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Okay, so this is the September 28th, 2021 interview of
Fred Fishman by Audrey Barnett for the Humanities Truck Community Archive
recorded on Zoom, in both of our respective homes. So first and foremost,
I'd like to ask you do I have permission to record this interview?
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Yes, you do.
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Thank you. Now would you be able to tell me what your
name is and also spell it?
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My name is Fred Fishman F-R-E-D F-I-S-H-M-A-N
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Perfect. So it would be awesome if you could just tell me
a bit about yourself. For example where you currently live and like, what's
your current occupation?
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I currently live in San Francisco, California and my
occupation is I'm a supervisor for the data safety monitoring committee,
which is part of the infrastructure of the cancer center at UCSF, and my
organization monitors clinical trials in the cancer center, cancer studies.
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Okay, cool. So I'm curious then just to connect to the
topic of this interview which is HIV/AIDS activism in DC. How long did you
live in DC and what initially brought you there?
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I lived in DC for 18 years and what brought me there
initially was I was in school at the University of Maryland College Park.
And during the time that I was in college started going downtown and
familiarizing myself with Washington. It's a little complicated I actually
moved away for a year after I graduated, but came back to DC with my
partner at the time and we actually came back to DC just for a visit and we
were planning to move to the West Coast then. This is like in 1977. Yeah,
1977 I guess.
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We were planning to move to the West Coast at that time. We
weren't sure where exactly. Maybe San Francisco, maybe Seattle. We really
hadn't prepared anything and the friend that we were visiting, we were
staying with him and he was managing a little restaurant and a little
carryout place, and anyway, we took temporary jobs there and I ended up
staying for 18 years.
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Wow. What prompted then you guys to stay?
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We were having a great time in Washington. It just seemed
like the right thing to do. It was a good place to be and you know we sort
of started putting down roots there. I already knew a lot of people from
college. And, you know, there seemed to be quite a thriving gay community.
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Yeah. I'm curious then if you could tell me a bit about
your LGBTQ community in DC. Was there a moment when you first felt
connected to the community? Was it instant or did it require some
navigating on your end?
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Well, I think it happened fairly quickly, you know, if we
had a time machine and could go back, you know, DC was a rocking town at
that period. You know, we don't think about it that way today. It seems
like, you know, our DC has a different reputation today than it did then.
But it's always been a very progressive town, very politically astute, of
course as politics is the main industry of the town.
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And, you know, there were a lot of people doing a lot of
political activism that felt good and right and there were many many
organizations. There was a lot of community organizing, lots of
organizations were springing up all over the place. The Washington Blade
was a good newspaper that, you know, not all places had a good newspaper as
good as the Blade and I don't know if there was one particular moment. I
don't think I could name one moment when I felt connected, but very quickly
I started to make connections everywhere.
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What spaces did this connection revolve around? For
example, organizations or events or hangout spots?
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All of those things. So for organizations, I would say I
got very quickly involved in the gay synagogue, as we called it the gay
synagogue, not the lesbian and gay synagogue as it later became known.
Because initially, I think it was mostly men, but it later became Bet
Mishpachah
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I had a very strong Jewish upbringing, conservative, but
you know, leaning towards Orthodox and my Jewish values still really inform
how I go through my life. Although I'm not affiliated with any synagogue
today, I still think the way that we were raised, you know, and if we were
raised in a religious tradition regardless of what our superficial
connections might be, there are values that are inculcated in us that we
keep for the rest of our lives. And anyway, it felt like a very welcoming
space and people was joining fairly rapidly and it was exciting to be
there.
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And I'm curious, just because you speak of these values
that have remained kind of a constant in your life. In what ways did this
gay synagogue and your community in DC impact those values or solidify them
or mold them? What was the relationship between these values and that
period of time in your life and your faith at that time?
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I think I would say it was the primary motivator. First of
all, social to meet other Jewish people. And also the idea of social
justice, you know, for us at that time, I think when we said social justice
we were mostly talking about Gay Liberation, which was extremely important
to us at the time.
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And again today we might forget what it was like back then.
But you know, we really were oppressed and in a way that I think people
forget or you know, young people might not realize how real that oppression
was. And there were, you know, myriad examples of that. Laws, you know that
prevented people obviously couldn't get married, couldn't adopt children,
but even more draconian things than that, there were sweeps of gay people
being arrested, appropriate healthcare was denied to people, people lost
their housing, people lost their jobs.
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This is very, very serious systemic oppression, which I'm
so happy to say that in my lifetime I've been able to see huge changes and
we really can't claim to be an oppressed minority so much anymore. Of
course, there is still homophobia, but it's nothing like it was back then.
So forming institutions was a very critical part of our liberation at that
time. And of course, you know this connection but by being part of the
synagogue I found the chorus, the lesbian and gay chorus, and I could tell
you that story now or we can save it till later.
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Yeah, why don't you tell me that story now? That would be
great.
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So as the synagogue grew we were aware that there were
other LGBT synagogues springing up all over the world. And there was an
organization formed at the World Congress of Gay and Lesbian Jewish
organizations, and we started having conferences. This is in the 1970s that
they started having conferences and the 80s that grew and I don't remember
exactly what year it was, but it was in the 80s maybe about 85, maybe, I
don't remember what year it was. We could do some research and find that
out.
