A Tale of Two Pandemics
And it is with these words that my tale of two pandemics can begin.
A 1983, for a young white South African male was an amazing time to be gay and alive. I was eighteen years old, just finishing matric, I was out, and I was hitting Johannesburg’s gay scene. Disco was alive and well and I was a party boy hanging out at the Dungeon, Idols, Zipps and later on Scants and Heaven. These were discos that were of a world class standard. For the younger readers, drugs were not really part of the scene, poppers and the occasional joint were for the main part the drugs we used. The sexual revolution that epitomised the ‘60s and ‘70s was still very much in play, and it was a time of one-night stands, random pickups and deep meaningful relationships that lasted maybe a week or two. To meet people, you went to bars and clubs, and of course there were bathhouses or sex-clubs as well. Hook-ups were plentiful and random, and the town buzzed with sexual energy.
It was around this time that in our gay press and buried deep in mainstream newspapers that we first heard about this new disease called GRID (Gay Related Immune Disease) which soon became known as AIDS was killing young gay men in the US and Europe. Back home in South Africa 1983 also saw the first confirmed cases of AIDS and the first deaths in the same year.
Towards the latter part of the ‘80s HIV/AIDS as we now called it was decimating the gay population the world over. Caught up in the clubbing world as I
