WHILE I WAS AWAY…

Since my last post in August 2010, my mother’s health declined.  Following minor surgery after she was filmed for SEX POSITIVE, my mother wasn’t getting the care she needed; left bed-ridden, health complications mounted.  While explaining the situation to my longtime friend and physician, Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, I expressed my growing suspicion that some elderly Americans are more likely to die from neglect than old age.  Once Joe confirmed my fear, I knew I couldn’t let that happen to my mother.

What I didn’t know was how I could leave my New York City apartment after 32 years and move back to a place in New Jersey that I consider hell, but others call the suburbs. Manhattan has always been my bohemian Oz and Eros, the only place on the planet I can call home.

I kept visiting my mother more often, until I found her laying helpless in her waste for 24 hours.  If that wasn’t painful enough, she didn’t know how to ask me for the help she needed.  For a woman who spent decades washing, cooking and cleaning up after a husband and three sons to be discarded like that, felt so unjust and infuriating.  I stepped outside onto the patio to figure out what to do.

*

My mother describes her life as “going from parents who adored her to a husband that cherished her.”

My parent’s marriage was an affection-filled love story until 1975, when my father died unexpectedly at 54 and left my mother with no way to meet the mortgage payments to hold onto their house.  Everyone assumed my mother would fall apart, but as the burgeoning women’s movement suggested, it’s all too easy to underestimate a woman.

My mother took in boarders and baby-sat for $2.00 an hour.  She ate whatever was cheap, like the ends of deli meats.  She used fans instead of air-conditioning and slept in sweaters during winter to keep utility bills down.  She returned to college to be a substitute teacher but was asked to do home instruction after demonstrating a gift for the students no one wanted: kids with special needs or terminal illness, pregnant teenage girls, and boys suspended for fighting.  “They didn’t just need a teacher,” she said. “They needed another mother.”

When the school administration gave her an award, she was so proud, until none of her family or friends attended the ceremony.  She never took a vacation and she didn’t stop working until she was 76.  She’d paid off the house years before but wanted to be sure that she’d saved enough so that she’d never have to go to a nursing home and be “surrounded by strangers.”   To her, that’s not living — that’s what family is for.

*

Recalling my mother’s history gave me my answer.

There are things you think you can never do until love makes the impossible the imperative.  I had no idea how to confront the task at hand, and as a gay man who never had sex with a woman, how would I know how to wash what I never encountered in life?  But the determination I could see on my mother’s face, which I recognized in myself, compelled me to figure out what to do step by step on my own.

When I’d  finished bathing and changing her, we exchanged a mutual look of shock and awe: Neither of us could believe what I’d just done, but an overwhelming sense of accomplishment left me feeling like I was glowing inside.   As I hugged her, my mother said, “Richie…you’re all I got.”

It was a moving moment, but I knew it wouldn’t linger: My mother disdains sentimentality.  Suddenly, with a whimsical, Yiddish inflection, she declared, “Now I know why God gave me a gay son!”

I never thought I’d live to see the day when that came out of her mouth.

My mother never liked my being gay and never got tired of reminding me:  “You ask me who’s to judge?  Me.  I judge.  I’m the judge.”

I rarely argued back: She’d never understand that, for me, being gay was the best part of being alive.  Raising me to have self-esteem and to question everything helped me to live life on my own terms, even if she didn’t like where it led me.  “I have nothing against gay men,” she often said, ” it’s just that the thought of two men together makes me want to brechhh.” (That’s Yiddish for puke.)

Maybe this was our karma: If my life made her nauseous for many years, so did the prospect of moving home to take care of her like this.  But as I sat there with my arm around her, I realized the last time anyone had given her a hug, a human touch or any physical affection was the last time I had.  It was time to go back home.

For 8 months, it’s been a grueling, night and day job taking care of her and the incessant, torturous paper work that health care monopolies in America inflict on the sick. I knew that from AIDS; I’d just spent a soul-sucking year battling my insurance carrier for “losing” my checks in their system, which left me uninsured.  My blood counts fell to dangerous levels when I finally learned that I had to register an official complaint with a state commissioner to stop them.  Now, I’m dueling for two –  navigating a never-ending, contemptuous array of bureaucratic hoops to jump through to get my mother’s treatments and doctors’ house calls covered.  Then, every 3 months, I have to cash in more of her “in case of emergency” bonds that she’s held on to all her life to pay outrageous premiums to a company whose bottom line prefers her dead.

