Tag Archives: AIDS

A Rough History of the HIV/AIDS Pandemic

May 27, 2026Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, Health Information, History, HIV/AIDSAIDS, Gay, HIV, HIV/AIDS, LGBTtimalderman

The HIV/AIDS pandemic remains one of the most devastating global health crises in modern history. Since the disease first emerged into public consciousness in the early 1980s, more than 40 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses, and tens of millions more have lived with the physical, emotional, and social consequences of HIV infection. The history of HIV/AIDS is not only a medical story, but also a story of fear, stigma, activism, politics, science, prejudice, grief, and survival.

Understanding the rough history of the pandemic requires looking beyond statistics and medical terminology. It means understanding how entire communities were transformed, how governments often failed vulnerable populations, and how ordinary people fought for dignity and life in the face of overwhelming loss.

The Origins of HIV

Scientists now believe that HIV originated in Central Africa, most likely in what is now Cameroon or the Democratic Republic of Congo. The virus is thought to have crossed from chimpanzees to humans sometime in the early twentieth century through the hunting and butchering of bushmeat. The simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), found in primates, mutated into a human form that became HIV. (cdc.gov)

For decades, the virus spread quietly and largely unnoticed. Researchers later identified evidence of HIV infection in human blood samples dating back to the 1950s. One of the earliest confirmed cases was a blood sample collected in the Belgian Congo in 1959. The virus likely spread slowly at first through urbanisation, migration, colonial trade routes, prostitution, contaminated needles, and changing sexual networks across Africa. (nih.gov)

By the 1970s, HIV had reached several parts of the world, including Haiti, the United States, and Europe, although nobody yet knew the virus existed.

The Mysterious Illness Emerges

The world first became aware of AIDS in June 1981, when the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported unusual clusters of rare illnesses among young gay men in Los Angeles. These men were suffering from a rare pneumonia called Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and unusual cancers such as Kaposi’s sarcoma, diseases normally seen only in people with severely damaged immune systems. (cdc.gov)

Doctors quickly realised something unprecedented was happening.

Healthy young people were developing catastrophic immune failure. Patients became vulnerable to infections that the body would normally defeat easily. Many deteriorated rapidly and died within months.

At first, the disease had no official name. It was referred to in the media as “gay cancer” or GRID — Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. Because many early cases appeared among gay men, society often viewed the illness through the lens of prejudice and moral judgement rather than medicine.

This stigma would become one of the defining horrors of the epidemic.

Fear, Stigma, and Panic

During the early 1980s, fear surrounding AIDS spread almost as quickly as the virus itself. Much of the public did not understand how HIV was transmitted. Some people believed they could catch AIDS through touching, casual contact, sharing utensils, or simply being near an infected person.

Gay men were heavily demonised. Religious conservatives described AIDS as divine punishment for homosexuality. Families abandoned sick relatives. Funeral homes sometimes refused bodies. Employers fired workers suspected of infection. Children with HIV were bullied or excluded from schools. (history.com)

The disease also affected intravenous drug users, haemophiliacs who received contaminated blood products, sex workers, and eventually heterosexual populations worldwide. Yet many governments were slow to respond because the earliest victims belonged largely to already marginalised groups.

In the United States, President Ronald Reagan did not publicly mention AIDS for several years despite the rapidly growing death toll. Activists later accused governments around the world of indifference and neglect. (reaganlibrary.gov)

The Discovery of HIV

In 1983, scientists at the Pasteur Institute in France identified the virus responsible for AIDS. The following year, American researcher Robert Gallo confirmed the discovery. The virus eventually became known as Human Immunodeficiency Virus — HIV. (nih.gov)

The discovery allowed scientists to develop blood tests to detect infection. This was a crucial breakthrough, particularly for blood banks. Before HIV screening existed, thousands of haemophiliacs and transfusion recipients were infected through contaminated blood products.

Testing also introduced new fears. Many people avoided HIV tests because a positive diagnosis was widely viewed as a death sentence.

The Grim Reality of the 1980s

The 1980s were marked by enormous suffering. There was no effective treatment for AIDS, and infection often led to death within a few years. Hospitals in cities such as New York, San Francisco, London, and Sydney filled with dying patients.

The symptoms could be horrifying. Opportunistic infections ravaged weakened immune systems. Kaposi’s sarcoma caused dark lesions across the skin. Severe weight loss, known as “wasting syndrome,” left many skeletal and frail. Dementia, blindness, and neurological damage were common in advanced cases.

Entire friendship groups disappeared.

Within the gay community especially, the emotional toll was catastrophic. Men in their twenties and thirties attended funeral after funeral. Some lost dozens of friends and lovers within a few years. Survivors later described living in a permanent state of grief and terror.

At the same time, communities mobilised in extraordinary ways.

Grassroots organisations formed to care for the sick when governments often would not. Volunteers delivered meals, cleaned homes, raised money, sat beside hospital beds, and comforted the dying. Lesbian women played a particularly important role in caring for gay men abandoned by families or institutions during the crisis.

Activism and ACT UP

As frustration with government inaction grew, AIDS activism became a powerful force. One of the most influential groups was the ACT UP, founded in New York in 1987.

ACT UP organised dramatic protests demanding faster drug approval, better healthcare access, increased research funding, and an end to discrimination. Activists disrupted government meetings, shut down Wall Street, occupied pharmaceutical company offices, and used confrontational tactics to force public attention onto the epidemic. (actupny.org)

Their activism fundamentally changed the relationship between patients, governments, and medical researchers. AIDS activists demanded a voice in scientific research and healthcare policy, helping accelerate the development of treatments.

AZT and Early Treatments

In 1987, the drug AZT became the first medication approved for HIV treatment. It offered hope but also controversy. The drug could slow viral replication, but early doses caused severe side effects including nausea, anemia, and fatigue. Many patients still died despite treatment. (britannica.com)

Other antiviral drugs followed, but HIV mutated quickly and developed resistance when drugs were used alone. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, treatment remained limited and imperfect.

Still, for many people, even a few extra months of life mattered enormously.

The Global Spread

Although AIDS initially gained attention in wealthy Western nations, the pandemic increasingly devastated poorer regions, especially sub-Saharan Africa.

By the 1990s, HIV infection rates in some African countries had reached catastrophic levels. In nations such as Botswana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, entire generations were affected. Life expectancy plummeted. Hospitals became overwhelmed. Millions of children were orphaned after losing parents to AIDS-related illnesses. (unaids.org)

Poverty, limited healthcare infrastructure, stigma, gender inequality, and lack of access to medication worsened the crisis.

Women became increasingly vulnerable to infection, particularly in regions where economic dependence and sexual violence limited their ability to negotiate safe sex practices.

The Breakthrough of Combination Therapy

A major turning point came in 1996 with the introduction of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), commonly known as combination therapy or the “drug cocktail.”

Instead of using a single medication, doctors combined multiple antiretroviral drugs that attacked HIV in different ways. This dramatically reduced viral levels in the body and prevented the virus from developing resistance as easily. (hivinfo.nih.gov)

The results were extraordinary.

Death rates dropped sharply in countries with access to treatment. Patients once preparing for death suddenly regained health and began rebuilding their lives. HIV gradually shifted from a near-certain fatal disease to a manageable chronic condition for many people.

For survivors of the epidemic’s worst years, the change felt almost surreal. Hospital wards that had once been full of dying patients began to empty.

Yet treatment remained inaccessible to millions in poorer countries due to high drug prices and patent restrictions.

The Fight for Global Access

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, activists pushed for affordable HIV medications in developing nations. Pharmaceutical companies faced intense criticism for charging prices far beyond the reach of many African countries.

International programs eventually expanded treatment access. Organisations such as the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, and the Global Fund helped distribute lifesaving drugs worldwide.

Generic medications dramatically reduced treatment costs. Millions of lives were saved through expanded access to antiretroviral therapy.

HIV in the Modern Era

Today, HIV is no longer automatically a death sentence in countries with access to modern healthcare. Antiretroviral therapy can suppress the virus to undetectable levels, allowing many people with HIV to live long and healthy lives.

Scientific advances have transformed prevention as well.

PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) allows HIV-negative individuals to reduce their risk of infection dramatically through daily medication. Public health campaigns now promote the principle of “Undetectable = Untransmittable” (U=U), meaning people with undetectable viral loads cannot sexually transmit HIV. (cdc.gov)

Yet the pandemic is far from over.

Millions of people worldwide still lack adequate treatment. Stigma continues to affect those living with HIV. In some countries, discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, sex workers, and drug users undermines prevention efforts.

The social scars of the epidemic also remain profound.

The Cultural Impact of AIDS

The AIDS pandemic transformed art, politics, medicine, and culture. Countless musicians, actors, writers, activists, and ordinary individuals died during the crisis.

Figures such as Freddie Mercury, Rock Hudson, and Arthur Ashe brought public visibility to the disease. Their illnesses forced many people to confront the reality that AIDS could affect anyone.

The epidemic also reshaped LGBTQ+ identity and politics. Many historians argue that the AIDS crisis radicalised a generation of activists and permanently changed public discussions around sexuality, healthcare, and human rights.

Books, films, plays, and memorials continue to document the emotional devastation of the era. The AIDS Memorial Quilt remains one of the largest community art projects in history, commemorating tens of thousands of lives lost to AIDS.

Lessons from the Pandemic

The history of HIV/AIDS reveals both the best and worst aspects of human society.

It exposed how prejudice can deepen suffering during a public health emergency. Marginalised communities were ignored, blamed, and stigmatised when compassion and science were desperately needed.

At the same time, the epidemic demonstrated remarkable courage and solidarity. Patients, activists, healthcare workers, researchers, and caregivers fought relentlessly for survival, dignity, and truth.

The scientific achievements that emerged from HIV research transformed modern medicine. Advances in virology, antiviral drugs, and public health strategies continue to influence treatment for many other diseases today.

Perhaps most importantly, HIV/AIDS taught the world that silence and stigma can be deadly.

The pandemic is not merely a chapter in medical history. It is a human story of loss and resilience that continues into the present day.

