This article appeared in the November 1982 issue of Christopher Street (no 70).
NOTHING IS HARDER to find than an apartment in New York and when one on the second floor of my building became vacant, I told a young friend of mine who had been living in Brooklyn; he came and took it. The previous tenant of these three rooms was an attractive man whose cocktail party I went to one year the week before Christmas, and who walked a little Schnauzer on Second Avenue around eleven each evening, and whom I saw in bars and discotheques, on Fire Island, at the baths (every time I went, come to think of it) over a decade—only nodded. One evening shortly before he left New York for the holidays, my young friend came by with a large black journal. “I found this in a desk drawer last night,” he said. “I can barely read the writing, but you might find this interesting, as a writer. It was kept by the man who lived here before me.”
No writer was ever left alone in a room with a diary he did not violate. How else (if the diary is unaffected) can he learn what is always hidden from us in life: what other people are really thinking? There are dull diaries and interesting diaries, but this one explained, I realized, the state of mind which not only my former neighbor but many of us had lived this past year. It began on the first day of the year I was saying goodbye to as I sat down to read it with a glass of champagne beside a group of lighted candles—a milieu in which I prefer to spend if not my entire New Year’s Eve then the early portion of it, in reflection and solitude and quiet, judging the past, preparing myself for the party (or year) to come. The cat watched me with unblinking eyes as I began the former tenant’s journal (one of those hardbound lined notebooks I used to buy on Canal Street), which I have decided, in retrospect, to call “Journal of the Plague Year,” or “The Demise of the Cocktail Kiss,” or perhaps “The Man Who Infected Pittsburgh.”
JANUARY 1, 1982
Saw the New Year in on a subway car in Times Square. Never change parties at eleven-thirty! This has happened to me before—I always end up on the IRT with two black men sleeping on the seat across from me, four girls chewing bubble-gum, and six drunken teenagers from Jackson Heights. Finally got to D.’s the evening around 12:30. Not much more cheerful. Everyone talking about doctors, amoebas, and people who’ve got Kaposi’s sarcoma. Such nonsense! Coming home with S. I said to him: “Have you noticed it’s only men our age, in their thirties and forties, who are talking about it? These older guys have to quit cruising anyway, and now they have an excuse. If I were twenty-three and just arriving in New York, I’d certainly have my affairs and romances.” “Darling,” S. said, “I couldn’t agree with you more. I refuse even to allow anyone at dinner at my house to talk about it.”
MARCH 4, 1982
Just came back from two divine months in Brazil with Paolo and John: Bahia all pink and blue. Went to see S. last night. Was stunned. He’s skin and bones. He got sick shortly after my departure. Went through 14 doctors, was on Flagyl—made him want to jump out a window—lost weight, had night sweats, dry mouth, pain in prostate. One doctor told him to get fucked to massage prostate! Finally went into hospital—same one Martha von Bulow is in. (In a coma she still has someone do her hair once a week. Knowing she was there made S. feel better.) Doctor removed two lymph nodes in tummy. Says S. does NOT have cancer and there is nothing wrong with him. Was it psychosomatic? Who knows? All S. has to do now is regain weight: eat chocolate syrup and ice cream!
MARCH 6
S. told me GH has cancer and is in hospital, that John P. died of the pneumonia last month, and 4 of EW’s ex-lovers died this past year. Imagine how EW feels! And he’s still the most handsome man in New York in my opinion: I used to watch him and R take a rubber raft out every day at sunset on Fire Island and make love far out from shore. Too divine.
MARCH 26
J. called today and told me that C.K. has K.S. There is so much rumor going around one cannot rely on any of it.
APRIL 4
J. called today to say the model RT has it and is dying. I’ve been burnt so often by J. He adores nothing more than calling up to tell me someone we know O.D.’d. Last year he told me four people we knew had committed suicide in San Francisco. All of them are still alive! How rude! I resolved then never to put a bit of credence in any gossip from this suicide-monger.
APRIL 14
I heard from two other people today that RT is dead. So it must be true. Incredible! He was never my type, but so many people I know considered him It. He had everything: looks, success, his own antique store on Thirteenth Street. Nor did I consider him particularly trashy. But then L. says they can make no correlation between sexual lifestyle and this disease. Anyway it’s incredible: that golden boy gone.
