The two major manuscript depositories for writing this book were the extensive Michael Callen Papers, housed at the Gay History Archives of the Gay Community Center (New York, NY), and a variety of collections (the Joseph F. Beam Papers being central) at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a branch of the New York Public Library. At the former, Rich Wandel was a cordial, tireless guide, and at the latter, Steven Fullwood was particularly helpful in locating materials. For a full listing of manuscript collections used, see the list that heads the notes at the back of the book.
I’m heavily indebted to those who sat with me, often for many hours, to share their memories of the two figures whose lives are the centerpiece of this book: Michael Callen and Essex Hemphill. In this regard I owe a great deal to Richard Berkowitz, Richard Dworkin, Wayson Jones, E. Ethelbert Miller, Michelle Parkerson, Chris Prince, Ron Simmons, Sean Strub, Joseph Sonnabend, and Abby Tallmer. Others have sent me documents or correspondence in their private possession; Barbara Smith’s letters from Essex were especially significant. Still other people talked with me on the phone or responded to my request for additional information with e-mails, letters, and documents; of special value was the material from Jim Bredesen, Frances Goldin, Jennifer Jackson, Wayson Jones, Jim W. Marks, Tim Miller, Doug Sadownick, and Joseph Sonnabend. Above all, I’m indebted to Richard Dworkin; in multiple interviews, he not only shared with me his intimate memories of Mike Callen, but also provided a significant number of documents and photos from his private storehouse. For photos of Essex Hemphill, I’m comparably indebted to Sharon Farmer. Both she and Richard Dworkin spent countless hours combing arduously through their back files to come up with the unique, vital images that illustrate this book. I’m enormously grateful to them.
Notes
The abbreviations used in the notes are as follows:
For Individuals
MC:
Michael Callen
BAC:
Barbara Ann Callen
CC:
Clifford Callen
EH:
Essex Hemphill
RB:
Richard Berkowitz
JS:
Joseph Sonnabend
JB:
Joseph Beam
For Manuscript Collections in Public Depositories
ASSC: Assotto Saint (Yves Lubin) Papers at SC
AVSC: Alexis de Veaux Papers at SC
EH/WJSC: The Essex Hemphill/Wayson Jones Collection, 1981–2008, at SC, plus two boxes of material donated by Wayson Jones in 2010
GCGW: Grace Cavalieri Papers, George Washington University
JBSC: Joseph F. Beam Papers at SC
JSNYPL: Joseph Sonnabend Papers at the New York Public Library at Forty-Second Street, Manuscript and Archives Division
MCP: Michael Callen Papers, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, National History Archive, New York City
NYPL: New York Public Library
SC: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library
For Manuscript Collections Privately Held
BSP: Barbara Smith Papers (EH correspondence)
DS: Doug Sadownick (correspondence)
FGAF: Frances Goldin Agency Files (EH unpublished novel, plus fifty unpublished early poems)
MP: Michelle Parkerson (flyers, posters, autographed EH material)
RBP: The Richard Berkowitz Archives (documents, correspondence)
RDP: Richard Dworkin (tapes, photos, documents, correspondence)
SSJS: Sean Strub (transcribed interviews with Sonnabend)
TM: Tim Miller (correspondence)
WJ: Wayson Jones (photos; Domestic Life)
For the many individual interviews I conducted, as well as secondary sources, see the notes.
Chapter 1: Before the Storm
Each note cites the material for the paragraph in which it appears and the paragraphs that follow until the subsequent note appears.
1. Multiple interviews with Richard Dworkin; the first two paragraphs are derived from MC to Jon [?], 9 pp., n.d., and the transcript of a microcassette recording between MC and RB, 1982, both MCP. MC was born and spent the first five years of his life in Rising Sun, Indiana, population 550.
2. The family background: MC, “Birth Announcement,” 4-p. ms.; MC, “Leave It to Beaver,” 26-p. ms.; Barbara Ann Callen to MC, October 4, 1974, October 23, 1977; MC to “Barbie” [?], August 9, 1977; MC to Jon [?], 10 pp., [1978?]; Dr. David Schmidt, 9-p. typed interview with MC, November 12, 1987; MC to Mary Bemesderfer-McCleary, July 22, 1993, all MCP. MC to Sarah Squires, May 23, 1993 (college), MCP. Three DVDs: “Mike at Home at 29 Jones Street,” 1982 (mirrors); “O Boys with Mike on Franklin,” October 16, 1993; “Callen on O Boys Video/CDC Part 2” [1993], all RDP; multiple conversations with Abby Tallmer, Jennifer A. Jackson, e-mails to me, March 18, 19, 2013.
