To tell you this story, I first must introduce you to Paul and Martin. For much of the 90s, Paul was my wingman. Along with Martin, we were the “three amigos” of the LA gay scene. The three of us met in the seminary as undergraduates when we were all Conventual Franciscans studying philosophy. Paul and I left the order in 1990; Martin followed us into civilian life a few years later. Paul was from Massachusetts, Martin Ohio. I, being a native Angeleno, had returned home to California after departing religious life, and the two of them thought of LA as Oz, a truly magical and wonderous place in which they could break free of the repressed, conservative, and staid culture of the east coast and be themselves as gay men. Paul and I were briefly roommates in the early 90s, but after Martin joined us the two of them split off and rented a house in Mount Washington northeast of Los Angeles because I’m difficult to live with, apparently.
I was closer to Paul, who had gone into law enforcement. Martin, who taught high school, I taunted relentlessly for being overweight. Once, at a party in Atwater, I may have had a little too much to drink. There was a DJ with a microphone, which I commandeered and began reciting from Isaiah 66; singling out Martin on the dance floor: “boys,” I proclaimed, “may I present Martin de Porres…”
So that you may nurse and be satisfied
Isaiah 66:11, New American Bible (Revised Edition)
from her consoling breast;
That you may drink with delight
at her abundant breasts!
As a fattie myself now, you might say karma got me in the end. But our bond was so tight that even that bit of verbal tomfoolery on my part could not break it. The next night we were out in some gay venue packed with shirtless men scanning the room for “tasty treats,” our codeword for cute guys. Because I was a little shit (back then), I probably said something like “ah, I see you brought your man boobs along, Martin.”
Paul and I were always much more serious about the task at hand, which was enticing one of the tasty treats to take us home. He had my back, and I had his. This might mean dancing together so one or the other of us could get close to a guy on the dance floor and “cruise” him, a staple of gay subculture whereby you indicate you’re up for it by looking fixedly at someone with one’s eyes wide open and not blinking. The three of us were out every Friday and Saturday night – Circus Disco, Arena, Catch One (for black guys), Woody’s (for Latinos). Rage in West Hollywood put on a tea dance and quite an extensive (and delicious!) buffet every Sunday afternoon – we never missed it, and used the more relaxed and less sexually-charged atmosphere it afforded to compare notes on our weekend’s conquests. And it’s there that our story begins on July 27, 1997.
Sitting around on the patio at Rage sipping cocktails and nibbling on pigs in a blanket (which always was a phallic double entendre in that setting, both verbally and visually), we realized the significance of the moment. Paul was set to move back to his native Massachusetts the following Saturday, August 2nd, and this might be our last time together at this stage – the young and reckless stage – of our lives. I was living about a block away on San Vicente at the time, and we agreed to get all our friends together the following Friday at my place for one last hurrah before we got serious about life, about careers, and about relationships. We were going to grow up. I had no idea how grown up I would be by the following Sunday!
August 1st was a Friday that year, just like today. I had taken the day off from work; I had a lot to do. Most of it around my apartment – you know, dusting (I’m the type who takes each individual item off the table or shelf and wipes it down in addition to the surface it sits on, or as I like to call it, I’m the type who does it correctly), vacuuming, preparing Canapés, arranging the liquor bottles on the dining room table in an elegant, inviting fashion, which was really a waste of time because with our group of friends I could have just put out a trough and filled it with vodka and they would have been happy. I had a few errands to run, like for mixers and garnishes, so I headed out about 1pm.
While I was out, I remembered that I’d had my biannual HIV test two weeks before but not gotten my results. This ritual – the testing ritual – was as much a part of our lives as breathing, particularly if we wanted to keep breathing! For me, it had become perfunctory: I always practiced safe sex, and my test results were always negative. So I popped into the LA Gay & Lesbian Center on Schrader, not thinking much of it. I wrote about that here.
When I got back to my apartment, Paul was sitting on the front step of the building. We went inside. I’d stopped at Rage for a cocktail, and Paul smelled it on me. “Jesus Matt, you’re out of control… you’ve started already, haven’t you?” Don’t you love the smackdown when someone’s drawn the wrong conclusion and you get to make them feel bad by disabusing them of their assumptions with the facts? I took little delight in what I said next.
“Paul, I’m POZ.”
You have to remember this was 1997. HAART (Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy) was in its infancy, and while it had shown remarkable results in extending life, gay culture surrounding the disease had not caught up, so an HIV+ test result meant you were circling the drain. I had, quite literally, just told my best friend, “Paul, I’m going to die.”
Martin arrived shortly after that, and he found us sitting in complete silence in my living room, me chain-smoking. He cajoled us, “c’mon girls, we got a party to get ready for, get off your lily-white asses [Martin is black].” I think it was Paul who told him.
Martin’s demeanor changed instantly and the schoolteacher in him kicked in as he took over. He said, “I’ll get on the phone and tell people not to come.” I said, “what’s that going to accomplish? It’s not like sitting in the corner alone with you two reprobates while I hug my knees rocking back and forth is going to change things.”
So within a couple of hours my apartment was full of liquored-up men eating my cream cheese and red chili flake Canapés, laughing, and wishing Paul well on this new chapter of his life he was setting out on the following day. And every once in a while, Paul, Martin, and I would lock eyes like we were cruising each other, but it meant “are you okay?” this time.
I remember that evening fondly, and I had a good time. It was a celebration of all that had gone before it. It was a celebration of friendship. And it marked, for me, an existential shift from young adult to adult.
The three amigos grew apart. Paul has been happily married to his husband (whom I introduced him to) for over two decades, and recently retired from a career in local Massachusetts politics, including serving as a city councilman in Lawrence, Massachusetts and a failed mayoral bid. Martin got his PhD in education and coordinates a program that helps prisoners in the California state prison system earn the equivalent of a high school diploma (called a GED or “General Educational Development” credential); he lives in San Diego. And me? Well, you know my story.
I was, and am, fortunate. Over 100,000 people died of AIDS in the US in the 1980s. Zidovudine (also known as AZT or Retrovir) received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in March of 1987; it had initially been developed in the 1960s as a potential cancer treatment but was found to be effective against HIV in the 1980s. But its effectiveness was limited, and annual deaths continued to climb. Researchers experimented with ways to attack the disease from multiple angles and over the next decade they developed a combination of drugs that work synergistically to defend people from the infection. The result of this research, Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy, or HAART, sometimes known in my HIV+ world as “the triple cocktail” because it involves three types or classes of drugs, has saved millions of lives and turned a once-seemingly undefeatable pandemic into a manageable chronic disease. I am here and can share this story with you today because of HAART. And HAART was only introduced a year before I tested positive for HIV infection.
My timing is impeccable!