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We were a host congregation, Bet Mishpachah was a host
congregation in Washington, and I was one of the chairs. I was a co-chair
of the entertainment committee for this big conference, where we had Queer
Jews coming from all over to Washington. My co-chair was a woman whose
partner was in the lesbian and gay chorus, and so she got them to come and
perform one night, and that's how I found out about the chorus.
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Now, I knew that there was a Gay Choral movement. In 1981,
the San Francisco Gay Men's chorus went on a national tour and they came to
the Kennedy Center and I went with my partner to see them, and boy, that
was a hugely emotional night.
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How so? Would you mind describing a little bit more the
feelings that you experienced?
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Well again, we don't really remember today. It's hard to
remember what conditions were like for gay people and how we had to be
hidden. How hard it was to be out of the closet and in public. So this was
the gay men's chorus that came around and did a national tour. They came to
the Kennedy Center. So my partner and I packed up our leather chaps and our
vests and our hats and we put them in our backpacks and walked to the
apartment of a friend who lived near the Kennedy Center.
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And there we changed into our outfits and proudly walked in
our leather to the Kennedy Center and to be there in the audience of mostly
gay people, to hear a gay, an out and proud gay, chorus performing was
extremely powerful, extremely emotional. And I just remember we cried and
cried and cried and cried and couldn't stop crying. And we never had an
experience like that before. We had never had an experience of ever being
in the majority anywhere. So, that was really important.
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After that national tour, gay choruses sprang up. I mean,
there were other choruses in existence already at that time, there's always
been a little competition about who was the first. Who cares who was the
first, not important to me, but that national tour did stimulate this idea
that there could be gay choruses and so I already knew about that.
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I always felt it was very important for gay men and
lesbians to work together. So this idea of an all men's chorus while it was
appealing to me, I was not, you know, I was not that happy about the idea
of auditioning for one. And the idea of a lesbian and gay chorus was much
more appealing to me and just like the synagogue we talked a lot about
equality and equity and concepts that today we're all very familiar with,
those concepts. But in those days, that was a new idea for many of us and
that we wanted to have both men and women representatives on all of our
committees and in all of our leadership, and all of our infrastructure, and
that seemed better to me. It just seemed better. I liked it better.
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Yeah, and I'm curious, because as you note that's an idea
that I think me and a lot of my peers are familiar with, the idea of gay
and lesbians working side-by-side together, but I'm curious if you could
expand a little bit more on how that might have been revolutionary or a new
concept and also what your experiences were like within the lesbian and gay
choir. I mean, it's purposeful how the lesbian comes first within that
title and so I'm curious if you could illuminate how maybe your experiences
in that organization differed from experiences within all-male gay settings
or other social scenes at the time.
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Say the question again.
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That was a bit long, but just if you could explain how
that concept was new or revolutionary, and then a follow-up is just sharing
how your experiences within the lesbian and gay choir differed from other
social scenes at the time that were possibly more segregated by gender.
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Yeah, okay. So first of all, I want to correct you. The
name of the group is the Lesbian and Gay Chorus, not choir. That's the
correct name. That was intentional also because people associate the word
choir with a church and we did not want to be associated with church
choirs. We wanted our name to be chorus rather than choir. So there was
intention behind that too.
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Oh, that's interesting. Why is that distinction important
between church choir and chorus?
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We, you know, I don't think this was explicitly written
anywhere. There's no documentation of it, but we did not perform religious
music. Generally, I mean, there were some exceptions. We did not do a
Christmas concert, for example, we did not do a holiday concert. We really
wanted to be egalitarian for everybody and it was kind of revolutionary. So
as a Jew it's like, you know, in all the singing that I had done in my
life, I sang a lot of Christmas songs.
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Oh, and then, there was sort of like, an increase in
awareness that there were Jewish people. So I would sing a Christmas
concert with 15 Christmas songs, and they would put in one Hanukkah song
for me. No, that never felt good.
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So in the Lesbian and Gay Chorus, we did not perform a
holiday concert and we didn't go caroling. Although maybe some people went
caroling, but that was independent, you know, and we did perform some
religious works, but we performed them as great works of music not in
conjunction with a holiday or for a religious purpose. That was important
to me, that made a big difference to me.
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And again, it was a consensus-based organization and that
was appealing to me also. So a lot of my socializing, those were the two
organizations, the synagogue and the chorus, were the two major social
organizations where men and women mixed. Because in my other gay social
organizations and well, not really organizations, but just in hanging out,
I was mostly with men. I felt that being involved with those two groups
really balanced out my life. Women have always been very important in my
life and I've made most of my women friends through those two
organizations.
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Of course, yeah. Thank you for the clarification also
between choir and chorus because that's really important. That's a really
interesting anecdote actually that I wasn't fully aware of before. And so I
appreciate you sharing that. It's really interesting.
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Also, the chorus used to be the Gay and Lesbian Chorus, and
then you mentioned this also, we changed the name to Lesbian and Gay Chorus
to put lesbian first and I'm sure you, people might have even told you
these stories before, but the number of times that I told people I sang
with the Lesbian and Gay Chorus, and they would say, oh, the gay men's
chorus. Because the men's chorus has always had the limelight, and that's
what people thought.