I have some hope because President Obama is trying to make things better, but without more people agitating and demanding single payer health insurance,  powerful corporate forces will find ways to keep increasing their profits and people’s suffering along with it.  They get away with it because many Americans don’t see how disposable they are until they’re literally fighting for their lives.  If that sounds like hyperbole, have a hoop:  As of February, Medicare now requires 3 to 5 months of detailed progress reports on no less than 3 specific bedsores (size, texture, location) written by a doctor in their system before they will consider whether or not to cover the cost of an air-alternating mattress to prevent these life-threatening infections.  It’s health care designed to wear you down, break your spirit or rid your annoying ass by red-tape induced preventable death.

My mother’s fragile health now rests in my hands.  That’s an awesome responsibility.  It’s been hard to block out time for writing when every month brings another health crisis that becomes another task for me to manage and another reason to re-enact Shirley Maclaine’s “Give my daughter the shot!” scene from “Terms of Endearment.”  We’ve been on a waiting list with a social service agency to get more help at home, but when I inquired what was taking so long, I learned that someone has to die to free up an aide.  People like my mother who love this county, who worked hard and paid taxes all their lives, surely deserve better than this.

*

I wrote this because I didn’t know how else to answer all the people who’ve been complaining that I’m taking so long to respond to their emails, that I’m never on Facebook, that I let my website go.

I’ve realized I have to hire help, which will free up some time for me.  In the meantime, I’ve started working with Dr. Sonnabend to digitize my video archives of the history of the earliest grassroots responses to AIDS and safe sex so that I can post them here.

Last week on a Logo segment of “1 Girl, 5 Gays”, the men were asked if they used condoms for oral sex.  They all said they didn’t but had no idea why they felt they were being safe.  For people confronted with questions like that, history has the answers — but it’s not in the history we’ve been fed, it’s in the history that’s been censored.  I hope this website will be that kind of resource.

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My ‘SEX POSITIVE” JOURNEY BEGINS

August 26, 2010

I had no idea what to expect on that first day in April 2007 when I sat down to be filmed and interviewed for Daryl Wein’s documentary, SEX POSITIVE.  It took a bungee-jumping leap of faith to let a heterosexual guy half my age depict my hyper-sexual journey as a gay man in the 1970s, in order to explain how that led me to collaborate on the invention of safe sex (for AIDS) and why it became my life’s crusade.  Simply put, I believe that for those at risk, it’s never too late for safe sex—especially for those of us with HIV.  It’s a concept that baffles most sexually active gay men I’ve known, but I believe it’s one crucial reason why I remain in good health 25 years after testing HIV positive.

A lot of people crave the spotlight, but it always revolted me.  Luckily, Daryl, then age 24, was smart, tenacious and thrilled about being the one to tell his generation the story of how safe sex began.  For me, the chance of reaching young gay men and sexually active women of Daryl’s generation was exactly what I’d been trying—and mostly failing—to do with my writing for over 20 years.  And so, I leaped. As anyone close to me can attest, I’ve been willing to do almost anything to get safe sex education right because, for so long, I believe we’ve been getting it wrong.

Ever since Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, Michael Callen and I published How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach, in May 1893, safe sex education in America has been under assault—mainly from the right wing—but also from gay-run AIDS organizations for whom crafting safe sex messages was often about what they should say (to maximize funding) or could say (what will straight people think?) instead of what they had to say to those whose lives were most at risk.  That began years of damaging efforts by activists to focus on de-gaying AIDS in America when we should have stayed focused on who always was, who always has been, and who still is being hit the hardest by HIV: sexually active gay men who engage in receptive anal sex with partners whose HIV status is unknown. 

I’m surprised to still hear activists proclaiming that viruses don’t discriminate, meaning everyone is at risk for AIDS.  Even the CDC is finally admitting what their evidence has always shown: that the greatest risk for new HIV infections—by far—is and always was, men who have sex with men. Contrary to popular opinion, this not the failure of men who have sex with men–this is the failure of prevention education.

If there was hope for safe sex, it would have to come from people who were much more comfortable celebrating the joys of receptive sex, particularly receptive anal sex than those who took charge of “educating” them.  The failure to do that through targeted, celebratory safe sex campaigns over the past 27 years has, in fact, perpetuated the very problem activists and educators have been trying to solve.  Whatever hope there was for safe sex practices would have to come from the common sense of ordinary, everyday people.   The most thrilling discovery of my SEX POSITIVE journey was that this was exactly what I found.

