#michael callen

[actually-a-dyke]

Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen writing How to Have Sex in an Epidemic, New York, 1983

[yourdailyqueer]

Michael Callen (deceased)

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Gay

DOB: 11 April 1955  

RIP: 27 December 1993

Ethnicity: White

Occupation: Singer, songwriter, musician, composer, writer, activist

[outweek30]

The quickest way to assess whether a person is at immediate risk for AIDS is to take the test. Not the HIV antibody test, the T-cell test. HIV antibody testing does not show what stage of infection a person is at. The T-cell test does. People with more than 200 T4-cells per cubic millimeter of blood rarely develop opportunistic infections. People with 200 or less are at immediate risk for pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) and other infections. PCP occurs in 80 percent of people with AIDS and causes 60 percent of AIDS deaths.

[...] Unfortunately, T-cell tests are not free. If you have a private physician, most labs charge between $75 and $150, plus doctor's fees. If you have to use the city hospital system, the wait to get your T-cells counted ranges from between one month to indefinitely, depending on which hospital you visit. [...]

Soon the state may begin covering the costs of T-cell testing for some people. This is essential if thousands of needless AIDS deaths are to be prevented over the coming years. Over 32,000 Americans have died of PCP since the epidemic began. More than 17,000 died since Michael Callen of the Community Research Initiative (CRI) and others asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), which runs most federal AIDS drug trials, to expedite testing of aerosol pentamidine[, which can prevent PCP,] in 1987.

The AIDS Program gave aerosol pentamidine a "high priority" designation, but then neglected to fund trials for lack of a single staff person. The trials which resulted in June IS's FDA approval of aerosol pentamidine for marketing were carried out by new community-based institutions, San Francisco's County Community Consortium (CCC) and New York's CRI.

[...]

Aerosol pentamidine is not yet available in all NYC hospitals. Kings County in Brooklyn, for example, doesn't even have its own nebulizer. Patients have to go to nearby SUNY Downstate to take the treatment.

[...]

Thousands of people are at immediate risk of contracting PCP unless the government moves rapidly to institute T-cell testing and PCP prophylaxis programs nationwide. But don't wait for sluggish health bureaucrats to wake up and sense the danger. If the last nine years are any guide, people at risk must fight for their own lives before the government will.

— Mark Harrington, “How Not To Get Pneumonia If You Have AIDS,” OutWeek Magazine No. 2, July 3, 1989, p. 33.

[redshift-13]

Martin Duberman Brings LGBTQ+ History To Life | Kirkus Reviews

The 93-year-old historian’s latest book, ‘The Line of Dissent,’ is a queer ‘Profiles in Courage.’

"I don’t quite know what bothers people so much about enjoying differences rather than piling on the security of similarity. I’m attracted to what I don’t know. I don’t want close friends who share my exact values or my perspectives—though, inescapably, in order to exchange feelings and ideas, that will be true of our closest friends in most cases. But I’d like to know a wider range of people.

And it isn’t easy. It’s never been easy. One of my problems is the inability of the majority of straight intellectuals to first of all want to understand—and then, secondly, make the effort to understand—the differences between the gay subculture and the middle-class patterns of the majority of people in this country. You really can’t find many straight people, for example—intellectuals or otherwise—who are familiar with [gay] literature, some of it very important not only for gay people but for everybody human."

A couple of years ago I read Duberman's:

-which I'd recommend.

What gifts would these two and countless others still be giving to the world were it not for the double pandemic of AIDS and public ignorance?

Here's Essex Hemphill:

So Many Dreams

Had I been clear-headed there would have been no pattern of sanity to follow. Out of this confusion I bring my heart, a pale blue crystal, a single rose, a kiss long held for you before the myth of Atlantis was created to challenge the genius of Memphis and Senegal. I long for the occult sciences to inform you of my affections, and if this evidence is insufficient, then let a single dream containing the content of my soul spill throughout your sleep, and from all the nights I have longed for you in a spell of masturbation, take whatever voice I would use to call out your name in the sleeping garden, take whatever suits you, my love, for now.

[abbie-a-aaronson]

Sex Positive (2008)

Sex Positive is the story of Richard Berkowitz, a controversial gay S&M sex worker turned AIDS activist in the 1980s, who along with Dr. Joseph Sonnabend and beloved activist and artist Michael Callen, helped invent the idea of ‘safe sex’. Berkowitz emerged from the epicentre of the epidemic demanding a solution before anyone else would pay attention.

Directed by Daryl Wein, Sex Positive explores Berkowitz's life and his contribution to the invention of safe sex. Aside from  Richard Berkowitz, the movie also features Dotty Berkowitz (his mother), Don Adler, Susan Brown, Demetre Daskalakis, Richard Dworkin, William A. Haseltine, Larry Kramer, Ardele Lister, Michael Lucas, Francisco Roque, Gabriel Rotello, Joseph Sonnabend, Bill Stackhouse, Krishna Stone, Sean Strub, and Edmund White.

This woefully short but incredibly deep movie about a complex subject doesn’t shy away from telling the story from as many sides as possible, and is one of my favourite documentaries. In 2008, the film won the Grand Jury Award at the Los Angeles Outfest for "Best Documentary Feature".

[temporarilyeuropean]

Why Am I Gay?  HBO special 1993

“Flirtations bill ourselves as the world’s most famous openly gay, politically aware a capella doo-wop singing group.” —Michael Callen

[universitybookstore]

An important new book from The New press, Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS, by Martin Duberman. A joint biography of the African American gay poet and the AIDS activist and singer, both lost to epidemic, Duberman's brilliant new book is a trumpet blast to remind us all the HIV/AIDS is still with us, still taking lives every day, and still robbing the world of irreplaceable artists like these.

[commiepinkofag]

Michael Callen [at typewriter] and Richard Berkowitz, 1984

In 1982, Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz, two gay men with AIDS living in New York, invented the practice of safer sex, forever changing the way people dealt with and prevented AIDS.

Courtesy Richard Dworkin