Impact of HIV and AIDS on homosexuals
Hull explains the impact of HIV and AIDS on the gay community. He recalls the palpable fear of the disease and describes how HIV altered his social relationships with other men.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Bill Hull, June 21, 2001. Interview K-0844. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
-
Right, right. Let me see here. So we have discussed the Ponderosa, tell
me a little more about HIV and AIDS and how it affected the community.
How do you see it, I kind of tabled that a little later, which is now. I
mean, how—you said that it changed the gay community in terms
of how it dealt with itself, and so forth can you discuss that?
- BILL HULL:
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I can't discuss it as far as the gay community is concerned,
because I was not that involved with the gay community. I was gay and
there was a community, but I was not. Tim and I have always been sort of
sequestered in our relationship. I was sequestered in this sort of gay
nuclear family that I had. It became frightening. I don't
know how it affected the entire gay community. I hoped during all of
that, when I saw friends dying and people sick that people were becoming
more aware of the risks of being indiscriminate, which for me, if I had
been their age at that time, would have probably have ignored also. It
was an unknown—
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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Ignored, in terms of the warnings?
- BILL HULL:
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Safety, yeah. I mean, everybody in your twenties and thirties, you know
you are immortal. You don't sense risk. There is a lot of for
the moment, which is fine, but you have to take precautions. Luckily, I
didn't have to experience that. I really can't
express it in terms of how the gay community is concerned, but I knew
that people were trying to be made aware and they had to be made
cautious and they had to be concerned, and they had to look at something
other than just the moment of pleasure. I didn't do T-rooms and cruise and stuff like that. By that
period, I was beyond that, I guess.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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You were in a relationship and didn't feel the need for that
outlet. So with Glen Rowan's death, that made a lot of news,
got a lot of news.
- BILL HULL:
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It did. None of us really knew what it was all about. The impact on me
was very sobering. I realized that he was a decent, wonderful person for
no reason or other, whatever happened in his life, just fate had caused
him to succumb to this evil curse. I had another friend who passed away
and was very devastating in my life. He was one of my best friends. He
probably passed away in 87. Who had every power to survive? I
don't need to go into that, I will get spiritual in all of
this. But, it really had a great impact on me and my relationships with
anybody in the world. I realized that they were fragile, life was
fragile. They were fragile, and I didn't need to caution
them, but I needed to become very sensitive to how they approached life,
if they were a little more flippant than they should be about their
encounters with people, I just almost had to turn my back on them
because I realized that I was going to lose them. I think that, that may
have happened a lot in the gay community.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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Do you think that it was a dividing wedge? Do you think that people
became more homophobic of themselves because of the disease?
- BILL HULL:
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May have been, I don't know.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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I kind of got the impression that you alluded to that.
- BILL HULL:
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I can't speak of that. I just thought that because of the
whole philosophy was "God's curse on
homosexuals" I think that a lot people could take that stance
and feel comfortable or at least feel superior.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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Were you in Chapel Hill when Glen Rowan died?
- BILL HULL:
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No, no I was not in Chapel Hill, I lived in Raleigh probably.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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But you were in the area.
- BILL HULL:
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But, I met him; I went to his home that sort of thing. We were social,
but I didn't live in Chapel Hill at that time.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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How many other people, were there very many other people that died?
- BILL HULL:
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A lot. I wasn't.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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In Chapel Hill or the area?
- BILL HULL:
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Chapel Hill, I was almost immune to it, because I lived in Raleigh at
the time. Chapel Hill and Raleigh at that time, were like time warps. I
knew people who died and at that point, I had to shut myself out of
that, waiting for me to die next.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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Right, it was just a protection mechanism, an emotional protection
mechanism.
- BILL HULL:
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Yes, now that you pointed that out. It was a protection mechanism. I
just sort of focused forward and find Tim.
[Laughter] Somehow, that would happen. I thought,
"My God, you are next. You could be next." If I had a
pimple on my hand, I thought, "You're
dead." You know. You had a head cold,
"You're dead."
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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[Laughter] Been there.
- BILL HULL:
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If I had the flu, I would call in "dying" If I had the
flu or AIDS, I didn't know, it could have even been the
potato famine.
- CHRIS MCGINNIS:
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You become very—you become a hypochondriac.
- BILL HULL:
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Well, I wasn't a hypochondriac, I just figured that anything
could be the first sign of something. Thank God, I am still here.