Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic
Page 29
w[ith]/him.”114 On the last page of notes, Shilts recorded Popham’s rec-
ollection that in 1983 he had seen “Gayton” in Vancouver, his “hair thin
from chemotherapy.” Dugas was “angry” and demanded, “How could
this happen to me[?]” The notes conclude with the ominous note that
“Gayton had airline tickets after he went on disability.”115
It would appear from his New York interview list that, after visit-
ing Rosen and before seeing Popham, Shilts interviewed Michael Cal-
len, the prominent New York AIDS activist. On page 7 of the reporter’s
notes is written, “Gayton— Patient Zero of cluster.”116 This could be a
written attempt to process the information from the recent Rosen inter-
view, as the realization was sinking in to Shilts’s mind. Alternatively, the
111. Bluestein, “Cries and Whispers,” 65.
112. “Paul Popam [ sic],” interview notes, 1986, p. 1, folder 25: Popham, Paul, box 34,
Shilts Papers. This interview appears, subsequently, to have been incorrectly labeled “II,”
although it occurred in February 1986 and before the archived notes for the interview
dated “Apr 17 ’86,” which has been labeled “I.”
113. “Paul Popam,” 2.
114. Ibid., 15.
115. Ibid., 17.
116. “Michael Callan [ sic],” interview notes, 1986, p. 7, folder: 12: Callen, Michael,
1983– 1986, box 33, Shilts Papers; box and emphasis in original.
172
chapter 3
notation might represent a corroboration offered by Callen, an acquain-
tance of Dan Turner’s, that “Gayton” was the same French Canadian
fl ight attendant as the one Turner had mentioned in San Francisco.117
The entry is followed by a description of a member of a support group
Callen had attended whose actions and attitude Shilts began to map onto
his rapidly solidifying impression of the fl ight attendant:
mid- 30s, professional
arrow
shirt
man
lived
for
sex
dark hair, mustache
identity threatened
doctor guiding group said
civil liberties have right
to choose
The tone for the rest of the interview, however, was perhaps even
more infl uential. Callen spoke at length about what he viewed to be the
decline of “ethical constraints” in the sexual activities of the gay com-
munity, which had been “breaking down since 1975.” He related to
Shilts a story of a man who came out of the closet and soon became a
hepatitis B carrier. When asking the “clap doctor” about any precau-
tions he should take, the doctor replied pessimistically, “‘If they don’t
get it from you, they’ll get it from somebody else.’”118 Callen noted that
“ethically— after syph[ilis]— no sex for week.” If one was infected with
amoebas, “ethically 6 weeks no sex,” while after hepatitis, a disease with
which Shilts was intimately familiar, “ethically [one] can’t have sex for
months.” Given the high numbers of anonymous sexual contacts one
could have in bathhouses— establishments which Callen dubbed “death
factories” in the interview—
one could not “contact partners if [one]
wanted” if a sexually transmitted infection was diagnosed; in any event,
“it was every man for himself.”119 Callen also spoke of the concern he
117. Turner and Callen had both been members of the PWA forum at the 1983 Denver
Conference.
118. “Michael Callan,” 4.
119. Ibid., 2; reference to bathhouses on p. 14.
“Humanizing This Disease” 173
experienced at an AIDS support group meeting in the late summer of
1982, when he realized that “1/3 [of the members were] having sex— no
bones[,] 1/3 having sex— confused[, and] 1/3 no sex from illness.”120 Cal-
len’s concerns would lead him to write, along with Richard Berkowitz,
“We Know Who We Are,” for the New York Native in November 1982
and subsequently the pioneering safe sex guide How to Have Sex in an
Epidemic. 121 Recalling this time in his interview with Shilts, the activist
pessimistically refl ected that “AIDS destroyed [the] myth that there was
a community.”122
Following this discussion with Callen, it is diffi cult to imagine Shilts
being in a more receptive mood to picture Dugas as an angry gay man
not heeding the danger his condition might pose to others in the bath-
houses. It becomes easier to guess at the journalist’s state of mind dur-
ing his interview with Popham later that same day. To one journalist,
he later stated, “That was when the entire scope of the AIDS tragedy
just hit me like a bullet between the eyes. Gaetan had slept with some-
body on Oct. 31 of 1980 and now I was looking at somebody in 1986
who was dying.”123 To another, he explained that “I realized that Paul,
who had visible lesions on his face, was dying from a virus from this guy.
It was like I was seeing the legacy of this person and his virus.”124 In
these statements, Shilts posits Dugas’s signifi cance as “Patient Zero,”
the original outsider bringing in disease and threatening the American
public’s health. When one combines this role with scenes from Band in
which Shilts depicts Dugas as deliberately infecting other men, the re-
sult is a horrifi c portrait of an apparent sociopath leaving, as Shilts put it,
his “legacy” all over the United States through “his virus.”125 From this
stage, I argue that Shilts became convinced of Dugas’s importance to the
120. Ibid., 3.
121. Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz, with Richard Dworkin, “We Know Who
We Are: Two Gay Men Declare War on Promiscuity,” NYN, November 8, 1982, 23, 25, 27,
29; Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen, How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Ap-
proach (New York: News from The Front Publications, 1983). See also Brier, Infectious
Ideas, 26– 44; Richard Berkowitz , Stayin’ Alive: The Invention of Safe Sex; A Personal His-
tory (Oxford: Westview Press, 2003), 135– 39, 151– 82.
