When did you first learn about "the gay disease"?

For fuck's sake, what's wrong with letting the 40th anniversary thread attract some commentary? Do you need the dopamine that badly, you troll?

[quote]When did you first learn about "the gay disease"?

You mean terminal bitchiness?

[quote] For fuck's sake, what's wrong with letting the 40th anniversary thread attract some commentary? Do you need the dopamine that badly, you troll?

Sorry. Let me rephrase this, R1. When did you realize you were a batshit crazy loser with no friends?

Forty Years ago this week.....AIDS was discovered (though it would not have a name until 1982....VIDEO...

When I was in Kindergarten or first grade. I just remember those purple lesions and being very scared, but not understanding it other than it was a "gay disease" (people call it that in the mid 80's) and I knew I was gay.

Another Video---this one from The Today Show......Notice "gay icons" Pete and Chasten are NO WHERE around to talk about the yucky AIDS?....Where are they?....Sharon Stone gave a speech today. Pete and Chasten are part of the "before my time and not my problem" AIDS HATERS....Seeing Pete talk about AIDS is like seeing Pete talk about BLACK people = avoided at all costs...

R5 is so desperate to be part of the AIDS discussion he came up with his first HIV "scare" in Kindergarten...pathetic...

[quote] is so desperate to be part of the AIDS discussion he came up with his first HIV "scare" in Kindergarten...pathetic...

I do want to be part of the discussion and I answered the question. It was scary and it had an impact on my generation. I'm not claiming the same impact, but we were there watching it happen as well and HIV was still a major thing in the late 90's and really until Prep.

R8 = Were "we". there...?...."My Generation".....I will say you calling AIDS a "major thing" says more about YOU than it does about AIDS........sigh.....

I was a child in the 1980s. I learned what AIDS is before I figured out what homosexuality is.

Ryan White. We were the same age, but he wasn't gay.

Everywhere Judith Light goes, AIDS seems to follow.

I read something about analingus. I knew or had been told all the surfer dudes were into that, so I thought they were all going to die.

I remember Ryan White. He would have to put his hands in the oven to keep warm.

I remember as a young Boston gayling pursuing an older guy that was a dead ringer for Don Johnson at the time.

He was a clerk in a video store off Newbury St. but I think he was well off and just had the job to meet guys. He kept telling me he had a huge dick and tried to put me off- because he instinctively knew I couldn’t take it and hated condoms.

Well, I got him to try while wearing one, but had to stop because it hurt too much (10” and thick), MARY! Boy was he ever angry. I was pretty adamant we weren’t ever going to have sex without a condom and this was when I realized that yeah, certain guys still did raw at the time and didn’t care.

We were at the Haymarket (anyone remember that sleazy place?) Tea dance and he abandoned me for an older much more whoreish guy, I swear, power bottoms can smell a big dick from across the room! I had tied my fanny pack to the bar and someone stole it.

About a week later someone mailed all my ID and wallet items back and a letter propositioning me for a date, LOL. Made me feel a bit better.

Summer 1977. Castro. Boys in the bars were talking about friends of friends having lingering coughs and "splotches" appearing on the backs. I heard it called Kaposi's sarcoma years before AIDS.

I remember when Magic Johnson announced he was HIV positive. It was all the kids at school could talk about. Not one person said the word "gay."

[quote] I remember when Magic Johnson announced he was HIV positive.

I was on the south island of NZ when this news broke. I didn't care, but when people learned I was a Yank, they'd apologize and offered their condolences, they really seemed crushed by it. This was well into the epidemic, I guess they thought it was a death sentence.

When I was 7 or 8. There were articles in the local paper about this mysterious plague hitting the gays in NY and SF. There were even cases cropping up in Philly and could be hitting the gays on my little hometown soon enough.

Thank goodness I was a paranoid, religious child.

I was a teenager and just coming out. There was so much confusion initially about how it was actually transmitted that having sex was both irresistible and a cause of terrible anxiety. Love and death seemed caught in a passionate embrace.

R20

Yes, it was certainly scary coming out in the mid/late 80s. I often thought to myself that had I been just 5 years older, I would likely be dead.

