Michael Gigante, the clinician at the Brattleboro AIDS Project (now the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont) from 1990 to 1992, writes: "During the height of the Covid pandemic, I was reminded of my experiences in a previous epidemic, HIV/AIDS. So I wrote. I wrote a series of vignettes of my very personal experiences of those times."
1. In the beginning
The day was sunny and warm when the news hit. The bay was frigid, as usual, and the Golden Gate Bridge was in full view. There must have been a thousand naked gay men lying on the beach at Bonita Cove that July afternoon in 1981.
A short article appeared deep in that day's newspaper, barely the length of the column in which it was embedded, its headline highlighting a strange new disease killing gay men in New York and Los Angeles.
Copies of the newspaper shot across the sand so that groups of friends could read it to one another and then pass it on. It caused a frenzy on the beach.
A rare type of cancer, previously unknown to any population other than elderly Mediterranean men, was striking young gay men in these two cities in unprecedented numbers. This particular cancer, which was rarely fatal in its usual target population, had a fatality rate in this new population approaching 100%. What was going on?
The disease soon took on the monikers of "Gay Cancer," "The Gay Plague," and "God's Retribution."
By 1983, I had moved east to a lovely, bucolic New Hampshire village far from the frenzy and fast pace of the big city. There I started learning about friends who had been diagnosed with the now-officially-named disease, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS.
John, an exotic Middle Eastern dancer with the stage name of Esther, received his diagnosis first of all my friends. He was dead within three months. Danny, my high school buddy, was next, in 1984.
Soon, the trickle of affected names became a steady stream, then a flood, and finally an unrelenting torrent, spanning the '80s and stretching into the early '90s.
I never tested positive for HIV/AIDS, but I watched clients, friends, and lovers succumb to this horribly ravaging disease, wasting away, their faces disfigured. I witnessed them losing their bodily functions, and, one by one, the loss of personal skills and unique individual talents and abilities.
I became horrified at the silence from my government. And then I became angry.
* * *
Since rural New England was mostly unaffected by AIDS in the early days, I took it upon myself to sound the alarm. I began speaking to whoever was willing to listen, warning that a tsunami of horror was soon to hit our quiet shores, and we would need to get prepared.
I spoke to hospitals, mental health agencies, human resource centers, schools, and even to groups of clergy. I was informing all of what this scourge was about, who was affected by it, how it was being spread, and what we could all do to mitigate it.
I was becoming so angry that our government was doing nothing, saying nothing, and tacitly agreeing with the pious fundamentalist "Christian" ministries, whose clergy were proclaiming that this was a problem of morals, not something with which they should get involved. I was horrified.
* * *
President Ronald Reagan never mentioned AIDS publicly by name until his friend and fellow actor Rock Hudson died from it, several years and thousands of deaths into the epidemic.
In a 1992 election debate, President George H.W. Bush was asked about the "widespread feeling" that his administration was not doing enough about AIDS.
Bush responded: "Well, change your behavior!" as though this was a viable response from a sitting president to an epidemic now claiming tens of thousands of lives.
When a friend and local Emmy-winning filmmaker and TV producer spoke at one of our Brattleboro AIDS Project's volunteer and buddy support group meetings about a newly forming activist group in New York, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), we became excited and decided to start a Brattleboro chapter.
ACT UP was created in New York as a direct response to the slowness of federal agencies to make the drug pipeline more responsive and urgent. Brattleboro ACT UP's first action was a march up Main Street, making noise and disrupting traffic. One member dressed in a huge papier-mâché mask of Bush, while others brought drums, horns, noisemakers, and their own voices to bring this sleepy population to awareness of this crisis. Letters to the editor of the Brattleboro Reformer both praised and condemned the action.
Nevertheless, actions such as this one - and much larger ones in Times Square, across the Golden Gate Bridge, and down Hollywood Boulevard - woke up an ambivalent country, thus preventing a heartless presidential administration from ever making such a crass statement again.