122. “Michael Callan,” 5.
123. Sipchen, “AIDS Chronicles,” V9.
124. Bluestein, “Cries and Whispers,” 65.
125. Emphasis added.
174
chapter 3
spread of the epidemic, of the fl ight attendant’s immorality, and of the
titillating factor inherent in the “Patient Zero” story. The information he
gathered after this point would serve as supplementary details to make
his depiction of Dugas more compelling.
It appears that Shilts did not interview Linda Laubenstein during
his New York City visit, but he managed to do so at some point before
the Vancouver journalism conference in March, probably by telephone.
Shilts learned that Laubenstein had heard from one of her fi rst KS cases:
“‘Y[ou’]v[e] g[o]t t[o] meet Gayton.’” Apparently, “he had it too.” The
nurses “called him vector of disease,” and he had a “‘little bl[ac]k book’
[that] wasn’t little.”126 After he became a patient, he would fl y “to NYU
[New York University] for monthly chemo.”127 He h
ad been one of a num-
ber of patients, a group which included health care professionals, with
whom she had discussed “g[oin]g to baths” and the “Mineshaft,” a sado-
masochism sex club. Laubenstein thought that it was “very clear early on
that everybody had been there,” assembled in New York and exposed to
“whatever it was— physical agent or microbe.”128 Laubenstein informed
Shilts that Dugas had “died of progressive KS” in 1984, though he fi rst
“moved to Vancouver” and then “to Quebec to die in hospital.”129
Having returned from New York, Shilts sent a typed thank- you note
to Selma Dritz. His research on the East Coast had impressed on him
“how much of human history relies on a few people” willing to carry
out “unrewarding work,” and he thanked her for having established a
“unique relationship” between her offi ce and gay doctors even before
the AIDS epidemic. He also warned that he would “nag” her “about Pa-
tient Zero since he has such a unique role both in the epidemic and by
epitomizing (in one body) so many of the public health issues which de-
fi ed a knee- jerk response. (What to do about a Patient Zero remains
something the gay community has yet to face up to. . . . and such pa-
126. “Dr. Linda,” interview notes, 1986, p. 2, folder 10: Laubenstein, Linda, box 34,
Shilts Papers. Shilts documents two interviews with Laubenstein in his book notes, one in
January and the other in June 1987; see Band, 608. It seems likely that he would have tele-
phoned her following his mid- January interview with Dan Turner. The nurses at New York
University called Dugas “The Vector,” a point corroborated by Dr. Christos Tsoukas, in-
terview with author, Montreal, July 9, 2008, recording C1491/30, tape 1, side A, BLSA.
127. “Dr. Linda,” 4.
128. Ibid., 4– 5.
129. Ibid., 4.
“Humanizing This Disease” 175
tients will certainly arise again.)”130 Shilts’s developing fi xation on Dugas
would no doubt have made him even more eager to dig around for addi-
tional information about the man in Vancouver.
As it turned out, he would not have to look far. As Shilts later re-
called in a Rolling Stone interview, “I was speaking in early ’86 at an
investigative reporters’ conference at Vancouver, British Columbia, and
on the panel on AIDS reporting, there was the head of the People with
AIDS group in Vancouver, and when I mentioned to him that I was in-
terested in fi nding friends of Gaetan’s, this man’s grief counselor was
Gaetan’s best friend.”131 Unable to believe his good luck, Shilts moved
with his characteristic speed. His one- hour panel session had ended by
4:15 in the afternoon; by 6:12 that evening he had interviewed Kevin
Brown, the PWA representative, and received a message back from
“Frank,” Brown’s grief counselor, to arrange a meeting for the follow-
ing morning.132
Brown provided Shilts with a sympathetic depiction of Dugas— and
corrected Shilts’s persistent misspelling of Gaétan’s fi rst name. He re-
counted the discrimination that Dugas faced as an early AIDS patient
(“told of how one of 1st in N. Amer.”), that he was the target of rumor
and conjecture, but that “p[eo]pl[e] who knew him— Dr. [Brian] Wil-
loughby [for example]— only had greatest respect.”133 Shilts set up an in-
terview with “Frank” for 10:00 a.m. the next day; and most likely Shilts
received the phone number of Gordon Price, a founder of AIDS Van-
130. Randy Shilts to Selma Dritz, 25 February 1986, Selma K. Dritz Papers, Archives
and Special Collections, UCSF Library and Center for Knowledge Management (hereaf-
ter cited as Dritz Papers).
