Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic
Page 51
styled “Marilyn Monroe” blond hair, and a tailor- adjusted uniform that
“fi t him like a glove.”29 A female colleague remembered, with good-
natured exasperation, that it was impossible to keep up with his insuper-
able energy:
I can remember doing a fl ight to London with him out of Toronto. And those
fl ights went at night and you fl ew all night and you hauled your butt into Lon-
don and got on the bus for an hour and went downtown, and usually ended up
feeling like you’d been dragged through a knothole backwards, went upstairs
to my room, put stuff away and got changed, came down and there was Gaé-
tan, dressed to the nines [ laughing], looking like he’d had ten hours of sleep,
much better than any of us, his makeup was nicer [ laughing together with col-
leagues] his hair was better, his clothes were nicer. We’re all kind of stand-
ing there looking at each other [ colleagues laughing] and Gaétan was on his
way out on the town. And I will never forget that feeling of inferiority [ laugh-
ing together with colleagues]. He was somebody I could never aspire to match
[ colleagues laughing]. And we’d laugh about it, like we’d say to him, “God— I
can’t ever look that good.” [ Imitating Dugas’s response:] “Of course not, dar-
ling [ laughing]. Why would you even try?” [ All laughing together]30
28. Warner, Never Going Back, 61– 95.
29. Menard, recording C1491/37, tape 1, side B (quotations “the queen of the queens”
and “fi t him like a glove”); Dunn, Watson, and Miller, recording C1491/26 (discussing
makeup, Dunn at tape 1, side B; Watson at tape 1, side A); Pedro Levaque, interview with
author, Toronto, September 8, 2008, recording C1491/47, tape 1, side A, BLSA (describing
“Marilyn Monroe” blond hair).
30. Dunn, Watson, and Miller, recording C1491/26 (Watson at tape 1, side A); empha-
sis on recording.
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Dugas’s confi dent, and sometimes defi ant, fl amboyance occasionally
resulted in confrontations with conservative male pilots, for whom— in a
point made by several fl ight attendants— non- standard displays of gen-
der behavior were sometimes perceived as threats to their own mascu-
linity.31 Pedro Levaque, a roommate and fellow Air Canada fl ight at-
tendant, recollected that “he was shocking in a way because he was so
outrageously gay and so bluntly gay to your face.” With his head- turning
style and makeup, “Gaétan was fl amboyant number one, you know.”32
Richard Bisson, another fl ight attendant, echoed this view, describ-
ing his friend as “outrageous” and “lit up from the inside.”33 Redford
agreed, emphasizing that Dugas was “completely imbued with the spirit
of Stonewall.”34 At work, there were complaints about Dugas wearing
makeup: he borrowed mascara from female coworkers and occasionally
used foundation and blush, “depend[ing] on his mood.”35 He protested to
the union, however, and the company ultimately decided that, in an era
of lawsuits surrounding sexual inequalities, both men and women could
wear makeup if it was done well— which Dugas’s always was.36 It was not
unknown for him to confront a passenger for homophobic behavior too.
A colleague recalled witnessing a fi ery exchange between Dugas and a
businessman on one fl ight. When the passenger reacted to the fl ight at-
tendant’s “fl amboyant” fi nger wagging with a hostile and homophobic
retort, Dugas spun around, declaring, “I’m not a queer, I’m a queen.”37
Levaque and Dugas met and became fast friends while working
aboard Air Canada’s Rapid Air service, which provided frequent fl ights
linking Toronto with Montreal and Ottawa. Levaque recalled that at one
point in the 1970s the two lived next to each other in an apartment build-
ing located midway between the downtown core and Toronto Interna-
tional Airport. During these years, Dugas also moved between apart-
ments in Toronto’s City Park complex, which was set in a burgeoning gay
31. On this point, see Phil Tiemeyer, Plane Queer, 68.
32. Levaque, recording C1491/47, tape 1, side B (“he was shocking . . .”); tape 2, side A
(“Gaétan was fl amboyant . . .”).
33. Richard Bisson, interview with author, Vancouver, August 21, 2008, recording
C1491/ 38, tape 1, side B, BLSA.
34. Redford, “Reminiscences,” Epilogue.
35. Conn, recording C1491/34, tape 1, side A.
36. Dunn, Watson, and Miller, recording C1491/26 (Dunn recollection at tape 1,
side B).
37. Conn, recording C1491/34, tape 1, side A.
Locating Gaétan Dugas’s Views 301
village near the intersecting streets of Church and Wellesley. The city af-
forded gay men like them many locations to cruise one another for sex: at
Buddy’s bar, for example, in the Barracks or Club Baths, or on the lake-
shore beaches of Toronto’s harbor islands— in fact, as one of Dugas’s ac-
quaintances later refl ected, “any place was potentially a cruising area.”38
Levaque recalled that both he and Dugas were at one point meeting up
to three new partners a day. Dugas had a large sexual appetite— “more
than anybody I ever met”— and was able to capitalize on his urges by
being so perfectly coiffed, with a buoyant personality to match.39 One
man who had sex with the fl ight attendant on a number of occasions re-
called Dugas’s forthright nature and confi dence at their fi rst meeting.
