Speaker 1: But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 1: the Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2: Because most people were not out at work or to
Speaker 2: their families, whatever, nightlife was where you sort of became yourself.
Speaker 2: Oddly enough, when it came to nightlife, being gay was
Speaker 2: really cool. Okay, we controlled clothing, we controlled fashion. Most
Speaker 2: of the DJs were gay, so records would break in
Speaker 2: gay clubs. The whole idea of going to these clubs
Speaker 2: was to celebrate. It was to celebrate your liberation, was
Speaker 2: to celebrate your sexuality. Was to celebrate your desire to
Speaker 2: sort of express yourself and dance and to listen to
Speaker 2: music that made you really happy.
Speaker 1: As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
Speaker 1: I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
Speaker 1: ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
Speaker 1: that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
Speaker 1: are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we'll meet how Rubinstein, a fashion legend
Speaker 1: and a regular at the iconic disco club Studio fifty four.
Speaker 1: We'll learn how Studio and the disco era broadly was
Speaker 1: deeply influential in shaping queer culture for decades to come
Speaker 1: from My Heart podcast. I'm Jordan and Solve and this
Speaker 1: is what We Loved. I was nine when I first
Speaker 1: heard Donna Summer. I was online Mark trying to download
Speaker 1: the song Naughty Girl by Beyonce, and instead I accidentally
Speaker 1: downloaded the song she sampled, I Love to Love You Baby.
Speaker 1: I clicked play, and what came out of my computer
Speaker 1: speakers was magical. It was funky and groovy with all
Speaker 1: these violins and pianos. I didn't understand the sounds that
Speaker 1: she was making, but I didn't care. I was entranced.
Speaker 1: As a little gay, Catholic kid living in the South,
Speaker 1: listening to that song gave me the feeling that I
Speaker 1: could be whoever I wanted to be. Little did I
Speaker 1: know that the freedom I felt listening to that disco
Speaker 1: song was the same freedom that many gays before me
Speaker 1: felt too. Disco music and the disco era the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies to find a vital time in queer history. It
Speaker 1: was right after Stonewall, but right before AIDS. It was
Speaker 1: a time when gay people felt liberated to celebrate their sexuality,
Speaker 1: and disco music was their soundtrack. Arguably, the symbol of
Speaker 1: that era was a nightclub called Studio fifty four. As
Speaker 1: soon as it opened it became wildly famous. But it
Speaker 1: was a gay club. It was where gay culture went
Speaker 1: from underground to mainstream. Queer people could meet each other
Speaker 1: there without consequence and form bonds of friendship, love and
Speaker 1: other things too. My next guess, Hal Rubinstein was a
Speaker 1: regular there. He's a style icon now at seventy four
Speaker 1: years old, having been one of the founding editors of
Speaker 1: in Style magazine. But when Studio fifty four was at
Speaker 1: its height, he was my age twenty eight. When did
Speaker 1: you know you were gay?
Speaker 2: When I was ten, I just got the sense there
Speaker 2: was something. I just I had a best friend at school,
Speaker 2: Stephen Chase, and he found a copy of a magazine
Speaker 2: called Junior, and it was a magazine and if you
Speaker 2: hire guys in posing straps. I didn't have full nudity
Speaker 2: back then.
Speaker 1: What is a posing strap.
Speaker 3: It's almost like a jock but smaller.
Speaker 2: Oh you know, basically you know, so basically your junk
Speaker 2: goes in, it goes into the piece of fabric and
Speaker 2: the rest is best held in by a string.
Speaker 3: And that was like the first at a gate porn.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Stephen found it and basically was charging everybody fifty
Speaker 2: cents to look at it. And I remember he showed
Speaker 2: it to me because we're friends, and I was surprisingly
Speaker 2: and inordinately interested, and I just was. I was kind
Speaker 2: of shocked that it was turning me on. Not that
Speaker 2: I didn't do anything then. Like I said, I was ten,
Speaker 2: so but I realized there was something up.
Speaker 1: So when did you act on it for the first time.
Speaker 2: It was nineteen sixty seven. I was seventeen years old.