This journal will cover many different issues, including two new threats to safe sex.  Along the way, I want to pass on what  I learned from audience reactions and hundreds of individuals who confided in me what it’s been like for them to navigate safe sex amid a cacophony of dueling, contradictory advice.  I’ve learned so much from young people struggling to keep sex safe, many of whom are a testament the “do-it-yourself” approach and work that I did with Dr. Sonnabend and Michael Callen.  When a crisis comes along, sometimes the best response is to figure out what to do on your own instead of relying on others to do it or explain it for you.

Spanish Version below/En Espanol:

Mi Viaje de “Sexo Positivo” Comienza

26 de agosto 2010

No tenía idea de qué esperar aquel primer día en abril de 2007 cuando me senté para ser filmado y entrevistado por el documentalista de SEXO POSITIVO (SEX POSITIVE)  Daryl Wein.

Tomó un salto de fe en bungee-jumping dejar a un tipo heterosexual de la mitad de mi edad representar mi viaje híper-sexual como un hombre gay en los 70’s, para explicar cómo eso me llevó a colaborar en la invención del sexo seguro (en el SIDA) y por qué se convirtió en la cruzada de mi vida.

En pocas palabras, creo que para aquellos en riesgo, nunca es demasiado tarde para el sexo seguro – especialmente para aquellos de nosotros con VIH. Es un concepto que desconcierta a  los hombres gays más sexualmente activos que he conocido pero creo que es una razón crucial por la que he permanecido con buena salud después de 25 años de haber sido diagnosticado VIH positivo.

Muchas personas deseaban llamar la atención y siempre me había sublevado. Por suerte, Daryl, en ese entonces de 24 años, era inteligente, tenaz y estaba emocionado por ser quien contara a su generación la historia de cómo comenzó el sexo seguro. Para mi, la posibilidad de llegar a los jóvenes gays y las mujeres sexualmente activas de la generación de Daryl era exactamente lo que había estado intentando – mayormente fallando – con mi escritura por más de 20 años. Y así, se dio el vuelco. Como cualquiera cercano a mi puede atestiguar, he estado tratando de hacer  todo lo posible para conseguir una educación correcta sobre sexo seguro ya que creo que, por mucho tiempo, la hemos estado recibiendo mal.

Desde que el Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, Michael Callen y yo publicamos Cómo Tener Sexo en una Epidemia: Una Aproximación (How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach), en mayo de 1983, la educación sobre sexo seguro ha sido objeto de asalto. Principalmente desde la extrema derecha pero también, desde las organizaciones gays que trabajan con el SIDA para las cuales la elaboración de mensajes sobre sexo seguro tenían que ver, a menudo, con qué debían decir (en orden de recaudar más fondos para financiación) o correspondía decir  (por lo que pudieran llegar a pensar los heterosexuales) en lugar de ser lo que realmente tenían que decirles a aquellos cuyas vidas estaban en riesgo. Esos primeros años de terribles esfuerzos de los activistas en focalizarse en sacar lo gay del SIDA en Estados Unidos cuando deberíamos haber estado focalizados en  lo que siempre ha sido más golpeado por el VIH y sigue siéndolo, la comunidad gay sexualmente activa que recibe sexo anal de compañeros cuyo estado de VIH es desconocido.

Estoy sorprendido de seguir escuchando analistas que  proclaman que los virus no discriminan, es decir, que todo el mundo está en riesgo de contraer SIDA. Incluso el CDC está admitiendo finalmente lo que su evidencia siempre mostró: que el mayor riesgo para nuevas infecciones por VIH es – por lejos – y siempre ha sido, hombres que tienen sexo con hombres. Contraria a la opinión popular, este no es un fracaso para los hombres que tienen sexo con otros hombres, este es un fracaso para la educación preventiva.

Si hay esperanza para el sexo seguro debería venir de la gente que se ha sentido más cómoda celebrando los placeres del sexo receptivo, del sexo anal receptivo particularmente, más que de aquellos que se han encargado de “educarlos”.  El hecho de no haber apuntado a campañas dirigidas de celebración de sexo seguro en los últimos 27 años ha, de hecho, perpetuado el gran problema que activistas y educadores han estado tratando de resolver. Cualquiera esperanza que haya para el sexo seguro debería venir del sentido común de la gente corriente. El descubrimiento más emocionante de mi viaje de SEXO SEGURO es esto, lo que he encontrado exactamente.