This man, a health- care professional, remembered getting dressed one
day, around 1978, in the changing rooms of the downtown YMCA, situ-
ated at that time on College Street near Bay Street.40 A young man en-
tered, wearing a pair of minuscule shorts that were “fl amboyant, even
for the 1970s.” He noticed the shirtless professional, walked straight up,
and said, “My name is Gaétan Dugas. That’s Gay, Gay- tan Dugas.”41
As a gay male fl ight attendant, Dugas joined a fraternity of young,
physically attractive, and fun- loving professionals whose ranks stretched
around the globe. Proud of their jobs, their uniforms, and their social ca-
chet, they often spent time together at layovers and after work.42 One of
Dugas’s acquaintances remembered attending a raucous “stews’ party”
and seeing him in uniform, standing side by side with stewards from
other airlines:
38. Levaque, recording C1491/47, tape 1, side A (discussion of Rapid Air); Macdonell,
recording C1491/27, tape 2, side A (discussion of Buddy’s, Barracks, Club Baths); Tivey,
September 7, 2008, recording C1491/44 tape 1, side A (discussion of lakeshore beaches);
Elliott, August 27, 2008, recording C1491/39, tape 1, side A (discussion of Buddy’s); Elliott,
August 30, 2008, recording C1491/39, tape 1, side A (discussion of lakeshore beaches),
tape 1, side B (discussion of Club Baths); Jackson, recording C1491/48, tape 1, side A (quo-
tation “any place was potentially a cruising area”).
39. Levaque, recording C1491/47, tape 1, side B.
40. The YMCA building, undoubtedly the site of many instances of gay cruising like
the one described here, was eventually demolished and replaced, in 1988, b
y the headquar-
ters of the Toronto Police Service.
41. Health- care professional, telephone interview with author, May 18, 2011. This man
made initial contact by e- mail after learning of this research project following a public lec-
ture by the author in Toronto in April 2011.
42. Tiemeyer, Plane Queer, 120– 21.
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Oh Goddess, that was hilarious. There was like stews from every airline . . .
and it was huge— oh, booze everywhere, drugs everywhere, sex everywhere—
but the party piece was . . . more than ten stews in . . . their various differ-
ent uniforms . . . all from different airlines, all doing the Boeing 747– 400
safety drill in different languages choreographed all together . . . and it’s
this cacophony, ’cause it’s like Finnish, French, English, German, Spanish,
Russian— everything you can imagine, and it’s all with a little bit of a lisp
[ laughing].43
Like many other gay male fl ight attendants, Dugas could and did take
advantage of his occupation to meet and make closer connections with
male passengers.44 On occasion, he might buy a customer a drink, chat
with him, and then slip him a business card on which he had written his
home phone number.45 Some of his closer colleagues and acquaintances
recalled him speaking of sex constantly— “way too much information,
Gaétan,” his friend and colleague Desiree Conn remembered joking—
and that he would refer to himself good- humoredly as “a slut.”46 One
friend explained, in an interview with Shilts, that for Dugas, “sex was a
43. Macdonell, recording C1491/27, tape 2, side A; emphasis on recording. Similar to
Macdonell’s recollection of the fl ight attendant as a “party boy,” Jacques Menard recalled
of Dugas, his friend and colleague, “This guy used to party big time.” He also remem-
bered, with a laugh, how Dugas would make light of his later hospital visits. “He would say
to us, ‘I tried to get more drugs out of there but they won’t give me any more.’” Menard,
C1491/37, tape 1, side A; emphasis on recording.
44. See Tiemeyer, Plane Queer, 120. According to their recollections, it seems that the
fl ight attendants who spoke with Tiemeyer recalled that they would wait for the passengers
to present their business cards. Dugas was, perhaps, bolder in his behavior, though Rink
Foto, a San Francisco photographer who had covered events in the lesbian and gay com-
munity since the late 1960s, also recalled occasions when fl ight crew members— a pilot and
a fl ight attendant— gave him their cards; Rink Foto, interview with author, San Francisco,
July 19, 2007, recording C1491/06, tape 1, side A, BLSA.
45. Thirty years after the fl ight attendant’s death, a former passenger donated to To-
ronto’s Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives the business card that Dugas had shared with
him on a fl ight from Toronto to Ottawa in April 1979 (accession 2014– 054). The passenger
recalled that Dugas interacted with him in just this way but that, for reasons unstated, he
never tried to telephone Dugas.
46. For example, Conn, recording C1491/34, tape 1, side A; Menard, recording C1491/
37, tape 1, side A; Rand Gaynor and Robin Metcalfe, interview with author, Halifax,
July 31, 2008, recording C1491/35, BLSA (Gaynor at tape 1, side A).
