Choosing Their Battles: (Four Oral Histories Look Back at the First Generation of an Unwanted Disease in an Age without Certainty)

Benjamin Heim Shepard Choosing Their Battles (Four Oral Histories Look Back at the First Generation of an Unwanted Disease in an Age without Certainty) History may show that the epidemic has changed our culture in much the way that the cataclysmic carnage of World War I transformed English literature. However it turns out, this is the story of our time. —Frank Rich "It's very frustrating because here I am at the pinnacle of my career. I could do literally anything I wanted in the world of journalism , and you're left with the strange feeling that your life is somehow finished without being completed," Randy Shuts, author of the magnum opus of the AIDS pandemic, And the Band Played On, said months before he died, himself, of AIDS last year ("Randy Shuts"). Activists, city officials, old friends and colleagues converged in droves at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco's decaying Tenderloin District the morning of February 22, 1994 to pay homage. "Can an aging faggot get a seat around here?" John Cailleau, a Shuts acquaintance from the decadent 70s heyday, asked a guard. "We don't use that word here," the guard responded. "A lot has changed," Cailleau said. Earlier in the week Rev. Fred Phelps had announced he was bringing members of his Topeka, Kansas congregation to picket "the faggot writer['s]" funeral. Fear of violence lingered as the crowd of two thousand waited for the service to begin. Two men held signs, "OUR RIGHT TO LOVE" and "OUR RIGHT TO GRIEVE." In the end, the Phelps group was pelted with eggs and ran. Phelps tried to take refuge in a police van but the cops kicked him out (Raine and Flinn). The spectacle around his funeral encapsulated many things Shuts had fought for. He had aspired all his life for gays and lesbians to live and die with dignity and respect. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Shilts' death was the books he did not get to write, the memories lost. He was planning on writing his memoirs of the 70s, 80s, and 90s in San Francisco. This story, like those of so many others, is gone. His death leaves a huge void. Across the city the morning of Shilts' funeral, George hobbled with his stroller out of an elevator at the AIDS housing facility where he lives and I work. He had wasted to a point where his emaciated bicep could be held between a thumb and forefinger. His once black mustache was now gray. His Creole accent was still thick. "Hi Ben," he said as he sat on a couch in the lobby. "How was the movie last night, George?" I asked. 36 the minnesota review "Pure camp," George smiled, "but I couldn't enjoy it too much because the seat was so uncomfortable. My rump's gotten so small, it's all bone. I don't get padding," George confessed. He died a month later. His old lover, Rick, came by the building to pack his things. "After three days on the respirator, he said forget it and told the doctor to pull the plug. He died within the night. The man never hurt a soul," Rick recalled. "Except for the homophobes who came to the Stud in the 70s looking for fights. George told me he would prance around until one of them would start something, then he'd beat the tar out of the guy." "Yeah, he used to call home and tell me, 1 did it again. Now everyone in the bar is buying me drinks.' When he was done with one of those guys he would tell him, 'Go home and tell your friends you got beat up by a fag!'" Many of the PWA's (People with AIDS) where I work have told me they intended someday to write down everything they have learned. Melvin, a black man who served in the army in the Czech Sudetenland, told me stories about his years romping around Europe. He regretted not having written his story down. "I wanted the world to know that as gay black man with AIDS, I have been able to make it." Sigmeund, a...