APRIL 15
Telling people someone is dead is a very odd form of gossip. A kind of meg-dish. You feel a certain frisson, a certain dramatic gravity, in relaying the news—it has weight in an otherwise trivial life—and on the other hand wonder if you are taking pleasure in the role it brings. I told three people today that RT died—they were all stunned, and after I hung up I felt vaguely dirty for having told. Is all this dying just a new subject of dish?
APRIL 17
I am having lunch at Mortimer’s this afternoon when in walks RT. PERFECTly alive! This man is not even ill. I will NEVER pass on a single piece of gossip on this subject.
APRIL 22
Word is out that MW has Kaposi’s in San Francisco. One of the party pioneers, original Hot Men. Now I wonder if this is what PG died of—that handsome man—two years ago. PG was very promiscuous. Thank God I never did drugs to a great degree and have not slept with 2,000 people. I wish. 200 is more like it.
MAY 4
L. is doing great work organizing doctors and gay men, raising money, and bringing this to the world’s attention. He is to be given immense credit, and yet I don’t want to get involved in it, it’s a bit too Florence Nightingale for me. But thank God there are people like that.
MAY 8
Letter from C. in San Francisco says it’s not a big concern out there. Phone call from R. in San Francisco says we’re all being neurotic New Yorkers, and feel guilty about sex, and it’s nonsense. Why is New York first with everything, including this? Surely in S.F. they have as much sex if not more than we do. It has to be a problem there eventually.
MAY 12
I ask L. why it’s not a concern in other cities and he says because NYC has half the nation’s cases, and the other cases are divided among several cities. He does not mention Philadelphia—I’ve been thinking lately about Philadelphia: only 90 minutes on the train, and such a lovely city!
MAY 16
L. says they have 2 cases in Philadelphia.
JUNE 7
Saw P. at dinner last night. His doctor told him to leave the gym he goes to because homosexuals use it. Just insane! Can I get it just from using the Nautilus at M.C.—is there a film on the handles from the previous user? This is turning into The Andromeda Strain. I refuse to become a germophobe.
JUNE 17
Found a bruise on the inside of my arm this morning. Was panicked till I realized I hit it against the new overhead-press machine at gym. Thank God!
JULY 7
L. is handing out brochures on GRID at harbor in Pines. Coming back on the train—I look at people differently now—I wonder: what if he has it? No orgasm is worth that risk. Fear operates on the same principle: because a few pigs mug and murder people in Central Park at night, it is deserted, off-limits for the whole city. All you need is a few incidents to poison the atmosphere. Same thing with this disease: a few gays die, and everyone is suspect.
AUGUST 5
R. says this is all just an objective excuse for ending a way of life that was bruising a lot more people emotionally than it was making happy: promiscuity. Let’s face it, promiscuity was tough. A lot of rejection and loneliness and ending up just where you were before you had sex. No fidelity, intimacy, trust, stability, peace, love. So maybe this disease thing is just a way of bringing it to a halt. It was VERY out of hand, VERY out of hand. But men are so greedy only Death could stop it.
AUGUST 11
P. is reading Seth Speaks and says people want plagues.
AUGUST 22
R. says the baths are “death camps,” and that a sign should be put over them: HOUSE OF CANCER.
AUGUST 24
But I love the baths, and I was curious to see who WAS still going in these circumstances. So I went last Answer: VERY attractive people. As if nothing at all were going on. A few regulars missing, but still lots of handsome and young men. Either they don’t know, don’t care, or refuse to think they’ll get it.
SEPTEMBER 9
Went to the baths. Ran into J. in the bathroom washing his mouth out with soap—like a child punished for saying naughty words. He’d just had sex and was so nervous his hands were shaking. I stood in the hall till midnight praying I would see no one I HAD to have. Then I left. I thought as I walked home: In the old days, I was crushed if I left the baths without sex, now I’m glad I didn’t have it. You can just smell the disease in that place—it’s one big petri dish.
SEPTEMBER 18
Gorgeous weekend: walked through meat rack and to my amazement people are still doing it. Grabbed a brownie off the kitchen counter of the T. house as I was running for the boat. On my way back I ate it. Ten minutes outside Penn Station I am so stoned I can hardly sit up. Should have known, considering the house, it would not be an ordinary brownie. Hadn’t been stoned in so long I thought it was a shame to waste the feeling and went to the baths. Gorgeous men! Nothing more beautiful than the male body. Went into several rooms. (One foot-fantasy I’d never have done sober. 2 others.) It dawned on me afterwards that we were all just jerking off. So it has seeped down to their level too. As the owner of the baths said when asked if this epidemic would change lifestyles: “Everyone will do the same thing only with more anxiety.” But in the end, dear, a stiff cock has no conscience. We go to the baths precisely TO abandon ourselves.