Locating Gaétan Dugas’s Views 303
way of expressing himself. Everything was sexual— the way he looked,
talked + dressed.”47
Some physicians would later suggest that Dugas’s high sexual activ-
ity was suggestive of a compulsive behavior.48 It was not, however, out-
side the norms of a young urban gay male culture that was centered
around commercial sex establishments in the years following gay libera-
tion. Also, some medical practitioners took a more nuanced view of this
behavior, evaluating whether it disrupted the individual’s life. For exam-
ple, in a book published in 1986, a New York– based psychiatrist gave an
example that was strikingly similar to Dugas’s case as a demonstration
of well- adjusted sexual behavior: “A 31- year- old gay man has frequent,
anonymous sex with other men that he meets in a park near his home, or
in bars in other cities. He works as an airline steward. He enjoys living
alone, traveling, and not having the responsibilities of a lover relation-
ship. He fi nds that these encounters satisfy his need for sex, and his sex-
ual style fi ts nicely into the overall pattern of his life.”49 While the author
acknowledged that a behavior becomes compulsive when it is repeated
to deal with stress in other areas of a person’s life, the distinction serves
as a useful reminder for the way in which a sexual compulsion was not
straightforwardly indicated by a high number of sexual partners.
In summary, from the evidence emerges an image of Dugas as an
attractive and charismatic young man who was sexually confi dent and
active— and defi antly proud of being gay. He deployed a keen sense of
humor to strike up friendships easily and maintained strong family ties.
An eager learner, he brought a strong will to his personal and profes-
sional interests, worked hard to enjoy life’s pleasures, and displayed a
fi erce resistance to actions he perceived to be unfair or homophobic.
47. “Simon,” interview notes, p. 8, Shilts Papers.
48. For example, Conant, “Founding the KS Clinic,” 166– 67; Lawrence Mass, interview
with author, New York, April 28, 2008, recording C1491/25, tape 2, side A, BLSA; David
Ostrow, interview with author, Vienna, July 21, 2010. Said Mass: “He was a sex addict. And
we didn’t have those terms or concept, we had no programs, nothing in those days.” Some
critics, meanwhile, have maintained that depictions of people with HIV and/or AIDS of-
ten rely on a trope of “hypersexual[ity]”; see, for example, Worth, Patton and Goldstein,
“Introduction to Special Issue,” 7– 8.
49. Ronald E. Hellman, “Facing Up to Compulsive Lifestyles,” in Gay Life: Leisure,
Love, and Living for the Contemporary Gay Male, ed. Eric E. Rofes (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1986), 34.
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Facing “Gay Cancer”
Dugas received a KS diagnosis in May 1980 at the age of twenty- eight.
The diffi culty he had with this news was evident to Desiree Conn, a new
coworker and friend. In the spring of 1980, immediately after her ini-
tial training course, she received her fi rst posting to Halifax, the east-
ernmost and smallest operations base for Air Canada. Dugas was sta-
tioned there as a purser, and the two soon fl ew together and became
friends. While the city’s small size contrasted with his usual habit of big-
city living, there was a lively and well- organized gay and lesbian commu-
nity, which drew men and women from across Canada’s maritime prov-
inces, and the city provided a well- located base for transatlantic fl ights
to London.50
Conn recalled that one day Dugas asked her over to the house with a
harbor view that he shared with a friend in nearby Dartmouth. He was
scared and upset, and he smoked a large joint to calm his nerves. He con-
; fi ded to her that he had been diagnosed with cancer and was very fright-
ened about dying. He had just begun to live, Dugas told her, in tears.
There were so many more people in the world he wanted to meet, places
he wanted to see, and he had dreams of starting his own gay airline, ca-
tering to lesbian and gay passengers hoping for grievance- free travel.
Dugas had heard from colleagues that Conn had spent time caring for
her father before he had died of cancer, and he wanted to learn about
the types of medication that her father had received. Conn tried to re-
assure her friend, telling him that although her father had succumbed to
his illness, there were now powerful new drugs that gave cancer patients
a much greater chance of survival. She also remembered Dugas lighten-
ing the mood somewhat by repeatedly encouraging her to share his joint,
which she, in turn, repeatedly declined. Soon after, Conn learned that
Dugas had left Halifax and switched to another base; she recalled him
mentioning during their bittersweet conversation a wish to move closer
to his family and to pursue cancer treatment elsewhere.51
50. Gaynor and Metcalfe, recording C1491/35, tape 1, side A (both speaking). See also
McKay, “Sex and Skin Cancer.”
51. Conn, recording C1491/34, tape 1, sides A and B; tape 2, side A. Although Dugas
received a Kaposi’s sarcoma diagnosis that spring, his lymph nodes were also swollen, and
Conn recalled him thinking that he had lymph node cancer.
Locating Gaétan Dugas’s Views 305
Many cancer patients report profound changes in their self- identities
following their diagnoses; the disease, for some, becomes “inscribed”
into their life histories.52 Dugas appears to have undergone a similar
transformation from this point. He became focused on acquiring a new
medical vocabulary, discovering and researching treatment options,
and adjusting to the self- perceived role of “cancer patient.” In the year
prior to his seeking care from doctors Alvin Friedman- Kien and Linda
Laubenstein in New York, Dugas had ample time to read widely, estab-
lish his own views of his disease, and resist the widespread notions of the
time of cancer being a mysterious and deadly invader, one perhaps in-
vited by patients’ fl awed character or their moral failures.53