Tim Alderman ©️ 2026

Sources

CDC HIV Origins Overview

CDC Museum HIV/AIDS Timeline

NIH AIDS History Timeline

History.com — History of AIDS

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library — AIDS Epidemic Archive

ACT UP New York Archive

Britannica — AZT

UNAIDS Global Fact Sheet

NIH HIV Treatment Information

CDC — Undetectable Equals Untransmittable (U=U)

A 40 Year Journey Into (And Out Of) Fear Part 8 (FINAL)

May 25, 2026Article, Autobiography, Gay Interest, Health Information, HIV/AIDSageing with HIV, AIDS, Gay, HIV, HIV/AIDS, long term survivortimalderman

The move to Dr. David Austin at Holdsworth House was a good move, made on recommendations from friends. The practise was well located in Darlinghurst, David himself was young, handsome, HIV/AIDS knowledgeable…and gay, as were all the men in the practise, which made communication easy.

The one good thing about David was that he was willing to make me an equal “partner” in my health management. This far down the line, I wanted more control over decisions made in regards to my health. When it came time to change my combination therapy, David would pick out a number of combinations, give me the run-down on them…efficacy, potential side effects…then I would choose the one that suited me.

Between late 1999-2001 I applied for several trials, but was disallowed due to having had CMV. A lot of my focus changed to controlling the ongoing pain from my peripheral neuropathy (which eventually became numbness), I tried acupuncture… through 407 Medical Practise in Bourke St…went to a reflexologist in Queenscliff, who was running a research project with subjects with ongoing PN. I then had regular sessions with Greg Milan, a reflexologist associated with Holdsworth House. Despite some minor improvements using these alternatives, nothing worked in a major way, and it became obvious that it was permanent, and I just had to deal with it…right up until now, where it affects my mobility and balance, controlled through exercise physiology.

Also in late 1999 I started part-time work at the HIV Prescribers Project, thanks to Lavinia Crooks (RIP) at ASHM (Australian Society for HIV Medicine) who managed it at the old (now long gone) Royal South Sydney Hospital, in Zetland. This project ran training courses for doctors wishing to expand their HIV knowledge, and become S100 Prescribers. In mid 2000 the project moved from Zetland, to the ASHM offices in the Albion St Clinic building. I helped to collate the training manuals etc for the courses which were run several times a year.

From photo shoot for The HIV Book Project at Sydney Park

In late 2000, David…my partner, not my doctor…and I decided to do a two week trip through the Red Centre while the Sydney Olympic Games were on. We caught The Ghan from Sydney (back then it alternated between Sydney and Melbourne) to Alice Springs…the end of the line back then…via Adelaide, then coached it up to Darwin. A truly awe-inspiring holiday, away from the madness of Sydney. On returning to Bondi, I then decided to legitimise my writing with a degree in writing from UTS…I was writing regularly for Talkabout then…and applied under the exceptions granted to mature age and disabled students, and was accepted. I quit my job at HIV Prescribers, and entered into a period of educational advancement.

I applied to do a Batchelor of Writing degree, though found university not to my taste. It reminded me a lot of school…which I hated…and many of the first year subjects had nothing to do with writing, which frustrated me. For the second and third years, I juggled subjects around to fit with what I wanted, and at the end of that period I had enough subjects passed to get a Graduate Certificate of Writing, which I settled for. While at UTS I had several articles published in “Vertigo”, the university newspaper, and was office-bearer for the Disability Collective. Dealing with student bureaucrats drove me crazy, and I wrote a number of heated letters blasting the Student Union for not offering reduced costs in fees to disabled and pensioner students. Naturally, all to no avail.

Midway through 2003, while finishing my writing degree, I started at East Sydney TAFE to get my chef’s credentials. Apart from writing, my other passion was cooking. Unlike UTS, I loved TAFE. The students were more down-to-earth, and genuinely loved the learning experience, not being hindered by the strictures of university. I also embarked on a correspondence course to get my Catering Certificate. So, by 2004 I had three new credentials under my belt.

Back to 2001, I went onto my second-last trial…and it was a doozy that I got paid $650 to do. It was called the Caprine Antibody HRG214 trial…more commonly known as the Goat Serum antibody trial…Phase 1. It was done by infusion at St. Vincent’s, followed by a two month observation period. Again, at the end of it, nothing was achieved except a sore arm from the 12 attempts to get a cannula in it, and an all-over skin rash at the end of the second month.

The last trial was in 2004, and both David and myself were involved in it. Back in 2000 I was knocked back from doing the T20 trial due to my CMV, but the criteria was made less stringent as time went on, and so in 2004 we both got into the T20 trial. This was an injectable drug vaccine trial that was seen as the possible future for drug regimes. The drug was administered into an area of body fat using a pneumatic gun. Initially, it was great…pretty well pain-free, quick, easy, and very effective according to pathology results. However, because you had to do it twice a day, it soon became notable that injection sites got painful, and you soon ran out of them. It could also cause serious bruising which put an injection site out of action until the bruise cleared. We both got about halfway through, then quit. Evidently a lot of others had similar problems.

Other events for that year were (A) my 50th birthday, a truly big event that I dragged out for two weeks. Highlights included David taking the wrong batch of…cookies…to Palms, and getting banned from The Colombian Hotel in Darlinghurst, due to my tendency to stagger. They later apologised for the behaviour of their bouncers (B) I wanted to open a business, but had no idea about how to go about it. I decided to go through a BGF return-to-work course, to see where it would lead. Fortunately, I ended up with Marie Crosbie as my advisor. She soon clicked that I didn’t really need what the course provided, and asked me what I really needed. Between the two of us, we put together the bare bones of starting a business and (C) we decided to move to a house in Dulwich Hill so we could have room to rescue dogs. We are both Jack Russell Terrier lovers, and that love of rescuing them exists right up to today. There is a notable lack of HIV information at this stage, as everything was now running smoothly, and it was moving further and further into the background of my life.

Dulwich Hill, with our two Jack Russell’s, provided a new approach to many things. I started a high-end catering business called Alderman Catering. This lasted about two years, before exhaustion finally ended it. Catering is a youngish persons business. It takes three days to put a functions finger food together. A day for shopping, a day for prep work, and a long day of cooking packing and serving. It really wears you out. I rejigged my business plans, and fell back into my old retail career, as it was something I knew, and was successful with…but I leapt onto a retail format that is only mew really popular…an online store (I could run it from home with minimal start-up expenses, and minimal overheads) called Alderman Providore, specialist in non-perishable Australian made food products from small, unknown niche suppliers. It was incredibly successful with a constant yearly growth, and then the addition of another specialist store called TeaCoffeeChocolate. What brought it all to an abrupt end was the Global Financial Crisis in 2009/10. Online businesses were the first to crash. I put the business up for sale, and sold it to a woman in Queensland.

From the photo shoot for The HIV Book Project in Sydney Park

It was soul destroying.

Around the same time I started having problems with my blind left eye. It was constantly irritated, like there was something in it that wouldn’t come out. I went to the eye clinic at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital at Camperdown. They found that the eye didn’t realise it was blind, and had created a new capillary network to feed the eye. This in turn caused the eye to swell, thus the irritation. They gave me steroid drops, and referred me to the Sydney Eye Hospital. After a consult, they decided to inject a cancer serum (Avastin), that stopped blood flow to tumours, to stop the blood vessel growth. It was successful, however over time, the eye changed colour, giving me two different coloured eyes. Talk about attention grabbing!

Also in 2009; I got out of the shower one morning, caught sight of myself in the mirror, and thought “who is that fat person in here!”…yep, it was me. So off to a local gym, and a new love affair with Les Mills Body Pump classes. The weight burnt away, and started me on an ongoing love of fitness which still goes on today, though in a more senior person way. Fit, healthy, active is my mantra now;

In 2011 we decided to move to Brisbane. No particular reason why…just because we could! So we packed up our home, got a removalist, filled the car, grabbed the dogs and moved to Ashgrove, a suburb of Brisbane. I had been told back in 1996 that due to all the scar tissue in my right eye, due to the CMV, it was highly likely I’d have a retinal detachment at some stage. No sooner had we gotten to Ashgrove than the retina decided it was time. So, into Royal Brisbane hospital for an operation to reattach it. The ophthalmologist also scraped down the scar tissue before reattaching it.

Leap forward to early 2015, and problems with my left eye continued. In the intervening years, all the eye’s internal workings had collapsed, so I made a decision to have the eye removed. Another operation, and it was gone. Shortly after, David and I returned to Sydney…we had split amicably in 2014, and are still close friends…and it was here that I had my prosthetic fitted.

In 2017 I was interviewed and photographed for a chapter in the HIV Book Project. It was here, for the first time, that I revealed my rather radical approach to HIV drug dosing In 2011. In an era where we were still dosing on 3-4 drugs twice a day, and guys were opting for drug holidays despite the risks, I opted…without disclosing to anyone…for a different approach. It was risky, but done with close observation to blood test results. Sick of pills, sick of side effects, I halved my daily dosing to once a day, and no pills on weekends. If my CD4s fell, or my viral load rose, straight back to my old routine. In the 5 years I did this, my CD4s continued to rise and my viral load remained undetectable. Interesting, isn’t it! Read my chapter in the book to find out my true feelings about this.

Apart from an extremely painful run-in with shingles in 2014, which has left me with neuralgia and partial numbness in my left arm and hand, and 5 weeks of radiation on a large Basil Cell Carcinoma behind my left ear last year, life is really great. My Jack Russell, Flash, and I live very happily in a social housing villa on the Central Coast of NSW. I’m on a category 3 home support package…with the addition of Assistive Technology funding…so have some cool technology to help me see to do hobbies. Someone comes in to clean, and helps me with shopping. My Exercise Physiology gym is a 2 minute walk away. Friends are close by, and I have great neighbours.

I obtained my Certificate III in Fitness back in 2012, and ran seniors exercise classes locally until 2 years ago, when I got my villa. I avoided COVID, and apart from writing about it, HIV could not be further from my mind. These days, ageing…the one concern I once thought would never happen…is, at 72, my biggest concern. I now use a walking stick to control my meandering feet, and only take antivirals once a day. I’m happy, and content. What else does one need!

So what have I learnt about myself over the last 43 years…and even earlier than that? Well, I’m certainly resilient! I’m an independent guy, and an individual. I’ve retained a sense of humour…though somewhat dark and sarcastic. I’m glad I’ve always been an out gay man, and I am what I am, and where I am, doing the things I love due, in large part, because I’m HIV, and had AIDS. There is a kind of perversity in that! If I had my time over, would I walk the same road? That is a very good question! And one I’ll leave you to ponder. Thank you for reading a very long rant. It is most appreciated. Now, pack it away, and get on with your life.