OCTOBER 14
Dinner with S. last night, who looks much better. S. says this is all the result of immigration, jet planes, and careless assholes (literally and figuratively). “You can’t blame anyone,” I said. “Can’t blame anyone?” said S. “Of course I can! Someone didn’t wash!” S. says it was brought from Africa, and because a few people got it, the whole community is ruined. I said: “How do you know it was Africa?” He said: “Well, dear, there are no amoebas in Bavaria.” Well. Whatever the origin, (F. thinks it began as a mutant gonorrhea brought back from Viet Nam; J. thinks it’s Haitian and spread by steam at baths), I said, “There should be a club of men who promise to sleep only with each other and are healthy.”
OCTOBER 18
There is. A friend of S.’s founded it, and tomorrow night I go to a meeting at S.’s of the club: men who have letters from their doctors certifying they are in good health, who agree to sleep only with each other. A bit Brave New World perhaps, but makes sense. S. and I are so hopeful. “Are you excited?” I said to S. “Excited?” he said. “I plan to meet my next husband here tonight!” “But what if they’re men who just can’t meet people, and joined the club for that reason? What if they’re dogs?”
“Expect nothing and hope for the world!” said S. as we went around fluffing pillows, putting out cheese and crackers.
OCTOBER 18, MIDNIGHT
Worst fears realized. Everyone wore name tags. They looked like a casting call for The Addams Family: all odd, each in his own way. The president of the club read the rules. Then door prizes were awarded. The first was a porn magazine so hot S. and I copied the name and plan to get it. The second was a package of deluxe condoms. (Condoms have never been used in gay sex. Why? Gay men love accoutrements, and I’ve always thought condoms SO sexy. But, like the samba, they’ve never caught on.)
The rest of the door prizes were nine bottles of a lubricant which has been tested by prostitutes in San Francisco for seven months. How perfect! (What am I in the City by the Bay but a prostitute? Only I make love with strange men gratis!) I won a bottle of lubricant. Later that evening I discovered someone more germophobic than I filched my door prize. Alas, I will have to continue with—? Since I’m not screwing any more I can’t even remember what I used to use—Intensive Care? Aloe-Vera Moisturizing Lotion from Mill Creek? Yes.
OCTOBER 19
Last night a club member who thought the meeting was Tuesday, not Monday, arrived at S.’s and turned out to be a hump. They had great sex and are now seeing each other for the ballet next week. Can you stand it.
OCTOBER 22
Talk with my French friend E. who thinks this is nothing more than the anti-sexual puritan strain in human nature, and that it is absurd to deny oneself sex. It is, after all, what we live for.
OCTOBER 23
Each person has his individual response to this—dinner with W. and his new lover T., who told me about going to the Sleaze Ball and having a great time. They both have a kind of cavalier attitude—as if it’s middle-class to worry about it. But as I sat there and listened to their aristocratic disdain, telling me not only that (a) they have an open marriage, (b) one went to Sleaze Ball, (c) the other wasn’t worried about it, I could only think: You poor boys.
NOVEMBER 4
I refuse to give up sex—what else is there to do in New York? The theater sucks, movies bore me, eating out with friends is nice, but really, we’re all only looking for our next sexual encounter. An Elizabethan man would have been dead at my age—but I still want more.
NOVEMBER 7
Wednesday at the Club, only $3 a locker. Have always loved the Club even though—or perhaps because—it has never been the official circuit baths in NYC. Still the nicest. My plan was to look and not touch. Simple solution. I went not to have sex, but to BE there: baths have always been a relief from the rest of society. Went hoping I would find anyone incredible. Tonight I did. It hurt so badly—I wouldn’t go into his room—I sat on a bench and got very sad. I thought of sucking his nipple (since it’s spread by fluids, what can you get from a nipple?), but I knew that would lead to Everything Else. I miss Everything Else. Left the baths very depressed and had to remind myself: before the Plague, there were plenty of other reasons to leave the baths depressed. I may blame the Plague for everything now, but sex was difficult enough before this. Promiscuity reduced me to a genital, and my genital wasn’t that great. Me and my genital. No one wants to stake his worth, his chance for a relationship, on one aspect of himself: his sexual performance.
No more baths for me. Finis.
NOVEMBER 9
But I live for the baths—they were always there, at the end of the day, no matter what happened. Like the mistress a businessman keeps. I went there when I was blue, and I went there at the end of the happiest evening, to top it off. They were always there, the one place I was happy.