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And this idea of even having a Lesbian and Gay Chorus, I
think, was more strange, more revolutionary, harder for people to
understand because they assumed that gay men would only want to be with men
and lesbians would only want to be with women. So again, I think that was
the climate at that time in Washington DC was that all the organizing was
around trying to provide equal treatment for everybody.
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At that period, you know, the BT, we said LGBT, but we're
really talking about lesbians and gay men. I think we all wanted to get
that established first and then little by little more awareness grew about
bisexual people and trans people. And of course today, I think the balance
has shifted. So there's a lot of organizations outside of just lesbians and
gay men.
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Yeah, that's fascinating. It's really interesting to
learn about how that has evolved. Because as you noted, I think it's kind
of commonplace now, but it's fascinating to learn more about the origins of
that organizing and how the Lesbian and Gay Choir was kind of at the
forefront of that like collaboration and emphasis on also consensus-based
decision making and making sure everyone has an equal voice.
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And so I am really curious. I'm really, I'm touched by
that story you shared of you listening to the Gay Men's Choir for the first
time at the Kennedy Center and so I'm curious if you could talk more about
the connection between singing, and maybe even more of your personal
experiences of singing within the Lesbian and Gay Choir, and then also the
connection there to LGBTQ visibility or LG visibility.
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I'm going to correct you again. It's chorus.
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Oh, I'm so sorry.
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It's okay. It's a habit. So I'm just going to correct you
again.
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No, thank you so much. I have just changed my notes. I'm
so sorry. I thought I had it correct. Yeah, okay it's chorus.
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It's okay, you weren't thinking about it. It's okay. And
now I forgot the question.
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Oh, no worries. I can reiterate. So how for you
personally was singing within the Lesbian and Gay Chorus Gay and Lesbian
Chorus has
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It was huge. It was huge. So I've always been musical. I
played instrumental music since I was a little kid and I sang in high
school and I played in college and, you know, after college, I was wishing
that I could continue doing musical stuff, but I wasn't quite sure how to
do that. Finding the chorus was really, it was exactly what I needed. It
was the right fit at the right moment. And when I joined it was a very
small group. There were only, I think, maybe six people was the total and
they only had one other bass, and I sing bass, and they really needed me.
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And so, the friend that I had, who was the partner of the
women that I work with on that committee, you know, sort of nagged me, a
little bit to come to a rehearsal. And I went to one rehearsal and that was
it, I was hooked. The people were so nice that's when I met Jill and some
of the other members who are still, you know, I still know them and I'm
friends with them.
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The ability to combine my love of making music with the
politics of the hour, with the politics of the day, was really powerful and
kind of intoxicating that we could, you know, sing publicly, sing well,
sing beautifully artistically, and carry a powerful message, and I think
that's in the tradition of, you know, the civil rights movement. Liberation
movements throughout history have used music and singing very effectively
and it really felt like we were on to something and I will tell you in
1989.
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So the formed a movement and were a huge organization,
called GALA choruses, Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses, you may know
about them. And we went, our small chorus by that time had grown. I don't
know if it was maybe 25 people or 30 people, something like that. And we
went to the first, our first GALA chorus conference, and that was in
Seattle, Washington in 1989.
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And you know, we had performed a lot by that point but you
know, we had never done anything like this where we walked onto this major
stage of a big venue and there were, I don't know how many thousand people
in the audience, and to hear them applaud for us, our little group singing,
it was one of the turning points.
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A really powerful moment in my life recognizing, like, my
voice is powerful. I feel like I'm going to cry right now just saying it,
you know, the choruses mission statement or vision statement, I'm sorry I
don't remember which it is, is every voice matters. Very simple and very
profound, right? So I started to feel like, oh my God, my voice matters. I
can make a difference in the world by standing up and singing. I mean, it
was really intoxicating.
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I can imagine.
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Yeah, and that fueled everything, you know, all things are
connected. So that fueled my desire to do more, to be more visible, to be
more out and proud, to demonstrate, to march, to just not care so much
about hiding myself.
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And again, we today tend to forget because everybody knows
gay people today, but I mean, when I came out to my parents, they told me
they'd never seen or heard of another gay person course, it wasn't true.
But that's people, you know, we were really in the closet.
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So it was so important to come out. It was so important to
be visible, but very uncomfortable in a lot of situations. But if you were
performing, if it was part of the Performing Arts, that was a way to be out
and proud and have something to say and know that our voice really
mattered. And then people told us that we were changing their lives.
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Wow.
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So that was really powerful.
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Completely. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing. I agree.
That statement is really succinct and very powerful and profound as you
said, so I am curious then to know how the AIDS epidemic impacted your
performances or collaborations that you had as a part of your time with the
Lesbian and Gay Chorus. Because obviously you've talked a lot about lesbian
and gay visibility, but I'm curious about the specific ways the AIDS
epidemic impacted your performances.
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Well, as I said, a moment ago, all things are connected, so
they really can't be separated. AIDS, you know, was first reported in 1981
by the time we're talking about in the mid-80s it was ravaging the gay
community, gay men's community primarily, and boy living through that
period, again, really shaped me and shaped who I am today.
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It's like, it would be like growing up during a war. It was
a war. And again, we don't remember the government rejected us, the
government abandoned us. They didn't do anything. And there were thousands
of people dying, and many of my friends died. And we had chorus members who
died and synagogue members who died and all my social circles were all
decimated. People were dying all over the place. Literally.