Speaker 2: I was a freshman at Stony Brook. Uh. I wanted
Speaker 2: to work in the reference library, and there was a
Speaker 2: really good looking a guy named Ralf Fusler who was
Speaker 2: the editor in chief of the school newspaper.
Speaker 3: And we got along very well.
Speaker 2: What I didn't know is that the bathroom down the
Speaker 2: main floor bathroom in this in the school library was notorious.
Speaker 2: So I'm in the I was in the bathroom stall,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, I see a hand come under,
Speaker 2: you know, but the part I see the hand come
Speaker 2: under the partition. I didn't know what that was. So
Speaker 2: I handed the guy in another rollertorle pit and he
Speaker 2: threw it and I went wow. And then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden I see a foot, and I'm looking at
Speaker 2: the foot, going, what the hell is that? Like, I
Speaker 2: just didn't understand what the hell was coming on, And
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, this voice goes, what's wrong with you?
Speaker 3: And I said, I don't know what you're doing.
Speaker 2: And with that, I go to I got to walk
Speaker 2: out of the stall because I just got cranky. Uh,
Speaker 2: and the stall with that, and of course the dwell. Basically,
Speaker 2: he realized that I was kind of green about this,
Speaker 2: so he asked me basically to come to his room
Speaker 2: that night. I wanted to come by his room that
Speaker 2: night and talk about the school paper or whatever it was.
Speaker 2: And he was the first person I ever slept with.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, and that was your introduction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was terrible sex.
Speaker 2: It was actually I realized that was however, so began
Speaker 2: my career in journalism. I was actually the art set
Speaker 2: of the school paper for my sophomore year.
Speaker 1: How was it coming out to your dad and your mom?
Speaker 2: I don't have the stories that other people have of
Speaker 2: that era, where so many of my friends were either
Speaker 2: ostracized by their family or nobody handled it well. When
Speaker 2: I told my parents I was gay, my father asked
Speaker 2: me if I was happy, that was the first thing
Speaker 2: out of his mouth, and I said, Dad, I'm trying,
Speaker 2: and that was it. My mom was a little bit
Speaker 2: more difficult, I think, only because she had she had plans.
Speaker 2: You know, my mom had plans. You know, she wanted
Speaker 2: to be agree, you know, she wanted me to get married.
Speaker 2: She wanted kids, you know, grandkids and all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. So it was also I think she worried.
Speaker 2: My mom was was really smart and basically my best teacher,
Speaker 2: and I think she she she worried for me that
Speaker 2: that it would that life would be harder, which of
Speaker 2: course it is.
Speaker 1: So now after you graduate college, you're proudly out what
Speaker 1: was New York City nightlife in the seventies, Like once
Speaker 1: you turned.
Speaker 3: It was thrilling.
Speaker 2: Remember you had you had the Stonewall, you had you know,
Speaker 2: you had the Stonewall riots. And I think what what
Speaker 2: what happened with Stonewall is that it changed the profile,
Speaker 2: It changed the profile of gay people or so from
Speaker 2: what to what, Well, you gave you number one, gave
Speaker 2: you a voice, gave you a presence. You know, it
Speaker 2: made you realize that you weren't the only one out
Speaker 2: there doing you know, basically who was gay.
Speaker 3: There was an.
Speaker 2: Enormous community and because most people were not out at
Speaker 2: work or to their families, whatever, night life was where
Speaker 2: you sort of became yourself. The city was dirty, it
Speaker 2: was scary, it was dangerous, it was really dirty. New
Speaker 2: York was raunchy back then. But it all kind of fit.
Speaker 2: But if you were young in New York in the
Speaker 2: seventies and you had an outgoing personality and you had
Speaker 2: to dance and you had friends, Basically we went out five, six,
Speaker 2: seven nights a week. We went out almost every night.
Speaker 2: There was a different club. You went to Hippopotamus on Monday,
Speaker 2: you went to Hurrah on Tuesday, you went to La
Speaker 2: Jardan on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Studio was much later.
Speaker 2: There was the Flamingo, there was the Loft, there was
Speaker 2: the Tenth Floor. The number of clubs that were out
Speaker 2: there prior to Studio it's kind of staggering. But we
Speaker 2: went out every single night.
