It’s interesting how seemingly unrelated events or situations come together at the same time and become intertwined. It’s one of those weird ‘cosmic moments’, an alignment of the planets, or evidence of a sentient universe, or something.
For instance, as I was searching for a topic for this month’s column (which is a monthly challenge at the best of times but then something in the news ‘reveals’ itself and I have a topic...talk about your cosmic moments!), I came across a small article about the rise of STI’s (sexually-transmitted infection) in Alberta, or what used to be called STD’s (sexually-transmitted disease) and before that, VD (venereal disease). I wasn’t sure what I could do with that, but I clipped it and added it to my pile of ‘potential pieces’.
Then I received an announcement in my in-box about ‘We are Diverse-City’ and the celebration of the 30th anniversary of AIDS Calgary. That was a shocker; was it really 30 years ago I sat around a kitchen table in an old two-storey house in the Beltline (which coincidentally became one of the SHARP Foundation’s residences for people living with AIDS a few years later before being demolished to make way for the Safeway expansion along 12th Ave SW) along with Bob Humphries, Damien Pepper, Jim Lang, and a couple of other folk, discussing the possibility of creating an AIDS support group?
At the time, AIDS was ‘big news’ with the gay populations of San Francisco and New York City being decimated. The virus had only recently been identified as being sexually-transmitted, after months of speculation that it might be air-borne or some other end-of-the-world scenario. Calgary had yet to see its first AIDS case, although as it turned out Jim, Damien, and Bob were all HIV-positive, and Bob - who was the driving force behind it all - was adamant we needed something in place for when AIDS did hit Calgary.
AIDS Calgary’s first office was in two cramped rooms above what was then Dick’s, a gay club later known as ‘318’, and Victoria’s Restaurant in the old Model Dairy building on 17th Avenue at 2nd Street SW. Jay’s Relaxation Centre (later Goliath’s) was down in the basement.
It was a busy time setting up a phone-line, seeking start-up funds, designing training manuals for volunteers and safer sex information, and establishing a system of support for the men we knew would be coming to us for help. The office was usually in a controlled state of confusion, with Bob and Damien often there at all hours, cans of Coca-Cola everywhere, and huge ashtrays overflowing with butts (yes, back then we all smoked in the office!!) and often accompanied by their large, rambunctious Labrador Retrievers - two of them, as I recall.
We managed to pull together a Board of Directors who would meet in the back office, surrounded by boxes of pamphlets, coffee supplies, and reams of condom packages and little tubes of lube.
It was here I remember having a meeting with representatives from the United Way from whom we hoped to obtain funding. The representatives appeared distinctly uncomfortable and, when offered coffee (Victoria’s Restaurant had donated the mugs to us) they all got this Bambi-caught-in-the-headlights look at the idea of drinking coffee out of mugs that ‘AIDS victims’ probably had used! They politely refused the coffee. And we didn’t get the funding, either. Since then, of course, the United Way has become one of the principal funders of AIDS Calgary, but it took several years for that to happen. At the time, it was the various gay clubs and the Imperial Sovereign Court of the Chinook Arch who raised money for us to pay the rent, phone bills and cover printing costs of our safer-sex literature. We were definitely a ‘grass roots’ organization, never quite sure if we would make it through the next six months.
Once the phone-lines were up and running, operating from 7-10 every night, just like the phones at Gay Lines Calgary, most of our calls centred around safer-sex information and symptoms of HIV infection...and dealing with whack-jobs calling in bomb threats and promises of physical harm.
The offices themselves were either freezing cold or sweating hot. The steam radiators dating from the early 1900s gathered their heat from Jay’s, which had a large cast-iron fire furnace in a back room behind the front counter to keep the steam room operating and their premises warm enough to be comfortable for men padding around in towels. We were constantly calling down to the attendant to please turn up the heat...or to please turn it down!
Funding was a constant issue. All of the mainstream funding organizations at the time not only bought into the stigma surrounding AIDS (and homosexuality), but had issues with the ‘pornographic’ content of our literature. AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs) back then were all based in the gay men’s community and operated by gay men, by and large, a few lesbians and even fewer straight allies.
