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The Sea of Peroxide: A Paramedic's Journey Through The Dawn Of The AIDS Crisis In New York City
In the early 1980s, Bruce Wolk was a Yuppie wannabe with an MBA, who after being fired, went from a sleek marketing job for a major New York City cosmetics firm to becoming an EMT and then, paramedic serving Manhattan. He worked the streets as a horrific disease that came to be known as AIDS began its awful spread. The experience changed his life.
The Sea of Peroxide is the recollection of a terrible disease observed first-hand from the driver's seat of an ambulance. The book shows AIDS wasn’t a “gay illness,” the virus went wherever infected blood went, the government cared little about the victims, and New York City was ill-prepared for the tragedy.
The book is gritty and street level. Most scenes involve the toll that HIV/AIDS took on families and loved ones. In some cases, there is blood and the aftermath of street violence. The book is not intended for young children.
The memoir includes recollections of other EMS responders of the early AIDS era in addition to those of the author. It is also an unashamed journey of the author’s own depression, and demands healthcare systems treat EMTs and paramedics with greater compassion for their unique struggles.
The book will provide a deeper understanding of the AIDS epidemic and
- Real-life accounts of the early days of the AIDS crisis
- Insights into the struggles of ravaged communities
- Why none of us should ever be complacent
No book has ever documented this tragedy at street level.
The Sea of Peroxide is the recollection of a terrible disease observed first-hand from the driver's seat of an ambulance. The book shows AIDS wasn’t a “gay illness,” the virus went wherever infected blood went, the government cared little about the victims, and New York City was ill-prepared for the tragedy.
The book is gritty and street level. Most scenes involve the toll that HIV/AIDS took on families and loved ones. In some cases, there is blood and the aftermath of street violence. The book is not intended for young children.
The memoir includes recollections of other EMS responders of the early AIDS era in addition to those of the author. It is also an unashamed journey of the author’s own depression, and demands healthcare systems treat EMTs and paramedics with greater compassion for their unique struggles.
The book will provide a deeper understanding of the AIDS epidemic and
- Real-life accounts of the early days of the AIDS crisis
- Insights into the struggles of ravaged communities
- Why none of us should ever be complacent
No book has ever documented this tragedy at street level.
Kindle Edition
Published April 18, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 14, 2025
I know Bruce. He is a man of compassion. This book came out of his desire to make sure these stories were told. He is a true hero.
July 20, 2025
I'm surprised the author lived to tell his story. Maybe the good karma Bruce Wolk alluded to accumulating over the years is what allowed him to walk away unscathed after spending the early 1980's splattered in the blood of AIDS patients. Well, physically unscathed at least; not so much psychologically. Good karma can only accomplish so much.
You might be wondering if "maybe he just exaggerated the 'splattered in blood' part," but you'd be underestimating the hubris of the city of New York (and the American government in general, or at least the people in charge of it at the time). They really did think they could penny-pinch their way through the AIDS crisis, not even bothering at first to provide EMTs like Bruce with basic safety gear or training about how to protect themselves-- in the beginning of the book, Bruce describes using his bare hands to attend the bleeding wounds of a man clearly afflicted with what would come to be known as "full-blown AIDS." EMTs weren't even given gloves!
In what might be the worst case of "if I ignore the problem maybe it'll go away" in American history, even the blood companies (if I am correctly remembering what I read years ago in "And the Band Played On" by Randy Shilts) refused beyond the point of reason to pull their supply, which resulted in over half of the nation's hemophiliacs becoming infected with HIV. Keep in mind that effective treatment for the AIDS virus didn't appear until the mid/late-90's, so many hemophiliacs sadly went the way of Ryan White.
Throughout the book Bruce felt a little like a kindred soul to me-- a fellow "burnout" of sorts, someone deeply uncomfortable with the pressure to sell his soul to the superficial demands of 1980's New York City yuppy culture. Someone who wanted a taste of the real world and what it truly means to be human.
He certainly got his wish, and then some: a very up-close-and-personal view of life at its most brutally honest. The key-take away from this book, for me at least, is that even money, designer clothes and a finely-decorated Manhattan penthouse can't protect you from having to call the same underfunded and overburdened local ambulance service (because you're slowly and horrifically dying from the same strange new disease you got from some guy in a bathhouse) as the homeless heroin addict sleeping on a filthy mattress in an abandoned building in Spanish Harlem. Life humbles us all, and perhaps the AIDS patients Bruce attended who were truly the most successful in life were the ones who had at least one person devotedly caring for them in their final hours simply because they wanted to be there for them.
Anyway, sappiness aside, reading this book also felt like stepping into a time machine-- it's full of little known historical trivia that is otherwise often lost to time. Here are a few examples:
-- Because so little was known about how AIDS was spread at the time, some medical professionals refused to treat patients suffering from the disease. For ambulance staff, "person having difficulty breathing" became a common euphemism used by callers suffering from an AIDS-related ailment, usually pneumonia.