Speaker 1: And tell me what that era was sort of like,
Speaker 1: who were the top artists, and what was the fashion like?
Speaker 1: And was what did the music sound like?
Speaker 2: Maybe the greatest dance song ever written, ever created, and
Speaker 2: it's an instrumental It's by a group called War and
Speaker 2: it was called City, Country City, and it's an eleven
Speaker 2: minute song and it will make you to this day
Speaker 2: if you play it will make people delirious.
Speaker 4: Wow, you remember dancing to it?
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, of course. Like I said, I love dancing.
Speaker 2: We rehearsed during the weeks. Dancing was very serious back then.
Speaker 2: Basically you watched Soul Train on Saturday morning, and you watched,
Speaker 2: and you rehearsed, and you met with your friends and
Speaker 2: you worked out routines. I remember when we went my
Speaker 2: favorite after hours club of all time was called The Loft,
Speaker 2: and it was strict membership. I think I was the
Speaker 2: second white person excepted in the club. I don't think
Speaker 2: the place was more than six seven hundred square feet,
Speaker 2: the original Loft, and yet it just it had the
Speaker 2: most devoted crowd. Went on Saturday night. You walked in
Speaker 2: about two thirty in the morning, and basically when the
Speaker 2: teutest man never walked the earth, the guy named Bryce
Speaker 2: took your coat, took your coat, and he would give
Speaker 2: you your coat, he would give you a number, and
Speaker 2: he would give you whatever drug we were all doing
Speaker 2: for that week, whether it was window pane or blottery,
Speaker 2: acid or whatever.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 2: And so the incredible thing was we all showed up
Speaker 2: at the same time and everybody basically took the exact
Speaker 2: same drug.
Speaker 4: What did you wear out on a typical night. Oh
Speaker 4: my gosh, you had to have outfits back then. You
Speaker 4: dressed up to go out. You wore Gaberdine pants, You
Speaker 4: wore silk shirts and.
Speaker 3: You destroyed them. Wow.
Speaker 2: Well you danced seven eight hours in these clothes. I mean,
Speaker 2: silk only lasts so long.
Speaker 1: Oh, so you would go out at midnight, say out
Speaker 1: till eight in the morning.
Speaker 3: Probably went out later the midnight.
Speaker 1: So yeah, what were you wearing on a on a
Speaker 1: typical night.
Speaker 2: Well, the thing is, you went shopping. They sold shirts
Speaker 2: made not a sort of banl on Niesta and back
Speaker 2: and they were thirty five dollars, which was a fortune
Speaker 2: back then for a shirt, and they were body hugging,
Speaker 2: they were tight. You wore these little these sexy little
Speaker 2: tops you wore. You wore, like I said, you wore
Speaker 2: Gavitine pants. And I remember this is around the same
Speaker 2: time I first got a hold of a credit card,
Speaker 2: you know, because like I said, I was a kid.
Speaker 2: I was, I was, I was. I was working at
Speaker 2: the United nations I was doing. I was editing speeches
Speaker 2: before they went into into print. I wasn't making a
Speaker 2: lot of money. So I had a credit card. But
Speaker 2: you had to have you had to have a look.
Speaker 2: You couldn't wear the same thing out of it all
Speaker 2: the time. So by the end of the first year
Speaker 2: of having a credit card, I was four thousand dollars
Speaker 2: in debt, which back then was a lot of money
Speaker 2: to be in debt, and that had to work three
Speaker 2: waiters job to pay it off.
Speaker 1: But you had the cutest clothes.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, of course you had to. I know.
Speaker 2: The idea was, you went out there address as sexy
Speaker 2: as you possibly could. It was all about a track,
Speaker 2: It was all about flirting, it was all about attraction.
Speaker 2: You went out to dance and you went out to
Speaker 2: get laid.
Speaker 1: Just in the sixties and seventies, America was changing rapidly.