I was 16 year old gayling reading the infamous issue of “Der Spiegel” on the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Grandmother was a fan of Rock Hudson.

Story Today = "Covid-19 Pandemic has derailed fight against AIDS, UN says".......

August 1981. In the prime of my sexual activity!

[quote] August 1981. In the prime of my sexual activity!

Congratulations, survivor!

I'm sincerely sorry for all the gay men who had to go through it when it was announced, and for all of the extreme anxiety, trauma, homophobia, and hostility it caused living through that.

August, 1981 I was starting my senior year in high school. Never heard anything about it until around 83/84, seemed ominous and scary and definitely contributed to my stifled sexuality thru my 20’s. It wasn’t until the early 90’s that I finally figured it all out and began chasing dick for the next 20 years.

From the movie Jeffrey.

What is this AIDS of which you speak?

R26 But luckily I didn't live in the US so I had early warning. Spent the 80's it a near paranoid state but I prefer to remember the good moments of the 1980s.

I learned about VICH/SPID from reading Pravda when I was one year old and it already had a name, BabushkaOP.

I may have heard about it, but didn't understand what it was until I was 6 or 7 in 1989. I got really freaked out and paranoid. I didn't even want to hear the word "AIDS." I didn't completely get over my bullshit until I was 26 or 27.

In junior high some asshole jocks were joking around that it stood for: Anally Inserted Death Sentence.

Who knows, maybe their sons are now closet cases that take multiple loads bareback and are not even on prep. What you do comes back to you,

Datalounge still refers to it as the “gay disease”, yes?

Senior year in college. All the gays were starting to get nervous, so I stopped having sex for 2 years.

It was horrible. I was 17. College freshman. Like 9 guys in someone’s old Impala. Radio report. Gay cancer. So young and naive. I’d barely kissed a boy & thought I was genetically predisposed to diseases only gay men could get. One way or another the world would figure out the horrible thing I was. Too inexperienced to even think it might be sexually transmitted. The car got really quiet. Several of the guys later came out. All are still around as far as I know. Thankful for that.

I first learned about it from the “horse’s mouth,” the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.” I was in grad school working on my Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology. I still remember that a cold shiver when down my spine after I read that first report, because I knew what it might mean for the future.

^^went not when

I had seen things before including the DW AIDS episode but nothing stuck with me until I would have to say that when I was 9/10. It was the Rev. Andrew Carpenter/Billy Douglas storyline on OLTL, don't ever say soaps aren't important, especially when they brought on the AIDS quilt. It is also when my mother explained to me that my "different" cousin that lived in "the Big City," was gay and had AIDS, he would then die a few years later. She surprised me because while it was clear she didn't understand why someone would be gay, she didn't judge him or condemn him. I am still sad that he died, if he had lived I would have very much wanted to have had him to talk to when a few years after he died I was starting to come to terms with the fact that I wasn't straight. Instead I internalized feelings of disgust and fear. Every time, I hooked up with a guy. I feared this was the end. I had gotten the AIDS and would die just like my cousin. That pandemic robbed us of many gay and bisexual men who created the Gay Pride movement, without them we wouldn't be able to have datalounge and every company wouldn't be pandering to us for an entire month every year. I'm not saying every gay then were activists many of them just changed people's views by being themselves but telling people they were gay or bi instead of hiding it. And, they caught A LOT of hell for it. If it wasn't for them we wouldn't have the first *confirmed openly gay member of the Cabinet. Or, regardless of how one feels about Ric Grenell or his boss, his appointment as the Acting Director of National Security was wonderful. National Security was always the reason given for not hiring homosexuals, because they were susceptible to blackmail, even though the blackmail was possible because of the laws passed by the country. That in less than 40 years since AIDS started, an openly GAY man would be named DNI by a Republican President, and none of the calls against him serving were based on his sexuality, just his qualifications, is mind blowing. Hell, the fact that my cousin was "different" in 1992 but had he lived he could have seen the day that he could get married to his lover while standing on the red clay of Georgia!