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So, that was a big part of the motivation where we
recognized that we have to do something. We have to take action, we have to
do something politically. How can we get the government to pay attention to
this? And not just let us die.
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I myself, tested HIV positive in 1985 when the test first
became publicly available. So I'm a medical miracle today when talking to
you about this. At that time in 1985, a positive test was essentially a
death sentence because really people were dying. It wasn't understood that
anyone could survive AIDS.
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If you feel comfortable, would you mind sharing a little
bit about the feelings that accompanied that diagnosis or how these
respective communities maybe helped you at this point in time?
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Yeah, when I talk about it, I call that year my lost year.
The truth is I was so freaked out and terrified that I don't even remember
anything. For about that year after I got my diagnosis, I really don't
remember anything. I just remember, I cried a lot. I cried at every sunset,
I cried at every movie, I cried every, every time I saw a flower blooming.
I was just crying all the time because I thought this is the last time I'll
ever see the irises blooming, you know, very melodramatic.
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It was justified I would say.
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I was 30 years old. You know is that right? Yeah I was 30
years old when I got my diagnosis and I also had, I was seeing it all
around me. I was seeing people, die, all around me. I remember the first
one of my friends who got sick and died and it was somebody, he was not a
close friend, with somebody that I had known for quite a few years by that
point.
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I'm guessing this was probably about 1983 or so, but I'm
not sure of the year, but I'm guessing around then, and I ran into him on
the street and he said, hello Fred. And I looked at him. I didn't recognize
him and I literally didn't recognize him. I was like, who are you? And then
he told me his name and I was, I'm sure I didn't hide my dismay and shock
very well. I regret that because I'm sure he was getting that reaction from
a lot of people and it must have been extremely painful.
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Because he looked so different?
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He was emaciated, he just looked, you know, 20 years older.
Yeah and that really shook me. And then it started happening. It started
happening all over the place. You know, during that period I lost my
doctor. I lost my dentist. I lost my therapist.
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I lost lots and lots of people and I had broken up with my
recent partner at that time, but he lived nearby and we had made a pact.
Again you have to remember there was no treatment. Literally, no treatment
for AIDS and we had made a pact not to get tested because there was no
treatment and we assumed we were positive anyway. Why get tested?
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But one day he showed up at my door in tears because he had
gotten tested and tested positive. And I tried my best to comfort him but
of course, then it really nagged at me. I thought well, I need to get
tested too because if he's positive, I'm probably positive. And that's when
I got tested and it was a terrible moment to be told that. It was like
getting a death sentence. I fully believed that I was going to die.
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Who was your support network at this time?
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So it was, yeah, so the synagogue, and the chorus I'd say
were my support places and my network of friends which by that time was
pretty extensive and we all, you know, everybody knew what was going on.
And using the time that I had to stand up and sing and to demonstrate and
to march felt like the right thing to do and because it was personal at
that point for me. I thought that my life depended on it. And so that
motivated me to be more out and more visible and not care too much about
what other people thought.
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Yeah. First, thank you so much for sharing all of that.
That was incredibly vulnerable and I am really appreciative to have this
opportunity to listen to you. I can't really, I can't imagine what that
must have been like. I mean, it just sounds like extraordinary grief and
so, I'm really curious how people within both your community at the
synagogue and within the chorus, how did people care for one another?
[undiscernable]
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So chorus, I remember one concert called, it's about the
names project and the quilt. I don't remember the name of the concert, it
might have been the names project, I don't remember but we sang a lot of
songs of support. We sang, oh, that's what friends are for, that concert.
Boy now I'm not remembering the individual songs, but a lot of political
action songs.
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We adopted a lot of South African freedom songs because
they really, they really spoke to us. So one was alone and frightened. That
was not South African, I think that was by a Ugandan, really Bengali Latoya
I think, he was a Ugandan activist if I'm not mistaken, who wrote that song
and others were from South Africa. Oh goodness. Fred Smalls's song anything
possible was maybe like an anthem for us that we performed again and again.
No, I'm not remembering programming that well right now, but a lot of our
songs were freedom songs and activism songs.
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In what ways did those speak to you then? Because Jill
also emphasized that within our conversation.
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I think it really, for me, it made me understand that our
Liberation movement had a place in history among all the other Liberation
movements and that I had a feeling of solidarity with the people in South
Africa and with the civil rights movement in the United States and with the
women's liberation movement and, you know, it just put us in a context that
made us feel like we're not this hidden group of people all by ourselves,
lonely all alone and you know, nobody knows about us, we're invisible. But
made us feel like we were part of a much larger stream of history and that
was powerful.
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I can imagine I think those cross-movement connections
are really important, actually, especially in this day and age. I think
it's what will propel people forward too. So that's fascinating to learn.
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I completely agree. I completely agree. And I think that as
I keep saying all things are connected, it's like, I think that we need to
see that today. We need to see this really badly. There's so much identity
politics and stuff in my group versus your group and the polarization and
everything. I just mean we need to come together and we need to see that
our struggle is all the same struggle.
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Totally. Were there any other connections or
collaborations between the Lesbian and Gay Chorus, or even like with your
synagogue, were there any connections made between movements beyond?