-- Many heroin addicts at the time were war veterans who apparently became addicted in Vietnam. I had no idea heroin was so readily available there, but according to the book many veterans later died of AIDS, alongside other addicts who shared needles. (Side note, one thing I didn't like about the book is that Bruce inserts his opinion a lot-- sometimes I agreed with him, but other times I found it off-putting. He was sometimes compassionate towards the street addicts he encountered, but other times he described them very harshly. I think he was just trying to convey the feeling of disappointment in watching people self-destruct and refuse help, but I wondered if he fully appreciated the fact that people who are so intensely physically and psychologically addicted to heroin that they are willing to risk AIDS don't necessarily "lie and manipulate" because they are innately bad people.)
-- The NYPD had their own code-word for calls involving a person who might have AIDS: "Hi-five" (the Roman numeral for "five" is the letter "V." Clever.) This reminds me in a way that I can't quite put my finger on of that famous "deloused" line a police officer uttered over the radio after delivering one of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims back to him because he and his partner bought Jeffrey's story that the bleeding pre-teen boy was in fact his adult boyfriend.
Anyway, I was really torn about how many stars to give this book. I definitely enjoyed reading it, especially because I learned so much about the AIDS epidemic from a ground-level perspective. The author really shows you the reality of just how horrific and confusing it was, and he does it with humility and vulnerability. However, I wouldn't say it personally resonated with me as much as it has and will continue to with others. So let's say 3.5 stars. I would definitely highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the AIDS epidemic (or 1980's NYC in general)!
You might be wondering if "maybe he just exaggerated the 'splattered in blood' part," but you'd be underestimating the hubris of the city of New York (and the American government in general, or at least the people in charge of it at the time). They really did think they could penny-pinch their way through the AIDS crisis, not even bothering at first to provide EMTs like Bruce with basic safety gear or training about how to protect themselves-- in the beginning of the book, Bruce describes using his bare hands to attend the bleeding wounds of a man clearly afflicted with what would come to be known as "full-blown AIDS." EMTs weren't even given gloves!
In what might be the worst case of "if I ignore the problem maybe it'll go away" in American history, even the blood companies (if I am correctly remembering what I read years ago in "And the Band Played On" by Randy Shilts) refused beyond the point of reason to pull their supply, which resulted in over half of the nation's hemophiliacs becoming infected with HIV. Keep in mind that effective treatment for the AIDS virus didn't appear until the mid/late-90's, so many hemophiliacs sadly went the way of Ryan White.
Throughout the book Bruce felt a little like a kindred soul to me-- a fellow "burnout" of sorts, someone deeply uncomfortable with the pressure to sell his soul to the superficial demands of 1980's New York City yuppy culture. Someone who wanted a taste of the real world and what it truly means to be human.
He certainly got his wish, and then some: a very up-close-and-personal view of life at its most brutally honest. The key-take away from this book, for me at least, is that even money, designer clothes and a finely-decorated Manhattan penthouse can't protect you from having to call the same underfunded and overburdened local ambulance service (because you're slowly and horrifically dying from the same strange new disease you got from some guy in a bathhouse) as the homeless heroin addict sleeping on a filthy mattress in an abandoned building in Spanish Harlem. Life humbles us all, and perhaps the AIDS patients Bruce attended who were truly the most successful in life were the ones who had at least one person devotedly caring for them in their final hours simply because they wanted to be there for them.
Anyway, sappiness aside, reading this book also felt like stepping into a time machine-- it's full of little known historical trivia that is otherwise often lost to time. Here are a few examples:
-- Because so little was known about how AIDS was spread at the time, some medical professionals refused to treat patients suffering from the disease. For ambulance staff, "person having difficulty breathing" became a common euphemism used by callers suffering from an AIDS-related ailment, usually pneumonia.
-- Many heroin addicts at the time were war veterans who apparently became addicted in Vietnam. I had no idea heroin was so readily available there, but according to the book many veterans later died of AIDS, alongside other addicts who shared needles. (Side note, one thing I didn't like about the book is that Bruce inserts his opinion a lot-- sometimes I agreed with him, but other times I found it off-putting. He was sometimes compassionate towards the street addicts he encountered, but other times he described them very harshly. I think he was just trying to convey the feeling of disappointment in watching people self-destruct and refuse help, but I wondered if he fully appreciated the fact that people who are so intensely physically and psychologically addicted to heroin that they are willing to risk AIDS don't necessarily "lie and manipulate" because they are innately bad people.)
-- The NYPD had their own code-word for calls involving a person who might have AIDS: "Hi-five" (the Roman numeral for "five" is the letter "V." Clever.) This reminds me in a way that I can't quite put my finger on of that famous "deloused" line a police officer uttered over the radio after delivering one of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims back to him because he and his partner bought Jeffrey's story that the bleeding pre-teen boy was in fact his adult boyfriend.
Anyway, I was really torn about how many stars to give this book. I definitely enjoyed reading it, especially because I learned so much about the AIDS epidemic from a ground-level perspective. The author really shows you the reality of just how horrific and confusing it was, and he does it with humility and vulnerability. However, I wouldn't say it personally resonated with me as much as it has and will continue to with others. So let's say 3.5 stars. I would definitely highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the AIDS epidemic (or 1980's NYC in general)!
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