Este diario comprenderá muchos problemas diferentes incluyendo dos nuevas amenazas para el sexo seguro. A lo largo del camino quiero transmitir lo que he aprendido de las reacciones del público y cientos de personas que confiaron en mi lo que ha sido para ellos navegar dentro del sexo seguro en medio de una cacofonía de duelos y consejos contradictorios. He aprendido tanto de la gente joven  luchando para mantener relaciones sexuales seguras, muchos de los cuales son un testimonio del “hazlo tu mismo” al que apuntábamos y trabajábamos con el Dr. Michael Callen y Sonnabend. Cuando una crisis se presenta, a veces la mejor respuesta es tratar de resolverlo por tu cuenta en lugar de relegar en otros esa responsabilidad y la de explicarlo para ti.

What was New York City like during the scandalous, hedonist, gay 1970s? 

In 1973, at age 17, I entered Rutgers University and became the Film Editor for the student newspaper (Targum), which sponsored my trips to NYC to cover the burgeoning LGBT arts.  I remember the excitement of seeing John Waters’ films at midnight shows at the Waverly Theater (Now IFC) in Greenwich Village where complete strangers passed joints to each other in the dark—without any fear of arrest, leaving notes for Bette Midler on her stoop on Barrow Street in an attempt to interview her, and seeing Divine live on stage at the Truck and Warehouse Theater.  I remember a time of ‘live and let live’, when sexual freedom ruled the day and fueled the arts.  To begin, I’m posting some of my writing which, for me, is how it all began.

Recently, while lamenting the loss of my closest gay male friends and lovers to a longtime friend, she asked me to re-think my assumption that if my late friends had survived, that I would still be close to them.  Don’t people change over time?  Well yes, we all do, and it was a painful thought to ponder.  Was I stuck in a past of what might have been?

But then it struck me:  This friend and I have been as close as most brothers and sisters I know since we met at my first job in NYC in 1978.  At that same job, I met another one of my lifelong sisters, Maria, with whom I’ve only grown closer to over the past 32 years.  Then there’s my pro-sex feminist guru and close lesbian friend Abby, who lives a few blocks from me.  We met in 1983, and see each other all the time. Then there’s Babs, the feminist “fag hag” I wrote about in Stayin’ Alive (p. 22-23) who helped me come out in 1974. We talk all the time.  There’s also my close friend Norma who appears in SEX POSITIVE, and my friend Ronni from Rutgers in the 1970s who’s always there when I need her.   And Kim, my neighbor since the 90s who lives downstairs; we’re so close people in our neighborhood think we’re married!

And so what I’ve concluded, is that yes, I have a history of loyal, long-term friendships that for me expand my definition of family, and there’s no reason for me to assume that if I had not lost my gay friends and lovers to AIDS, that my life would be even more fuller than it is.

And so, in this section, I want to also honor my fallen friends who made coming out in the 1970s the joy that it was.  I know a lot of gay men whose circle of gay male friends were decimated by AIDS; and so, in addition to recapturing what was good and revolutionary and exhilarating about those disco days of  feminist revolt, “Black is Beautiful” LGBT liberation and sexual exuberance, I also want to remember the gay men I lost and the love they left behind.

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My review/mini–interview of Holly Woodlawn’s nightclub act, 1975.

Bette Midler’s reply to my interview request. A frenemy stole my original copy.

My interview with Village Voice columnist, Arthur Bell, and Vito Russo, author of The Celluloid Closet, April 1976.

“Simply Divine,” Off-Broadway review of Women Behind Bars, December, 1976.

“What This Country Needs is a Good Gay Hero,” Gay News (Philadelphia), Cleveland Gay News, Lib Magazine (Long Island, NY), 1977.

“Cruising: Or How I Spent my Summer Vacation,” a report on the volatile protests against William Friedkin’s movie Cruising, The Independent, October 1979.

“Peer Panel Gagged at WNET,” a report on attempts to censor a lesbian comedy short film at WNET, The Independent, December, 1979.

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“WE KNOW WHO WE ARE: Two Gay Men Declare War on Promiscuity,” co-authored with Michael Callen (and Richard Dworkin), New York Native, November 8—21, 1982.  It was also published by: Mom…Guess What? (Sacramento, Ca) February 1983, issues#51–#52, and the Gay Press Association Wire Service.

“Christopher Street People: Dr. Joseph Sonnabend,” Christopher Street. Issue #68, December, 1982.

“A Warning to Gay Men with AIDS,” Dr. Sonnabend, Michael Callen and I published this piece as a paid-for advertisement after it was rejected as too “controversial” by the New York Native [ Nov. 22 - Dec. 5, 1982.]  It obviously touched a chord: San Francisco’s Bay Area Reporter and Health & Pleasure Times reprinted it for free.