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Yeah, so the synagogue had a social justice program and we
served food in a homeless shelter once a month and they did a lot of other
community organizing. And of course, at that time, there was a lot of,
again we forget today that these [organizations] like Metropolitan
Community Church, and Dignity and Integrity, and all these gay religious
organizations were fighting to be recognized by their religious
institutions. So that also was going on and that was a big struggle that
was going on at that time.
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And also there's another connection and that was that the
music director at Christ United Methodist Church in Washington DC in
Southeast, was a reconciling congregation. They were explicitly welcoming
LGBT people into the congregation and there was a big argument in the
Methodist Church at that time about what they thought about LGBT people. So
anyway, the music director there turned out to be, we got him as our
director for the Lesbian and Gay Chorus.
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His name was Mark Bowman, lives in Ohio now I believe, or
Chicago maybe. No he came from Ohio, I think he lives in Chicago now.
Anyway, that church also was the venue where Bet Mishpachah met for many
years. So that reconciling Church, these two things happened independently,
Mark didn't facilitate that, it just happened independently, but I thought
that was pretty interesting.
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Well, I really would love to know more actually about the
connection between your spiritual practices and your activism and how one
might affect your ability to do the other.
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There's a very strong component in Jewish history and
Jewish culture of social justice and I think that, you know, I don't think
we call this, I didn't personally think of it, I didn't call it social
justice at that time but like doing the right thing. Doing the right thing
politically is very important. And I think that again, I said at the
beginning of this talk like those values informed my behavior at the time.
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And in talking about it right now, it seems like well
singing that's not much of a political activity while going to a synagogue
that's not a political activity, but we don't realize it was a political
activity at that time. It was political. Just by doing what we were doing.
We were making a statement. We were changing things little by little. And I
think what we saw for queer people, what we've seen over the last 30, 40
years is that you work, you work, you work, you work, it seems like nothing
is changing, nothing is changing, nothing is changing. But actually, things
are changing, slowly and often under the surface. You might not notice the
changes that are happening, but then when those changes reach a critical
point, a big change happens.
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So that's what happened with gay marriage for example.
People said like, well, that will never happen. In the next year it
happened. But people have been working for that for decades. So it didn't
just happen suddenly, even though the moment that it happened seemed like
it was quite sudden. And I think that you know, all parts of liberation are
like that, but, you know, you just have to not give up hope.
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And again, that's what the freedom songs tell us that we
are strong, we are powerful. Don't stop, don't give up hope. Don't give in
to despair and keep on moving forward. Keep your eyes on the prize. We're
going to get there and even if not all of us get there we as a people will
get there. I'll just want to make one more little piece of that.
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Oh please do. Sorry.
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Then it's like so in Jewish history we, you know, in the
Bible, we talk about wandering in the desert for 40 years after the Exodus
from Egypt and how the Israelites wandered for 40 years in the desert and
finally, they got to the promised land where their ancestors had came from
and, had come from, and you know, Moses himself, who was the leader did not
get to enter the promised land.
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He died before he entered and I think that that's a
powerful narrative that, you know, you might wander in the desert for 40
years, you might wander for a long time in a place that seems like there's
nothing there. It's barren, it's desolate, you might feel lost but you're
actually going somewhere. And if you personally don't get there, that's
okay, your contribution matters, your voice matters, your presence matters
and you will get there. Your people will get there. There will be a good
outcome.
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And you know, I felt that, I will say I relate that to the
AIDS story. It's like if I didn't think there was going to be a cure, all
these many years, I wouldn't have been able to get out of bed in the
morning and I mean that literally. Going through this, going through that
epidemic was, it really was like going through the fire. It forged me into
the person I am today. It made me strong. It made me weak simultaneously.
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I feel and now I'm alive and I think I'm going to live to
see a cure. I think we really are making progress towards a real cure and I
work at UCSF and I'm tuned into a lot of the work that's happening at UCSF
and it's mind-blowing. When this thing started it was a death sentence. I
saw literally hundreds of people that I knew died.
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And, of course, then worldwide we have this horrible
calamity and I know we haven't talked about covid yet, but I want to bring
this in and say, one of the things that was hardest for me was when COVID
came to the United States at the beginning of 2020 and people ran around
with their, wringing their hands saying, nothing like this has ever
happened before, and I'm like, what are you talking about? It has happened
before. First of all, it's happened over and over and over again, and it
only happened right here only a few years ago. Not that long ago and it's
still happening by the way. AIDS is still a big problem in this country. We
haven't conquered it yet.
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And the people who knew nothing, younger people
particularly, who knew nothing about that history. And that was shocking to
me since it was like the most important part of my personal history was
going through that epidemic. And of course, I had to, I had to understand,
I had to realize that well, how would they know? It wasn't a defect on
their part that they didn't know. No one had ever taught them about it.
There was nothing in their history books.
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You know if their parents didn't know gay people
personally, it wouldn't have touched them, and similar to other epidemics
and pandemics that have happened around the world like Ebola. Nobody in the
United States cared about ebola. I won't say nobody cared. That's not
really true, but you know what I'm saying? Well, it doesn't bother us it's
those people in Africa and the AIDS epidemic was very much like that.
