Did the 1980’s AIDS epidemic trap you in the closet?

[Caged]

I came to age in the early 1980’s right at the start of the AIDS epidemic.  Right at the age when people typically start to sow their sexual oats I was terrified of doing so.  I knew I was gay or bi because I had had some M2M experiences when I was younger.  I saw gay men dying everyday. So instead of being myself I pretended to be straight and have been stuck there ever since.  Two failed marriages later, and a third one in the works, and I’m trapped in the closet.  Does anyone else have a similar experience?

[TallAussieBtm]

Not to that extent. I was about ready to come out just when AIDS became a thing in the early 80s. It certainly caused me to delay coming out for a few years until my mental health got so bad I felt I had nothing to lose and did a mass self-outing via 20 letters posted on New Year's Eve 1994! 📬

But it didn't stop me having sex in any way. Just stayed in the closet and used condoms for quite a few years until PrEP came along.

Life was instantly better after I came out. Didn't lose a single relationship and they were all actually better/deeper living honestly. 😃

[muscmtl]

Fukkk no. IT MADE ME

[hntnhole]

Absolutely.  It scared everyone like nothing before or since.  Before, everyone fucked everyone, at the drop of a hat.  When guys started dying it was like Armageddon was upon us.  No guy that went through those days and came out the other side alive will ever forget.  One guy just laid down in our driveway and died - not the sort of thing one just sluffs off. 

Guys that were already "out" didn't go back in the closet; everyone we knew just stopped fucking altogether.  We supported each other, went to countless "Celebrations of Life", and then started to Act Up.  Demonstrations shut down LaSalle St* many times, until the rest of the world started contracting the virus too.  But it took a long time for the wanton sex to return to anything close to what it was before.  What hiv didn't do, however, what change who and what we were/are.  It just forced a pause in the magnificent pigsex we all loved, until treatments began to surface.  

Some guys made it through - like muscmtl above - and thank Whatever he did.  Most of us were scared shitless.  

*Financial district in Chicago

[cboycam]

I came out in '87, I was fucking without rubbers.  I've never had a rubber on to have sex with a guy.

[partying.hard]

No.  I was born 1976.  So I heard about aids my entire life. And while it was scary, they’re always was a thrill to it. I only use a rubber three times in my life, in high school, to avoid getting girls pregnant.  I was very promiscuous in high school and went to the bad Sm the first time on the night I graduated high school. I was 17.
 

The aids crisis made me the man I am today!

[SpectreAgent]

An interesting post, especially as I’ve just watched the new documentary about Rock Hudson today (which is brilliant, by the way). The crisis galvanised me. I refused to be cowed and became quite active in fundraising and raiding awareness. As I was never “in” (friends joke I was cruising the doctor as I came out of the womb), going into the closet that I’d never been in wasn’t on my agenda. But I understand why some guys felt they had to. The media in the UK in the early days was pretty horrific. 

[BBArchangel]

Aids did not forced me back into a closet. Orphans in my early teens. I didn’t really I have a closet to go back into. And because I was already studying dance and ballet with some pretty major companies, I was used to people assuming I was gay even before I was ready to except myself.

but my oldest and closest childhood friend, had the misfortune to be one of the first people in KC to die from aids. It galvanized me.  I helped establish  the first AIDS service organization in in KC. Later, two more such groups. Still underage, I carried baskets of condom and informational materials weekly to the two bath houses. I drove patients to their (primitive) treatments, and other chores for them. And I raised money. Corporate cash and involvement was not really a thing. At that point and aids services were  supported one dollar at a time on the talents of drag queens. I didn’t do drag, but I emceed countless shows and did whatever I could.  

It all became unbearably ugly. I watched a lot of friends die horribly. Attended to many funerals. I debated focus on the family  founder, James Dobson. I listened to a Pfizer representative pronouns that there was absolutely no money in a cure, and we shouldn’t expect that. And a lot of other hellish stuff. Then I hit burn out. I took a long breath and looked around me, and I realized that I had not had a significant relationship or really sex with another man at all for a long time.

Aids did not keep me in the closet. It did something worse. It made me afraid of sex. It froze me emotionally. I did not even want to form relationships. I was just in too dark of a space. it took me a long time to work my way back into some thing that looked like light. I’m not sure I’m there yet.