Speaker 1: The Civil Rights Act had been passed in sixty four,
Speaker 1: Stonewall happened in sixty nine, and Roe v. Wade legalized
Speaker 1: abortion nationwide in seventy three. Many Americans felt free to
Speaker 1: explore all facets of their life for the first time,
Speaker 1: and disco music had become widely popular. Because for many
Speaker 1: it represented that sense of freedom that, along with wider
Speaker 1: access to oral contraception or the pill, shaped a new
Speaker 1: attitude towards sex for straight and gay people alike, sex
Speaker 1: without consequences. In fact, the disco song Ymca by the
Speaker 1: Village People is actually said to be about gay people
Speaker 1: hooking up, and one of the best places to find
Speaker 1: hookups was on the dance floor at disco clubs.
Speaker 2: You know we call them, you call them hookups now.
Speaker 2: But basically, you went to a club, you went home
Speaker 2: with somebody. Basically you went back into the club after
Speaker 2: that and kept on dancing. Because of the sexual revolution,
Speaker 2: it wasn't like you had the option to go home
Speaker 2: with all these people.
Speaker 3: You actually had the responsibility. I'm not joking.
Speaker 2: You had the responsibility to go home with as many
Speaker 2: people as you could because you were just spreading the love.
Speaker 3: Literally.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: The whole idea of going to these clubs was to celebrate.
Speaker 2: It was to celebrate your liberation, was to celebrate your sexuality,
Speaker 2: was to celebrate your desire to sort of express yourself
Speaker 2: and dance and to listen to music that made you
Speaker 2: really happy.
Speaker 1: It seems like it was a flirty sign.
Speaker 3: Oh, my god.
Speaker 2: Yes, theme of flirting is it's an unbelievable skill. The
Speaker 2: ability to flirt is such an incredible gift in the
Speaker 2: sense that it can get you virtually anything. It can
Speaker 2: get you, It can get you laid, It can get
Speaker 2: you a cheaper price and a mattress, it can get
Speaker 2: you a job. It just but flirting is such an
Speaker 2: incredible scale. I feel like I should go, like, go
Speaker 2: to the new school and teach it because because young
Speaker 2: people don't know how to flirt.
Speaker 1: And back then it was all about flirting.
Speaker 2: It was absolutely all about flirting, and that's what made
Speaker 2: it so much fun. And remember too, it's I mean
Speaker 2: withou getting ahead of ourselves. It was it was sex
Speaker 2: with that consequence.
Speaker 1: What do you mean.
Speaker 2: We didn't know bad aids. We didn't know that there
Speaker 2: would be a downside to promiscuity.
Speaker 1: As disco and the sexual revolution began to crescendo louder
Speaker 1: and louder, a new club opened in New York that
Speaker 1: became the talk of the town. It was called Studio
Speaker 1: fifty four. It was an old opera house with massive
Speaker 1: sets and bright lights. Every night felt like a theater production,
Speaker 1: and as though you were partying on stage, and if
Speaker 1: you wanted to have sex, there was always the balcony.
Speaker 1: Words spread fast that Studio fifty four was the place
Speaker 1: to be. Celebrities like Michael Jackson and Cher would show
Speaker 1: up frequently. A giant line would form outside the club,
Speaker 1: with thousands of people trying to get in every night.
Speaker 1: Most were rejected, but it didn't matter how much money
Speaker 1: you had, or if you were as famous as regular
Speaker 1: as like Andy Warhol or Diana Ross. The only criteria
Speaker 1: was that you had to be beautiful, and if you
Speaker 1: got in, you were transported to a different world. The music,
Speaker 1: the drinks, the drugs, and the sexual energy was intoxicating
Speaker 1: for the patrons and for the queers it felt like home. Well,
Speaker 1: now tell me about Studio fifty four. How did you
Speaker 1: first hear about Studio fifty four.
Speaker 2: If you went out, you knew, I mean, if you
Speaker 2: went out, you knew people were building this club.
Speaker 3: It used to be a theater.
Speaker 2: You know, you walk through an entrance way, you walk
Speaker 2: through a lobby, so you know, you would see all
Speaker 2: these pictures of people waiting to get in a studio. Wait,
Speaker 2: you know, go hey, wait, screaming please get me. If
Speaker 2: you were if if you were gay, You were well dressed,
Speaker 2: and you were i'll use the word cute. You didn't
Speaker 2: wait more than twenty seconds to get in. I never
Speaker 2: waited to get into the club.
Speaker 1: Way way, way. I have a question. Do you think
Speaker 1: I would get in?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yes, no.