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Even though we were right here among everyone else if you
didn't know somebody who was gay, and I think everybody probably knew
people who were gay, but if they weren't out, you didn't know they were
gay, you wouldn't think it touched you. So it was like, you know, it's
those queers. It's their disease. And you know, I think there was still at
that time in the public mind thinking like they deserve it. This is God's
punishment. Many people actually believed that God was punishing us for our
terrible behavior.
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Yeah, that's fascinating.
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I know I went on a tangent there.
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No, but it was amazing. I appreciated every moment of it.
I, similarly, think it's really fascinating. Although I can't pretend as if
I was not one of those people. I will say during this pandemic I have
really sought out information about the AIDS epidemic and primarily have
learned about this history, in part because of the pandemic, we're living
through currently, but I noticed this rhetoric. I mean, this rhetoric is
evident within many facets of life and it certainly was really explicit and
obvious to me during the Trump presidency. Also, the rhetoric of this has
never happened before. This is almost like an isolated historical moment,
which of course, is a complete fallacy.
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Completely. Yeah, not only has it happened before, we
anticipated it. There were scientists that were warning this was going to
happen. We had a task force in Wuhan to study this and to make sure that it
didn't happen and the Trump Administration, I'm sure you know this, took us
out of there.
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Yeah. No, it's horrible. And I'm just really curious
because I like your point about how this rhetoric was so startling to you
as someone who lived during the HIV-aids era and so you do have this unique
positionality as someone who is still with us today and has had all of
these experiences. What connections would you draw between the pandemic
we're living in currently and the AIDS epidemic? I imagine there are some
similarities and differences and so I would love your perspective on it as
someone who was there living during this time.
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Well, one major similarity is that the government
completely bungled our response. Completely. And that's I think, for AIDS,
it was really intentional. It really felt intentional. That was the Reagan
Administration. It really felt like President Reagan just didn't want to
deal with it at all and didn't have to. Nothing forced him to.
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And since it was gay people dying and by that point, you
know, intravenous drug users were dying. And, you know, it was spreading in
communities of color and all the people that he didn't care about. And I
think in general, the leadership just didn't want to deal with it and
didn't know what to do. Partly they didn't know what to do. They had no
idea what to do and they didn't want to spend any money on it and I think
the Trump Administration similarly.
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It wasn't exactly the same in that, in that, they... in
some ways it was the same. I mean again who was dying, old people,
communities of color, you know latinx communities, black people. Oh, well,
they're dying. It's okay. We don't care about them, really. The rich white
people are not dying and that's all they cared about. That's what it looked
like to me. It's horrible, just horrible.
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But you know, as people were, again people didn't have any
awareness that this had happened. For I did a lot of... I hope I wasn't too
obnoxious in trying to educate many people in the workplace. What happened
in the 1980s, only 30, 40 years ago. You know, this was not new, it wasn't
surprising to me. I saw, had seen it before so that the government could
completely bungle its response to a terrible crisis like this.
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I mean Trump, Reagan looks like June Cleaver compared to
Trump, in my opinion. Nothing. I don't ever want to say nothing could be
worse because we keep saying nothing could be worse, but then we find out
that something is worse, so I don't think that but terrible. A really
inexcusable terrible. I consider Trump to be responsible for the deaths of
half a million Americans.
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Yeah, are there any noticeable differences between the
two?
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Yes, so the scientific response was breathtaking for covid.
Very very quickly things were put into motion. The fact that we got a
vaccine as quickly as we did, several vaccines, is amazing and
mind-blowing. And again, I know that that's the result of decades of basic
science that was put into developing these kinds of mRNA vaccines and also
understanding biology altogether and all those studies that gave us the
body of knowledge that we have today that enabled us to address the covid
pandemic as quickly as we have.
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And a lot of that interest in biology interestingly came
from the AIDS years because many of these top virologists, so like when
Tony Fauci started going on TV, like who's this guy? I'm like, oh I know
him well because he became famous during the AIDS epidemic. He very
famously.
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That's such an interesting connection.
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It is right? So he very very interestingly responded
positively to gay people who were demonstrating to get FDA approval of
drugs through the pipeline faster, these drugs that were taking 15 years to
be improved and they, you know, for quick approval. So that became many of
the changes that were put in place in the 80s and 90s as a response to the
AIDS epidemic were put in place, and were in place for covid.
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So that enabled us in addition to the great technology that
we have now, the DNA sequencing and all that stuff that we can do now, and
many world-famous virologists got their start working on HIV. So, you know,
that really set the stage for working on SARS and MERS and West Nile and
all these other viruses that have come up and Ebola, you know, all these
turbo viruses that have come up since then. Virology has become a really
burgeoning field and we know so much more now than we did in the 80s when
we really knew like comparatively, we knew nothing.
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Yeah.
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And I will also add one other little piece, so like it's
because of my HIV-positive status that I started enrolling in clinical
trials and that led me to the career that I've had now, working in clinical
research. So, again, one of those funny things that was not my background
and I had no intention of doing that, but I was a patient in so many
studies that in one of them, the nurse practitioner, who was my clinician
said, oh, you know, are you interested in a job here? Because we had gotten
to know each other and knew I was looking for work and she knew that
somebody was leaving so that led to the career that I have today.
