Peter Staley - Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism

P ETER STALEY IS A HERO TO ME . I first heard about him in 2004 when he paid to put up a half dozen ads on phones booths in a gay neighborhood in New York, warning of the dangers of crystal meth. They looked like sleek ads for a gay dating app, but their tagline was startling: HUGE SALE! BUY CRYSTAL, GET HIV FREE! They were, no doubt, offensive to some, but they certainly got your attention, and made you think. Id heard a famous HIV/AIDS activist was behind them, but it wasnt until years later, when I watched David Frances remarkable documentary How to Survive a Plague, that I actually saw Peter in action and came to understand what he, and his band of brothers and sisters in ACT UP and TAG, accomplished during the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic. I was so moved by what Peter did that I reached out to him to thank him, and weve been friends ever since.

Peter jokingly says he blames me for this book. He claims I was the first to push him to write a memoir, though Im quite sure many others suggested it before me. Now, having read the book, I am so glad that I did push. The plague that killed a generation of gay men cannot be forgotten, and Peter saw it all from the front lines. Never Silent is a powerful and poignant remembrance of love and loss, fear and fury. Its also an inspiring call to action, showing the power of protest and of people coming together, educating themselves, and demanding change. It is fierce and funny, and a critical account of what it was like to be in the trenches of a war against a virus that was also a fight against silence, and greed, and hate.

Peter found out he was HIV positive in November 1985. Back then, there was no effective treatment. AIDS was a likely death sentence. Peter was a twenty-four-year-old bond trader on Wall Street; still in the closet, he had only just begun to explore gay life in New York. It is hard for many to imagine what that time was like for LGBTQ peoplethe fear of getting sick, the loss of so many friends and loved ones, the stigma surrounding the disease, the discrimination, and the hate. Peter could have stayed silent about his diagnosis. He could have tried to take care of his health and enjoy life for as long as he could. But that is not what he did. It is not who he is. Peter Staley is a warrior, and it wasnt long after his diagnosis that he began to fight.

In a speech Peter gave in 1990 at an international AIDS conference, he quoted Vito Russo, saying, AIDS is a test of who we are as a people. When future generations ask what we did in the war, we have to be able to tell them that we were out here fighting. And we have to leave a legacy to the generations of people who will come after us. Remember, that someday, the AIDS crisis will be over. And when that day has come and gone, there will be a people alive on this earthgay people and straight people, Black people and White people, men and womenwho will hear the story, that once, there was a terrible disease, and that a brave group of people stood up and fought and in some cases died so that others might live and be free.

That is what Peter Staley didthat is what he chose to do in the face of death and discrimination. He wasnt the only one, but he was a key member of a brave group of people who stood up and fought back so that others, you and I, might live and be free.

H IS EYES LOCKED WITH MINE for that beat longer than straight guys do. What was a young gay stud in 501 Levis and a black leather jacket doing on Wall Street at 7:30 AM? He handed me a sheet of paper as our eyes kept meeting, eyes that could undress my crisp suit and tie. But it would have to be a passing thrill, or Id miss the market briefing that always started my workday on the US government bonds trading floor at Morgan Guaranty.

It was the morning of March 24, 1987. The flyer in my hand was about AIDS, the six-year-old epidemic that was terrifying and repulsing Americans. They had ignored the disease and its rising death toll for years, until headlines blared ROCK HUDSON HAS AIDS, followed closely by ROCK HUDSON IS GAY. The news launched a fear-based backlash and forced Americans to think about homosexuality, toward which repulsion was still the social norm.

No one at the bank knew I was gay. I had carefully cultivated the straight macho persona required of US government bond traders, kings of Wall Street at the time. We made millions for the fastest-growing firms, like Salomon Brothers and Goldman Sachs, by churning Reagans debtall the new bonds needed to finance President Ronald Reagans huge tax cuts for the rich, which included those very same bond traders.

The flyer was announcing a MASSIVE AIDS DEMONSTRATION that morning in front of Trinity Church, just a block from my trading floor. It included a bulleted list of demands targeting Reagan, the US government, and the Food and Drug Administration. It mentioned both AIDS and AIDS-related complex (ARC), a kind of pre-AIDS diagnosis that is no longer used today. The flyer resonated: less than two years before, I had received my own terrifying diagnosis of ARC just after Rock Hudsons death. Only my family and a few gay friends knew.

The other traders surrounding me on the floor received the same flyer from the handsome guy in leather, whose piercing eyes they likely looked away from.

Mark Werner, the senior trader on our floor and my mentor since I started there in 1984, with his tall, muscular build, short-cropped blond hair, and blue eyeseyes that were too risky for me to stare atquickly shut down the conversation about the flyers. If you ask me, he said, they all deserve to die for taking it up the butt.