Memories of My Gay Brothers

By Michael T Roper

I could never have imagined what the future had in store for me and my Castro Street friends when I began a memory book in 1985. This is my memoir of more than ninety people I knew in San Francisco who died of AIDS. It was the decimation of a thriving culture in just over a decade. Who cares? We all should.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 20, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462804610

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Copyright © 2000 by Michael T. Roper.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Preface

Chapter One: 1985

Chapter Two: 1986

Chapter Three: 1987

Chapter Four: 1988

Chapter Five: 1989

Chapter Six: 1990

Chapter Seven: 1991

Chapter Eight: 1992

Chapter Nine: 1993

Chapter Ten: 1994

Chapter Eleven: 1995

Chapter Twelve: 1996

Epilogue

Appendix: Works Consulted

I Dedicate This Book To My Partner Richard A. Libby,

My Physician Richard B. Ward, M.D., And Hedy And Mina

Preface

It has been more than fifteen years since I began my memory book, remembering the people I have known who died of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). The Bay Area Reporter (B.A.R.), a weekly newspaper for San Francisco’s gay and lesbian community, was publishing the obituaries of gay men living in the Bay Area who had died of AIDS. Over the years the number of weekly obituary notices grew at an alarming rate; sometimes a dozen names in one week would appear in the B.A.R. Add to these names the obituaries printed in San Francisco’s two daily papers, the Examiner and Chronicle, and I could never have imagined the large number of deaths and what the future had in store for me and my Castro Street neighborhood friends. It was the decimation of a thriving culture in just over a decade and the continued reshaping of the gay community in San Francisco to this day.

This is my memoir of the Castro Street men who died. The memories culled from my diaries, collection of obituary notices, and letters, that have become all I have left of my gay brothers. I take pride in remembering here some of the many men who came from around the world in the seventies to settle in Eureka Valley, building a gay community at the foot of Twin Peaks in the often sunny and warm Castro.

These friends’ lives were lost to me in just slightly more than a decade. Taken all at once, I imagine it is as though a neutron bomb had been dropped on the Castro neighborhood, killing most of the inhabitants and leaving behind just empty buildings. The impact on the gay community was devastating.

Although some have accused me of a preoccupation with death, the stark reality of the AIDS epidemic is the torturous ending of life for the people infected. To recall the lives of these men I must recall their untimely and tragic deaths. In fact it is in their deaths they live as a reminder of government neglect of gay people in the face of a deadly epidemic.

Each man I knew was special to me in some way and I hope that my recollections here will offer some understanding of the impact HIV disease had on the Castro gay community. To those caring for people with AIDS and those living with the disease, I say never for a moment give up the fight against this infection because each person’s effort to survive is very important to someone.

San Francisco, California M.T.R. July, 2000

Chapter One: 1985

3575-ROPE-layout.pdf President Ronald Reagan begins his second term of office.

3575-ROPE-layout.pdf San Francisco 49’ers beat the Miami Dolphins 38-16 to win the Super Bowl.

3575-ROPE-layout.pdf Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, a play about AIDS opened April 21, 1985 at the Public Theater in New York City.

3575-ROPE-layout.pdf Academy Award for best picture is Amadeus.

3575-ROPE-layout.pdf Rock Hudson, 59, film star, dies of AIDS.

3575-ROPE-layout.pdf Tony Award for best Broadway play is Biloxi Blues by Neil Simon.

3575-ROPE-layout.pdf Christopher Isherwood, author, dies.

3575-ROPE-layout.pdf An Earthquake in Mexico City kills 7,000.

3575-ROPE-layout.pdf The U. K. begins screening blood donations for the AIDS virus.

3575-ROPE-layout.pdf A remote-controlled camera photographs the wreck of the Titanic, lying deep in the North Atlantic.

Number of new U.S. AIDS cases: 8,210

Number of U.S. AIDS deaths: 6,681

Richard Valentino was the first obituary entry in my memory book. I met Val in the mid-seventies in the Castro district; an exciting time when gay men were moving to San Francisco from all over the country. As with many of the guys I got to know, when we would meet on the street Val and I always gave each other a big bear hug. This growing fraternity of gay men was wonderful to behold and a pleasure to experience. Seeing men free to show their affection toward other men was one of the rewards of living in the predominantly gay neighborhood.

Val worked as a waiter at Los Cazos, a Mexican restaurant on Castro Street, and I remember one night following dinner he told me that he was leaving San Francisco soon and moving to Palm Springs. Since I felt San Francisco was the only place for a gay man to live, this was quite a surprise to me; I was disappointed. He and I had gone out a few times and it was clear we were fast becoming friends. I sure missed seeing his handsome smiling face in the neighborhood when Val finally did leave the city. Though I felt certain he would return since most of the guys I knew who left town did come back, happy to return. San Francisco’s Castro District had a unique allure, once experienced, was very hard to resist.

However, Val never did come back to the city. The next time I saw his smiling face it was a photograph in the newspaper staring back at me next to his obituary notice. I recall a chill came over me and my stomach knotted and I felt like I was going to pass out. In stunned disbelief I stared at his picture for what seemed like hours. The notice read that he had died on February 23 in Palm Springs after a prolonged struggle with AIDS related disease. He was 44 years old. Val and I shared the unique and wonderful comradeship of the men living in the Castro. If there is a deadly contagious epidemic spreading in San Francisco’s gay community, I had so far been spared the loss of my friends—that is until now. By the end of this year I would experience the loss of twelve neighbors and friends.

Val was not the first person I knew who died of AIDS. The beginning of what has become my AIDS chronicle was on my birthday in 1985. It was on February 15 that a friend and client of mine died quite suddenly, just a week before Val. I received the telephone call of his death at my office and all I can remember thinking about at the time was; did he receive the get well card I sent him a few days earlier? He was in the hospital barely a week, and I know from my telephone conversations with him that his visitors were being asked to wear hospital gowns, rubber gloves, and surgical masks to prevent their infection. It would be some time before the medical community realized that the threat of infection was to the patient and not the visitors. A friend close to him in the hospital told me that his condition was not diagnosed until two days before he died. It was later determined to be an AIDS related condition: Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia.

In the first years of the epidemic most hospitals were ill equipped to diagnose and treat people with AIDS. This was a time when the disease was responded to largely by harsh discrimination and ignorance. There was much hatred against people with AIDS since many thought it was a gay disease. Gay people were often vilified by society just for being gay and the AIDS epidemic gave those individuals more reason to justify their hatred and loathing of homosexuals. This animus was played out in many hostile ways, often in hate speech or out an out violence against people with AIDS. In fact my friend’s family did not print in their son’s obituary that he died of complication from AIDS. It was no doubt much easier for them to omit the cause of death in order to escape the possibility of family and hometown scorn.

Shortly after my friend’s death,—even now I respect his family’s desire for privacy—a memorial was held at the Swedenborgian Church in San Francisco. This was the first of many memorials that I would be invited to at this church, named for the Swedish philosopher and mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg. The interior of the church was very beautiful, with pastoral wall paintings depicting rolling green hills painted in soft, earthy colors. A religiously neutral place to hold a memorial service.

I was the deceased’s printing supplier and we knew each other outside his circle of family and friends. As I experienced with many of my gay clients, he and I often shared over lunch details of the most personal events and feelings in our lives and over time we came to know each other quite well. I felt very close to him as I did with many of my gay clients, although it was at this man’s memorial service I first encountered the loneliness of attending a remembrance service as an outsider to the immediate family. Until the death of this man I had never experienced