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That's so interesting. Yeah. I'm curious in what other
ways the reverberations of the HIV/AIDS continue to be felt in your life
today, I mean as you've stated throughout the interview. It was an
incredibly formative time obviously, how could it not? It's a very
traumatic time as well. So that obviously will leave an impact but I'm
curious given the distance you now have, if there's any other reflections
you've been able to make.
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I want to mention the trauma because I believe that I have
suffered from PTSD my whole life because of the impact of that epidemic
from the 80s when I got my diagnosis, and I literally, I started keeping a
list of people I knew who had died and after I got to 200 names, I stopped
keeping a list because It was too upsetting to keep recording.
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Yeah, so I think I struggled with grief my whole life and
I'm struggling currently. I was in a lot of years of therapy when I came to
San Francisco. I joined a support group at AIDS health project and I was in
that group, we met weekly for 13 years and many of the people who came
through that group died during that period. So it was a revolving door
somewhat. I was one of the very few people who was still in the group. I
think there maybe were only two of us, I think, who were the remaining from
the time when I joined to the time when the group disbanded.
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So, that was enormously helpful for me to be meeting
weekly, with other guys who were struggling with HIV-aids and share our
knowledge and our compassion, for each other, and it was an odd kind of
thing because we weren't really good friends. We were good friends in a
certain way, but we weren't like normal good friends. Like we weren't going
out to dinner together or anything like that. We didn't have strong close
relationships outside of the group, but the group was still enormously
important.
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I was also in individual therapy for a lot of those years
and that helped me tremendously as well. But the damage is real and I think
that I am, I'm a grieving person and I do have PTSD from it. I mean, I
think it's not maybe obvious to everybody because I'm a pretty functional
guy. I had one therapist tell me that I was a highly functional depressed
person. I am highly functional, you know, I was advised by my doctors to
retire from work because of my diagnosis, they expected me to die and some,
more than one doctor strongly advised me to retire.
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But actually, I never wanted to be a disabled person, you
know, I was encouraged to go on disability. I saw many people go on
disability and become more disabled because our system requires you to be
disabled if you go on disability, so I didn't want to be in that group. So
I thought I'm going to work till I can't work, and I think it was the right
decision for me. I think work sustained me. I had work, I had a lot of jobs
that didn't really sustain me in my heart, but when I got into clinical
research that did give me a lot of sustenance, a lot of nourishment,
because I felt that I was helping people.
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And the initial part initially in clinical research, I got
into the study that hired me, was the one I was referring to just now, is
for HIV-positive men who have sex with men and so I felt that I was
directly giving back to my community. That was powerful for me. And then
from there I now went to the cancer center so, you know, it's not exactly
the gay community but it's still clinical research and it's still, the
hook, is still that we are helping people. We are improving the world.
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Another very fundamental Jewish value is called Tikkun
Olam, which means repairing the world and we're really required to do
Tikkun Olam. It means you have to do something to make the world a better
place. And I feel like, you know when I had jobs in other Industries, I
wasn't making the world a better place and now I am making the world a
better place and that my little part might be a tiny little bit, but it
does add to the whole and we are finding better treatments for cancer. And
there's no hook better than that. If you can find a treatment that will
save somebody's life.
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Totally. Wow, yeah, I can see that connection for sure.
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And I'm still in a lot of studies today. I'm still in a lot
of studies for HIV-positive people today.
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It's fascinating because someone else I talked to is
actually in a really similar line of work to you and like similarly. He
still works in DC but is like support for cancer patients at Georgetown
Medical. And so there's some overlap with what you do and he just shared a
very similar sentiment. So that's really interesting and I see the
through-line, that makes sense to me. And I'm happy that you are doing work
that feels fulfilling on that, like spiritual emotional level, as well.
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Thank you. Although I'm now planning, I'm scheming to plan
my retirement, so I won't be doing it that much longer.
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That feels well-deserved honestly. That'll be nice I
think. I'm curious if there are any, like, or what your connections are to
people from DC, from that era of your life? Obviously, you're still
connected with Jill, but are there other people you're connected to?
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A lot of people yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'd say Jill is a
primary contact. I also have one friend from the synagogue, who's a primary
contact. Actually he is like my best friend from college days back from the
70s. So, our relationship goes back even farther, and we still talk
frequently and, you know, unfortunately we had a pandemic recently so I
haven't been able to really see my friends, but all the years that I've
been in San Francisco, 26 years now in San Francisco, I always went back to
DC. I
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never, there wasn't a year that I didn't go back at least
once. And many times I went twice back to visit people and those
relationships are very important to me. That continuity is important. Last
time I was there, last time I was in Washington, I was there for Jill's
70th birthday party in September 2019. Right before, right before pandemic.
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01:01:31.200 --> 01:01:52.700
Hmm. That's awesome. Yeah, Jill is really, really
wonderful. Obviously we were speaking about this on the phone, but it makes
sense to me why that continuity would be important. And so it's interesting
to hear you say that, or I guess it makes sense that you would have kept in
touch with these people.
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01:01:53.100 --> 01:02:26.915
Yeah, and I would say Jill is one of those people whose
like the center of a wheel with many many spokes because she's connected to
so many people. So my friend at his name is Larry Neff. He also is a person
whose connected to so many people and he has lived in Washington his whole
life. He was born there. So, knows, he knows everyone. Really knows
everyone. So, also I would put you in touch with him if you wanted to talk
to him because remember we talked before and I said I had friends who would
be able to talk to you about that history also.