Nam myoho renge kyo (Buddhist mantra)

Tim Alderman ©️ 2026

Are You Kidding Me?

April 18, 2026Article, Gay Interest, General Interest, Health Information, HIV/AIDSAIDS, HIV, HIV hoaxes, HIV misinformation, HIV/AIDStimalderman

The persistence of HIV hoaxes represents a troubling intersection of misinformation, stigma, and public health risk. Since the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, myths and conspiracy theories have circulated alongside scientific advances, often undermining prevention efforts and deepening fear. Understanding how these hoaxes arise—and why they endure—is critical to addressing their impact.

One of the most common HIV-related hoaxes is the denial that HIV causes AIDS. Despite overwhelming scientific consensus, a small but vocal group has promoted the idea that HIV is harmless or that AIDS results from lifestyle factors, drug use, or even pharmaceutical conspiracies. These claims gained traction in the 1990s and early 2000s, amplified by fringe publications and, later, online platforms. The consequences have been severe. In some cases, individuals influenced by denialist beliefs have refused life-saving antiretroviral therapy, leading to preventable illness and death.

Another category of hoaxes involves false claims about transmission. Stories about HIV-infected needles hidden in public spaces—such as cinema seats, petrol pumps, or ATM machines—circulate periodically, often accompanied by alarming warnings to “be careful.” While these messages spread quickly via social media and messaging apps, public health authorities have repeatedly found no evidence supporting such incidents. These hoaxes exploit fear and misunderstanding about how HIV is transmitted, which in reality requires specific conditions such as the exchange of certain bodily fluids, not casual contact.

Similarly, there are persistent myths about “miracle cures.” From herbal remedies to unproven alternative treatments, these claims often target vulnerable individuals seeking hope. While some alternative therapies may support general wellbeing, none have been proven to cure HIV. Antiretroviral therapy remains the only scientifically validated treatment that allows people living with HIV to lead long, healthy lives and significantly reduces the risk of transmission. Hoaxes promoting fake cures can lead people to abandon effective treatment, with serious health consequences.

The rise of the internet and social media has accelerated the spread of HIV misinformation. Platforms that prioritise engagement can inadvertently amplify sensational or controversial content, regardless of accuracy. A dramatic or fear-inducing story is more likely to be shared than a measured, evidence-based explanation. This creates an environment where hoaxes can spread rapidly, reaching audiences far beyond their original source.

Stigma plays a major role in the persistence of these hoaxes. HIV has long been associated with marginalised groups, including gay men, sex workers, and people who inject drugs. Misinformation often reinforces harmful stereotypes, portraying HIV as a moral failing rather than a medical condition. This stigma discourages open discussion, testing, and treatment, allowing both the virus and the myths surrounding it to persist.

Education is one of the most effective tools for combating HIV hoaxes. Comprehensive, evidence-based information about transmission, prevention, and treatment helps dispel myths and empowers individuals to make informed decisions. Public health campaigns have made significant progress in recent decades, promoting messages such as “Undetectable = Untransmittable” (U=U), which highlights that people with HIV who maintain an undetectable viral load cannot pass the virus on sexually. However, these messages must compete with a constant trickle of misinformation.

Critical thinking and media literacy are equally important. Encouraging people to question the source of information, check for scientific evidence, and consult reputable organisations can reduce the spread of false claims. Health authorities, researchers, and community organisations must also remain proactive, addressing new hoaxes as they emerge and communicating clearly with the public.

It is also essential to approach the issue with empathy. People who believe or share HIV hoaxes are not always acting maliciously; many are responding to fear, confusion, or a lack of access to accurate information. Shaming or dismissing them can reinforce distrust. Instead, respectful dialogue and accessible education are more likely to change minds and build trust.

HIV hoaxes are more than harmless rumours—they can have real and dangerous consequences. By undermining trust in science, spreading fear, and discouraging effective prevention and treatment, they pose a significant challenge to global public health. Combating them requires a combination of accurate information, critical thinking, and compassionate communication. As science continues to advance in the fight against HIV, ensuring that truth keeps pace with misinformation remains an ongoing and essential task.

Tim Alderman ©️2026

A 40 Year Journey Into (And Out Of) Fear Part 7

February 23, 2026Article, biography, Gay Interest, History, HIV/AIDSAIDS, Gay, HIV, HIV/AIDS, Lazarus syndrome, long-term survival, return to worktimalderman

One of the major problems that concerned both my doctor and myself was my weight. Having dropped to 48kg when admitted to Marks Pavilion, and being of slight build, I was having trouble putting it back on. Fortunately for me, the Albion Street Clinic started running a Deca-Durabolin (an injectable anabolic steroid) trial at this time to attempt to counter the effects of Wasting Syndrome, a common problem within the AIDS demographic. I’m not sure this far down the line of it’s duration, but I think it was 6-8 weeks, with a weekly injection, and weigh-in. What I do remember about it was the drastic change to my eating habits. For the period of the trial, I was obsessed with eating! From the moment I woke up, to the time I went to bed…all I thought about was food! I was continually planning my next meal, my next snacks! The (successful) end to this was a meteoric weight gain in a very short period of time. My usual weight was around 64kg…by the time the trial ended I was at 84kg. On going out for dinner with friends I hadn’t seen for a while, one guy exclaimed “What have you done…you look like a teddy bear!”. To be honest, I was thrilled to have put so much on, especially seeing how I had seen myself in the low, and scary, weight range. I’m thankful to say that after the trial ended, my weight dropped back to my usual range.

There is a big problem with surviving AIDS, and spending 18 months recovering and keeping busy with doctors, clinics, hospitals, peer groups, and treatment compliance sessions…and having a lot of same either end, or become more spread out…BOREDOM! Sitting at home watching “Days of Our Lives” and “The Bold and the Beautiful” daily is not a fulfilling experience! But what to do was the big question. Not fit enough to return to full-time work, and not wanting to return to my old profession in retail. As frightening as the whole AIDS experience had been, its lasting legacy was the overwhelming desire to change my life direction. It made me realise how much of my life I’d wasted doing work I hated, and never being brave enough to take the leap to follow my dreams, to step into the unknown with confidence! This was the point where everything changed, where I finally found enjoyment and fulfilment in my life’s choices.

But the question still remained…how to take the first step? I had been receiving “Talkabout” for some time, and recollected that I had seen an ad for volunteering at the…then…PLWHA office in Darlinghurst. A phone call, and a meeting with another volunteer in the Oxford Street offices…and I found myself on the reception desk, initially one day a week, but it was a fun office to be in, so I started turning up daily. This was also my first encounter with computers (other than my experiences in the 80s with owning a Commodore 64). This pushed me to do courses in basic computing, and the Microsoft Office Suite. Around the same time I did a Peer Group Facilitator course with ACON, brought about by me having done a HIV/AIDS survivor group with them. I went on to facilitate some groups.

After around 6 months on reception, Jo Watson…the then Research Officer…asked me if I’d like to work with her as an assistant research officer. The office manager (Ryan McGlaughlin) interviewed me and I got the job. It was here that I wrote my first article for “Talkabout”, a quite humorous piece on my doctor, Cassy Workman. Though not named, it was obvious (by those who knew her, or were patients) who it was about. From this point I became a regular contributor to Talkabout, and 28 years later, I’m still writing for the magazine…with occasional breaks! I also became a member of the Talkabout Working Group. Like many occasions in community groups, funding dried up, and I had to move on.

It was just after this that I was informed that a research position was opening up with another community-funded project called Positively Working. Having survived AIDS, and now being in a position to orientate myself to new work experiences…outside what I had been doing post AIDS… it was a position I slotted into quite neatly. At Positively Working, we were compiling a report (I was working with Sonia Lawless) on the return-to-work needs of guys like me who had survived AIDS, and we’re now faced with the very real situation of…what do I do now; and where the hell do I go now! I personally interviewed a number of the guys, and it was quite eye opening! Once again, after six months the funding dried up. We got the report out, and once again I was faced with what to do!

There was one very interesting…and disturbing…occurance that resulted from my time there. Several of the guys I interviewed mentioned that they had used the “services” of a supposed HIV/AIDS employment service on Oxford Street called “Options”. Evidently Options had been using guys attending there as a free workforce in the office under the guise of “work experience”. I was very angry to hear this, and decided, as a writer for Talkabout, to investigate and expose this issue. I approached the office as a return-to-work client. Not only were they using their clients as an unpaid workforce, they were also not providing the services they were touting, to help guys break back into the workforce. Clients were being placed in front of computer screens with the usual run-of-the-mill employment services, and told to find a job. Contrary to their name, Optoons provided no options.

I wrote a scathing article on them for Talkabout. The editor forwarded the draft onto them, basically saying this is about to come out! Well, didn’t the shit hit the fan! The manager, Peter somebody, demanded to see me. I turned up at his office, and he tried the good old sweet talk! Naw, didn’t sway me. The threats came next, to sue Talkabout, the editor, and me! I was amused! Anyway, to calm the waters, and ensure no action was taken, the editor did a rewrite. I wasn’t happy about it, but at least wanted Options thrown into the spotlight, so allowed a very, very watered down piece to be published. Several months later, Options closed. I just smiled!

I undertook Positive Speaker Bureau training in 1998. My first gig was to a group of nurses at the Albion Street Centre. At the end of the talk, I opened the floor to questions. The final question floored me, as training hadn’t prepared me for this one…did I have survivor guilt? I did…after a long pause…give an answer. Yes, I did! I spent 12 years as a PSB speaker, being quite in demand with community groups, universities, and nurse training talks. I had no problems filling an hour. I was also on the PSB working group.

Two of our major community groups instigated return-to-work groups, but in many respects they missed the mark. The Positively Working report pointed out that one of the major requirements of AIDS survivors contemplating how to move on, or approach a return to the workforce, was choices, be it returning to their previous profession, or taking up education or training, or a myriad of other options such as opening a business, or moving a hobby to a business. What they were finding in the groups that were set up was a repeat of information that wasn’t new to them, or of no use at all. There needed to be more options than resume writing, or interview techniques. One project that did have a different approach was “Reconstruction”, a group facilitated by Pene Manolas. In my own time, I did a number of talks at these group meetings, encouraging guys to follow dreams and desires to find more fulfilment in lives now “reset to zero” and going off in new directions.