AIDS was specifically a gay issue since that was where the vast majority of the infections were occurring; AIDS had not yet crossed over into the heterosexual community, although those of us involved in AIDS work back then knew it was only a matter of time before it did. In fact, one of our first cases was a bisexual man and his wife, both of whom were infected. The literature was tailored to the gay, bisexual and MSM (men who have sex with men) community and it was sexually graphic and frank. We used the language gay men used. Who would understand what the hell "manual-anal intercourse" meant? Or "oral-anal"? Fisting they understood. Rimming they understood. Fucking they understood. Sucking cock they understood. And that’s how we wrote it up.
A few of us had designed the training manuals for not only the phone-line volunteers dispensing safer-sex information and information on symptomology and members of our Speakers’ Bureau, but also for those wonderful individuals who came forward to serve as ‘buddies’, the front line emotional and practical support caregivers.
Those early manuals, designed by Barry Elmer, Sully Yankovitch, and myself, were highly technical and very detailed. Volunteers in those early days got a crash course in the complex world of viral transmission and mutation, endocrinology, hematology, and disease transmission modules. In fact, I think it is safe to say that the handful of AIDS Calgary volunteers in 1983 were better experts than the majority of the medical establishment was at the time. This was a time when doctors and nurses would refuse to enter the room of an ‘AIDS patient’ or if they did, they donned Hazmat suits. Hospital housekeeping would place food trays outside rooms, forcing the weak and frail and often confused patient to climb out of bed and retrieve their food themselves or wait until friends came to bring it in for them.
I think those early days we made a definite impact on our community. I know we saved lives by handing out condoms at the bars and down at the baths, by having Information Nights at those establishments, by hosting fun, informative and actually kind of sexy Safer Sex Workshops. Naturally, there was resistance to using condoms at first. Rubbers were perceived as such a heterosexual/birth control thing so the big challenge was to overcome that and make using condoms the ‘hot’ thing to do, not just the right thing to do. And it worked.
Fast forward 30-plus years and we are in an era where HIV/AIDS is just a fact of life. Gone are the days of seeing those you cared about test positive and waste away within a matter of a few months. Gone are the days of attending two or three memorials a month as yet another friend/lover/ex-lover/fuckbuddy died, most before they hit 40, many before they saw their mid-30s. Some of us lost entire friendship circles, our whole ‘adopted family’ groups. The social impact of AIDS was devastating and truly traumatizing, to say nothing of the medical and health impact it clearly had. Now HIV/AIDS is a ‘manageable disorder’, kept under control by a daily regimen of medication, and with those infected living for years past what they initially were told they would. AIDS just isn’t that big a deal anymore. Only, of course, it is.
Safer sex teaching was always controversial, especially when directed toward youth and high school age. But this is the age group most in need of it so that they can incorporate that understanding into their own sexual expressions as they become sexually-active.
The survey on STIs, commissioned by Trojan Condoms, indicates Alberta’s post-secondary students are below the national average when it comes to condom use. Of the 1,500 students surveyed across Canada, approximately 51% reported they had used a condom the last time they had sexual intercourse, but only 45% of Albertans did. The survey also indicated 67% of Alberta students reported they were not concerned about contracting a sexually-transmitted infection while the national average was 56%.
Predictably, the rate of infection jumped. Chlamydia amongst female Albertans aged 20-24 increased from 3,370 in 2011 to 3,541 a year later. In men of the same age group the number jumped from 1,860 in 2011 to 1,994 the following year. Gonorrhea, a particularly nasty STI by the way, saw the number amongst females go from 199 reported cases to 294 in the same time period, while amongst males it jumped from 246 to 297. Syphilis would probably match the rate of infection of gonorrhea, with some individuals contracting both.
If the rates of infection for these has gone up in Alberta, infections for which the symptoms can (but not always) manifest fairly soon after exposure, one can only imagine what the HIV-infection rates will prove to be. HIV symptoms don’t show immediately, sometimes not for years. AIDS Calgary, now a relatively well-funded health service organization rather than a gay grass-roots organization run and operated by a handful of volunteers, has struggled for 30 years to get the message out there, and continues to struggle. That they have hung in there through a variety of internal and external challenges over the years, continuing to care for people with HIV/AIDS, and their loved ones, expanding their outreach beyond gay men and onto the streets is laudable. Sitting around that kitchen table in the Beltline, who amongst us could have known the fight would go on for 30 years? Bob, Damien, Jim and the others never lived to see what AIDS Calgary became, but I like to think they know.