Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic
Page 24
if you present who these people are.” 3 In his presentation, Shilts con-
veyed how important he believed it was to render human the people be-
hind the statistics, in a bid to promote understanding and to garner sup-
port for efforts to tackle the spread of the AIDS epidemic.
This is the conundrum that this chapter attempts to explain. How is
it that Shilts, despite his publicly stated goal of helping people relate to
those with AIDS, spent his weekend in Vancouver gathering as much
information as he could about Gaétan Dugas? And that he would use
this information to create a personifi cation of the early AIDS patient
that would lead many readers of his work to believe that the French Ca-
nadian man was a monster? How is it that a journalist who worked for
years to develop his craft and was a vocal advocate of his profession’s
ethical code may have misled his sources, relied on unsubstantiated in-
formation, and defended his depiction of Dugas from critics by pro-
claiming that it represented “very good investigative journalism”?4
Douglas Crimp, a cultural theorist, AIDS activist, and one of Shilts’s
most vocal critics, has suggested that Shilts’s claims of being “not ideo-
3. I draw my verbatim quotations of his presentation from a sound recording made
of the panel, reprinted with permission from the Canadian Association for Journal-
ists (CAJ): [Media Coverage of AIDS], March [15,] 1986, copy consultation numbers
167573– 1990– 0395– 39- S1.mp3 and 167573– 1990– 0395– 39- S2.mp3, item number 167573,
accession number 1990– 0395, Canadian Association of Journalists fonds, Library and Ar-
chives Canada, Ottawa.
4. Crimp, “Randy Shilts’s Miserable Failure,” in Crimp, Melancholia and Moralism,
120– 21; see also Tim Kingston, “Controversy Follows Shilts and ‘Zero’ to London,” Com-
ing Up! April 1988, 11.
“Humanizing This Disease” 141
logical” and wanting to “get the whole story out” represented either a
“dangerously naive or cynically disingenuous ideological position,” par-
ticularly when Shilts defended his reporting of the “Patient Zero” story
on the basis that it had actually happened. Crimp points out that Shilts
himself acknowledged that he chose to tell Dugas’s story not because it
was representative but because it was “fascinating.” Of the 6,079 peo-
ple included in the offi cial statistics for US AIDS deaths by the end of
And the Band Played On’s coverage, Shilts chose to write a story about
Dugas, which, to Crimp, “makes his story about one six- thousandth of
the ‘truth.’” Crimp ponders what “unconscious mechanisms . . . would
account for this very selective will to truth” before concluding that the
story’s truth mattered “not one whit,” given that the fantasy of the delib-
erate disease disseminator had already existed in the public’s mind be-
fore Shilts had penned it.5
Similarly, the cultural critic Priscilla Wald questions Shilts’s motiva-
tion in her skillful scrutiny of the “Patient Zero” story. In an analysis of
Shilts’s comments to a reporter regarding the irony of the media’s fo-
cus on “Patient Zero” in the face of his larger policy stories, Wald com-
ments that “it is hard to imagine that Shilts really did not recognize the
importance of his character.”6 Furthermore, in contemplating Shilts’s
statement that researchers would later “try to fathom the bizarre coin-
cidences and the unique role the handsome young steward performed
in the coming epidemic,” she writes, “It is hard to know exactly to what
‘unique role’ refers; for in Shilts’s narrative Dugas plays more than
one.”7 The criticisms of both Crimp and Wald suggest the utility of hav-
ing a better understanding of what may have guided Shilts in depicting
this character.