In 1999, I was on a very unpleasant…understatement…liquid protease inhibitor called Retonavir. It was very effective, but disgusting to take. Cassy Workman supplied her patients on it with gel capsules and a dropper. Putting it into the capsules made it a lot easier to take. I made an appearance on a popular television series at the time called “Healthy, Wealthy & Wise”, who were doing a segment on HIV and it’s impacts. I can be seen sitting in a park in The Rocks, and filling gel capsules with Retonavir. I guess that was my 15 minutes of fame!

Also in 1999, following my stint with the Positively Working project, I briefly returned to my old retail career…but as a cash office supervisor this time, with Angus & Robertson booksellers in the city. The manager there had a large group of gay friends, so when, during my interview, I explained a long absence from employment on AIDS and recovery, she understood exactly what was going on. It wasn’t why I got the job, but my long retail background on cash handling.

1999 was another busy, and scary, year. I noticed I was having problems walking a straight line up the footpath. It wasn’t neuropathy, as at that stage it wasn’t as bad as now. As I walked, I drifted to the left of the path, and had difficulty getting myself back to the centre. Over a few weeks, it got progressively worse. At one stage I was using a walking stick to maintain balance. Cassy sent me to see Bruce Brew, a well known neurologist at St. Vincents. He was baffled, as was Cassy. At one stage he sent a letter to Cassy saying he suspected it may be PML (Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy is a rare, severe, and often fatal viral brain infection characterised by progressive white matter damage. It is caused by the JC virus (JCV), which lies dormant in most adults but activates in individuals with severely compromised immunity. Common in HIV/AIDS, cancer, or patients on specific immunosuppressants, it causes rapid neurological decline). A very scary prospect! AIDS dementia was another possibility.For her part, Cassy ordered up a raft of tests…iron, folate, B12, cortisol, thyroid, CT scan, gallium scan, Addison’s disease. The last resort was an MRI! And there it was! THE VIRUS…on my brain! It could frightened be seen in the scans! During a drug combination change, it had picked a small opportunity when the new combination was starting to kick in to cross the blood/brain barrier, and up into my head. The solution was actually very simple…when the new combination kicked in, it kicked the virus out.

I was at A & R’s for about 4 months…and encountered the difficulties other guys had of obtaining meds from hospital pharmacies during lunch breaks, and fitting in doctors appointments…when I got a phone call from Bill Whittaker (now deceased) to help out doing data entry for the AIDS Research Initiative, which was run out of Cassy’s medical practice in Little Oxford Street (called Ground Zero Medical, as it was on the site of the original Club 80). So I returned to Darlinghurst!

It turned out to be a double job. On days I wasn’t working for the ARI, I was doing reception work in the medical practice. It was here on a working day in the practice that I developed excruciating pain in my back, in the kidney area. Cassy diagnosed Indinavir sludge, a build up of Indinavir in the kidneys. I was told to drink a lot of water…it didn’t help! I spent a good part of the day in the nurses station with Janice (the practices nurse) unable to keep still because of the pain, which just wouldn’t let up! Cassy checked on me a couple of times, but didn’t suggest I go to A & E. By mid afternoon, Janice took it upon herself to call a taxi to take me to St. Vincent’s. I needed to have a stent inserted in my kidneys to drain the sludge.

I was so disappointed that Cassy had been so blasé about it that I quit her practice. And her as my doctor!

A new relationship started with Dr David Austin, at Holdsworth House Medical Centre.

Tim Alderman ©️ 2026

A 40 Year Journey Into (And Out Of) Fear Part 6

September 4, 2025Article, Autobiography, Gay Interest, Health Information, History, HIV/AIDSAIDS, antiretrovirals, HAART, HIV, HIV personal stories, new life decisions, pandemictimalderman

We had been forewarned! Told that the new antiretrovirals were game changers. That people who were on the brink of death could be reprieved, could, like Lazarus, be brought back to life. The community organisations were given time to prepare for a change in how HIV/AIDS was handled! Did they listen? From my perspective…no!

I was discharged from Prince Henry Hospital on the 19th June 1996, after ten days in hospital. That was how quickly things were turned around. It was winter. I weighed just under 50kg, and I really felt the cold. I got a taxi from the hospital to Bondi Junction. My first port of call was Target for a new duna, and warm clothing, then home.

And so began a period of self-imposed boredom. For those of us who survived the final ravages of AIDS, we were, for a time, in a no-mans land. Caught between recovering from something we thought would be our end (and under earlier circumstances would have been), and having to mentally and physically readjust ourselves to an ongoing life, with minimal support services, not knowing what to do with ourselves, and realising that nobody else knew what to do with us either. It was a new world for all of us!

For anyone who thinks that surviving something as devastating as AIDS would send me back to my old life…think again! For the next 18 months, life became an often tiring and frustrating round of clinics, doctors appointments, specialists, support services, support groups, and pharmacy trips. When not doing that, I was stuck in front of the television watching “Days of Our Lives” and other trash daytime television. I ruminated on, and disected my previous life, as it was now a pre-AIDS, and post-AIDS existence…as that is what it was! It wasn’t a life! Change was going to be essential!

So reality started setting in…where exactly was I going from here? Taking vast amounts of antiretrovirals came with its own problems. In these early days of HAART, compliance was drummed into you. The drugs came with both dietary and time constraints. You often couldn’t eat fatty foods prior to dosing, or they had to be taken on an empty stomach. This both restricted eating out with friends, or involved rising at ridiculous times to conform. Likewise, doses had to be eight hours apart, so you were often getting out of bed in the early hours just to take pills. So I was often tired, and cranky! Added onto an already heavy pill burden were prophylaxis drugs like bactrim, dapsone, ketaconizole, clarithromycin, and the list goes on, which were often taken a couple of times daily. Then we have side effects…mainly diarrhoea and nausea. I was getting scripts for Imodium as I was buying fifteen by five boxes (yes, 75) at a time. If I was lucky, they’d last one month. They often didn’t! A bucket of Napisan was permanently in the bathroom for soiled underwear. It was a nightmare, and I often wondered if I had survived AIDS, to die of organ failure from all the drugs I was taking! It sounds like an exaggeration when I tell people that initially I was taking around 340 pills a week…but just look at Imodium, where I was taking a staggering 140 pills a week, or more!

Help came from the wonderful, empathetic Pene Manolas, and her “Calao” Project. Caleo was a treatment management program, whose sole purpose was to encourage and empower those attending to remain compliant despite the burdensome load of pills we were taking. Over the 6 (or 8) weeks of the program you were given tools to help you achieve that aim. It was incredibly successful, and lasted for 2 years, then ceased due to funding. It was not my last encounter with Pene.

At the outpatient eye clinic at Prince of Wales (POW) hospital in Randwick, I was still attending on a monthly basis, and continued, at least for a time, to get the ganciclovir injections directly into the left eye. In 1998, Professor Patrick Versace asked me if Ivwas willing to participate in the Vitrasert Implant trial. The tiny implant was inserted into both eyes, and leached ganciclovir into the eyes over a 9 month period. The chances of developing a cataract were estimated at 4%. I was a more than willing participant in this trial, knowing how stressful it was having the intraocular injections. So, two operations to insert the implants, which were held in place with a stitch. The 4% chance of developing cataracts became 100%, so then another two operations to remove the cataracts, and insert new lenses. The whole sad part of this was, that with HAART proving so successful at keeping opportunistic illnesses away, they were never needed, despite their success. It is still present in my right eye.

Then the panic attacks started. I would wake up during the night and feel like my bedclothes were suffocating me, and had to throw them off. I’d get claustrophobic in underground trains, and stopped getting them. I had a panic attack one Sunday night, home on my own watching television. A gay lifeline had been established by one of the community groups… can’t remember who. I rang the line, needing someone to talk to, only to find their phones weren’t manned on Sundays…just an answering machine. They rang me the next day to apologise, but it would have been a bit late if I was suicidal!

I had a transition period getting used to bad vision, and only one eye. I had a couple of serious accidents. I was on my way to the POW eye clinic one week day, and got caught in this crush of people rushing to get a bus on Crown Street. There was a wooden bus seat just out of my line of vision, and my knees hit it, and I went for a sixer. Took the skin off my knees and shins. Only one guy stopped to help me! One! He checked me over, and despite how serious the wounds were, I told him I was on my way to the hospital anyway. He saw me onto the bus, and the nurse in the eye clinic patched me up. The second time, on the opposite side of Crown Street, I tripped over some tree roots which had pushed the asphalt up. This time the skin was off both knees. I then realised that I had no perspective in my one working eye…the footpath looked flat to me. I started slowing down my walking from that time on. My peripheral neuropathy was setting in at this stage as well, moving from my feet to my ankles and lower shin. This caused me to stagger when I walked, and was responsible for getting me banned from three gay hotels over time. I wrote a letter to the Star Observer about it when the bouncers denied me entry to the Colombian Hotel on the night of my 50th birthday, and refused to get a manager or supervisor for me to speak too. The Colombian apologised in a return letter, saying the bouncers had been out of line.

The most serious falls happened in Bondi. I went to visit a favourite gift store down there, and while wandering around the store, my legs just gave out on me and I collapsed on the floor. The shop assistant, who had been talking to the owner, helped me up. Five minutes later, it happened again. Thankfully I didn’t break anything. But this time, with a frustrated look on their faces, without asking me what was wrong (in retrospect, I should have requested an ambulance) and assuming I was either drunk or drugged, just grabbed my arms, ushered me out of the shop, and sat me on the footpath up against their window. I was in a pretty serious state of shock, not knowing what was going on. I sat there for over an hour, not game to try standing again in case the same thing happened. When I eventually tested them, they seemed to be fine. I started walking home…we had moved from Penkivil Street to Ocesn Steet at this time…up Bondi Road. Deciding to visit a cafe on the other side, I crossed at an intersection that had both lights, and a small pedestrian crossing. I crossed through the lights fine, but on using the crossing my legs just gave out again, and I collapsed on the road, hitting my head on the gutter. Thankfully there was no turning traffic, and a guy sitting in the window of a nearby pub rushed out, grabbed me and helped me to the footpath. I eventually got upl had a coffee in the cafe, and walked home. The gash on my head was serious enough to go to hospital. It never happened again, though I suspect it was a precursor for what was to come!