131. Wills, “Rolling Stone Interview,” 48.
132. “Room 1016, Message,” hotel reception clerk’s note to Randy Shilts regarding
missed call, March 15, 1986, folder 23: Patient Zero, box 34, Shilts Papers. “Frank” and
another interviewee, “Simon,” requested that Shilts not use their names, so I have created
pseudonyms to refer to the notes Shilts made when interviewing these individuals to help
protect their privacy. Kevin Brown would go on to play an important role in early Cana-
dian treatment activism, drawing attention to the government’s inadequate provision of
drugs for PWAs and lobbying for the eventual release of the antiviral drug AZT in Can-
ada as an experimental therapy. See Silversides, AIDS Activist, 142– 45; Arthur D. Kahn,
AIDS, The Winter War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 77– 79.
133. “Kevin Brown,” interview notes, 1986, folder 23, box 34, Shilts Papers; quotation
on p. 2, correction of name spelling on p. 7.
176
chapter 3
couver, from “Frank” at this time.134 The journalist contacted Price to
set up for an interview and to look for documents from the AIDS Van-
couver meetings of 1983. Price later recalled that the journalist “was
disappointed that there really wasn’t very much. There was hardly any-
thing in the minutes.”135 In the end, Shilts took a copy of the meeting
minutes from April 1983.136 He also managed to obtain a phone number
for Michael Maynard, one of the AIDS Vancouver members and one of
Dugas’s former physicians, as well as for the health writer of Fine Print, a
regional gay paper in Edmonton. There is no evidence in Shilts’s fi les to
suggest he attempted to contact Brian Willoughby, the physician Kevin
Brown mentioned who would defend Dugas against innuendo- based ac-
cusations, with whom the journalist would never speak.137
It was likely that Shilts was out late that night chasing leads, as a mes-
sage was left for him at the hotel, shortly after midnight, asking him to
call a man who could offer “more information on Mr. Dugas.” It seems
that this individual eventually provided Shilts with the names of two ad-
ditional fl ight attendants, whom he would try to interview by phone later,
and informed him that Dugas had “lived in Toronto, [and] Halifax.”138
Shilts later described his meeting with one of Dugas’s best friends the
next morning: “So the next day I was sitting with him, and he is the guy in
the opening scene of Band, who was asked to dance with Gaetan. It was
just luck that I had opened the book on that specifi c day, Gay Freedom
Day 1980, and he remembered what they were doing. He had a great big
photo album with all kinds of pictures, he had fl own with Gaetan, he was
a fl ight attendant, too, so it was just totally serendipitous.”139 “Frank”
provided Shilts with a detailed description of his times with Gaétan and
some psychological insight to Dugas’s feelings, though, as I will argue in
the following section, Shilts did not refl ect the full range of this insight in
Band. The reporter would have had to rush to catch his 12:30 p.m. fl ight
134. “Pan Pacifi c Vancouver, 10am,” Shilts’s appointment notes, 1986, folder 23, box 34,
Shilts Papers.
135. Gordon Price, interview with author, Vancouver, August 28, 2007, recording
C1491/17, tape 1, side A, BLSA.
136. Shilts, Band, 262.
137. Brian Willoughby
, interview with author, Vancouver, August 31, 2007, recording
C1491/18, tape 1, side B, BLSA.
138. Printed hotel telephone message sheet with Shilts’s handwriting, 16 March 1986,
folder 23, box 34, Shilts Papers.
139. Wills, “Rolling Stone Interview,” 48.
“Humanizing This Disease” 177
back to San Francisco. By that evening, he was tirelessly typing up his
notes from a productive weekend, spending about an hour on each of the
accounts of “Frank” and Kevin Brown to develop them. That evening
his typed notes assumed a form similar to the way they would eventually
appear in Band.140
To this information he would add a later interview, most likely con-
ducted by phone, with another fl ight attendant friend, “Simon,” who
knew Dugas well.141 Shilts also interviewed Bob Tivey, former execu-
tive director of AIDS Vancouver, later in March as well. Tivey had orig-
inally intended to attend the Vancouver journalism conference but was
in Washington for another meeting, so Kevin Brown had taken his place.
Tivey later declared that Shilts had misrepresented his intentions for
gathering the information and that the reporter had promised not to use
Dugas’s name if Tivey agreed to tell him “what it was like to be friends
with one of the fi rst AIDS patients in Vancouver.”142 The journalist also
conducted a follow- up interview with Popham, in which the dying man
reemphasized his view of Dugas as a disease spreader: at the March
1983 forum, Popham “could tell he was trying to establish it was OK for
PWAs to have sex.”143
On May 14, 1986, Shilts wrote to Marcus Conant to pass on the ref-
erence details for an article. “By the way,” he added proudly, “I’ve re-
searched out Gaetan’s whole life story. Great stuff— .” In his handwritten
letter he thanked Conant for the offer of Conant’s cabin in Russian River,
noting that he would probably look to make use of it in early June, al-
most certainly for writing.144 Two months later, Shilts wrote to Conant
140. Shilts’s printed video display terminal entries bear automated user information in-
dicating, for example, that he worked on the entry for “Frank” from 18:06 to 18:54 (by the
24- hour clock, meaning 6:06 to 6:54 p.m.) and that of Kevin Brown from 19:00 to 20:09
(7:00 to 8:09 p.m.). See various printed copies in folder 23, box 34, Shilts Papers.