Speaker 2: Look, it's just they wanted they wanted the nice looking
Speaker 2: gay boys in the club. It's that simple. You were
Speaker 2: you were the attraction. The front of the club. The
Speaker 2: first thing you hit was the bar. It was a
Speaker 2: circular bar, oval shaped bar that faced one side to
Speaker 2: the dance floor and one side not to the dance floor,
Speaker 2: and then and then to the to the left, to
Speaker 2: the left was this big open was this big open space.
Speaker 2: It's you know, because it used to it was a stage,
Speaker 2: so it was two stories two stories high.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: The lights would come down to these great and these bars,
Speaker 2: and there were like four bars, four or six bars
Speaker 2: of lights that would come down. The funny thing was, though,
Speaker 2: unlike now, the clubs weren't dark. You actually could see people.
Speaker 2: That was it. You wanted to see other people. You
Speaker 2: want to see other people dancing. You want to see
Speaker 2: what they were doing, You want to see what other
Speaker 2: people were wearing. The celebrities all sat in a certain place. Honestly,
Speaker 2: most of us could have given a shit about them.
Speaker 2: Nobody cared, you know, because it wasn't about them. It
Speaker 2: was never about them. For all the way you look
Speaker 2: at it and you read, you know, Liza City and
Speaker 2: there in Holston being there, nobody cared about them. For
Speaker 2: all the celebrities and Liza and Peter Allen and Mick
Speaker 2: Jagger and Bianca and all those people who shut up,
Speaker 2: they were all there for one reason. Studio fifty four
Speaker 2: was a gay club when you came out to watch
Speaker 2: the gay boys dance. Oddly enough, when it came to
Speaker 2: night life, being gay was really cool.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: We controlled clothing, we controlled fashion. Most of the DJs
Speaker 2: were gay, so records would break in gay clubs. Remember
Speaker 2: R and B has its has its origins and gospel,
Speaker 2: you know, so everything was elevated. Everything was everything was
Speaker 2: was designed to be celebratory. You wanted to be ecstatic
Speaker 2: that you went out, you know, I mean, and and
Speaker 2: you were devoted. I remember we were there on I
Speaker 2: remember going to on New Year's Eve one year that
Speaker 2: was probably seventy nine or something like that. And they
Speaker 2: must have had no less than six to seven inches
Speaker 2: of silver glitter on the floor. Wow, I couldn't get
Speaker 2: I didn't get those that glitter off my body or
Speaker 2: out of my shoes. For about five months, I would
Speaker 2: find glitter all over the place in my apartment.
Speaker 3: It just went ever, it just went everywhere.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was just it was one glorious song
Speaker 2: after the next.
Speaker 1: And what was it like being gay?
Speaker 3: There?
Speaker 2: The idea when you were there, you were safe within
Speaker 2: that within that hole, within that hall, regarded which one
Speaker 2: you were safe that. When you get out in the
Speaker 2: real world, it's it's it could be other things. You
Speaker 2: don't feel that kind of safety at work. You don't
Speaker 2: necessarily feel that kind of safety at school.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: All it sounds like this era was just fabulous, but
Speaker 1: obviously we know that it ended. But I'm wondering for you,
Speaker 1: what was the marker of this amazing era coming to
Speaker 1: an end.
Speaker 2: There was this weird disease that was killing gay men
Speaker 2: beginning of aides, and also a different attitude towards gay people.
Speaker 2: Suddenly we weren't cool anymore. We were at the place
Speaker 2: where music dropped, We were at the place that controlled
Speaker 2: that controlled fashion. Most people in fashion are gay actually
Speaker 2: passed away from AIDS, go right through the list, but.
Speaker 3: You weren't. Because of AIDS.
Speaker 2: You were no longer cool, You were no longer people
Speaker 2: didn't want to hang out with you. People shut the
Speaker 2: doors on you because they were afraid of you. Nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one was the start of GRID gay related immune deficiency.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen seventy nine. Studio fifty four and Disco were
Speaker 1: at the height of their popularity when suddenly the owners
Speaker 1: were charged with evading hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes.