Feeling a bit lonely and outcast at this time, I decided to try a personal classified in the Star Observer. I was quite open about my HIV status, and that I was damaged goods (yes, I really did say that!) from AIDS. I received about 10 letters in reply…I still have them…all from HIV+ guys. I met a number of them, though none really compatible except for about 3. One was a serial replier to classifieds whom I had been warned about. He was a bit of a problem, so dropped very quickly. Had a one-nighter with another (I’d had no secxual encounters for about two years at this time), and I liked him, but he didn’t want anything further. Then I met Michael, who lived at Rose Bay. We started a bit of a “thing”, though I think it was more a matter of us both being lonely, more so than being compatible, and we both had someone to go places with. Having had a number of bad experiences through the classifieds, the first thing he said to me when I knocked on his door was “Wow…you’re actually good looking!”.

Between 1996, and 1997 antiretrovirals started being pumped out at a staggering rate. Over this period, I must have been, in HAART combinations of three or four drugs, on every drug that was released (thank heavens for the PBS, who approved them very quickly). These included AZT, 3TC, Indinavir (a high dosage caused nausea), Nelfinavir (caused chronic diarrhoea), Saquinavir, Neverapine, Retonavir (more on this shortly), Combavir (AZT+ 3TC)l Efavirenz, and Abacavir. The quick approval of drugs, due to their efficacy, had its drawbacks. Long term side effects often popped up as time went on, for example it was found that Indinavir could cause kidney stones. For me, with both AZT and 3TC still being included in my combinations, my peripheral neuropathy got worse (even now in 2025 I have totally numb feet, which now affects my balance).

In early 1998, through a mutual friend I was out with one Sunday night, I met David in the bottom bar of the Midnight Shift. I was in a casual relationship with Michael, and he was in a relationship as well. We finally surfaced a couple of days later, both deciding to end our current relationships. David and I then went on to be in a relationship for 16 years.

Nelfinavir was the worse drug of all as far as diarrhoea went. David and I were both on it, and it was a nightmare. We were both scared to go out for any length of time, as we would inevitability be caught short. Nelfinavir gave you no warning (and it over rode any amount of Imodium) so you were often caught out grocery shopping, at a movie, or on a walk. We discovered that public toilets were disgusting! There were often underwear changes several times a day. I got so fed up with it restricting my life, that I just charged into Cassy’s consulting room, and demanded she change it! She did! Shortly after, David was also taken off it.

However, despite all this, my viral load continued to, initially, drop, then maintained itself at undetectable. My CD4 cells continued to do a slow, but constant, rise. Probably the only reason we put up with what we did.

But even more changes were coming!

Tim Alderman ©️2025

Why HIV/AIDS History Matters!

June 17, 2025Article, Gay Interest, Health Information, History, HIV/AIDSAIDS, community response, HIV, HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS history, pandemicstimalderman

Please note that my use of language here is deliberate, and of-the-time! I make no apologies for it!

The one thing that really got my back up during the Coronavirus/Covid pandemic was that this was touted as the most devastating pandemic of our times. There was the occasional nod to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, but it was almost as if the 40-odd year whispers about the most devastating pandemic of the modern era…HIV/AIDS…had never happened. I looked at the worldwide death figures from Covid, approxiamately 7.5 million, with many millions more recovering from it. I then compare this to the death rates from HIV/AIDS over the last 40+ years which stands at over 43 million and still rising (630,000 in 2023 alone) despite modern treatments. The difference between the two pandemics is staggering! And of course, up until 1996 and the advent of HAART (Highly Active AntiRetroviral Therapy), your chances of recovering from AIDS was almost zero!

In this day and age, your chances of living with HIV with no serious illness implications, and by taking 1 or 2 pills a day, is very high. Yes, stigma and discrimination still exist, and I would never downplay that, but for the ease of maintaining good health for the lifetime you may have it for, there is little recognition now for the 40 year battle that led to now! Most people who seroconvert now, due in many respects to generational experiences, have no knowledge of the history of HIV/AIDS, and may never encounter a long term survivor who has lived that history!

So, why is HIV/AIDS history important? Well for starters, the response was nothing like Covid! HIV/AIDS has to be viewed in its main time setting of the 1980s/90s. This alone is a historically important era, as the LGBT community gained rights under the laws of many countries, where we finally came out into the open and proudly displayed our sexuality to the world. In retrospect, HIV/AIDS could not have picked a worse time to raise its head! It’s effects upon a newly openly emerging sub-culture were devastating, and in a world where hatred, misinformation, prejudice and stigma were still rife within the general communities we lived in, for many it was a rough journey from being closeted, to being “out”. So, just as my journey as a late emerging 26yo gay male, just starting out on my sexual awakening, little knowing that three years later both that journey and my HIV journey would go forward hand in hand, so the journey of the LGBT community would find itself both politically and socially intertwined.

From a community perspective, HIV/AIDS created an affirming group of mixed people. That here in Sydney we created what was an LGBT ghetto gave us great strength. The vast majority of this community lived in the Darlinghurst/Surry Hill/Paddington/Newtown/Kings Cross areas, and in many respects our services were centred in these areas. We had our bars, hotels and nightclubs; our own retail strip; cafes and restaurants; our newspapers; medical, dental and legal services; community and support groups. A self-contained community within the wider communit. There was a security and strength within this.

And this is where the strength of the community becomes historically important when HIV/AIDS appeared in the early 1980s. Despite knowing very little about the origins or eventual outcomes of what was to become a worldwide pandemic, the community stepped in early to put both political, medical and support mechanisms in place, as what started as a dribble of cases became a waterfall.

Out of our community of both positive and negative individuals, gay men and lesbians, we started negotiating with politicians to make funds available to help set up support mechanisms, and fortunately we had the very foresighted health minister Neal Blewett conferring with our community on strategy. As a country, we were among the first in the world to start taking the upper hand with HIV/AIDS,to attempt to minimise its impacts

We established what are now long-standing groups for both political clout, and support for those infected. ACON (AIDS Council of NSW), NAPWA (National Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS), BGF (Bobby Goldsmith Foundation), CSN (Community Support Network), ANKALI, PLWHA (NSW) Inc (People Living with HIV/AIDS), ASHM (Australian Society of HIV Medicine), Maitraya Day Centre, NorthAIDS, HALC (HIV/AIDS Legal Centre), NUAA (NSW Users and AIDS Association), ACTUP, and many other groups (even an AIDS bus at one stage) had their foundations in the 1980s/90s, and many still continue today within the framework of an evolving pandemic.

A lot of negativity also existed alongside this. Misinformation raised its ugly head even in our hospitals, leading to disgraceful headlines regarding full contagion gear, meals being left outside patients doors. Politicians like the Rev Fred Nile openly created fear and religious discrimination through misinformation. People in contact with HIV/AIDS patients wouldn’t touch crockery, cutlery, glassware, bed linen, toothbrushes. There was no open dialogue about those infected sexually, through blood transfusions, or needles. Safe sex messages became confused, and the badly timed Grim Reaper ad appeared. There was a perception of HIV/AIDS being a “gay disease” even when it crossed over into the straight community. Virus’s do not discriminate!

The community itself suffered innumerable and relentless loss as the pandemic ravaged our social circles. Funerals were daily affairs, our newspapers death notices took up pages. It politicised Mardi Gras! St Vincent’s Hospital established Ward 17 South as a dedicated AIDS ward, and set itself up as the premiere health care hospital, along with palliative care at the Sacred Heart Hospice.

Money poured in…not always political funding, but from within the community itself. Pubs ran auctions, and groups like BGF established fund raisers such as the Bake-Off. We had dedicated HIV GPs, and PBS funding for HIV treatments were established, so that care and treatments were always within the financial constraints of those on pensions. Government departments such as Centrelink, and the Department of Housing came on board with fast track pension approvals, and rental subsidies. Centres, such as the Dental Hospital set up trials. Clinics became specialised. We established memorials such as the Candlelight Vigil, the AIDS quilt, World AIDS Day, and the AIDS Memorial Garden in Sydney Park, so that grief could be openly expressed, never alone, but nurtured within a group setting.

This is why HIV/AIDS history in important, not just as to how a community responded to a seemingly chaotic pandemic, bringing all its diverse aspects together to create support and care, but how we, as individuals, have our seperate and diverse stories of how our lives were, in many ways, empowered and enriched within the structures we had created. Our lives, and deaths, mattered.

This history must never be forgotten. Recent pandemics such as Covid could have taken lessons from these pages of history. There is strength in community, provided we evade the negativity of exclusion, stigma and prejudice.

Sometimes, instead of looking forward, we need to look back.

Interestingly, from a historic perspective, there has never been a review, detailed study, or a commission into the handling of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. It would be fascinating to see what was revealed!

And over 40 years down the line from the first infections, we seem to be no closer to having a vaccine, or method of eradication! At this time, despite being able to suppress it using antiretrovirals, it would appear that HIV still has the upper hand!

A 40 Year Journey Into (And Out Of) Fear Part 5

June 15, 2025Article, Autobiography, Gay Interest, Health Information, History, HIV/AIDSAIDS, CMV, Cytomegloviris retinitis, HAART, HIV, HIV/AIDS, Lazarus syndrome, Prince Henry Hospital, Prince of Wales hospitaltimalderman

The period of the Great Denial was about to begin.

I have copies of many of my medical records from around 1994 through to 1999. Included are correspondence between my GP and specialists, information on trials, pathology, viral loads, hospital discharges, along with my own notes giving a chronology to all that was going on. I haven’t actually looked through them for many years. Perusing them now is a very scary process. How I ever survived all this I do not know! There are some frightening prognosis, and the word “enigmatic” appears more than once as my medicos tried to work out just what the hell was going on with many of my symptoms, and test results. If I was religious, I’d say it was a miracle! But I’m not religious! This was pure stubbornness, nothing else!

