If we were to take our cue from the denizens of New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, we would be making our way through this rubble of loss, grief, anger and uncertainty by creating art. The photographs of Mapplethorpe, called by some pornographic, though they portrayed the truthful flesh of the most vulnerable; the memoirs of Doty, Johnson and Monette; the fiction of Hollinghurst, Cunningham and countless others—these were the faithful documents and documentarians of the AIDS epidemic in this country, known to many of us as the AIDS crisis. Because crisis it was, however disregarded by governments and individuals whose moral judgments tragically eclipsed the significance of the word. Crisis: A time of intense difficulty, trouble or danger.
There were, in fact, politicians who refused to respond to the virus, that virus, as something dangerous, something that might cause trouble and difficulty across lines of race, class, creed and sexual preference. A very recent victim of this denial was the town of Austin, Indiana, population 4,000. In 2015, it had the highest rate of new infections of any place in the country. Throughout the crisis, the price of political morality was paid not by bureaucrats, but by people in hospitals who had transfusions; by people on the street addicted to drugs; by men and women, straight and gay, who enacted the human biological need for sex. Until treatment first became available in 1987, there was no forgiveness with the AIDS virus. It was an equal opportunity destroyer of lives.
I’ve written before about the AIDS crisis in this column. I wrote, “So many large ideas were lost that decade.” I would like to revise that now to say: So many large ideas were gained. Visibility, for one. The gay community could not and would not hide any longer. Several social activist groups grew out of that time. The Gay Men’s Health Initiative, the AIDS Memorial Quilt, and most notably, ACT UP. And here’s what happened to the deep divide between gay men and lesbians: it healed. Both communities now had a reason and a way to talk together. That’s what a virus can do, especially a virus that stretches around the world. It can bridge gaps. It’s a great equalizer. The things that keep us apart are often forgotten in a pandemic. When we need more than ever to stay apart, we want more than ever to be together.
Because the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, was so little understood, and early on its primary victims in the U.S. were a shunned minority, the spread of HIV was largely unchecked for years. No one knew how it was transmitted. Originally known as gay men’s cancer, AIDS didn’t even have a proper medical name until 1982. In this distinct vacuum of information, unnecessary loss led to unstaunched emotions. Grief and fear, that two-headed monster, moved quickly and efficiently through whole communities, threatening the well-being not only of the dying but of those of us who weren’t likely victims, only helpless and grief-stricken friends. In some cities, and places like Provincetown, Key West and Palm Springs, small towns friendly to gays and bolstered by the healthy commerce gay culture often brings, it was more than a decade before the destructive course of the virus turned, before the curve flattened. It took facts, unbiased information, and action to stop the spread of HIV, as well as new and affordable medicines. Sadly, infuriatingly, it took the spread of AIDS into the straight community to bring full national attention to the disease.
It was during that terrible decade, near the end of it, that art began to flourish. Art inspired by rage and loss. Art of the epidemic and its aftermath. Writers, painters, photographers, performance artists. There was an upswell of energy intent on creative expression, a phoenix rising from what remained of the fire. Tony Kushner’s Angels in America played first in San Francisco, then in cities across America and all over the world. It portrayed the raw underbelly of the AIDS epidemic, complete with drug hoarding, risky sex and the extremes of cultural, religious and internalized homophobia. But it did not ignore the emotional realm, the confusion and despair of victims and their beloveds. I saw it on Broadway. It was a very long play, as it needed to be, in order to do justice to the enormous cultural shifts, the seismic repercussions initiated by the crisis.
The erotic photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe excited a controversy and a necessary dialogue about the nature of art. His work represented one of the most stereotypical faces of the epidemic. He photographed nude men and women, some engaged in sexual acts, others presenting a different angle on gender. He pushed the envelope in an art form too long untested, and died of AIDS at the age of 42.
Mark Doty, Fenton Johnson, Paul Monette. All three eulogized their lovers lost to the epidemic in a new genre that came to be called the AIDS memoir. Michael Cunningham, Alan Hollinghurst, Susan Sontag, Sapphire, Sarah Schulman and dozens of others depicted a world in which the existence of the virus changed the course of human lives. And as we have seen, when humans stand aside and allow the rest of the natural world to breathe and flourish, even for a week, a month, the lives of those with whom we humans share this planet are transformed as well.
What if I were to propose that our current pandemic is itself the phoenix rising from the ashes of SARS, hanta, AIDS, flu, the black plague, the sweating sickness? Each of these purges offered us an opportunity which we did or didn’t take, in the short-term or long, and now we are witness to another fiery bird, its message gripped in its talons: With these I can take life, but look upon my resplendent plumage and know beauty, and right from wrong, and be restored. That is this artist’s understanding of what is offered within all that is taken away. “Paris is unrecognizable,” writes a friend. “There are virtually no cars and no planes, and the quiet is extraordinary.”
Our artistic endeavors, and those who endeavor for us, are translators and translations of a new language that we now have an opportunity to speak. Will we speak it? And if so, for how long? How long will it be before we forget this precious time when the mythical bird flew up once again from the dead flames of our cold familiar fire?