To understand Shilts’s claims and, perhaps more important, his un-
stated ideas about Dugas and the character of “Patient Zero,” it is help-
ful to investigate what may have motivated the reporter, not only in his
ambitions for the book but also in the years leading up to his work as a
journalist covering AIDS. To this end, the author’s extensive personal
and professional papers provide a useful opportunity to understand the
forces that infl uenced his thinking and reporting— particularly in the
absence of any published biographical material of depth— as well as a
5. Crimp, “Miserable Failure,” 122– 24; emphasis in original.
6. Wald, Contagious, 231.
7. Shilts, Band, 23; cited in Wald, Contagious, 233.
142
chapter 3
means of establishing the development of the fi ctional character, “Pa-
tient Zero.”8
The chapter has four main sections which, taken together, allow us
to build a more nuanced picture of Shilts and a crucial context for his
best- selling book on AIDS. The chapter’s fi rst section draws on mate-
rial from Shilts’s personal papers as well as interviews he gave through-
out his career to contextualize Shilts’s deep- seated motivation to be a
successful journalist and his developing writing style. The second out-
lines Shilts’s growing interest in AIDS as a story which would eventu-
ally defi ne his professional career, and it follows him up to his decision
to write a book on the history of the American AIDS epidemic. It is im-
portant to consider how Shilts’s self- perceived role as a cultural inter-
preter between the gay and straight communities shaped his approach
to writing Band: he wrote, as was his custom, for a heterosexual audi-
ence.9 The third section scrutinizes Shilts’s interview notes to recon-
struct the manner in which he uncovered the “Patient Zero” story and
outlines the journalist’s growing fascination and self- described obses-
sion with the dead fl ight attendant. The chapter’s fi nal section examines
the way in which Shilts made sense of his source material and guided it
through the draft phases toward publication. It also draws on another
journalist’s suggestion that Shilts was a skillful observer of everyone ex-
cept himself as a means of explaining how his strong personal opinion
would color his statement of the “facts,” in spite of his aspirations to the
highest professional standards of objectivity.10 Shilts’s journal entries,
the interviews he gave while promoting Band, his letters, and his story
8. Apart from some obituaries published at the time of his death, there is little bio-
graphical work on Shilts— perhaps a sign of the divisions he raised in the gay communities
he profi led. The entry for the author in the American Dictionary of National Biography
is currently the best short sketch; see Ralph E. Luker, “Shilts, Randy Martin,” in Ameri-
can Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2000– 2010, article pub-
lished 2000, http:// www .anb .org/ articles/ 16/ 16– 03326.html. For an excellent description of Shilts’s AIDS reporting, see James Kinsella, “Chronicler of the Castro,” in Covering the
Plague: AIDS and the American Media (London: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 157– 84.
9.
Mike Weiss, “Randy Shilts Was Gutsy, Brash and Unforgettable. He Died 10
Years Ago, Fighting for the Rights of Gays in American Society,” San Francisco Chron-
icle, February 17, 2004, D1, http:// www .sfgate .com/ cgi - bin/ article .cgi ?f = / c/ a/ 2004/ 02/ 17/
DDGGH50UAU1
.DTL. As the article demonstrates, many observers interpreted his
stance as that of an “assimilationist.”
10. John Weir, “Reading Randy,” Out, August– September 1993, 46.
“Humanizing This Disease” 143
drafts all offer evidence that Shilts’s personifi cation of Dugas rests to a
certain extent on an external projection of the reporter’s own fears and
insecurities. The journalist’s excitement about uncovering the identity of
the “Patient 0,” about whom he had read, combined with both his drive
to become famous and his legitimate concerns about the consequences
of AIDS led him to produce a skewed— and thus even more compelling
— characterization of Gaétan Dugas for the straight audience he held in
his mind.
“Typewriter Therapy”
The 1986 CIJ Conference was not Shilts’s fi rst time in Vancouver. The
reporter had visited the city in late 1975 during a different and diffi cult
period of his life, one marked by wanderlust and personal frustration.
Shilts had recently graduated from the University of Oregon with a dou-
ble major in English and journalism, and he was encountering signifi -
cant diffi culty fi nding employment as a journalist at a mainstream pa-
per. To make ends meet, he freelanced as the Northwest correspondent
for the Advocate and pitched ideas for story after story to the magazine’s
editors. His frequent letters in 1975 to Sasha Gregory- Lewis, one of the
Advocate’s senior editors, demonstrate an eagerness to develop his writ-
ing style as well as a hardworking, entrepreneurial attitude.11 The Van-
couver trip was for an article in a series of travel pieces on North Ameri-
can gay destinations. In a journal entry, Shilts described the experience
of visiting the foggy, rainy city in early December as “rather depressing.”
He found the local politicos “boring,” so he took to the streets and set-
tled for “three consecutive nights of tricking” with a local man.12 Even
the ambitious Shilts would likely not have been able to imagine the more
triumphant circumstances of his next visit to Vancouver a decade later.
Similarly, his path to becoming a journalist had not been clearly sign-
posted either.
11. Folder 5: Advocate, 1975, box 11, Shilts Papers.
12. “Seattle— December 14, 1975,” folder: Journal ’75- ’76, carton 2, Alband Collection.
Shilts kept a number of journals, copies of which are held in the San Francisco Public Li-
brary LGBTQIA Center’s Shilts Papers as well as in the GLBT Historical Society’s Linda
Alband Collection.
144
chapter 3
Randy Martin Shilts was born in Davenport, Iowa, on August 8, 1951,
and grew up in a conservative, Methodist household in Aurora, Illinois,
third eldest of six brothers. His parents both drank heavily, and although
Shilts would grow to appreciate their better qualities at a later age, dedi-
cating his fi rst book to them, his feelings for them were characterized by
hatred during his childhood, when he received regular beatings at the
hands of his mother, and his adolescence. Katie Leishman, Shilts’s friend
and a manuscript editor for Band, has suggested that his propensity for
writing grew from these near daily instances of violence and that, after
years of wrestling with multiple addictions, he had realized that writing
was “the only anesthesia that lasted.”13 Shilts himself would refer to his
“typewriter therapy” in his periodic journal entries during the 1970s, as
well as to his frequent use of sex, alcohol, and a variety of drugs to cope
with his troubles.14
The teenaged Shilts did not have the conceptual framework to cat-
egorize his early sexual experiences with other young boys on Eagle
Scout campouts; he would not hear the word homosexual until he was
eighteen.15 Described by his local newspaper as a “hard- boiled conser-
vative” at age sixteen— and one who “doesn’t expect to be out- talked”—
Shilts founded an Aurora chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, a
nationwide conservative youth organization, before experiencing a pro-
found shift in political beliefs during his senior year of high school.16
Caught up in antiwar protesting— spurred in part by the receipt of a low
draft number, representing an earlier induction into the army— Shilts
earned the title of “class nonconformist” in the fi nal weeks of his high
school career by organizing antiwar rallies and handing out black arm-
bands at school assemblies.17 He would later remark that “it’s impor-
13. Randy Shilts, “The Summer of ’74,” pp. 5– 6, journal, carton 2, Alband Collection;
Randy Shilts, “April 4, 1978,” “Green” Journal [1977– 1978, 1984, 1986], carton 2, Alband
Collection; Katie Leishman, “The Writing Cure,” New York Times, March 5, 1994, 23.