Ever since having pneumonia, I’d had ongoing problems with anaemia, and though possibly just because I was HIV+, it was later acknowledged by Professor Dwyer, from POW hospital, that there was a distinct possibility it was caused by AZT. I do remember how tired it made me feel. Everything was an effort! I used to walk from Darlinghurst to the then Redfern Mall in Surry Hills to do my groceries…Clancy’s in Darlo were scandalously overpriced…and it was a slow, exhausting walk.

Everything started to decline. For most of the two years between 1994 and 1996, I was put on, and taken off AZT. My CD4 counts dropped to 160, and continued on a slow downhill slide from there. My weight started dropping! In one letter from a specialist to Marilyn McMurchie, it was stated that my weight was 52kg! Considering that for many more recent years my weight was stable at 68kg, and that I now try to maintain it at between 74kg and 76kg, find it hard to visualise myself at 52kg! During my recovery years of late 1996/1997, drinking mates at The Oxford informed me, scarily, that despite wearing baggy clothes to try to disguise it, they could tell I was rapidly losing weight, and speculated on when I would just…disappear, like so many others!

Yet despite all the signs of a rapid decline towards the inevitable end, I went into full denial, and carried on as if nothing was happening. By 1995, the Stronghold Bar had closed, though I continued to DJ at the Oxford Hotel, and for the Dolphin Motor Club at the Midnight Shift. A couple of close friends died which utterly shattered me. Stuart and Don, both whom I did my gutter drag stints with, both passed…Don from stomach cancer, Stuart from AIDS. With them gone, all the wind went out of my sails, and I threw a large party at my apartment…still shared with Tony…and sold off all my costumes and drag. An era had come to an end! The other thing that ended around this time…though in some ways substituted by copious amounts of alcohol…was my sex life. Always pretty healthy up until this time, I just lost interest, and, I gues with my weight dropping at the rate it was, I just didn’t want to be seen stripped down naked!

In early 1996, Tony and I decided to move from The Dorchester in Darlinghurst, to an apartment in Penkivil St in Bondi. It was here that things took a turn for the worst. Initially, I started complaining to Tony about how dark the apartment was…it wasn’t! Then stepping out of the shower one day, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Who was that person, that emaciated skeleton in the bathroom with me! It was a horror show! Skin stretched over bone! I often went to the French patisserie on the other side of Bondi Rd from the end of our street. Just crossing Bondi Rd was an effort. A couple of years later, I ran into the woman who used to serve me there. She told me she would watch me crossing the road, always fearing I would collapse midway, I was so thin and frail looking. She was astounded that I had survived that period (all that I said was that I had a viral infection on my brain…not quite the truth, not quite a lie…I didn’t go into detail!).

In early June 1996, I collapsed on the footpath outside my apartment building. I could hardly breathe, and had this heavy weight in the centre of my chest. My immediate thought was that a heart attack was going to spirit me away before AIDS got me! It could be a blessing! With no one around to help, I got myself into my apartment, and rang Tony to get me to St Vincent’s. It was a collapsed left lung! Thankfully neither the cardiac problems, or PCP I was suspecting.

I was in St Vincent’s Ward 17 South (the AIDS ward) for 2 weeks. Despite my vision greying out, I kept insisting that I just needed new lenses in my glasses. I saw Dr David Cooper, but although questioned regularly about my eyes, I insisted they were fine! Talk about denial! It is a period of stupidity I’ve never forgiven myself for! To my thinking, having gotten though 13 years of HIV relatively unscathed, it could not possibly get me now! My care at St Vinnie’s could not have been better, despite a massive cut to hospital funding that occurred at this time. Our HIV nurses were walking miracles. I was still on the Oxfords DJ roster at this time, though I remember the shocked look on Sandy’s face (a manager at the Oxford) when, on visiting someone else there, she realised I was in there as well. It probably looked obvious I wouldn’t be returning to the mix-decks anytime soon!

I was discharged at the end of two weeks. It is at this point where I am about to make a decision that would save my life! Feeling that Marilyn had too soft an approach to HIV, and desiring a more aggressive approach to my health care…I had my rather scary discharge papers sent to Dr Cassy Workman! Perhaps more importantly, despite being told it could take three-plus months to get in to see the tee-shirt wearing, chain-smoking Cassy…a week later her receptionist rang to say she wanted to see me…urgently!

So a few days later, I turned up at her (then) Surry Hills surgery. Her consults were far from normal, something patients were thankful for as the casual setting put them more at ease. It is not even a point of despute that Cassy was one of the most knowledgeable, most radical, most aggressive HIV GPs in Sydney at this time. Those under her care adored her. The very first thing she did when I got in was to check my eyes. She immediately suspected CMV (Cytomeglovirus retinitis). She rang Patrick Versace (a leading Sydney ophthalmologist) and arranged for me to visit him at his Hurstville eye clinic the next day. A friend drove me there the next morning. He confirmed the diagnosis. By the time I got back to Bondi Junction, I received a phone call from Cassy to say I was to get to Prince Henry hospital, at Little Bay, IMMEDIATELY! They were waiting for me!

25th June 1996! So, a very scary bus trip to Prince Henry, without even a stop-over at home. It was coming on nightfall when I got there. As promised, the nurse in triage was waiting for me. It was not a healthy boy who turned up that night. Weighing in at 48kgs, I had chronic anemia, chronic candida, chronic bilateral CMV retinitis, and 10 CD4 cells. They didn’t need to tell me prognosis was not good! I was admitted to Mark’s Pavilion (the AIDS ward) that night, then followed 2 weeks of blurred memories…life went into fast-forward! Hooked up to blood, and saline drips. Hourly blood sugar tests…my finger tips were so sore from the pricks! In my mind, this was my final pit-stop. I remember vividly how reconciled I felt about that. Not scared at all…just very much at peace at such an…inevitability!

But the twist was coming!

The ward on the floor above us in Marks Pavilion was for the HIV/AIDS Tuberculosis guys. My first morning there, I was piled into a mini van with other patients from both floors who required care at Prince of Wales (POW) hospital in Randwick. The eye clinic there was to become a very familiar place over the next couple of years. And so my first experience with the very scary ganciclovir intraocular injections. Trust me on this…no matter how necessary it may be, our eyes just don’t want needles poked into them. And will go to any means to avoid it. Trying to keep your eye still when you know a needle is heading towards it…they have to try every trick in the book. The weird thing is that it doesn’t hurt, it’s just the eyes defensive function. Anyway, we got there, and this had to be done quite a few times a week until the CMV became quiescent. Both my eyes were full of the cloudy formations typical of CMV, though my left eye was more severely affected, with only a small window of vision left in it. The optic nerve was severely affected. I was lucky…it never got into my nervous system…a very scary way to die.

There was one very touching incident that happened. One of the TB boys and myself often attended the same eye clinic. He was a good looking lad, and appearing to have little support from family and friends, I sort of took him under my wing. I consider myself to be a pretty tough guy…I’ve had enough hard strikes in my day to make me so…my friends say they admire my pragmatism. I can’t remember the guys name, but we were sitting together in the waiting room and started discussing our situations, our fears. I put my arm around his shoulder, and it was like a trigger…we both ended up in tears. Such a brief, intimate encounter, and it was the last time I saw him, but I’ve never forgotten it. The lonely guy and the tough guy sharing an instant in time. I hope he survived his TB and eye encounter. I hope his fight coontimued.

Under Immunologist Professor Dwyer I was started on a combination of old and new drugs…AZT, 3tc and the new kid on the block…the protease inhibitor Indinivir! This was the start of what was to become known as HAART (High;y Active Antitetroviral Therapy). Viral load counts were started around the same time…my initial reading in Prince Henry was 500,000! The initial high dosage of Indinivir caused nausea, so dosages were modified. I also had a bone marrow biopsy to explore how much AZT was present there. The very nervous male nurse gave me Pethidine. I was so high…an amazing experience. The biopsy was done at the rear top of my thigh, and his first sample wasn’t sufficient. Upon asking my permission to go in again for a better sample, I was so off my face I told him to do whatever he liked! There was a very nice bruise there after,

I was in Prince Henry for 2 weeks. As I stated earlier, most of it was a blur. I’m sure I had visitors, but don’t ask me who! It was all medical…including 8 trips to POW for the ganciclovir injections. At the end of the two weeks…thanks to the new drug regimes, my CD count was doing a slow rise. Handing me over to the care of clinicians and my GP, was a logical step.

So I was discharged from Prince Henry on the 9th July 1996. I got a cab home. One would think…gee this is a really good outcome! And it should have been! I’d survived AIDS! But it was just the start of an 18 month recovery nightmare.

Thrust back into a world that was not prepared for me…for us! We became the HIV worlds Lazarus syndrome survivors! No one knew what to do with us! We were left flailing in the winds of change!

A 40 Year Journey Into (And Out Of) Fear Part 4

February 25, 2025Article, Autobiography, Gay Interest, Health Information, History, HIV/AIDSAIDS, AIDS infections, antivirals, discrimination, Gay, gay plague, history of HIV/AIDS, HIV, HIV/AIDS, LGBT, personal HIV experience, workplace bullyingtimalderman

Before diving into the 90s, a brief note on sub-cultures (Tribes) within the gay community at this time…or to be more exact, how I placed myself within the community as far as lifestyle went in the 80s and 90s. After coming out in 1980, I intentionally positioned myself in the Clone sub-culture. It was a Tribe I felt comfortable in, and adopted it with ease. It was a badge I wore with pride pretty well for the duration of my active life on the scene. The short hair, big moustache, white or black tee-shirts (and flannelette shirts during winter), Levi 501 jeans and boots were, in my eyes, the look that defined gay masculinity. I was, at times, known to dip into the leather world, but my interest in leather was never sexual! I just liked its look, so never saw myself as a leatherman. For a number of years I was an active member of the Dolphin Motor Club (DMC), and member of a gang known by the acronym G.O.D. (Girls/Guys of Disgrace) which was established by the girls who founded Wicked Women, and whose purpose was to peruse the scene at night, and report any potential problems…problems which had escalated since the advent of HIV/AIDS thanks to the media, and societal homophobia. This morphing between scenes meant I could indulge my fun-side by doing what was known as “gutter drag”…a sort of respectful parody of drag itself, using huge wigs, over-the-top make-up, big frocks…and no removal of facial,or body hair. Cleo’s “reputation” and antics still live on amongst my friends. My life revolved around the Oxford Hotel, and the Midnight Shift night club.