Speaker 1: The famous nightclub shut down the very next year. An
Speaker 1: era was ending, but not just for Studio fifty four,
Speaker 1: the era of Disco two and everything it represented the
Speaker 1: freedom of queer people, of black people, and of women.
Speaker 1: The same year that Studio fifty four's owners were caught
Speaker 1: and convicted, an event was held at a Chicago White
Speaker 1: Sox game in nineteen seventy nine. It became known as
Speaker 1: Disco Demolition. Night Fans were encouraged to bring disco records
Speaker 1: that would be collected and blown up in protests of disco.
Speaker 1: Twenty thousand fans were expected, but fifty thousand showed up.
Speaker 1: The massive crowd chanted disco sucks. As the records were
Speaker 1: blown up to smithereens with explosives. There was so much
Speaker 1: anger that once the explosion took place, thousands of patrons
Speaker 1: rushed the field and what became a riot. Disco was dead.
Speaker 1: But there was something else that also marked the end
Speaker 1: of this era for gay people, this period of being
Speaker 1: so carefree. It was AIDS.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, I knew people at the beginning it was called GRID. Well,
Speaker 2: later it was called AIDS, and I knew people who
Speaker 2: passed away very early on, by eighty two eighty three.
Speaker 2: I mean, because there was so much misinformation or lack
Speaker 2: of information about how it was contracted and how it
Speaker 2: was spread. You know, people thought of you know, if
Speaker 2: you were gay and they touched you and you touched them,
Speaker 2: that they could get AIDS. If you kissed them, that
Speaker 2: you could get AIDS. The lack of intelligence or the
Speaker 2: lack of information about how it was transferred and how
Speaker 2: it was passed on was.
Speaker 3: Frightening.
Speaker 1: What did it feel like for you that this decade
Speaker 1: of liberation had sort of come to an end?
Speaker 2: Oh God, it came crashing down. My friends started getting sick.
Speaker 2: My friends started getting sick, and you you banded together.
Speaker 2: But now you were a banding together, not in celebration,
Speaker 2: you were banding together in fear. And that changed everything.
Speaker 2: You realized that people weren't on your side, that people
Speaker 2: didn't care what happened to you.
Speaker 3: They thought you were toxic. I didn't hide that I.
Speaker 2: Was being gay, but you weren't really broadcasting it either,
Speaker 2: because you saw the response of certain individuals. I mean
Speaker 2: either they were afraid of you, or they hated you,
Speaker 2: or they blamed you. I used to work at a
Speaker 2: gay restaurant in the seventies. I used to work at
Speaker 2: a restaurant called Company on Third Avenue in twenty sixth Street.
Speaker 2: The food was terrible, absolutely horrible. I made a fortune.
Speaker 2: I made so much bene why flirting. Basically my thighs
Speaker 2: were black and blue, you know, from getting pinched. But
Speaker 2: I went home with a with a shitload of money
Speaker 2: every night. But one of the gentlemen who owned the
Speaker 2: restaurant and was on a panel been actually with NYU
Speaker 2: discussing the grid and the start of it. And I
Speaker 2: remember coming to visit him and the hospital in NYU
Speaker 2: and the room was freezing and he was burning up.
Speaker 2: And to tell you how long ago.
Speaker 3: This was.
Speaker 2: He handed me a sheaf of mimiographed paper. Before copy machines,
Speaker 2: before xeroxing. You had a mimiograph machine where you put
Speaker 2: this blue ink that wreaked the high heaven in and
Speaker 2: that's how you rolled off copies of things. And he
Speaker 2: handed me a sheef of mimiographed paper and said, read this.
Speaker 2: You're only going to understand about half of it, but
Speaker 2: you need to know this.
Speaker 1: What did it say on the paper?
Speaker 3: Well, it was all medical information about.
Speaker 2: How people's bodies are going to react to aides and
Speaker 2: how your body shuts down, how whether it was carposi
Speaker 2: socoma or pneumonia or the expansion of your lymph nodes,
Speaker 2: what would happen once you contracted it? And it was frightening.
Speaker 2: And I read this and I just went, oh my god,
Speaker 2: this is me. There's no way I'm not HP positive.
