Hold Tight Gently by Martin Duberman Page B

and the Annals of Internal Medicine .
    Sonnabend felt certain that it was going to take years to sort out the complex symptomologies and causative factors. He also felt early on that some people might have a certain degree of genetic protection against immunological assaults. One early finding that suggested genetic variables was that those gay men with tissue type HLA-DR3 were more prone to get Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), and those with tissue type HLA-DR5 were more likely to develop KS. Given all the variables, it seemed to follow that there would never be one formula, one explanation, for charting the progression of the mysterious new disease. Sonnabend also insisted early on—and this gave Mike a great deal of hope—that a decline in the immune system’s T4 cells was not tantamount to an inexorable death sentence (though it would be a number of years before the importance of a high level of T8 suppressor cells would be recognized as essential to warding off infections).
    One day when Mike was in Sonnabend’s office, legs in the stirrups so Joe could check for anal warts, his assistant came in to tell him that he had a call from a scientist in Japan. Mike was impressed and dutifully waited for Joe to come back. And waited. He was used to Joe’s delays but not when his legs were up in the air. Finally pulling on his pants, Mike started to wander around the office. When he bent over thetypewriter, he saw the final page of an article in progress that Joe had been working on—a “multifactorial model” to explain the bizarre and mounting number of gay men who were falling ill. At least two other infectious disease researchers were tentatively suggesting that a bombardment of sexually transmitted infections might be responsible for the drastic weakening of the body’s immunodefensive capabilities. 3
    Mike sat down and read the entire article. As he later wrote, with characteristic hyperbole, “it changed my life.” When Joe finally returned, outspoken Mike told him straight out that he had to publish the article in the gay press, had to get it out quickly so that people could be warned; it was “a moral imperative.” Joe halfheartedly protested that it was a highly technical piece, and besides, he had no journalistic contacts. Mike volunteered to write up the material in everyday language and also to get it into the New York Native . Ethically, he insisted, it was essential to reach people with the double message: if you stop having multiple sexual encounters and change your behavior, you’ll stop getting STDs—and you’ll save your life. Joe thought for a second, then said, “I have another patient who feels the same way you do. Maybe if the two of you meet, you can do something.” It was August 1982.
    The “other patient” was Richard (“Rich”) Berkowitz. Born the same year as Callen, he’d grown up in a working-class Jewish family in New Jersey and had come out sexually in his early teens. Hard up for money, and blessed with Italianate good looks that fueled his self-confidence, Rich had started to hustle while still in college at Rutgers. Though he came on as “know-it-all arrogant,” he was well aware that his strutting, “I’m in charge” machismo covered over the fear of being called a “faggot” even as it served as a magnet for the increasing numbers of paying customers who came to him for S/M sex. 4
    Berkowitz’s bank account was growing nicely and his apartment was filling up with the harnesses, cock rings, studded belts, and boots that his adoring customers lavished on him. He was good at what he did, and he understood “why it was difficult for men to reveal the human desire to relinquish control in sex because it transgressed our culture’s definition of what it meant to be a man in much the same way that homosexuality did.” Rich was rarely bored, rarely broke, and rarely at a loss to come up with an erotic fantasy that would satisfy his multiplying list of loyal,