By the 1990s, what I call the Great Diaspora of the gay community began, starting, in many eyes, the slow demise of the gay ghetto. People fled to the far flung suburbs, the north and south coasts, to the hinterlands, to the bush, and even interstate, and overseas. Some from fear, some to get away from the relentless deaths and illnesses, some to find peace and quiet, some to die.The scene has never recovered.

So we enter the 90s! Little did we know that the apocalyptic start to the decade, with death notices filling page after page in the gay rags, and with no end in sight, would morph into a decade of great hope by the time we hit 1996. It was at its start, a time of monotherapy, and trials. At the start of 1990, I had a CD4 count of 453…and going down! Two of my ex-partners died of AIDS. Damien evidently returned to his family in Victoria, and died in 1991. I found out quite some time later, when running into a mutual acquaintance in the Oxford Hotel one might, just as I was about to attend a DMC dinner. Frank…my first Sydney partner, if I don’t count the psycho who dragged me back to Sydney from a happy Melbourne life…I ran into when leaving my hairdressers (Kulture In Hair) in Goulburn St one day in 1994.I hardly recognised the figure slowly shuffling up the street. He died a short time later.

Personally, I had a fleeting relationship with Anthony. My sex lifestyle was pleasantly fulfilled with three fuck-buddies. Paul I met in the bottom bar of the Midnight Shift in the very late 80s and would have had a serious relationship with him if he wasn’t already married to his job. Graeme I met when he and his partner Peter took me home…after picking me up in the Midnight Shift…for a threesome. The next morning I found myself in the middle of a domestic abuse (verbal) situation. It was like I wasn’t even there. Graeme drove me home, and when I asked him up for a coffee, he told me Peter would have him on the clock for his return. Shortly after, they thankfully split up, and Graeme and and I saw each other regularly for a couple of years. Gregg I met at the Oxford late one night. He wore way too much after-shave, and he had a wife and two daughters in Forbes. One of those marry-to-cover-up-being-gay situations. He came to Sydney every month to tutor on computers at Sydney Uni. We saw each other very regularly for about 2 years…until I started to get serious with him.

I quit my managerial job at Numbers Bookshop, and moved to a managerial position with Liquorland in 1990, whose store was situated under Numbers. This job was to be my last for quite some time. Not only was I out as a gay man, but also out as a HIV+ man. To my thinking, a gay man running a business on the gay strip was a no-brainer. Obviously I had the contacts in the community to bring in business…and I did. Under my management, the store shot up the rankings from 43 to 18. However, not everyone was happy with my presence! More on this shortly.

Healthwise, in 1992 I started seeing Dr. Marilyn McMurchie as my HIV specialist, and she started monitoring my CD4 and CD8 counts, and percentages. At that time, my CD4 count was <350 My greatest fears were realised…I was diagnosed as stage 3 HIV infection, and started on AZT (my thoughts on this have already been mentioned.There was a slow decline in my CD4 counts once I started on it. Having been taken off AZT briefly, I was asked to go on a trial using another monotherapy drug called 3TC (lamivudine). A short way into the trial, it was found that nearly all participants had haematological toxicity and become anaemic, so the trial was stopped. I also went on the p24-VLP (Very Light Protein) trial around this time. It was an injectable, and the theory was that by stimulating the p24 antigen, it may stop the decline to AIDS. It did nothing!

It was also the year I had viral pneumonia in my upper right lung. It was pretty serious, and something I may have shaken off more quickly if I wasn’t a chain smoker. It pretty well crippled me for a couple of weeks, and I pretty well took up residence on the lounge, in front of the tv. Recovery was very slow, and my holiday pay in advance saw me through.

In 1993, I went onto DDI (didanosine). I was reluctant to take ddC due to side effects. DDI was vile. The huge chalky tablets (jokingly called horse tablets) had to be ground down to a powder in a mortar & pestle, then you mixed them into whatever liquid made them palatable…in my case, Nestles chocolate Nesquik. Even then, you had to hold your nose when downing it! It was a nightmare to prepare in the workplace…which was only one of several problems I encountered at Liquorland.

When I started there in late 1990. The area manager was a wonderful man, who believed in inclusion and treated all the staff with respect. He left in late 1991, and replaced by Rowan, pretty well his exact opposite. Not only homophobic, but as it turned out…HIVphobic as well. For the next 18 months I was subjected to relentless bullying, by an expert. Always out of earshot of staff, the smallest thing was picked on. With no witnesses, so a his-word-against-mine situation, knowing from experience that head office would take his side. Things came to a head in late 1993 when he installed an assistant manager at the same pay grade as me. With me working 50-60 hour weeks, smoking and drinking heavily, and with a bad diet…I’d had enough. My health was already in decline, and I was losing weight. I arranged a meeting with Rowan to request that I step back to a position of assistant manager to reduce my work load. At the time of the very uncomfortable meeting, he said to my face…”You should consider quitting. You’ll be dead in a couple of years anyway!”. As it turned out, an assistant manager position opened up at the Surry Hills branch. I then went on 2 weeks vacation. Rowan would not confirm the transfer despite a number of calls. A day before I was due to return to work, he confirmed the transfer…he had been hoping I’d quit in the interim. As an act of planned revenge, I turned up at the Surry Hills store…and handed in my 2 weeks notice. Rowan said not one word to me over that period…not even a farewell!

I had started to indulge in my passion for dance music by becoming a resident DJ at The Oxford Hotel in 1990. I DJd there until 1996, and also at the Stronghold Bar (in the basement of the Clock Hotel in Surry Hills) from 1990-1994. This proved to be a handy source of additional income as time went on.

I met John at The Oxford one night just before quitting Liquorland. A gentle, artistic man (his mother thought I was too old for him) we were together for about 8 months. With my health slowly declining, I pushed him away. I didn’t want him (he was HIV-) to have to nurse me through, what I saw at that time, the inevitable end.

In 1993, Carol Ann King started the Luncheon Club and Larder, providing cheap meals and grocery items to HIV+ boys on pensions. Though never attending the club myself, I did become a disability pensioner that same year. Fred Oberg at ACON was instrumental in getting me onto the pension, and a SAS (Special Assistance Subsidy) with the Department of Housing, who paid a percentage of my private rental in The. Dorchester, in Darlinghurst.

At the same time, the Dental Hospital in Chalmers St, Surry Hills started providing free dental care to those with HIV (a trial). Having ongoing bouts of thrush as a result of a declining immune system, I attended there and had a number of teeth removed that were so loose I could have pulled them out. They also devised a small denture to fill a gap at the front lower jaw. I could smile again without covering my mouth to hide the gap.

Prophylaxis was another term we came to grips with. In 1992 I started on Bactrim for my reoccurring bouts of thrush, and Fluconazole to ensure I didn’t get PCP.

I had my 40th birthday 1n 1994. I considered myself very lucky to have reached this milestone, and threw a big bash at the Stronghold bar, where I was a DJ. Tim Vincent, a close friend and owner opened the bar early in the afternoon, put on a long happy hour, and was an open house until the bars usual opening hour. It was quite a crowd, and quite an afternoon.

By May that year my CD4 count was 160, and I was back on AZT! At this stage I estimated I had maybe 2 years left…if I was lucky, or a miracle happened. On the former, I was accurate, little knowing the latter would happen, and a miracle did happen!

A 40 Year Journey Into (And Out Of) Fear Part 3

February 1, 2025Article, Autobiography, Gay Interest, Health Information, History, HIV/AIDSAIDS, HIV, HIV history, HIV pandemic, HIV/AIDS, long-term survivaltimalderman

We create our own memorials for a growing list of names of friends, acquaitenances, partners, and family members swept away in this new tide, a tide of grief. I attended my first AIDS Candlelight Rally and Vigil…it was the first held… in October 1985. My friend Dietmar Hollman was a reporter for 2SER Gaywaves, and reported from the rally and AIDS Candlelight Vigil,,organised by Sydney City councillors Brian McGahen (died 1990, using voluntary euthanasia) and Craig Johnston. The recording, which can be found on the Australian Film & Sound Archive, includes discussion of the 1985 Public Health Proclaimed Diseases Amendment Act, speeches from Brian McGahen, Craig Johnston, Dorothy McRae-McMahon (Dean of the Pitt Street Uniting Church), Dennis Scott, a performance from Judy Glen and vox pops from the crowd, including Robert French, and Mother Inferior (Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence). The candlelight walk down Oxford Street started in Green Park, had the vigil in Hyde Park…there weren’t many names to read out at that stage, but as the years rolled by the list got longer and longer…and finished with a rally at Parliament house in Castlereagh Street. Along the way, there was a brief halt to remember Michael Stevens, a young gay man who had been bashed to death two months earlier, caught up in the tide of gay hate and hysteria brought about by media reports on the HIV/AIDS pandemic at that time. The whole event was solemn, and tearful.

The other equally emotive memorial was the AIDS quilt. The panels were created as part of the Australian AIDS Memorial Quilt Project, which was founded in September 1988 by Andrew Carter OAM (the brother of Don Carter, known as Dodge Traffic) and Richard Johnson in Sydney. It was formally launched on World AIDS Day, 1 December 1988 by Ms Ita Buttrose. Quilt unfolding started in 1988 with 35 panels, now 122 quilt blocks with 8 panels per block. This was the most powerful of the AIDS memorials, due to its panels being designed and partially put together by friends and family of the deceased. Wandering around the blocks of panels…with conveniently placed boxes of much needed tissues…and hearing the names being read out was a truly moving experience, and no one left with dry eyes, and feeling emotionally drained. Myself and a group of friends assisted with the beautiful, quiet unfolding of the panels at both the Commonwealth Pavilion (in the old Sydney Showgrounds) and the Conference Centre in Darling Harbour. I was also a names reader, and despite the solemnity of the occasion, there was the occasional lapse

Above photo…Peter McCarthy, Peter Gilmore (Deceased), Bevan (Deceased),,Steve Thompson and myself at an AIDS Quilt unfolding (we were in folders) at the Government Pavilion (Sydney Showgrounds ) around 1988/89. The tee-shirts bear the Quilts Insignia, and “Remember Their Names”

into humour when the names of the Sisters if Perpetual Indulgence were read out. It was hard to keep a straight face. It is the one singular AIDS ritual that I miss, and feel that the panels are wasted hanging on a museum wall.