Soon afterwards, with the 1992 election of Bill Clinton as president, a new era brought more awareness, kindness, and sympathetic understanding across this land. Viable treatments would emerge only a few years later. The crisis was subsiding.
2. Green medicine
At the height of the AIDS epidemic, marijuana was illegal-so much so that the state used helicopters during the harvest season to scout out cultivated patches of pot for confiscation and burning.
I knew, as the clinician on staff at the Brattleboro AIDS Project, that marijuana, despite the fearmongering in the culture, brought calmness and peace; it helped ease the pain of both the progression of the virus as well as the side effects of its treatments. It increased appetites, thus staving off "wasting syndrome"; it brought socialization to often isolated folks, and it brought laughter and merriment to otherwise somber and fear-filled lives.
I knew it was damned good medicine for our clients.
But how could I procure enough marijuana to fill the needs of the ever-expanding number of people with AIDS (PWAs) we were seeing in southern Vermont? How could I do so without putting the clients, the AIDS Project, or myself in legal jeopardy? And what about the men with advanced Kaposi's sarcoma lesions invading their lungs? They would not be able to inhale, thus they would be unable to partake in the medicine.
What to do?
I could cultivate enough plants and distribute the bounty to all who requested it.
* * *
For several years, good friends in southern New Hampshire, Boston, and Long Island were all delighted to let me use land to plant the sprouts that I had started from seed under grow lights in the cellar of the home I was renting in Brattleboro. Those friends would then tend to the delicate growths and assist with the harvest, all for a small sampling of the bounty.
My Massachusetts friend, understanding the difficulties some of these individuals would have inhaling the product, fashioned some of the plants into a tincture that the PWAs could drink. I still refer to this woman as my "witch friend," as she could make healing brews that were so greatly appreciated.
I could now distribute the contraband quietly to all those who requested it. I could feel their gratitude. I could hear the stories of how it lifted their lives, even if just a little, out of the hell they were in.
* * *
I never mentioned this endeavor to other staff members of the AIDS Project, to my landlords where I started the plants, nor to anyone other than the growers and the recipients of the "green medicine." I did not want to implicate anyone as an accomplice. I never did.
One by one, most of the recipients of my endeavor died, but I know this effort made the last months, weeks, and days of their lives just a bit more tolerable.
I broke the law. Many times. And it was worth it. My grower friends also put themselves at risk and broke the law. And they, too, felt that it was worth it.
My Yiddish-speaking friends call this a mitzvah.
3. Loving support
Our HIV support group had become so popular that we had to move its venue from the small, cramped offices of the AIDS Project in downtown Brattleboro to the more spacious, sun-filled living room of my apartment.
My space not only gave us more room, but afforded us a greater degree of quiet confidentiality, a commodity crucial back in the early '90s when AIDS phobia ran rampant throughout the country.
And although Vermont was more tolerant and accepting than most places, fear of transmission from exposure to HIV-infected individuals still ran high.
My apartment was on a quiet lane about a mile from downtown, on a street replete with stately old Victorians. It took most of the first floor of one of them.
The Helen Dowling Institute, in the Netherlands, researches the relationship between the mind and the body. The Institute conducted groundbreaking research in the early 1990s measuring the effectiveness of support groups for gay men with HIV/AIDS.
The research found that the support group participants, although they did not necessarily live longer lives than their counterparts, lived healthier lives, freer from opportunistic infections for longer periods of time.
Once our group had taken off, anywhere from eight to 14 participants would show up each week. We'd sit on chairs, couches, pillows, cushions, and back-jack seats - whatever was comfortable for our two hours each week. A friend and fellow psychotherapist helped me co-lead this group, which could get quite emotional and overwhelming at times.
Members of the group projected their angers, fears, and pain onto each other. We were unfair. We were also so very loving. We talked. We cried. We yelled. We supported each other. We were everything to each other - we were the safety net not afforded to people with AIDS during the height of the crisis.
We talked about the progression of the disease, about the medications we were and were not taking. We talked about the side effects of the medications and how to deal with them. We talked about the latest supplements touted to bring about miraculous results.