“Offense and Defense,” My frantic “Letter to the Editor” in response to the first AIDS cover story in the Village Voice, December, 1982.

“When the Epidemic Hits Home: A Couple of Gay Guys Sitting Around Talking about AIDS,” New York Native, December 20, 1982—January 2, 1983.

Unpublished response to multiple magazine/ newspaper articles attacking what Callen and I wrote in “We Know Who We Are,” 14 pages, February 1983.

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HOW TO HAVE SEX IN AN EPIDEMIC: One Approach (with Michael Callen), our landmark, self-published 40-page booklet, May 1983, written under the scientific supervision of Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, with editorial assistance by Richard Dworkin.

TO READ THE BOOKLET CLICK HERE

“The Denver Principles,” an historic manifesto co-written with 10 other gay men with AIDS (pictured) which established the PWA self-empowerment movement, June 1983.

“Special Report on AIDS: The End of Promiscuity?” Two Gay Men with AIDS Talk About AIDS and Promiscuity,” First Hand, August, 1983.

“My speech to the 1^st National AIDS Vigil, Washington, D.C., published in Gay Community News, Oct 29, 1983; excerpted in Washington Blade, Oct. 14, 1983.

Me & Michael @ 1st Nat. AIDS Vigil, 1983, D.C.

“Staying Alive in the Year of the Plague,” Mandate, November 1983.

“AIDS: One Man’s Odyssey,” The Sourcebook on Lesbian/Gay Health Care, a handbook for the First International Lesbian and Gay Health Conference, June 16-19, 1984.

“How to Have Safe Sex in a Bathhouse.” Florida presentation commissioned by Jack Campbell, CEO & Founder of the Club Bath Chain (CBC), Feb. 1985, with ads & press.

“Safe Sex is a Learned Behavior,” The Weekly News (Miami), February 27, 1985.

OUCH! NYC gay activists were outraged by efforts in 1985 to shut gay bathhouses— but not one would talk to the press about going.  Callen called me and said, “Its either you—or no one.”  I knew the risk but  I was mortified by this “Op-ed” personal attack:

Various obituaries, PWA Coalition Newsline, 1987—1989. (Confidentiality)

“Safe Sex Makes a Comeback,” QW, May 17, 1992.

“Still Kicking After All These Years: Memoirs of a Long-term Survivor,” QW, May 17, 1992.

“Because I am a Woman: Since 1982, AIDS Pioneer Joyce Wallace, MD Has Tended to Sex Workers, S/M Practitioners and New York City’s Unwanted,” QW, September 20, 1992.

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“The Truth Sucks,” A Gay Man Explores the Real Risks for AIDS,” New York Press cover story, June 2-8, 1993.

“Shelves of Life,” New York Press Best of Manhattan Special Issue, Best Gay Bookstore, Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, September 15-21, 1993.

David Dinkins “Letter to the Editor,” New York Newsday, Nov. 1993

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“Truth Be Told: AIDS Activist Michael Callen was a Brutally Honest Prophet,” Boston Phoenix, January 7-13, 1984.

Series of safe sex articles published in SISSY, a South Beach ‘zine for sexually active gay men distributed at bars, discos and sex clubs, 1995.  (X-rated, coming soon.)

“AIDS: Return of the Sex Police,” SPIN magazine, Vol. 11, No. 11, February 1996.

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“The Co-factor Factor: A New Strain of Herpes is being Touted as the Missing Link Between HIV and AIDS,” SPIN magazine, Vol. 11. No. 12, March 1996.

“A Brief History of AIDS Dogma,” unpublished think piece attacking the notion that everyone is at risk for AIDS, August, 1996. (Coming soon.)

“The Birth of Safe Sex,” POZ magazine, No. 18, November 1996.

“The Way We War: A Tale of Two Cities, 11 Sluts and One Trick Question,” POZ magazine, No. 21, February, 1997.

“The Tragic Death of Robert Gould, MD: How a Straight Man who Became a Lesbian Hero was Destroyed by AIDS Activists a Generation Later.  Unpublished, 1997.

“The Great Sex Debate: The Inventors of Safe Sex Weigh In,” co-authored with Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, POZ magazine, No. 25, June 1997.

“The Great Sex Debate: Before the Revolution,” POZ magazine, No. 25, June 1997.

“The Original Safe Sex Slut’s Guide to Healthy Living,” San Francisco Bay Times, June 26, 1997.  Winner: Best Health Article, Vice Versa Award, protested by one of the judges. (This article will be continued in an X-rated section.)