NOVEMBER 10
It’s as if we were all addicts and the heroin has dried up—there’s no dope in the whole city.
NOVEMBER 11
At the gym tonight I found myself staring at the nipple of a guy working out in green nylon shorts and a headband, stubble of a beard, tinted glasses: common, but he had one of those short, stocky, perfectly proportioned bodies that is All Meat. And what meat—olive-skinned, smooth. His legs pushed weights back and forth and I just stared at his right nipple through the Universal, thinking: I want to be attached to his nipple while he does his work-out, a human tit-clamp, a baby sucking Mom, connected to that olive skin, that beautiful musculature, like some leech, some bee, unobtrusive but there. Spent the rest of the evening in a daze thinking of his nipple. That’s how nuts this Plague is making me.
I could put an ad in the New York Native, I guess, but I never answer ads and can’t imagine the people who would.
NOVEMBER 25
Went to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving: lovely time. As usual I arranged things so I could be dropped off downtown to catch the airport bus and went to the baths instead. My thought: disease-free flesh! But as I walked there I thought: Am I? And I began to wonder: could I infect Pittsburgh? Went inside, 2 o’clock, Sunday afternoon (thought it would be jammed, like baths in NYC at that time), asked the attendant: Is it busy? He said: You don’t want to come in, there are only 2 people. (At least he was honest!) Left the baths, crushed—forgot Pittsburgh is a small town—and relieved that I had not brought gay cancer to Steel City. Wandered around till departure time looking at buildings, street architecture: just what I used to do on those visits before I came out!
DECEMBER 5
Articles in the Native all the time now. None really addresses the fear: What if this trick has it? Once admit this possibility and everyone is theoretically lethal. One shouldn’t have sex in New York: logical conclusion.
DECEMBER 7
Have not tricked in over a month. Just masturbating. Masturbation a bore after a while, but is all I do. After coming home from the gym (beauties in the locker room), I jerk off to some fantasy. This is no longer fun—I feel nostalgia for sex. I remember now so many things: taking showers with people, facing each other and kissing while you stroke cocks, enclosing T.’s chest from behind in my arms, the long slow licking of a body. All gone. I leaf through porn magazines but the bodies—like Vargas drawings, their muscles so feminine—do nothing to me at all. I see a photo of two men kissing, and then I am so sad I close the book. How beautiful! How long since I kissed anyone?
DECEMBER 9
When I think of going to Mexico or Brazil or Germany, and being able to cruise again, I wonder: Could I go back to tricking the way it was before? Maybe I’m no longer suited for promiscuity.
DECEMBER 12
R. and I go to the Saint. Halfway through the evening the two men dancing beside us start to kiss—a purely carnal kiss: the short Latin takes the bearded WASP in his arms and penetrates his mouth with his tongue, establishes dominance, anaesthetizes him with his kiss—I am so excited I start to scream. The New Wave music is very loud (can it be otherwise?) and no one hears me. I scream for five minutes.
DECEMBER 20
Depressed. Should I leave NY? Till the epidemic runs its course? Isn’t it foolish—no matter how this is spread—to be here, now? Move to Brazil? Go straight? After only 3 days in the hospital C. died of pneumonia. What a life! In the past year he had his heart broken by G.B., then got herpes of the eye, now he’s dead. Why is gay life so stinking? Isn’t there some better way to structure it? The funeral is Friday in Queens. I am shocked and depressed but I don’t think I will go. As much as I liked C., I (a) went to one party at his house—beautifully done, (b) talked to him one day on Fire Island, (c) spoke to him when he telephoned my roommate. I decided I was not really part of his “family” of friends.
DECEMBER 31
Applied to State Dept. for job overseas—the party, as S. says, is over. What a year it’s been! Dr. W. thinks it may go on another 5. Will any good come of it? Cure for cancer? Respect for one another? I look, give the strangers on the street must be pitiful—so needy, so lonely—because they look away as if I’d slapped them. Well, goodbye—to them, youth, and New York. If only I could be frozen (like Walt Disney) till the cure is found, and THEN return to Manhattan! If only eating ice cream made your cock bigger! Adieux, my lovelies. It’s been fun. ❡
Andrew Holleran is the author of the celebrated novel Dancer from the Dance (1978) and, most recently, The Kingdom of Sand (2022). He wrote a regular column for Christopher Street from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. [Andrew Holleran on Wikipedia]