Speaker 2: This is even before they had the testing. I caught
Speaker 2: pneumonia in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: Can you take me to the moment that you were
Speaker 1: diag ghost? What made you want to get tested?
Speaker 2: I think everybody had to get tested at that point.
Speaker 2: I think you were stupid if you didn't. When I
Speaker 2: was diagnosed, the doctor said, get your life in order.
Speaker 2: You got four months, four months for what to live.
Speaker 2: That's it that your numbers are so low, you're going
Speaker 2: to die in four months. You know, if you watched
Speaker 2: your friends started getting you know, purple blemishes, people passing out,
Speaker 2: people having seizes in the street.
Speaker 3: It was frightening.
Speaker 1: What did it feel like living through AIDS and thinking
Speaker 1: back just a few years ago, in the seventies when
Speaker 1: everything was so different.
Speaker 2: Well, the fact is I basically lost almost every friend
Speaker 2: I ever had at that point. I remember sitting in
Speaker 2: a and this is like mid eighties. I remember sitting
Speaker 2: in a restaurant on New Year's Day in Miami with
Speaker 2: eleven friends, all of them rhould be positive. I'm the
Speaker 2: only one still alive.
Speaker 3: Mm.
Speaker 2: My housemates passed away. I lost my best friend, my
Speaker 2: dance partner, and a perfect example. He started suffering seizures
Speaker 2: and weakness, delirium, and he wouldn't tell anybody at work
Speaker 2: what was wrong. And at one point we were on
Speaker 2: the phone, I could hear him having a sea dry.
Speaker 3: It hurt. It hurt.
Speaker 2: It's just which you were losing. You were losing your friends,
Speaker 2: and you had no choice. It was it was not
Speaker 2: a good time. You found strength in your friends. You
Speaker 2: bonded with your friends as best you could to support
Speaker 2: each other because you knew, we knew we were in
Speaker 2: this alone. You know, you had a government that was
Speaker 2: wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention to your problem
Speaker 2: because it wasn't their problem. Other than that I didn't
Speaker 2: have I didn't have symptoms. I didn't. I didn't get thrush.
Speaker 2: I didn't have carposies. I didn't. I didn't have wasting syndrome,
Speaker 2: any of those things. But my friends did. My friend
Speaker 2: it was it wasn't about celebration anymore.
Speaker 3: It was about survival.
Speaker 1: The early eighties was a tragic time for queer people
Speaker 1: in America. Because of AIDS, the government didn't take much
Speaker 1: action to slow the spread, and the virus was deadly.
Speaker 1: Holl had already lost so many friends, and he learned
Speaker 1: that he was HIV positive too. In the span of
Speaker 1: just a few years, his life had dramatically changed from
Speaker 1: the care free disco era of the seventies. Disco had
Speaker 1: helped gay people realize something though they were powerful. Their
Speaker 1: culture had influenced an entire decade of music and fashion.
Speaker 1: This realized power gave them the strength to fight back
Speaker 1: against the neglect and discrimination of the AIDS crisis. Because
Speaker 1: of disco nightlife, they'd also formed strong bonds of friendship
Speaker 1: and community that carried them through the loss and the
Speaker 1: despair of AIDS. What do you think the impact of
Speaker 1: disco was on gay life in America and in the world.
Speaker 2: Disco was basically helping you to build a community, basically
Speaker 2: to go out there and see you learn alone. And
Speaker 2: I think it it was sort of a precursor to
Speaker 2: the strength that was needed during the Age crisis. That
Speaker 2: we had found these people initially, and therefore we realized
Speaker 2: we had a sort of all turn inward to survive,
Speaker 2: to define strength.
Speaker 1: In other words, what you're saying is that the same
Speaker 1: communities that you built in the seventies, going to these clubs,
Speaker 1: going to Studio fifty four, these are the same people
Speaker 1: that were with you hand in hand fighting the ages.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, absolutely, I mean, and that's that's what you created.
Speaker 2: That's where you created these friendships. And you certainly weren't
Speaker 2: I mean, unless you were fool, you know, are cruel.
