Sex Positive

I'm so glad you arrived in time to film me

at the most humiliating low point imaginable of my entire existence.

I've spent 50 years drowning in pleasure,

more pleasure than most people ever experienced in a day,

and now that I'm like a monk trapped in a monastery,

here comes the film crew.

There is no way you can hear this.

No one knew my past.

I popped up out of nowhere,

and I was forever marked as like, you know,

a self-hating enemy to gay people.

- Great. - That's gonna come off.

All right. Don't!

I don't care. Butch. It's butch to be sloppy.

Don't film me smoking, 'cause I told my family I quit.

- Okay. - Fuck 'em.

I really don't feel comfortable telling you this.

I would make them get down on their knees and suck my di...

- I mean, I'm 51 years old, Daryl. - I know, I know.

- It's just, you know. - I know...

I can't think of anything more unsexual

than listening to some old fart

talk about how he got his dick sucked in 1979.

No, it's really interesting.

I really get under people's skin because I've broken every rule,

I've done everything my own way,

I've done everything you can do to kill yourself,

and I'm still standing.

Safe sex came about because of three people.

Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, who had the scientific background.

Michael Callen, who was a beloved activist, who really...

gay men connected to when he spoke

because he was so brutally honest.

And me, because I had the health and the anger

to stay on top of the two of them.

Joe, who was busy with patients.

Michael who was, you know, not in the best of health.

I had the energy and time

to make sure the words got on the page,

the writing got done, and the book got out.

It was Joe and Michael and Richard who walked in and said it.

They said directly to men that this was happening

and how to keep it from happening.

I think Richard and Michael knew what they were talking about.

They were speaking from the epicenter of the epidemic

and speaking truths that people didn't want to hear

and didn't want to listen to.

The idea that gay men would wear condoms was ludicrous in 1982.

They were using a...

...a vernacular, a vocabulary

that was very politically incorrect in terms of the moment.

No matter what, the idea of reducing exposure to fluids,

reducing exposure to fluids that may contain infectious agents,

both are really, you know, the cornerstones of safer sex.

I think people should know who Richard Berkowitz is,

and I should hope that Richard

will come out and say what it's done to his life.

What all of these people just, you know,

not wanting to accept what he had to say.

The frustration and how he dealt with it.

The first week that I had moved into my apartment,

you know, I suddenly felt like the kid in the proverbial candy store,

because I was 23 years old,

I had my own place in Manhattan,

and the city was exploding with sexual playgrounds.

I mean there were places to go and have sex

morning, noon, and night.

A lot of gay men who lived the lifestyle I did...

it was who they were, it was our identity.

It was what we lived for.

Gay liberation began about men loving men,

but it became about so many men, so little time.

And what that meant was, so much dick, so little time.

It got taken over by this explosion of commercial sex establishments

where the only thing that brought gay men together was sex.

One night, I was at the Rawhide Bar.

This was the beginning of the end.

And I met this really hot guy.

And we got it started.

We took one look at each other and we knew we were gonna walk out

and go home and have sex.

And just as we turned to leave the bar,

he said, "What is that bump under your ear?"

I had completely blocked it out of my mind.

And I could feel like the earth quaking all around me,

and I didn't know what to say.

And he said, "Listen, I think I'm gonna call it a night."

And I remember, like, leaning back on the Pac-Man machine

feeling like a fucking leper, like an abandoned leper,

and thinking, "Something's changing. Something bad is happening."

Atlanta, Georgia.

Doctors at the Center for Disease Control

sift through volumes of research data

as they close in the causes

of the mysterious and deadly epidemic known as AIDS.

Memphis, Tennessee.

A popular television evangelist preaches that the new epidemic

is a natural, inevitable result of sin.

incurable and, so far, 100 percent fatal

because of promiscuous homosexuality.

Washington, D.C.

20,000 gay men marched through the streets

to demand an increase in government spending

to fight the epidemic.

So far, over 800 people have died from the disease

and 70 percent of the victims have been homosexual or bisexual men.

At the very least, there should be a quarantine

of all homosexuals, drug abusers, and prostitutes

with the frank disease AIDS.

- Right now. - A quarantine?

A quarantine.

They should be confined to quarters or hospital if that is necessary.

AIDS was more complicated than just a new germ.

There may be a new germ. There may not be a new germ.

But there's a lot of things going on in an urban-gay-male lifestyle

that are bad for the immune system.

Let's look at what we know

and keep an open mind for what we have yet to discover.

But it was an indictment of urban promiscuity.

There is a new case and a half each day

in New York City alone.

Do you know what it's like to have 18 of your own friends

in a year and a half die?

Men who are at the height of their creative usefulness to society?

All men under 50 years old?

In one year, I am asked to live with the kind of problems...

or problems is the wrong word...

experiences that my mother, at 84 years old,

is now having to learn to live with when her friends are dying,

and I am only 47 years old.

Now, I don't think the straight community has any concept

of what it's like to be a gay man in this city.

It's like living in war time.

You don't know when the bomb is gonna fall.

Who's it gonna hit next?

A friend of mine that I had dinner with two months ago,

three weeks ago checks himself into the emergency room

at St. Vincent's Hospital

and in 10 days is dead.

He seemed perfectly healthy.

What is this mysterious thing that is in... who?

Do I have it?

This was a gay white man's disease,

and that straight people like myself didn't have to be bothered with it,

except with those of us who had loved ones who were dying.

There were a lot of gay men

who wanted the straight world and the media world

to believe that it was a virus that any of us could catch

and that it wasn't a direct reflection

on their sexual behavior or their lifestyle.

I do think it is gross irresponsibility

for homosexuals active who go to these bathhouses and the rest of it

to cry out that the government's got to do research to save us

when they continue indulging in the kind of activity

that spreads the disease.

It's the height of irresponsibility.

You've got to realize the atmosphere of the times.

You know, we were trying to get attention.

We were trying to get sympathy.

And you're not going to get sympathy easily by going out and saying,

"I've slept with 500 people.

That's why I've got it."

Well, I mean most people would say, "You deserve it," and, "Get lost!"

And that's what we were trying to prevent.

I was a pretty fucking angry 23-year-old.

I was politically angry.

I wanted America to accept gay rights overnight,

and I had absolutely no patience for the kind of time it takes

for social change to happen.

I grew in a family of Northeastern liberal Jewish Democrats,

and that provided very fertile ground

for my accepting of the whole gay-liberation movement,

because, you know, we were empathetic on social issues.

Someday, you'll see me on television.

For my good looks and my shape.

Anything you want to know.

What do you want to know?

But he didn't tell me everything.

Richard was a delight growing up.

He gave me absolutely no problems, and I had three sons.

They weren't bad either.

We weren't particularly wealthy.

We were kinda working class,

and we were a family of five living in a 41/2-room apartment.

And as the '60s were on,

and the Civil Rights Movement started to emerge

and the anti-war movement against Vietnam happened,

all of this was just grist for the mill,

for, like, our family dinner.

We were compassionate about... concerned for poor people.

We were working class ourselves.

You know, we were for Humphrey and Johnson and Kennedy.

I mean, Kennedy was really the one, you know,

because for family values in the early 1960s,

we consider the Kennedy family "family values."

We loved everybody,

and we felt that's the way to live.

And if anybody didn't have a place to stay,

they came and stayed with me.

In between my grandmother's death