“When do HIV-exposed Individuals Seroconvert?” co-authored with Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, unpublished, June 1997.

“Safer Sex Panic,” co-authored with Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, Sex Panic!, November, 1997.

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Series of six graphic, illustrated safe sex articles published on-line at analorgasm.net (X-rated.)

“Timeline of Dr. Joseph Sonnabend’s Contributions to AIDS” July 1998, POZ magazine.

“Heterosexual Men and AIDS: Uncovering Fraud at the NYC Health Department,” co-authored with Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, solicited/rejected for publication by GEAR magazine, 1999.   Published on Dr. Sonnabend’s POZ blog with an update:

http://blogs.poz.com/joseph/archives/2010/05/sexual_transmission.html

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Stayin’ Alive: The Invention of Safe Sex, Westview Press, June 2003.

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“The Other Epidemic: Gay Suicide Rates are Higher than Most, but Who’s Counting?” New York Press, May 25, 2005.

“Safe Sex: How I Started in the Fight Against AIDS,” First Post (London), October 24, 2008.

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/45724,news-comment,news-politics,how-i-turned-gay-men-on-to-perils-of-promiscuity-richard-berkowitz

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“Foreword: It’s Never Too Late for Safe Sex,” 2^nd edition of Stayin Alive: The Invention of Safe Sex, June 2008. This illustrated paperback version was made possible by a grant from Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS & Tom Viola.

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(Coming soon): “Foreword: Safe Sex Positive,” Alyson Books (3rd) edition of Stayin’ Alive, retitled Sex Positive: A Frontlines Memoir of the Battle Over Safe Sex. December 1, 2009 release date postponed.  I’m currently seeking a publisher.

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“Speech to Rutgers University Gay Fraternity, Delta Lambda Phi, April 20, 2010.”

Daily Targum – Gay advocate promotes safe sex awareness

Gay Press Association Award for Outstanding Achievement in Community Projects, 1983.

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“It was How to Have Sex in an Epidemic…that pioneered the approach to safer sex which we recognize today. By deducing a means by which gay men could continue to ‘have sex in an epidemic’ but take rational precautions to make that sex safer, [Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen, under the scientific supervision of their physician, Dr. Joseph Sonnabend] provided the model for safer sex campaigns ever since.”

— Edward King, author of Safety in Numbers

“This is the sanest, most sensible advice I’ve read yet about AIDS.”

— Edmund White, author of States of Desire, Genet

“At last: a response to the effect of AIDS on our lives that goes beyond fears and myths to suggest positive actions.”

— Dennis Altman, author of Gore Vidal’s America

“Particularly well-done.”

— Village Voice

“It urges a sensible restriction of sex among currently promiscuous homosexual males.”

— New York Review of Books

“The useful thing about it is that it is precisely about how to have sex, not a warning not to.”

— Body Politic (Toronto)

“The only literature yet produced by this particular crisis in human affairs, is this touchingly funny, very instructive 40-page pamphlet.”

— Peter Fisher, author of AIDS: Your Questions Answered

“Sympathetic…their recommendations are appropriate for all sexually active people.”

— Frontiers Magazine

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The text of “HOW TO HAVE SEX IN AN EPIDEMIC: One Approach”

Click each thumbnail below from (left to right) to enlarge and read:

— The End —

Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, Michael Callen & me, 1993

Book Jacket, First Edition, Westview Press, 2003

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Praise for STAYIN’ ALIVE: The Invention of Safe Sex (2003)

[A] “compellingly readable memoir.”

— The Advocate

“Richard Berkowitz is an intelligent and perceptive commentator on the gay scene, an AIDS activist of many years standing, a pioneer in the field of safe sex practices, a thoroughgoing mensch and a good writer.”

— Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America

“Frank, funny, sexy and invaluable, Richard Berkowitz’s Stayin’ Alive is a must-read for anyone interested in the story of sex in 20th century America. A heart-poundingly heroic memoir.”

— David Drake, author of The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me

“Richard Berkowitz offers eloquent and invaluable testimony from the earliest days of AIDS.  Rather than looking on in horror, he did something that changed the course of the disease. Ironically, in conceiving safe sex, Berkowitz [with Dr. Joseph Sonnabend and Michael Callen] discovered a home truth gay men needed and need to embrace: we are our brother’s keeper.”