3. JS to me, April 1, 2013; JS, interviews with Sean Strub, SSJS; Sean Strub, “The Good Doctor,” POZ, July 1998; Anne-Christine D’Adesky, “The Man Who Invented Safer Sex Returns,” Out, Summer 1992; “Callen on OBoys video/CDC Part 2.” [1993], courtesy Dworkin. For a survey of the bars, back rooms, and baths from 1969 to 1982, see Arthur Bell, “Where Gays Are Going,” Village Voice, June 29, 1982. As a result of his reputation as an interferon scientist, JS came to know the cancer researcher Dr. Mathilde Krim, who, as co-chair of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR—earlier known as AIDS Medical Foundation), would soon become a key figure in AIDS research. James Kinsella, Covering the Plague: AIDS and the American Media (Rutgers University Press, 1989); Ronald Bayer and Gerald M. Oppenheimer, AIDS Doctors: Voices from the Epidemic (Oxford University Press, 2000); Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, June 5, 1981; Steven Epstein, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (University of California Press, 1996); Jacques Pepin, The Origins of AIDS (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
4. Milton Coleman, “Marion Barry,” Washington Post, January 2, 1979; David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (University of Chicago Press, 2004), 193–94, 211–14.
5. Sidney Brinkley, “Making History,” in Smash the Church, Smash the State, ed. Tommi Avicolli Mecca (City Lights, 2009). The Blacklight archive is online at www.blacklightonline.com/archive.html. See, esp., Thomas B. Romney, “Homophobia in the Black Community”; James S. Tinney, “Baldwin Comes Out”; Chasen Gaver, “Interracial Intentions”; the Adrian Stanford poem “Yeah Baby”; and EH’s “Homocide: For Ronald Gibson.”
6. EH interview in Network 1, no. 3 (December 1990), SC. Though I’ve long taught and written about African American history and culture (see A Martin Duberman Reader, The New Press, 2013), in my opinion no one has reflected on the cross-cutting identity issues here with more brilliance and persuasiveness than Cathy J. Cohen, in her remarkable The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1999). I’ve relied heavily on her insights and perspectives.
I found EH’s early poems in the back files of his literary agent, Frances Goldin. I’m grateful to her and to Sam Stoloff of the same agency for making photographic copies of the poems for me, along with correspondence and the manuscript of EH’s long-lost novel, “Standing in the Gap.” See chapter 7 for my discussion of the novel. A number of EH’s close friends have long blamed his family for refusing to turn over his papers to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, as he wished. But as far back as 1998, EH’s mother did mail Frances Goldin what she described as all the material he had left behind. Possibly she does still retain some items, but at the least it’s clearly an injustice to accuse her of refusing to turn over any material for possible publication. I discuss EH’s close relationship with his mother in more detail in this chapter.
7. Thomas B. Romney, “Homophobia in the Black Community,” Blacklight.
8. EH, “Vital Signs,” in Life Sentences, ed. Thomas Avena
(Mercury House, 1994); EH, “Fixin’ Things,” in Ceremonies (Cleis, 1992); EH interview, Network; EH, “Miss Emily’s Grandson Won’t Hush His Mouth,” Outweek, August 8, 1990, reprinted in EH, Ceremonies; Vanguard, August 23, 1991; Albert Williams, “Essex Hemphill and ‘Cultural Transformation,’ ” Windy City Times, March 21, 1991; “Where We Live: A Conversation with Essex Hemphill and Isaac Julien,” 210, in ([speak my name]): Black Men On Masculinity and the American Dream, ed. Don Belton (Beacon, 1995).
9. EH, “Ceremonies,” in Ceremonies.
10. Wayson Jones, interview, May 2009; Philadelphia Daily News, December 6, 1990 (Mathis); EH, “The Other Invisible Man,” in Boys Like Us: Gay Writers Tell Their Coming Out Stories, ed. Patrick Merla (HarperCollins, 1996), 176–85; EH to “David” (at Gargoyle magazine), March 28, 1978, GCGW. Many of the details about EH and Jones as roommates derive from Jones’ commentary on this book when in manuscript form, and especially from his long e-mail to me of April 15, 2013.
11. EH didn’t include “My Funny Valentine/For Southeast” either in Ceremonies or in Brother to Brother (Alyson, 1991); EH, “Take Care of Your Blessings,” Network (the manuscript of the poem is in JBSC). Interviews with Chris Prince, Michelle Parkerson, E. Ethelbert Miller, Wayson Jones, and Ron Simmons—all done in May 2009; Wayson Jones commentary on manuscript, April 15, 2013. The Michelle Parkerson poem “Highwire” is courtesy MP. A good deal of material on various aspects of D.C. gay life can be found online at www.rainbowhistory.org/html, including the quotation from a 2001 oral history with Gideon Ferebee Jr. The reference to Rafiki is from the guide to the Schomburg Center’s February 1 to August 31, 2012, exhibit “Gay Men of African Descent (GMAD) at 25.” For early black organizations and their relationship to feminism, see Anne M. Valk, Radical Sisters: Second-Wave Feminism and Black Liberation in Washington, D.C. (University of Illinois Press, 2008), esp. chaps. 5–6.
