who were outstanding actors (one playing Hamlet opposite my Horatio), who became a bonded pair way before gay marriage was ever thought of, and who nonetheless died of AIDS in the early 2000s.

    It was as a professor, though, that my heart was irrevocably broken time and time again. I started teaching full-time after completing my PhD in 1973 and from the start I had much more and more intimate contact with my students than any non-theatre professor ever would. This was primarily due to rehearsing plays with them, usually five nights and one weekend day per week for five weeks. Just the amount of time we spent together was unusual, but the quality of the time was also unique. I was never Dr. Stevens or Professor Stevens but always David, and we spent a good deal of time in physical contact. Our rehearsal discussions were often aimed at opening them emotionally so they could play their characters more effectively. Very little is left to the imagination as this process unfolds, and I can truthfully say I became closer emotionally to these young men (and women) than with almost anyone else in my life, at that time or this. The fact that they were gay usually had little if anything to do with it, but it wasn't a secret either, even with those still in the closet. The other way I got particularly close to these young men was in the teaching of acting, stage movement, and voice for the stage classes. These classes were most often taught in informal clothing (often sweatshirts and pants) rather than suit and tie, and they often involved "the laying on of hands". I was of course careful not to invade their personal spaces, but it is difficult if not impossible to teach tumbling (often part of a beginning acting class) without touching them. This emotional and physical intimacy led to good relationships for the most part, but I must admit that it very occasionally confused the students about the nature of those relationships. 

    During the seventies I taught at three colleges and directed an average of two productions per year. Except for one production that featured an all-female cast I had at least one gay actor in every production, and sometimes several. I particularly remember the young man who played Alan Strang in Equus in about 1978; he had to appear onstage nude with a quite lovely young woman, also nude. The scene would have been ruined had he developed an erection at any time, but as a gay man he wasn't attracted to women and so the issue never came up. He, too, died of AIDS in the nineties.

    It was during the eighties that the HIV epidemic reared its ugly head. I spent most of that time at a major university at first as the Chair and later as a tenured professor. One of my duties as Chair was to appoint graduate assistants for our MFA and PhD programs, and to hire actors and technicians for our professional summer playhouse. I also hired faculty members and civil service employees. This personnel aspect of my job proved to be the most difficult. Beginning in 1984 and continuing through 1993, when I resigned my tenured position to become an attorney, I hired more than three dozen gay men. Some were aware of the problem and took great care; I am pleased to say they are alive and well today. Others were either unaware or didn't care, and I regret to say that most of them are dead. This toll includes a visiting professor whom I fired for harassing young men; several guest actors who continued throughout the eighties as if they were immune; two costume technicians; our costume shop supervisor; a visiting professor who was among the best university directors I have ever worked with; and two or three playwriting graduate students. I will never forget the day that one of our PhD grad assistants came in to resign his position for the following semester. When he told me that he had tested positive for HIV I spontaneously hugged him. He seemed shocked, as if he didn't know that HIV could not be spread by such casual contact. I also got that feeling from a temporary faculty member, who came into my office to ask if she could catch AIDS from a toilet seat. I'm not sure she believed me when I told her emphatically that she could not.

    After I resigned as Chair in 1988 I enrolled part-time in law school, graduating with my JD and passing the bar exam in 1993. My first legal publication, in 1991 in The Journal of Legal Medicine, dealt with negligence liability for transfusion-associated AIDS transmission. I sent offprints of the article all over the world in response to requests from doctors, hospitals, and attorneys. I could have had a second career as a law professor, especially after I published another half-dozen articles in The Illinois State Bar Journal, but I had a different agenda. I finished my career as a trial and appellate attorney in Mattoon, retiring 15 years ago and living (I hope) happily ever after.

    My contact with HIV was entirely peripheral, but I think it's fair to say it changed my life forever. I'm not sure why it bubbled to the surface now, but the truth is that it's never far from top of mind. There but for the grace of god go I, or any of us.