In August 1987, I was approached by The Bulletin to gather some HIV+ friends together for an interview (unfortunately I can’t remember the reporters name). The interview was held in The Oxford Hotel. I still have a copy of it, and when I read it now, I cringe. There was so much naivety back then, as we were still “filling in the gaps” in our knowledge base, so to speak. There was a mixture of positive and negative attitudes about how we rated our chances of survival, but the general feeling amongst all interviewees 3as…we will be killed by it, so let’s party while we can!

Then, despite all this solemnity going on around us, we still managed a bit of dark humour with the publication of “The Daily Plague”. This was a fanzine that had no regular publication dates…it just seemed to pop up out of nowhere. It’s tongue-in-cheek satirical approach to the AIDS pandemic came at a time when it was needed. I also can’t overlook the huge role played by the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence. Despite what seemed to be a bit of flippancy, both with their over-the-top names, and the irreligious n and interpretation of Catholic ritual, they were in fact outspoken radicals, and would be seen at most rallies and vigils. I always have great admiration for those who don’t take themselves too seriously.

Much to my amazement, by this stage I was still very healthy. By 1987 I was already four years into the fray, with no sign of illness, though my CD4 counts had slowly started dropping This was the year that the controversial…most toxic and most expensive ever… drug Retrovir (AZT, Zidovudine) was introduced. A failed cancer drug, it was thought that it might “keep the wolf from the door” with HIV huts…yeah, right! Despite several flawed trials, and some evidence to show that it pretty well did nothing, they fostered it onto us.,I wanted nothing to do with it, due to the bad press around its side effects, and the results from the Concorde trial in 1991.. Patients on zidovudine should be monitored closely for nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, myalgias, insomnia, bone marrow suppression, peripheral myopathy, lactic acidosis, elevated liver enzymes, and hepatotoxicity…oh…and suppression of their immune systems! I fought my doctor on this one. Some patients flatly refused to go on it. They were the lucky ones. My doctor won that battle…and I reluctantly started on it, with massive dosing. I, and many others, paid the price for that decision.

Shortly after my return to Sydney from Melbourne in mid 1082, I met my first partner, Frank. We had an apartment over;poking the harbour in Neutral Bay. We split up around the time I seroconverted, and left my retail job in the city to take up the then far more lucrative jobs…we were paid huge amounts of money under the counter back then…as a bar useful in the Midnight Shift, and doing the graveyard shift in Numbers Bookstore. It 3as an amicable breakup and we remained flat mates. Frank also seroconverted around this time, though we both had a lot of casual sex back then, so it was impossible to pinpoint any one person for causing it. Frank died in the early 90s. While working at Numbers, I met my second partner, Damien. At that time he worked at “Dudes”, a male brothel in Goulburn Street (which later became Kulture In Hair). Damien also worked at the Den Club in Oxford Street. He was also HIV+, and died in October 1991. At the time I was officially flagged as HIV+ in 1985, my partner was Tony. He was HIV-, and the two differing status put what was already a shaky relationship on a downward spiral. We split shortly after, though have remained friends…and occasional housemates…through to the present day. Tony is still HIV-.

As we entered the 90s, things were about to come yo a head.

A 40 Year Journey Into (And Out Of) Fear Part 2

November 5, 2024Article, Autobiography, Gay Interest, History, HIV/AIDSAIDS, gay History, HIV, HIV history, HIV/AIDS, long term survivortimalderman

New words were added to our vocabulary, a series of acronyms that would imprint themselves forever into our memories…PCP (Pneumocystis pneumonia); KS (Kaposi sarcoma); CMV (Cytomegalovirus…one I’m intimately familiar with))… MAC (Mycobacterium avium complex); candidiasis (Thrush), toxoplasmosis, to name a few. When we asked how people were, we were really asking what did they have…and what was the prognosis! Meanwhile, the Australian nightmare was well and truly hitting home.

In 1986, my first close friend, Andrew Todd, died. At that time there was no dedicated AIDS ward, and Andrew was shifted between wards as beds were needed for other cases. On Christmas Day, we visited him in what was called St Christopher’s ward (due to patients travelling into and out of it), in Sydney’s St Vincent’s emergency department. He was very thin, and frail, but we had brought gifts for him, including sheet sets, and books. We were going to a friends place in Glebe for Christmas lunch. When the time came to leave, Andrew said to us, something that was quite upsetting for us, I have to say, that he ‘wouldn’t die that day, and ruin everyone’s Christmas lunch’. It unintentionally did, as we waited all day on edge, for a phone call. True to his word, he didn’t pass away on Christmas Day. He died on Boxing Day. It was my unpleasant duty to ring everyone at a party, and inform them. Party pooper status acknowledged!

His funeral at Eastern Suburbs Crematorium, a place we were to visit on far too many occasions, was several days later. His father had travelled from South Australia to oversee it. Myself and Sandro, both close friends of Andrew’s, ended up being the middle men between those of us who wanted a funeral that was honest and respectful, and the leather community who wanted what we considered an over-the-top leather funeral. We won that one.

Towards the end of the crematorium service, as the curtains were closing over the coffin, every door in the chapel suddenly, and very loudly, slammed close. The silence after was eerie. We could say it was just the wind, but one was left wondering. Andrew got the last laugh anyway. I had lent him many novels during his hospital stays, and in his will he bequeathed them all back to me.

Sex became a conundrum. As soon as it was found that HIV was sexually transmitted, the dynamics of sex changed, at least temporarily. Some guys went celibate. Others cut out anal sex altogether. Others went to odd extremes, like standing well apart and just mutually masturbating. For a culture that was heavily geared towards sex, it was a real blow. The dynamics of “picking up” changed significantly. Condoms became the new order of the day, and condom and lube “safe sex” packs were everywhere, from sex venues to pubs and nightclubs.

ACON created the Safe Sex Sluts, who at least put a bit of fun into what was now a serious subject. This, over time, created some reverse, and some dark situations. On the dark side, terms like “bug chasing” came into being. This phrase described those who deliberately sought out HIV+ guys and indulged in unsafe sex on the purely weird chance that they would get infected. “Breed me” could often be seen on sex sites, placed there by guys who wanted to become infected. It was strange times.

Then there were guys like me who just hated sex with condoms. They ruined spontaneity, and were just passion killers. Naturally, this meant we were seeking out guys to have unsafe sex. To this end, I restricted my sex life to sex with HIV+ guys only. It was politely referred to as “negotiated unsafe sex”. I could never have lived with myself if I knowingly passed on HIV to another guy, but the thinking was that it was impossible to infect a guy already infected. Talk of the risk of creating a HIV mutated “super bug” came to nothing.

Of course, this meant constantly outing yourself as HIV+, but that has never greatly concerned me, and by this time I was working on the scene so it wasn’t a risky thing to do. For the record, I had a very fulfilling sex life. There was no shortage of HIV+ guys hunting for skin-on-skin sex. Another term spawned by the era of safe sex was “barebacking”…known as normal sex (or condom-less sex) in earlier times. Yet despite all the restrictions, self imposed or otherwise, the sex-on-premises places such as Numbers Bookstore which I managed in Darlinghurst, the Toolshed, the Hellfire Club (later to become the Den Club), Club 80 (initially thought to be Ground Zero for the Sydney epidemic) and various others, and the saunas such as 253, the Roman Baths, KKK and the Steamworks, and other notorious sites such as the beat in the Green Park toilet block, and The Wall on Darlinghurst Road, thrived.

In 1984, Ward 17 South was established at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney which became the dedicated AIDS ward. For the next 10 years it was never empty. Palliative care was through the Sacred Heart Hospice. With the support services in place, pubs and nightclubs started running events to raise money. I think if there was ever a time where I was proud to be a member of the Sydney gay community, it was seeing the huge amounts of money raised at auctions, raffles, and events. Tens of thousands of dollars were raised from the pockets of the grassroots community, and was either spread around the various support groups, or was used to buy things like televisions for Ward 17.

In 1987, Colin Crewes, seeing the need for basic lifestyle support, such as meals, a place to meet and interact with others in the same situation, massages, hair cuts, access to magazines and newspapers, counselling services etc started the “Maitraya Day Centre” in Surry Hills (it later morphed into the “Positive Living Centre”). It had a constant stream of guys socialising there. At Milton’s Point, NorthAIDS (Myrtle Place Centre) offered the same services to those living on Sydney’s northside.

Hospitals such as Westmead, hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons; full contamination clothing for those working with HIV patients, rooms not being cleaned, meals left outside doors. According to the rumourmongers, you get HIV from using plate/cups/cutlery/glasses/toothbrushes/towels/bed linen that any infected person had used. It was anathema despite it being washed, despite all information stating that you could not contract HIV through this means. Even the poor old mosquito copped a hiding as a means of contamination. An advertising campaign in 1987 featuring the Grim Reaper bowling down people indiscriminately, created an apocalyptic vision of HIV that scared the life out of everyone. It was quickly withdrawn three weeks into its six week run.

By this stage, my two years prognosis had become four years…became six…became eight. That was great for me, but not for so many others. The obituary columns in the gay rags went from scattered memoriums to pages as the death toll mounted. My life became a haze of alcohol and cigarettes, not shared alone. Our coping mechanisms were being stretched to their limit. Funerals were a daily occurrence, as were wakes. I attended as many as I could, but I just got to a stage where I was burnt out by the continuing relentless onslaught, and stopped going.

In the 80’s, I held a lot of parties with anywhere from 40-60 friends attending. By 1996, if I had tried to hold a party I would have been lucky to have dug up 10 friends to attend. In the blink of an eye, my social circle was effectively wiped off the face of the earth. In 1997, having finally recovered from AIDS, and thinking it was time to reconnect to the community, I went out one Saturday night to The Beauchamp. For the first time in my life on the gay scene, in a crowded pub, I stood in a bar and could see NOBODY I knew. It was an incredibly lonely sensation.

Tim Alderman 2024

Above photo…Peter McCarthy, Peter Gilmore (Deceased), Bevan (Deceased),,Steve Thompson and myself at an AIDS Quilt unfolding (we were unfolders) at the RHI Pavilion (Sydney Showgrounds ) around 1992. The tee-shirts bear the Quilts Insignia, and “Remember Their Names”