We talked about the homophobia and AIDS phobia in the culture around us and how it impacted us personally. We talked about the government and its lack of help for us and this disease. We talked about our latest love interests and breakups. And above all, we talked about how frightened we were with this death sentence hanging over our heads.
The meetings were mostly supportive and loving, but at times tempers did rise and nasty negativity flew across the room, as fears and anxieties percolated to the surface with nowhere else to put the feelings except onto each other.
We were, after all, in the same boat, and thus our feelings were relatively safe with each other - safer than with the outside society.
* * *
Over my 2½ years co-leading this group, some 25 participants attended. Among them:
• A published short-story writer from Manhattan returning to Vermont, where he was a big help with the AIDS Project's written communications.
• An heir to an international company who claimed he had become HIV positive from a blood transfusion but who later acknowledged having homosexual relationships. He also helped the Project with getting out educational information.
• Two gay couples who moved up from Florida, coming north to get away from the endemic homophobia of the South.
• A West Virginia man, disinherited by his family for being gay and for having AIDS, had moved to Vermont to be with a lover. He awoke one morning to find him dead in their bed from AIDS-related causes. He found it necessary almost weekly to remind me, as someone who was not positive: "You can walk away from this - we can't!"
• A man from Los Angeles returned home to live, and subsequently die, in the home of his mother. He was the first member of our group, and also the first to pass away.
• A state legislator who spearheaded the passage of statewide LGBTQ-rights legislation, including our incorporation into the antidiscrimination statutes banning discrimination in the state.
His mother, now into her 90s, has consistently been the No. 1 fundraiser for the AIDS Project's Walk for Life, the organization's biggest yearly fund-raising event, cumulatively raising more than $500,000 on her own.
• Several straight men who contracted the virus from various sources, including same-sex forays, blood transfusions, or shared heroin needles. One of these men discovered that he was HIV positive via a phone call from an insurance company denying him life insurance. The shock to him - and his wife - sent them reeling. They both became educational speakers for us.
• A professional musician who wanted me to have his piano when he died.
• A gay local bartender who orchestrated a farewell party for himself at his hospital bedside.
• A guru of sorts from South Africa with a following of local and international disciples, who was also dealing with recent uncovered memories from early childhood sexual abuse.
• A gay man who initiated the Vermont Prison Project for inmates with HIV. The project was designed to bring information, support, and hopefully access to the latest in medical treatments to the inmates. Unfortunately, he died before he could get his dream project into full operation.
• A young gay man from Massachusetts, not long out of high school, and still living with his parents.
• A gay man who was brutally mugged, stabbed, beaten, robbed, and left for dead in a back alley at a Memphis bus station while he was picking up a couple of seemingly interested men for anonymous sex. He recovered from his injuries. In hindsight, his experience evokes aspects of the high-profile murder of Matthew Shepard which would take place a decade and a half later.
• The sole woman of our group, who became HIV positive from a bisexual lover and IV drug user. Her mother, a firebrand redheaded bundle of loving kinetic energy, would prepare a daily green concoction of juiced herbs, spices, and plants for her daughter to drink, instead of taking the azidothymidine (AZT) and Didanosine (DDl), the most frequently prescribed pharmaceuticals for HIV infection at the time.
* * *
Of all these people in our group, excluding myself, to my knowledge, the sole survivor is the one woman. I still keep a gratitude letter I received from her while she was serving time in prison. She is gainfully employed and has become a parent and a grandparent. She lives a healthy, sober, and a happy life after much tribulation and many trials.
• The two couples from Florida eventually returned there. Several years later I heard from one, just to check in to let me know he and his partner were still together and both were doing fine. Since this call occurred after the introduction of the "cocktail," a combination of successful HIV medications that were prolonging lives, I assumed they lived on for a much longer time. I did not hear from the other couple.
• The straight man who learned of his HIV infection from the life insurance company over the phone also moved with his wife to Florida, and I never heard from either of them again. Prior to this move, she remained HIV negative.