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That would be amazing. Yeah, that would seriously be
awesome. That's crazy that he's lived here for his whole life then. That's
such a wonderful unique perspective. I would love to talk to him. But I
know we've talked now for about an hour. So I wanted to check in and see if
there was anything else you wanted to spotlight or anything else you felt
was important to have on the record before we kind of conclude our
interview.
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We covered a lot of territory.
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It was amazing.
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I've enjoyed talking with you quite a lot. I think this is
such a cool project. I'm so glad you're doing it.
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I've been having really, I guess fun. I don't know if
that's the right word because honestly it's a difficult material to deal
with so it's not always fun, but it's interesting and it feels really
important and close and dear to my heart. So it's been really like a
wonderful experience making these connections with people I would say.
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Yeah, I think I'm inspired by talking with you and I think
that I've always been interested in history also, and the more I learn, the
more fascinating it becomes because the history... you know, I didn't like
history in school I will say very much, but that's because I didn't really
learn very much and the interesting stuff is all in the details. That's
what captures my attention and captures my excitement. So I think what
you're doing is really valuable.
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As I said like it was hard for me to swallow that there
were so many people that live here in San Francisco that didn't know
anything about the AIDS epidemic. And I think, you know, it's a history
that needs to be recorded and needs to be told. Again we, I'm sure this is
true in every generation I'm not dissing your generation or any generation.
I think it's natural that of course, when we grow up we think this is the
way the world has been and it's only with the perspective of getting older
and seeing how things change and the way that they don't change, that we
have that perspective and can really understand that.
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But I think the more we can tell stories, individual storie
that taken together show what was really happening on the ground. Not from
30,000 feet, but you know, what was actually happening on the ground. What
do people think? What do people do? What do people say during a particular
period?
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The more you can get that information the better. The more
we can record it the better and I think also, because we're living in a
time when the traditional ways of studying history which is all from
documents has changed and there aren't a lot of, there aren't going to be a
lot of documents, you know, there aren't going to be letters that anyone
has written today to study. So making recordings like this, that's where
that information is going to come from. So, I think what you're doing is
really fantastic.
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Well, thank you. That means a lot to hear you say that. I
agree, I think oral histories are such like an amazing, personal look into
an individual's life and I find it fascinating. I've always been more drawn
to social histories than anything political or even I don't know just
something about like, hearing a person talk and being able to hear the
emotion reflected in their voice. I think there's a lot more you can learn
from that, than from written sources, although, of course, there are pros
and cons to learning from each, but I found myself personally drawn to the
oral accounts and oral histories.
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And, and yeah, so so thank you also I appreciate you
saying that because I think there's a lot of inherent value in the work of
oral histories and oral historians, and so it's nice to hear that you have
that appreciation as well. So, I don't know if there's anything else you
would like to share. Otherwise, we can conclude.
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I think that's about it. For now anyway, that covers it.
I'd be happy to talk with you again if you have questions about anything
that we discussed and want more clarity. I also could put you in touch with
Larry if you are interested in. I would talk to him first. I feel certain
that he'll say yes, but I would ask him first if you want me to do that. I
will. If there's anything else that I can do to help you promote this just
let me know.
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Thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate all of those offers.
I actually would love to be able to talk again. I think it would be
awesome. I'll be in touch with you because I'll transcribe this interview
within the coming weeks and share that with you so that you can look it
over and approve before having it become published within the archive. But
I always find that an hour can sometimes feel insufficient. Or there's
always more to talk about really.
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Well there's always more to talk about. I mean, you're
never gonna cover a hundred percent of it.
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Hmm, and I always like I'm aware of people's time and
generosity and so when first chatting with someone I like to keep it or
keep it to a certain time constraint, but certainly, if you are interested
in talking more, I always have more questions. So I think we should
continue to be in touch and I'll obviously reach out once I finish the
transcript and possibly questions will arise from me reviewing the
recording and whatnot. But it would also be great if you could put me in
touch with anyone but especially like your friend, Larry is his name? He
sounds really interesting. I mean he has a really valuable perspective.
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He would be good one to talk to.
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01:09:12.200 --> 01:09:15.899
Yeah, so that would be wonderful to be able to be put in
touch with him.
157
01:09:16.300 --> 01:09:21.000
Yeah, he's a couple of years older than me. He's going to
be 70 this year.
158
01:09:23.200 --> 01:09:23.554
Cool.
159
01:09:23.899 --> 01:09:28.576
You know older than me, younger than Jill. We're all in the
same cohort, the same generation.
160
01:09:29.700 --> 01:09:54.200
I'm really looking forward to connecting with him.
That'll be great. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time today and I will
definitely be in touch. This has been a really wonderful experience for me.
So thank you again for your vulnerability and for sharing with me really
personal stories and anecdotes. It's really meaningful to me. So, thank you
so much.
161
01:09:55.000 --> 01:09:56.800
You're quite welcome. I really enjoyed it.
162
01:09:57.100 --> 01:10:00.292
Yeah, well, have a nice day and I'll be in touch.
163
01:10:00.600 --> 01:10:01.554
You too Audrey.