12. EH to Alexis de Veaux, October 19, 1983, September 29, 1985, AVSC; EH to Joe Beam, February 5, 18, 1988, JBSC; Wyatt O’Brian Evans, “Essex Hemphill: The Force Remains With Us,” http://wyattobrianevans.com/online/node/49; interviews with E. Ethelbert Miller, Ron Simmons, Chris Prince, Wayson Jones, and Michelle Parkerson, May 2009; phone interview with Jim W. Marks, March 5, 2013; phone conversation with Michelle Parkerson, April 5, 2013; phone conversation with Sharon Farmer, June 7, 2013; Marks e-mail to me, February 28, 2013; Julie Enszer e-mail to me, February 22, 2013 (McCoy); transcript of Brett Beemyn interview with Wayson Jones, June 27, 1998, EH/WJSC; City Paper, October 28, 1988. For another example of EH’s “ornery” response to authority, see EH to Chris Hayes (The Painted Bride), September 16, 1989, EH/WJSC. In 1986, Essex dedicated his chapbook Conditions to “Ray Melrose, Wayson Jones, Joseph Beam and the family.” For more on the Blackheart collective and the subsequent New York group Other Countries, see Daniel Garrett, “Other Countries: The Importance of Difference” (1987) in Freedom in This Village: Twenty-Five Years of Black Gay Men’s Writing, ed. E. Lynn Harris, 83–99 (Carroll and Graf, 2005).
Chapter 2: Reading the Signs
1. MC to his parents, November 7, 1979; Clifford Callen to MC, November 13, 1979; MC to Clifford Callen, December 17, 1979; MC to his sister, Linda, March 10, 1981, all MCP.
2. Ronald Bayer and Gerald M. Oppenheimer, AIDS Doctors (Oxford University Press, 2000), chap. 1; Sean Strub interviews with Sonnabend, transcripts courtesy Strub; January 27, 2013; discussion between myself, Sonnabend, Sean Strub, Richard Berkowitz, and Walter Armstrong; two DVDS: Gay Cable, Men and Films [1984] and Sandi Freeman Reports [1984], both courtesy Dworkin.
3. MC, “Leave It to Beaver,” 26-p. ms., MCP; Steven Epstein, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (University of California Press, 1996), 46–48.
4. Interviews with RB; RB, Stayin’ Alive: The Invention of Safe Sex (Westview, 2003).
5. Interviews with RB; JS, Strub, RB, and Armstrong discussion, January 27, 2013; the Rubinstein report is as quoted in Susan M. Chambré, Fighting for Our Lives: New York’s AIDS Community and the Politics of Disease (Rutgers University Press, 2006), 2.
6. Interview with RB; Deborah B. Gould, Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight Against AIDS (University of Chicago Press, 2009), 60, fn. 11.
7. Peter Lewis Allen, The Wages of Sin: Sex and Disease, Past and Present (University of Chicago Press, 2000), 120; Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On (St. Martin’s, 1987). Though Shilts is reliable on the initial lack of federal response, his book is seriously skewed (see Douglas Crimp, “Randy Shilts’s Miserable Failure,” in Melancholia and Moralism [MIT Press, 2004], 117–128).
8. Kate Walter, “High Spirits,” New York Native, August 26, 1984 (Lowlife); The Advocate, October 3, 1984 (Lowlife); interviews with Richard Dworkin; RB, Stayin’ Alive, 107 (queen), 114 (patriarchy), 117 (sanity); MC, “The Luck Factor,” 10-p. ms., MCP; O Boys with Mike on Franklin, 2 of 2, DVD, RDP. About as close as JS came to being judgmental was in a letter to Maurice Hilleman, in which he wrote, AIDS “stems from a culture that made possible the sexual excesses of the past ten to fifteen years” (January 8, 1983, JSNYPL). For PCP prophylaxis, JS to me, March 20, April 1, 2013; JS, “Pneumocystis Pneumonia Can Be Prevented,” 2006, http://Aidsperspective.net/articles/pcppropylaxis.pdf.
9. MC, “Luck, Classic Coke, and the Love of a Good Man,” in Surviving AIDS (HarperCollins, 1990); Epstein, Impure Science, 56 ff.; Chambré, Fighting for Our Lives, 78–79, 114–15; multiple conversations with Abby Tallmer, 2013; Tallmer, e-mail to me, March 21, 2013. The Voice finally made AIDS a cover story in its December 21, 1982, issue, but its headline, “Defenseless,” angered advocates of self-empowerment like Rich and Mike (RB, Stayin’ Alive, 166). No better, more poignant description exists of the desperate search for treatment on the part of those diagnosed with AIDS in these years than Paul A. Sergios, One Boy at War: My Life in the AIDS Underground (Knopf, 1993), though I’ve never seen it cited in the AIDS literature.