• The "guru" from South Africa returned there, having written several books.
• The international company heir died in an apparent suicide in a hotel room in West Palm Beach.
• The disinherited man returned home to West Virginia once his symptoms became too dire for him to continue to live alone in Vermont. We learned he had been welcomed back into the bosom of a now-loving family, where he died peacefully.
• The author moved to New Jersey, where he opened a book store with an older brother.
• Each of the other straight men of our group passed away while still being a member, as did the young, gay post-high schooler. All of the surviving members attended each of those wakes and funerals.
• The "Matthew Shepard" of Memphis died peacefully following all- night vigils attended by friends. He is buried in a cemetery in Brattleboro.
• The state legislator died a day after returning to Montpelier from his Christmas break. He was respected and admired by lawmakers from both parties. Subsequent legislation, including Vermont being the first state in the nation to enact marriage equality status to LGBTQ+ couples, was a direct result of the pioneering work that this brave legislator filed several years before.
• The musician became quite ill with pneumocystis pneumonia while visiting his father in Florida. We had several telephone conversations while he was there. He never made it back to Vermont, though this was his wish.
• The bartender's friends gathered at his bedside in a nearby major medical center. While hospital staff were not looking, they ceremoniously pulled the plug.
* * *
I cannot say that the individuals attending our lovely little HIV support group in Brattleboro between 1990 and 1992 lived longer or healthier lives than they would have had they not been involved in this group.
But I do know that they attended with passionate regularity and that they were fiercely protective of the group, of one another, and ultimately of me. I am grateful for the experience of having been its facilitator.
4. Ray
I wasn't present the morning Ray died. Clarence and Alberta, volunteers of the Brattleboro AIDS Project, his very-longtime friend Eleanor, and I had just spent three days of all-night vigils at his bedside.
Carey, a young volunteer, took over so the rest of us could have the time off. The vigil had left me exhausted, bereft, and hungry for rest, so I left to spend the weekend in the sand and sun with old friends.
The next morning, I received the phone call that Ray had died.
It was as if he waited for the familiars to leave the room before he could take leave of his body. He was one day shy of his 40th birthday - the age he said he would never want to admit to being. He never had to, as it turned out.
* * *
Those last days were tough for Ray. All through his illness he shared with me, as his friend, how scared he was of dying. As the illness progressed and more infections wracked his body, he became increasingly angry, belligerent, and abusive.
I didn't know how best to respond to his outbursts and tongue lashings, so I simply took them in - not responding at all.
He blamed me for having reached these final stages.
That's because two months prior to his death, his condition worsened, and he asked me to ask his physician for sleeping medications, mood elevators, and anti-anxiety medicines. I did. The doctor did not feel comfortable prescribing all these psychotropics, and suggested he visit a local psychiatrist.
Infuriated, Ray screamed at me, "I don't need a psychiatrist, I'm not crazy!" All my rational explanations about the value and use of psychiatry went unheard.
I returned to the doctor, who relented and prescribed the requested meds, understanding now that Ray's time was short. Not much later, Ray erroneously blamed these meds for the recent and rapid progression of his HIV infection, along with me for getting them for him.
* * *
In the final month of his life, Ray had become much more mellow and loving once again. His handsome face and body had became grossly disfigured and gaunt. A cytomegalovirus infection popped out an eye that never closed and that unseeingly stared endlessly and eerily out into the world.
Despite all this, he seemed to feel more peaceful, hopeful, and appreciative.
Before slipping into final unconsciousness, he often expressed to me his appreciation for all I had given to him over the past few years. He appreciated the marijuana I procured for him and the peace and ease it brought to him. He appreciated my friendship, my touch, my listening ear, my presence.
I gave the eulogy at his funeral. I talked mostly about how we were friends. How politically we were at opposite ends of the spectrum - he thought my politics lay somewhere to the left of Boris Yeltsin, and I thought his lay somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun.
But we never tried to change each other. We each listened quietly to the other, each of us convinced of our correctness but never trying to change the other. We were friends. We loved each other. Our sexual forays with each other were brief, fun, and sweet - a fun dalliance lasting the evening. I never even spent the whole night.