— Kevin Bentley, author of Wild Animals I Have Known

“Reading his story, one has the sense that this is not a book, it is a conversation. Even more, it is a life. His, yours, and countless others. Whether you are gay or straight, male or female, HIV-positive or HIV-negative, Stayin’ Alive is a lesson in strength, courage, and most significantly, empowerment.”

— Arts & Understanding

“Berkowitz paints a vivid, surprising history…This book is required reading for anyone trying to understand the ideological divide between risk reduction and abstinence.”

— POZ Magazine

“Stayin’ Alive is a compelling memoir by a gay man who co-wrote How to Have Sex in an Epidemic, which was the first safe sex manual published in 1983. That was a controversial book in its day, and Stayin’ Alive will be no less so twenty years later.  Berkowitz is a truth-teller, and while the truth may set you free, it may also cause considerable consternation when let loose.”

— Ian Young, Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide

Book cover, paperback edition, 2008

[Thanks to a grant from Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS & Tom Viola, I was able to produce a paperback version of my book with illustrations.  Signed copies can be obtained ($15.00) by writing to me at RichBerkowitzNYC@gmail.com or via Paypal.

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Grand Jury Prize, Best Documentary: OUTFEST L.A.

Best Documentary, Fort Worth Gay & Lesbian Film Festival

“A beautiful and important story.”

— Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America

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“Superb new documentary.”

— David Weigand, San Francisco Chronicle

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“In his illuminating, timelessly timely Sex Positive documentary, Daryl Wein calls attention both to unjustly neglected, pioneering AIDS activist Richard Berkowitz and his still widely ignored groundbreaking promotion of safe sex.”

— Kevin Thomas–Los Angeles Times

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“Passionately verbal, intensely well-informed…Berkowitz’s life and landmark achievement are chronicled in Daryl Wein’s Outfest Award-winning documentary Sex Positive.…In 2003, after two decades of activism, Berkowitz wrote his autobiography, titled Stayin’ Alive: The Invention of Safe Sex. It was this compelling memoir that would inspire Daryl Wein, a young, heterosexual filmmaker Berkowitz met at a Passover Seder in 2006, to make the activist his next documentary subject. “

— Gary Goldstein–Los Angeles Times

*

“The movie jolts you with the realization that the AIDS epidemic and the public debate about such issues have retreated so far under the news radar as to be half-forgotten.”

— Stephen Holden, New York Times

*

“Richard Berkowitz ought to be lionized as an early crusader in the fight against AIDS. Daryl Wein’s engrossing portrait…is freshly engaging largely due to the subject himself…Wein captures his latter-day fighting spirit, intellect and grousing in bemused but admiring terms.”

— Dennis Harvey, Variety

*

“Indispensable…completely fascinating.”

— Ella Taylor, NPR

*

“It helps that Wein’s subject is such a fascinating, garrulous paradox.”

— Village Voice

*

“[Berkowitz] was desperate to introduce the notion of safe sex while decreasing promiscuity, a tactic considered either foreign or insulting to many of the men he was trying to reach. It didn’t help that he was self-righteous and stubborn — but it sure didn’t hurt, either. After all, some of those same people may be alive today, thanks to his inflexible persistence.”

— New York Daily News

*

“Berkowitz is a fascinating, prickly, decidedly unsaintly character, and Wein’s film provides a fascinating and crucial slice of traumatic sexual history that’s all but invisible to younger generations.”

— Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com

*

“While capturing a disastrous time in recent history, Sex Positive insists that we reflect anew on the AIDS crisis, revisit its first wave (as opposed to its persistent tide) for new or different lessons. Wein clearly cares for his subject. Yet he leaves room for our admiration and our ambivalence. This is an achievement of heart and of mind.”

— Denver Post

*

“Most of the film rests on Berkowitz to carry and, fortunately, he is more than up to the task. Blunt, profane, mustachioed and charming, one can understand how he rubbed people wrong twenty years ago, but just might be the right sort of person to spread this message today…Sex Positive is the best kind of political documentary, one which slips this message in, as part of a fascinating, previously untold story.”

— Collider.com

*

“The film is moving, powerful, funny, and sad. Berkowitz is unbelievably generous in the film with his time, archives, and honesty. And the result is an important document that anyone interested in the history of sexuality or in the current state of sexual health should see.”

— About.com

Sex Positive director, Daryl Wein

“Provocative and enlightening…Director Daryl Wein’s compelling film champions the man who as one interviewee says, ‘made safe sex sexy.’ And Berkowitz is an alluring figure — a passionate, self-conscious, frustrated, and often sensible advocate who demands attention. Finally recognized for his achievements, Sex Positive captures Berkowitz warts-and-all, and it is an extremely fascinating and rewarding portrait.”