14. “January 3, 1976,” folder 3: Jobs, box 11, Shilts Papers.
15. Ken Kelley, “The Interview: Randy Shilts,” San Francisco Focus 36, no. 6
(1989): 108.
16. Ron Krueger, “He Eats, Thinks and Drinks Ideas: Randy Shilts and Young Amer-
icans for Freedom,” Beacon- News [Aurora, IL], January 23, 1968, 2; “Shilts: ‘Incredible
Programs We Could Do,’” Oregon Daily Emerald [Eugene], March 30, 1973, 6.
17. Charlotte Bercaw, “Author Bemoans AIDS Travesties in Best- Seller,” Beacon-
News [Aurora, IL], November 15, 1987, A1; Charlotte Bercaw, “Shilts Gets Grip on His
Being, Then Worldwide Epidemic,” Beacon- News [Aurora, IL], November 15, 1987, A5.
“Humanizing This Disease” 145
tant to have seen the extreme right and left— to realize there are well-
intentioned people on both sides of the political spectrum and no one
has a monopoly on the truth. As a journalist, you have to have that basic
open- mindedness.”18
Encouraged by a Thanksgiving trip to New York City just months
after the infl uential Stonewall riots, and a Ritalin- fueled conversation
with a friend on Christmas Eve 1969, Shilts made the decision to leave
home— and his fi rst year of college in Aurora— in early January 1970 and
embarked on several months of hitchhiking around the United States
as a hippie.19 An employment history detailed on an application to the
Pulliam Journalism Fellowship in 1975 reveals that by September 1970,
Shilts had settled in Portland, Oregon, and was working as a security
guard for the campus of Portland Community College while he took
courses in anthropology and English. Shilts also proudly noted on his
application form that he did not receive any fi nancial assistance from his
parents between 1970 and 1975.20
While a student at community college, Shilts came to terms with his
sexuality, making the decision to come out of the closet at the end of
1971. By this point he had met a number of older closeted men and, en-
couraged by the emerging gay
liberation movement, decided that he did
not want to share their fate by allowing the fear of others discovering his
secret to ruin his life. It was in one of his college anthropology classes
that Shilts would come out more publicly on May 19, 1972, using the op-
portunity of a course assignment to invite a group of gay friends to join
him in making a presentation on homosexual life in America.21
Shilts then moved to Eugene, Oregon, having transferred to the Uni-
versity of Oregon to continue his studies in English in the fall of 1972. He
18. Bercaw, “Shilts Gets Grip,” A5, A8.
19. “December 25, 12:30 AM— 1979,” “Green” journal, Alband Collection. See also
“Train to New York City, January 31, 1978,” in the same journal.
20. “Application; the Pulliam Journalism Fellowship,” 1975, folder: Shiltsmas + X- mas
Cards/Mem, Personal Stuff + Humor + Misc. Things, Alband Collection. Unlike a later
employment history that he fi lled out for St. Martin’s Press, Shilts did not mention his work
as a gay bathhouse attendant during the summer of 1974 at Portland’s Majestic Baths. See
Authors’ Questionnaire, 2, folder: Shilts, Randy. [The] Mayor of Castro [Street], box 843,
St. Martin’s Press Archive (SMP- 2000), John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence,
RI. See also Shilts’s disgust at being seduced by his single- testicled employer at the Majes-
tic: “The Summer of ’74,” Alband Collection.
21. Bercaw, “Shilts Gets Grip,” A5.
146
chapter 3
believed that studying English had taught him to read but not to write,
and at a roommate’s suggestion, he enrolled in a journalism course to
rectify this imbalance. “I sort of stumbled into my calling,” he would
later remark.22 Shilts found that he enjoyed writing news stories, perhaps
because the straightforward nature of “factual” news reporting appealed
to his developing political self- identity. He viewed himself as having ven-
tured to both ends of the political spectrum before settling, in his mind,
somewhere in the “objective” middle. He also found that through jour-
nalism he could marry his creative writing to his desire to bring about
social change. From this early period, Shilts would maintain that report-
ing about gays to the straight community could achieve such a change,