Ray was dashing as a younger man. He had only one true love, Billy, in his almost 40 years. He was prone to picking up men - lots of them - in bars, alleyways, bus stations, highway rest stops, airports, and bathhouses.
Once he picked up two men at the train station in Memphis. Together all three went into a back alley, where they mugged him, stabbed him, stole his money and all his possessions, and left him for dead. He recovered from the gross wound in a Tennessee hospital over many weeks. He wore that deep scar in his back with pride.
I couldn't say that Ray was a good man or even an honest man. But I loved him. He was my friend.
5. The fern painting
He was entitled, spoiled, demanding, and arrogant. His mean words could cut like the lash of a whip. But, of course, none of this was mentioned at Burr's funeral, which drew a standing-room-only crowd of hundreds of admirers to the local Unitarian church hall.
There, people spoke about his brilliance, his artistic abilities, his creativity, his inventiveness, and his gentle, hippie side.
His accomplishments included the mapping of international mass transit systems of major metropolitan cities for a British catalog. He painstakingly painted ferns and mushrooms with such precision, one had to look closely to see it was not a photograph. He was an amateur botanist and collected wild mushrooms for local restaurants.
He spoke Mandarin and travelled to China, where he taught English as a second language to the Chinese. He was an avid biker, and used this vehicle to pick up men. He was a true Renaissance man.
But the lopsided picture of this man presented at the funeral annoyed me, because I knew that other side of him.
As Burr lay dying from the ravages of HIV/AIDS, first in a cabin on his father's land, then later in a bed in his father's house, I was called in as the clinical coordinator of the Brattleboro AIDS Project. It was my job to be with Burr, to find out what he needed to ease his suffering and, if necessary, just to hold his hand.
Each day that I was with him he had lost some new functioning: motor skills, bowel and bladder continence, speech. Each day saw a new level of anguish for this man, now in his early 40s. He was bereft, despairing, hopeless, angry, and miserable, and he just wanted to die. He sought escape from the misery that had become his life, but couldn't "pull the plug" himself.
This is where he needed me.
Unable to speak, he was desperately attempting to communicate something vital to me, but I wasn't getting it with his grunted attempts at speech and his spastic signing. I designed a word board for him so he could spell this message out for me. Even this proved too difficult, having lost so much muscle control. After much trial and error, anger, desperation, and frustration, I finally got it!
The top drawer of his dresser contained a stash of medications, each specific for symptoms, moods, and reactions to other medications. Since I did not know what all these meds were, and Burr knew that fact, he wanted me to call his physician, who could tell me which meds to administer and in what quantities, so that I could feed them to Burr along with some juice, so that he could achieve his end.
In short, he wanted us to kill him.
* * *
While still at Burr's bedside, I telephoned the doctor to tell him of this unusual, and illegal, request. He suggested that we sleep on it and have breakfast the following morning, just the two of us, to discuss what to do.
When I left Burr's home, Burr's father stopped me and said: "I was listening to your conversation. Whatever you two decide to do is fine with me." Burr's father was a compassionate and loving man who had witnessed enough of his son's suffering and anguish and so was willing to let him go, if that was our decision.
The following morning, I received a waking telephone call from Burr's father.
"Burr died during the night, quite peacefully," he said.
I immediately called the doctor at home, and told him the sad but relieving news. We decided to meet for breakfast just the same - to pay tribute to this man whose passing would touch many lives, and to discuss possible future similar requests.
During the course of the previous night, neither of us got much sleep, but by the next morning, we had each examined our respective consciences.
We had come to opposite decisions. The doctor felt that he could not participate in the taking of a life, and I felt that under similar circumstances, I could - and would.
Fortunately, I never had to.
* * *
Shortly after Burr's funeral I resigned from the AIDS Project. I was burnt out. The staff and board of the project threw me a going-away party in which Burr's father presented me with one of his son's exquisite fern paintings. I immediately hung it in my kitchen.