— San Francisco Bay Times

*

“Sex Positive is a well researched, filmed and edited story, which might be an asset to college level classes in gay and lesbian studies and public health, particularly those researching gay health issues form historical and sociological perspectives. The film’s verbal slang and graphic sexual imagery may be disturbing to some, yet is appropriate for the subject matter. Nonetheless, faculty and librarians may wish to preview it first.”

—  Educational Media Reviews Online

*

“Compelling. Sex Positive takes a no-holds-barred look at Berkowitz’s quest to educate gay men about safer sex, the backlash he faced, and the personal sexual history that made him both an unlikely and perfect messenger.”

— Laura Douglas-Brown, Southern Voice

*

“Few remembered Berkowitz’s role until Sex Positive, a documentary by Daryl Wein, began screening. The compelling film came to Atlanta last night for a benefit screening for Positive Impact…Berkowitz was in attendance and received a standing ovation after the film. In remarks to the audience, he didn’t mince words about the difficulties of getting out frank information about safe sex, and the way conservatives have ‘watered down’ the message in the last decade to the point that it no longer celebrates sex and no longer has resonance for gay men.”

— Washington Blade

*

“Open[s] a window into a culture unfamiliar to the general audience…[Sex Positive] paints a vivid portrait of persistence in promoting a revolutionary idea against virulent opposition.”

— Jewish Journal

*

“You’ve probably never heard of Richard Berkowitz. But if you’ve ever used a condom — or asked your man to — with the goal of protecting yourself from HIV, you have him to thank. Sex Positive brings to light — through Berkowitz’s eyes as well as through those of some who once stood against him — the daunting quest he took on to save the lives of the men around him and ended up making the concept of ‘safer sex’ almost second nature for today’s generation.”

— HIV Plus Magazine

HIV PLUS Magazine, July/August 2009

*

“Richard Berkowitz, the man at the center of Daryl Wein’s intelligent and engaging Sex Positive, is the ideal documentary subject: with his combination of self-effacement and daunting confidence, Berkowitz easily commands the screen throughout its short running time. Such an appealing figure is especially crucial for a film that focuses on a subject as potentially didactic and strictly educational as the promotion of safe sex…An unabashed and even transgressive portrait of sexuality.”

— IndieWire.com

*

“Sex Positive has the virtue of not only telling an important story but having, in Richard Berkowitz, a fascinating subject truly worthy of scrutiny. Berkowitz is a compelling presence.”

— Filmmaker Magazine

*

“Richard Berkowitz appeared at Columbia University yesterday for a screening of the film. His message from 25 years ago is just as relevant today. Honest and open dialogue about sexual behaviors and risks is one way a community can take action against the HIV/AIDS epidemic, STI’s and unintended pregnancy. He pointed out that…if you look at the education campaigns of other developed countries, along with their STI and teen pregnancy rates, it is clear that the U.S. is doing something wrong.”

— Reproductive Health Hub

*

“With the resurgence of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases in the United Kingdom, Sex Positive is a timely documentary about Richard Berkowitz, one of those who pioneered the safe sex message.”

—  British Medical Journal

*

“Sex Positive provides a defiantly non-PC look at guerrilla gay activism and three of its most tragically unsung heroes…a must-see for audiences who like their documentaries to be no-holds-barred peeks at less-than-perfect lives accompanied by brutal candor, dark humor and piercing intellectual acumen .”

— Bay Area Reporter

*

“Wein’s straightforward documentary on a forgotten hero…is fascinating.”

— GaydarNation.com

*

“Frank and fascinating…Sex Positive will be of particular interest to gay men, but its value as a document of social change and evolving attitudes toward sex has broader significance.”

— Backstage

*

“This film is charged with passion, emotion and dedication to its subject. Meet the man who invented your 21st Century sex life. Sex Positive is a brilliantly electric and intoxicating film, telling a much more dramatic and intriguing story of the AIDS crisis than you may have ever imagined.”

—  Irish Film Institute

*

“An intriguing candid, central character — Berkowitz makes Sex Positive shine.”

—   Metrosource

*

“Dear Sex Positive documentary subject Richard Berkowitz: You have our eternal thanks for being one of the earliest voices of reason in the midst of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s…As the rates of HIV infection continue to climb, we hope your story will serve as a cold reminder to a new generation and that you can now live your life in a place of honor, not obscurity.”

— The Advocate

Atlanta Screening/Q&A, August 29, 2009