In the mid-1980s when I was still working in theatre I was usually unable to go a week without seeing the name of someone I knew, my age, in the obituary columns. Some weeks of course there was no one, but other weeks were really bad when every day brought someone new. Anybody who worked in the arts during those years probably tells the same story because so many brilliant lives were cut short because nobody gave a damn that gays were dying.
As long as AIDS remained something that only killed gay men, who cares? They were only reaping the whirlwind of their own perversion. It was only when so-called "innocent victims", children and others who had received tainted blood and began contracting the disease, that governments got off their sorry asses and started to do something about it.
Like any community during a pogrom, gays across North America closed ranks and began taking steps to both ensure their survival and to demand their rights as human beings be respected. Ever since the 1970s and the gay sexual revolution, when closets were being kicked open all over North America, their community had been subject to harassment from politicians and conservative religious leaders.
It was pretty hard to find anyone in those days who was willing to cast a positive light on gay men, but one of the few voices out there was author Armistead Maupin. Over the course of six novels set in San Francisco, collectively referred to as The Tales Of The City Series, he charted the lives of a group of gay and straight friends as they revelled in the good times and suffered through the hard times, just like anyone else.
From the early days of the seventies until the dark days of the eighties he wrote about these people like any author would write about any group of characters, except that most of his were gay. Just like everyone else they were in search of sex, love, companionship, and everlasting relationships.
Twenty years later he picks up with one of the lead characters from his former series, Michael Tolliver, in his new book published by Harper Collins Canada, Michael Toliver Lives. The title can be looked at in a couple of ways. One, that Michael is a 55-year old gay man who had developed full blown AIDS and was preparing to die, only to have his life saved by some of the new drugs that came on the market. That he lives at all is a miracle and worth proclaiming to the stars.
But the title could also be in reference to the fact that, unlike a lot of his contemporaries who have just been content to survive the plague years, Michael still wants to live. For Michael that means finding a partner to spend his days and nights with, more than just sex but a husband. When the opportunity arises he jumps in headfirst and falls for a younger man, Ben.
In fact, during a brief period when gays were being allowed the right to marry in a few cities in the United States, he and Ben had been joined in a civil ceremony. But they are living in the Brave New World of George Bush Jr.'s America where being gay is an aberration for the man in charge and he's doing his best to strip people like Michael and Ben of any rights they have gained.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net , which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and to Boston.com. Nice work!