Perhaps a year or so later, I met up with my friend Lise, who later became a UCC pastor. We talked, laughed, and shared our stories as we always do when we have lunch together. Then she noticed Burr's painting hanging on my kitchen wall. She proceeded to tell me her story.
She was a professor in a local college where Burr had enrolled, and he took her course.
"It was my first year of teaching, and Burr was my nemesis!" she said. "He was brilliant, and challenged me at every turn. He was not kind to me as a neophyte instructor. He was mean, but he made me a better teacher. It was just a bitter lesson!"
I then told her of my experience at his funeral - where I actually left the church for fear of losing my composure and exposing my feelings about Burr's other nature amidst all the touchy-feely sentiments bantered about at that ceremony.
And then it happened. Burr's painting of the fern suddenly came crashing down off the wall, shattering the glass into a million pieces.
We just stared at each other, and then at the shattered picture frame lying on the floor, and then back to each other. We vowed never to talk disparagingly about Burr again.
The next day, after cleaning up the glass, I brought the painting to the local frame shop downtown, to be reframed. Two weeks later it was ready, and I went down to fetch it - very carefully. Also very carefully, I re-hung the picture on that same wall. And suddenly, that newly installed glass frame cracked-just a little-on the lower right hand corner.
I left the crack. Today, nearly 30 years later, I still have that painting, and it still has that small, barely noticeable crack.
6. A pity
Upon arriving at work, I received a distressed telephone message from Christina, who lived in Jacksonville. She had gone to visit her good friend Robert in his apartment, only to find him disheveled, delirious, and very ill. She called the Brattleboro AIDS Project for help.
I knew neither of them. I immediately got back into my old Saab and drove to Jacksonville. I had never been there prior to this cold, dreary, rainy early spring morning.
I knocked on Robert's door. Christina opened the door and led me up a rickety staircase to his second-floor apartment.
I was shocked at what I saw. Robert was barely dressed. He was ranting. His face, and what I could see of his body, were riddled with lesions, which I thought to be signs of Kaposi's sarcoma; his breathing was labored and wheezing, which I thought to be signs of pneumocystis pneumonia.
He was emaciated, signs of AIDS wasting syndrome, and his delirium seemed symptomatic of AIDS-related dementia.
I immediately called for an ambulance. Christina was very grateful. The ambulance arrived quickly, whisking Robert away to the hospital.
* * *
The first day after Robert was admitted, I walked into his hospital room and was greeted warmly by Christina and other good friends of Robert. As I approached his bedside, he looked at me very suspiciously - he stared at me, in fact - and clearly did not remember me from the previous day at his home.
On each subsequent day that I visited, Robert was alone, without visitors. Each day he seemed a little better - healthier. His breathing improved. His skin gained more color. He put on some weight. He became conversant.
We spent some quality alone time together. He told me that when I first walked into his hospital room days before, I look like Saddam Hussein, who was figuring prominently in the news. Robert said he wondered to himself, "Why is Saddam Hussein visiting me in my hospital room?"
I was amused. Not flattered, but amused.
On each of the following days' visits, Robert was increasingly more present, seemingly healthier, more robust, and even cheerful. I was pleased.
During my visits, we shared our lives with each other. We became as close as two men could become under such circumstances.
I began to understand who this man, Robert, was. I wanted him to join our support group, to receive the services that we at the AIDS Project could offer, becoming part of our community.
Sadly, such was not to be.
On perhaps my fifth visit, I walked into his room to find it empty and the bed made up.
I asked the attending nurse if Robert had been released.
"No," she responded. "Robert passed away the evening before."
I was surprised and saddened. But such was the course of events with AIDS at the time. A man could be on the verge of death, and then recover fully within 24 hours. Or, conversely, as in Robert's case, a seemingly healthy recovery could be followed by a quick and sudden death.
* * *
I never saw or heard from Christina again, apart from sharing, and consoling each other about, the news of Robert's passing. I do not believe I was made aware of his funeral, or even if there was one. No one close to Robert ever knew of the relationship we had forged in those final days before his passing.