 

[WiltsCumDump]

I was born in ‘67 so mid ‘80s I left home to go to university. Finding the local cruising area was the best thing ever where I discovered the beauty of who I am as a horny passionate BOTTOM who loves cock😈

[onlyraw]

I guess I am “lucky” in that I graduated college and moved to Boston (which had a great gay scene) in 1977 - so I had a few years to be out and enjoy the peak of the 70s - disco, poppers, and random hookups (or tricks as we called them back then)

and then I was again “lucky” enough to get a really nasty case of annal warts just before AIDS hit and as I had no health insurance , my outpatient treatment lasted about 3 years - so by the time I could get fucked again we knew to wear condoms 

and again I was “lucky” again in that I didn’t get tired of condoms (and get Pozzed) until after the first cocktails had been discovered 

So @Caged I totally get how just being a few years younger you were spooked by it all and thought it was safer to stay in the closet… but I want to tell you it is NEVER too late to come out - I can’t promise you it will be easy- or that everyone will greet you with high fives - but you will feel so much better about yourself 

And @BBArchangel THANK YOU!!! for your service… i know you watched a lot of friends die …. But your work in the trenches back then did force the government and pharmaceutical companies to do something- and I know that I am just one of the many guys alive today thanks to your work- I hope each day gets a little lighter for you 

[hntnhole]

16 hours ago, BBArchangel said:

I was just in too dark of a space. it took me a long time to work my way back into some thing that looked like light

Thanks so much for sharing the terrible experiences you went though.  The only ray of light is that you did what so many of is did: you started to resist the complacency and demanded Action from the powers that were.  The President (at that time), a former B actor in Hollywood never even let the then-current descriptor pass his lips.  It took countless hours, as you describe, on the part of many gay men to summon forth the activism that finally broke through.  

You did everything you could possibly do and more, and for that every single one of us is grateful beyond words to express.  Take heart though; while progress may seem glacial, we're able to put those horrors in a mental drawer, and keep that drawer mostly closed.  

Best of luck, and thanks for sharing your experiences.

[Johnjohn]

To some extent it set me back. I lost (as did other guys) some very dear friends to AIDS and following their deaths I wouldn't go near a cock unless it was almost triple wrapped in plastic. I wanted, no, needed sex but I was just too scared to play raw the way I always used to and wanted to. Then I met a guy (probably poz) who refused to use a condom and he used to breed me. From that point on I knew that it had to be skin on skin and loads of seed up my hole. It was just like old times again; I loved it and I was prepared to take the risk. I never regretted it.

[PozTalkAuthor]

Denial, rather than closet; I was a child when it all started while when Freddie Mercury died (1991) I had just turned 16. 

Then I've tried to avoid my sexuality matter despite knowing it for years, just until first serious relationship came. 

[partying.hard]

17 hours ago, BBArchangel said:

Aids did not forced me back into a closet. Orphans in my early teens. I didn’t really I have a closet to go back into. And because I was already studying dance and ballet with some pretty major companies, I was used to people assuming I was gay even before I was ready to except myself.

but my oldest and closest childhood friend, had the misfortune to be one of the first people in KC to die from aids. It galvanized me.  I helped establish  the first AIDS service organization in in KC. Later, two more such groups. Still underage, I carried baskets of condom and informational materials weekly to the two bath houses. I drove patients to their (primitive) treatments, and other chores for them. And I raised money. Corporate cash and involvement was not really a thing. At that point and aids services were  supported one dollar at a time on the talents of drag queens. I didn’t do drag, but I emceed countless shows and did whatever I could.  

It all became unbearably ugly. I watched a lot of friends die horribly. Attended to many funerals. I debated focus on the family  founder, James Dobson. I listened to a Pfizer representative pronouns that there was absolutely no money in a cure, and we shouldn’t expect that. And a lot of other hellish stuff. Then I hit burn out. I took a long breath and looked around me, and I realized that I had not had a significant relationship or really sex with another man at all for a long time.

Aids did not keep me in the closet. It did something worse. It made me afraid of sex. It froze me emotionally. I did not even want to form relationships. I was just in too dark of a space. it took me a long time to work my way back into some thing that looked like light. I’m not sure I’m there yet.

 

Thank you, sir!

[PervBugChaser]

I admire guys who embraced HIV bravely in 80's and 90's even it meant death at that time. Those guys are real sex heroes. Everyone dies, sooner or later. What made life more miserable is to living under fear, not illness itself.