Speaker 2: I mean, you weren't going to run from your friends
Speaker 2: when they when they were in crisis. You weren't going
Speaker 2: to run from your friends when they got sick, because
Speaker 2: you were possibly the only people they could rely on,
Speaker 2: because especially if their families or their you know that
Speaker 2: their families or their coworkers and stuff wouldn't go anywhere
Speaker 2: near them. You these are the people you drew strength from.
Speaker 1: You know. I think that there are so many parallels
Speaker 1: between our generation, that time period when you felt so
Speaker 1: free and sort of took everything for granted, and then
Speaker 1: it all kind of blowing up a few years later.
Speaker 1: Do you sort of find that young people look to
Speaker 1: you for wisdom?
Speaker 2: Something happened a couple of years ago. All the things
Speaker 2: that I think young people both straight and gay, thought
Speaker 2: we're givens, same sex marriage, abortion, all these things that
Speaker 2: you thought were done deals. You see everything being reversed now,
Speaker 2: and suddenly younger people started asking questions, how do you
Speaker 2: defend yourself? How did you make these things happen in
Speaker 2: your direction? They want to know what happened before they
Speaker 2: showed up. Finally, and we have stories to tell because you,
Speaker 2: especially today, you better dig your heels in and fight
Speaker 2: hard or are they going to mow you over that
Speaker 2: there's a lot of ugly out there, and we all
Speaker 2: need to be strong, we need to be unified. I
Speaker 2: like is the fact that that younger people want to know,
Speaker 2: they want the information, they want to know how we
Speaker 2: go about making this better. And I think in any culture,
Speaker 2: if you don't listen to your quote elders, I don't
Speaker 2: mean follow them, but if you don't listen to the
Speaker 2: stories they have, you're fool. They know you don't. You
Speaker 2: can either pay attention or not pay attention, but they
Speaker 2: know stuff that you. I look, the advantage of being
Speaker 2: older is that you've been through it. I have great
Speaker 2: pride in looking at the energy of young people today.
Speaker 2: I'm actually very positive.
Speaker 1: Well, what's your hope for young young queer people these days?
Speaker 1: The young gays that.
Speaker 2: They that they have to understand their power, They have
Speaker 2: to understand their power and being united and being unified
Speaker 2: and not being and not being afraid.
Speaker 1: What do you want to pass down?
Speaker 2: There was a certain period or a certain ara where
Speaker 2: gays tried really hard to assimilate. You know, we're all
Speaker 2: going to move to the suburbs and live down the block,
Speaker 2: and we're going to adopt three kids and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: I think what I want gay people to embrace is
Speaker 2: the thrill of being different. I don't want you to assimilate.
Speaker 1: It sounds like as you've gotten older, you've become more
Speaker 1: comfortable being different.
Speaker 2: As you get older, you realize how much less or
Speaker 2: how much you don't give a shit. You know, somebody
Speaker 2: wants to yell out faggot in the street. You know
Speaker 2: my answer would be, what's your point? Yeah right, I
Speaker 2: am not perfectly fine with the word. I don't care.
Speaker 2: I want people to celebrate the joy of being different
Speaker 2: once again. I still love the fact that I'm gay.
Speaker 2: I love the way my life turned out.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you're hopeful about the next.
Speaker 2: I'm very hopeful about it, simply because they're comfortable in
Speaker 2: their own skin, and I think that's that's just nothing
Speaker 2: matters more than having pride and who you are and
Speaker 2: in understanding what you need to do to maintain that pride.
Speaker 1: But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsalves. New
Speaker 1: episodes drop every Wednesday. A small note, we have two
Speaker 1: more episodes before we take a small summer break two weeks,
Speaker 1: and when we're back, we're going to hear stories about
Speaker 1: the gay origins of house music, the history of drag, voguing,
Speaker 1: and much much more. As always, if you want to
Speaker 1: write in to tell your story, email us at Buttweloved
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com or send us a message on
Speaker 1: Instagram or TikTok at but We Loved. We are a
Speaker 1: production of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But
Speaker 1: We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers
Speaker 1: Areshina Ozaki, Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey patt Our.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Me and Maya Howard. Fact checking by
Speaker 1: Marisa Brown. Original music by Steve Boone. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Jay Brunson and rockel Willis. If you loved this episode,
Speaker 1: leave us a rating, follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify,
Speaker 1: and thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.