After his passing, I would remember Robert each spring in the "Reading of the Names" segment of the AIDS Project Walk for Life, our annual fundraising event. I included his name among the growing number of local dead, even though he never became an official client of the AIDS Project. I read his name with honor, along with all the others.
Today, nearly 30 years later, even though our paths crossed so briefly, Robert had made his mark on me. No one else at the AIDS Project ever met him - I alone got to known this man. A pity.
7. To Bennington
Ted and Mark were a couple of aging queens, perhaps 25 years my senior. They lived in quiet luxury up a nearly-1-mile driveway on a sprawling, palatial estate overlooking Old Bennington and Mount Anthony. Their gardens were impeccably manicured, and beautiful.
Having been monogamous for decades, they themselves were immune to the scourge of AIDS. Nevertheless, they opened their wallets, their home if necessary, and their hearts to the afflicted gay men in the Bennington area.
Ted and Mark's idea of creating a local AIDS project was to give money to the men in need - to whomever asked.
For example, when Ray, still more than a year from his death, began planning his own funeral, a cremation was all he could afford. Realizing later that he would rather be buried, Ray asked Ted and Mark for the money for an upgrade.
They granted his wish, no questions asked. They reimbursed him for any funeral expenses he had already incurred, and they arranged it all for him. This was Ted and Mark, both grand of hearts and of financial resources.
But as more and more men were being diagnosed in the Bennington area, with needs not reachable by money alone, they turned to us, the Brattleboro AIDS Project, for help and guidance.
We worked with them to develop a "Buddy" system modeled after our own - that is, two Buddies (to prevent volunteer burnout) to every HIV-infected individual. We helped train their Buddies. We provided educational services to their schools, hospitals, and mental health clinics, and we initiated their HIV support group, also modeled after our own highly successful group.
Once a week, on a Monday evening, Ray and I would drive the 40 miles, across two mountain ranges, to facilitate their support group. It started off small - two or three members - plus Ray, me, and Mark, who wanted so much to be a part of this. (He was not HIV positive, but with the group's permission, he joined in.)
We grew quickly to seven, eight, and then nine members. Ted and Mark, so grateful to Ray and me, paid us to perform this function, even though we would have done it for free.
During the warm months of May through September, the group took place on a patio amid their formidable gardens. But as the Vermont autumn progressed into winter, Ted secured a room in a local church for us to meet in.
The group remained at a high level of participation, generally six to nine members for its duration. And as men died, newly diagnosed participants joined.
* * *
Some two years later, when I resigned my position as the clinician of the Brattleboro AIDS Project, I also stopped going to Bennington. Ray wouldn't go without me, so we passed the group to a local psychotherapist, this time a woman.
It wasn't the same for the remaining men in the support group, I learned. The gay banter, the bawdy humor, the irreverence of the intragroup "queenishness" ended. New membership stopped. And as the old guard died away to the last member, so ended that group.
As it turned out, none of the remaining members lived much longer. AIDS had taken its toll.
Of the two, Ted died first, in 2007, soon followed by Mark, in 2008. Both were in their 80s when they left. They were old-guard '50s queens, and although invulnerable to HIV infection themselves, they were so very vulnerable to the pain, suffering, and anguish of their younger brothers who came to them desperately seeking help.
Most of the people touched by these two kind souls are long gone now. But I remember them. And I will be forever grateful to Ted and Mark for doing their part in uplifting the lives of so many men.
Thank you again, Ted. Thank you again, Mark. You are remembered.
This Voices Memoir was submitted to The Commons.
This piece, published in print in the Voices section or as a column in the news sections, represents the opinion of the writer. In the newspaper and on this website, we strive to ensure that opinions are based on fair expression of established fact. In the spirit of transparency and accountability, The Commons is reviewing and developing more precise policies about editing of opinions and our role and our responsibility and standards in fact-checking our own work and the contributions to the newspaper. In the meantime, we heartily encourage civil and productive responses at [email protected].