10. Mirko D. Grmek, History of AIDS (Princeton University Press, 1990), 17 (Denmark); MC, 6-p. typescript, no title or date, MCP; Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney, Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (Simon and Schuster, 1999), 460–67; Edward Alwood, Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media (Columbia University Press, 1996), 215–19. The “homophobia . . . junkies” quote is from MC to Ed Kosner, editor of New York Magazine, June 15, 1983, JSNYPL. JS made the same argument in a letter to Dr. Marcus Conant, June 22, 1983: “Our view in a nutshell is that repeated exposure to cytomegalovirus on the basis of a mild sperm-induced immunosuppression would be sufficient to explain the syndrome in gay men . . . a cumulative process as opposed to a single hit by a unique infectious agent,” JSNYPL.
11. MC and RB, “We Know Who We Are,” New York Native, November 8–22, 1982; MD, JS, Strub, RB, and Armstrong discussion, January 27, 2013; Charles Jurrist, “In Defense of Promiscuity: Hard Questions About Real Life,” New York Native, Dec. 6–19, 1982; “Good Luck, Bad Luck,” New York Native, November 1982, Dr. Peter Seitzman, “Guilt and AIDS,” New York Native, January 3–16, 1983; Dr. Nathan Fain, The Advocate, February 17, 1983; Dr. Lawrence Mass, The Advocate, no. 55; New York Review of Books, August 18, 1983; MC and RB, 14-p. transcript and 4-p. reply to Jurrist, both MCA; Clendinen and Nagourney, Out for Good, 478–80; Ann Silversides, AIDS Activist: Michael Lynch and the Politics of Community (Between the Lines, 2003), 21–23; Gay Cable, Sandi Freeman Reports. [1983], courtesy Dworkin. The ms. of MC’s 5-p. response (“To the Editors,” November 16, 1982) to Dr. Bill Lewis and Michael Lynch, “The Case Against Panic,” dated November 16, 1982, is in MCP; Tallmer e-mail to me, March 21, 2013. When the Native refused to print their rejoinder, MC and RB took out a two-page ad in the Native, “A Warning to Gay Men with AIDS,” New York Native, November 22–December 5, 1982, emphasizing that chemotherapy, interferon, and ultraviolet light were immunosuppressive, urging gay men to get health insurance, and stating that plasmapherosis might prove a helpful treatment, M
CP.
12. JS interviewers with Strub; David Roman, Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS (Indiana University Press, 1998), 13; Larry Kramer, Reports from the Holocaust (St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 39–43; Chambré, Fighting for Our Lives, 15–22; MC and RB “A Warning to Gay Men With AIDS.” The best account of Mayor Koch’s record, and one on which I’ve relied heavily, is Andy Humm, “Ed Koch: 12 Years as Mayor, A Lifetime in the Closet,” Gay City, February 3, 2013.
13. For the quote on Apuzzo, see Jeff Escoffier, interview with MC [1987?], MCP; Kramer, Reports, xvi.
14. JS interview with Strub; all the quotes about Kramer, Mass, and the GMHC leadership are from a series of mid-1982 to early 1983 transcripts of taped conversations, in various combinations, between MC, RB, JS, and (rarely) Edmund White, MCP.
15. Mike Talks About War [with GMHC] Again, DVD, courtesy Jim Bredesen; MC, “Pinned and Wriggling: How Shall I Presume?” 6-p. transcript, MCP. The pre–ACT UP self-empowerment movement has been slighted in the vast literature about AIDS. My account is based largely on a 10-p. transcript, “A History of the PWA Self-Empowerment Movement by Michael Callen (in New York) and Dan Turner (in San Francisco),” MCP; and MC, speech on responsibility, February 3, 1983, 2-p. transcript, MCP.
16. How to Have Sex in an Epidemic (Tower Press, May 1983); RB, Stayin’ Alive, 169–79. In the early eighties Mike held down a daytime job as a legal secretary for the gay lawyer and philanthropist Bill Hibsher, who was so impressed with Mike’s intelligence that he urged him to go to law school (Dworkin interviews).
17. Congressional Record, May 18, 1983; MC, “Remarks of Michael Callen, AIDS Patient, Before New York State Senate Committee on Investigation and Taxation,” June 1, 1983, 10-p. typescript, MCP. JS initially chaired the Scientific Committee of amfAR but resigned that position, while still remaining a member of the committee. In mid-1985 in an angry letter he wrote: “not only is my advice no longer sought . . . [but] executive policy decisions have been directed at disassociating the AMF from my views.” (JS to Terry Beirn, May 21, 1985, JSNYPL.) Yet by the end of the year, amfAR had contributed $126,000 to JS’s work (JS to Editor, New York Native, October 24, 1985).
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