The World Beyond BetterMost > Anything Goes
May, 1983: Where were you?
HerrKaiser:
all these young, youthful and happy times in 1983! That is great but in stark contrast to my own....
Already by the spring of '83, several friends has died of a very strange, unknown malady. It had just been labeled AIDS, but almost nothing was known. Every morning on the radio, the "aids count" included numbers of deaths the previous day and new cases reported. May 1983 was not a happy time for my surroundings.
delalluvia:
You guys have memories like elephants. I've no idea what I was doing. Probably was at home with my parents.
dot-matrix:
--- Quote from: HerrKaiser on May 07, 2007, 12:48:45 pm ---all these young, youthful and happy times in 1983! That is great but in stark contrast to my own....
Already by the spring of '83, several friends has died of a very strange, unknown malady. It had just been labeled AIDS, but almost nothing was known. Every morning on the radio, the "aids count" included numbers of deaths the previous day and new cases reported. May 1983 was not a happy time for my surroundings.
--- End quote ---
I will certainly be the first to admit that I was a very sheltered and naive 22 year old. Oh I knew the basic facts of life but I was not that in-tune as yet with the world outside the rarefied halls of home or academia. That and home on the ranch were the universe I revolved between. It was probably another 5 years, when I had my first clerking position, that I really became aware of Aids and the devastation that it was bringing upon the world at large and gays in particular. As I said in 1983 I still had a boat load of growing up to do.
louisev:
May, 1983. With summa cum laude in English in hand, I had finally enrolled in graduate school, part time, evenings, worked, part time weekends, and worked full time as a staff assistant and junior systems administrator for the fundraising arm of Public Television in Boston, WGBH. I was studying foreign literature, specializing in modern German literature in seminars on Kafka and Mann in the School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, tutoring 3 nights a week with Amy Wissinger, PhD candidate in the German Language and Literature program, and had in my sights the secret plan of my life: to abandon spouse and stepson and escape to Tübingen University and become a suicidal German scholar. Spring 1983 was the seminar in Kafka and Mann and I had published my monograph on the mystical significance of the French allegory, the Romance of the Rose.
We lived in a tiny garret apartment in north Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I was finally making enough money to move us to a larger apartment, one with actual ceilings instead of eaves, five blocks away, for a whopping $395 a month. I might be able to convince my husband to actually get a job to help support our more posh lifestyle that involved a dining room and full sized oven.
My husband, 14 years older than I, had not worked at a job since moving in with me after my 18th birthday in 1978. Working two jobs, finally clearing an amazing $22,000 a year between the day, evening, and weekend, I could afford both graduate school and the apartment. And I somehow didn't think I was doing quite enough for my family. Hence the secret escape plan, which was hidden, even from myself most of the time. He threatened suicide almost weekly. I worked harder. Somehow, there was never enough work to give him enough distractions to please him.
Looking back, it is not a pleasant memory.
Brokeback_Dev:
--- Quote from: HerrKaiser on May 07, 2007, 12:48:45 pm ---all these young, youthful and happy times in 1983! That is great but in stark contrast to my own....
Already by the spring of '83, several friends has died of a very strange, unknown malady. It had just been labeled AIDS, but almost nothing was known. Every morning on the radio, the "aids count" included numbers of deaths the previous day and new cases reported. May 1983 was not a happy time for my surroundings.
--- End quote ---
Very sad indeed.. In 1983, i had not yet heard of the deadly disease. That awareness came later in 80's.
With the crazy promiscuous lifestyle i lead, i was very fortunate not to be a victims of AIDS.
Rest the soles who we've lost.
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