Sean Strub > Quotes

“Politicians used AIDS to energize anti-gay supporters and religious conservatives who heralded it as a consequence of immorality. Pat Buchanan, an adviser to President Reagan, declared, “The poor homosexuals—they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution.” A”
― Sean Strub, Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival

“They didn’t understand that what was important wasn’t what they thought I had embraced but what I had rejected: shame, guilt, and constant fear of exposure.”
― Sean Strub, Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival

“Some families were already refusing to allow gay male relatives to join family holidays or to hold young nieces and nephews. Those who tested positive were sometimes welcomed at holiday meals on the condition that they use disposable utensils. People known to have AIDS lost their jobs and apartments. Sonnabend’s landlord tried to evict him because he treated people with AIDS at his office in the West Village. Funeral homes wouldn’t take the bodies of those who died of AIDS or charged exorbitant extra fees to do so. There was serious talk of quarantine, and by the end of 1985, an effort was under way in California to put such a measure on the ballot. Only”
― Sean Strub, Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival

“Vito encouraged me to do “something important” with my life. “This is not a dress rehearsal,” he wrote to me in August 1981. “It’s your one and only life, and you have to make it something right now, you do not have all the time in the world, it only seems that way.”
― Sean Strub, Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival

“During a dinner party at a friend’s West Village town house, I saw the host discreetly change the hand towels after a guest rumored to have AIDS used the bathroom. After dinner, that guest’s dishes were washed separately, with scalding water. “You can’t be too careful!” the host told me. Gay men discovered that family members and straight friends they once comfortably kissed or hugged now avoided physical contact. It wasn’t unusual for linens to be thrown away or burned after use by someone with AIDS. Health”
― Sean Strub, Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival