The New York Times - December 17, 1985
Dena Kleiman

It did not occur to him then that it would turn out to be Kaposi's sarcoma, a skin cancer that indicates a patient's immunological system is being destroyed by AIDS.

"I knew it was a possibility but I never thought it would really happen," said Mr. McCalister, who was in charge of production for a midtown wallpaper company.

AIDS has become so pervasive a fact of life in New York that it is rare to find a New Yorker who does not at least know of someone who has been stricken. Mr. McCalister, who is 24 years old, already has seen five acquaintances with AIDS die, including two roommates, a former boss, a former colleague and a close friend. Through friends he knows of a dozen others.

They are among the more than 14,000 people - predominantly young and homosexual men - in the United States who have developed this inexorably fatal illness. One third of them have been in New York City.

Every day the web widens of men and women who know someone with AIDS, either tangentially or intimately - and with it, the fear and sense of tragedy.

"I'm going to die; I know that," said Mr. McCalister, who repeats the sentence often, at times with dispassion, at times with tears. The shock of his diagnosis has changed not just his own life, but also the lives of his friends, family, colleagues and distant acquaintances, some of whom are not yet aware of how profound those changes are.

Revealing the Secret

When he learned he had AIDS and was dying, Mr. McCalister tried to continue his life as best he could. He and the man he has lived with for the last year stopped sleeping in the same bed. They stopped drinking out of the same glass. They stopped sharing towels. But Mr. McCalister remained at his job and continued to see friends. As the weeks passed and the purple spots began to appear on Mr. McCalister's face, however, the diagnosis became impossible to conceal.

Until several weeks ago, Mr. McCalister worked as a production director for a well-known wallpaper company with offices in the Design and Decoration building at 979 Third Avenue, between 58th and 59th Streets. It is where New York interior decorators often come to shop, and as Mr. McCalister would ride in the elevators, he would look around and wonder how people would respond if they knew. He wondered every time he got his hair cut, stood in line at the bank or ate lunch in a crowded restaurant.

One day in September, Mr. McCalister decided to tell his boss. Two years earlier the owner of the company, a man in his 60's, had died of AIDS. Earlier this year a 19-year-old stock boy was stricken. Mr. McCalister became the 3d out of 21 employees to get the disease.

When word got out, a secretary showed up at the office with disinfectant spray. Someone complained about his having used the telephone. Others seemed nervous standing next to him. His boss did not have to say anything for Mr. McCalister to know that despite his support, he too was concerned that word would leak out to clients and insurance companies.

When Mr. McCalister decided to leave his job, his boss was relieved.

"People are uptight," he said. "Patrick's spots are now showing. Clients would look. If they had known, they would have been out the door."

Agony of the Lover

Mr. McCalister lives with a 34-year-old graphics designer he has known for some time. They share a loft in TriBeCa and a country house in Pennsylvania. Theirs has been a relatively burden-free relationship revolving around expensive restaurants, fancy cars and dinner parties in the homes of well-known designers, photographers and artists.

Since Mr. McCalister was diagosed as having AIDS, they have not been getting along. At times Mr. McCalister's lover shouts at him and orders him to leave. At others, he showers him with presents. Mr. McCalister in turn alternately taunts his lover with his feelings of helplessness and self-pity.

"When I first heard about it, all I did was cry," said the graphics designer, who is afraid that if clients learn he is living with an AIDS victim, he will be fired. "I think of it as a death sentence. It's like a bad dream. I just want it to go away."

The graphics designer knows that Mr. McCalister is likely to die soon and that before he does he is going to become so desperately ill he will require constant care. The thought of caring for Mr. McCalister overwhelms him, as does the terror that he may come down with the deadly disease himself.

"I'm all torn between love and fear," said the graphics designer, adding that just being with Mr. McCalister is a constant reminder of his own vulnerability.

"I never thought monogamy would kill me," he said - a line he uses with friends when the conversation begs for levity. "I vacillate between wanting to be there and wanting to run away. I'm torn between myself. Why do I have to take on this burden totally? But why can't I? Why don't I have the psychological strength. It makes you feel like a failure."

The graphics designer said he has tried to bury himself in work. There are entire days he remains in bed, heavy with depression. He has tripled his life insurance. Blood tests have come back negative for the antibody indicating exposure to AIDS. But his terror does not go away.

"You wonder," he said. "How did Patrick get this?"

A Mother's Caring

Patrick McCalister mother has known for years that her son is homosexual and when AIDS first came into the news she naturally worried. But it was a rather remote fear; not unlike the concern a parent might harbor for a child prone to driving too fast.

Like other parents, it was not easy at first for Mr. McCalister's mother to accept her son's sexual preference. She knew that his being homosexual would bring him conflicts and discrimination. But, she says, she loves her son and accepts him.

"God, he's so young," said Mr. McCalister's mother, who lives in a small East Coast town where she is known by the name of her second husband. It is a town, she says, "where people think if you're dying of AIDS, you deserve to."

Should he decide to come back to live with her, she wants him to be able to return without stigma.

Mr. McCalister's mother said she thought she was fortunate she could talk openly with her son. She said she knew there were many other parents, who never learn the truth.

Mr. McCalister knows a 27-year-old book editor, for example, whose lover died of AIDS last year. The young man's parents, who live in Colorado, learned that their son was ill only after he was in the hospital with less than six weeks to live. They did not know he was homosexual until the day they met the editor in their son's hospital room in New York.

"It was a tough time," said the editor, who has not been able to talk with his parents about his fears either. "For all they knew, I had given it to him."

The Withdrawal of Friends

Mr. McCalister told some good friends who have young children that he had AIDS, and they continue to see him, but they no longer allow the children to hug him.

"He is 24," said the mother. "I think of how I was at 24. It's so much the beginning of your life. I think of how he's suddenly had to grow up."

"My initial reaction was shock," said the children's father, who is afraid that any association with an AIDS victim could hurt his jewelry business. "This is horrible. But then you start thinking. How is this going to affect me? Should I be eating with him? We've lived rather closely. Every weekend we would have dinner together. We share glasses. You start to think, oh my God, am I going to get it? I have two children. They have been drinking out of his glasses, too."

Mr. McCalister said he believed the father's response was a reasonable one. He finds himself withdrawing on his own. He has not been to a dentist since he learned of his illness, he said, because he would not want to keep his illness a secret. And he could not bear having his dentist turn him away.

Death So Young

Not long ago, a 30-year-old businessman invited a friend to dinner and said there was something important he wanted to discuss with her.

"I've had a depressing day," she recalled his saying over dinner. "Today I wrote my will. I want to name you executor."

She said he explained that as a sexually active homosexual who had watched friend after friend struck down by the disease, he could no longer avoid the fact that one day AIDS might strike him too.

This man had recently spent the day with Mr. McCalister. The 27-year-old book editor had been there, too, and, had he been alive, the editor's lover, who was an aspiring actor, would also have been there.

"It seemed totally absurd," said the woman, who is a 33-year-old career counselor. "Here is an ostensibly healthy, vigorous person, whose existence suddenly is precarious. I can't imagine him dying."

The businessman and the woman sat at the table a long time, she said, talking about what being an executor would mean. They talked about the businessman's health, about who else they knew who had been stricken, about the fact that even if he were to get the disease he would never want his parents to know.

The counselor said she would do anything her friend asked.

As she sat there, she had another thought, one she kept to herself. It was that in 1975 - before AIDS, before her friend knew he was homosexual - the two were lovers. Scientists say the incubation period for AIDS is five years. If so, she says, she is safe. But she said she wonders if the scientists are right or if they know.

The Celibate Homosexual

Safe sex. This is what people who are worried about AIDS talk about. They talk about condoms, about how it is no longer safe to kiss, about whether having sex these days is safe at all.

There is such division over which sexual practices are safe that many previously active homosexuals are no longer engaging in sexual activities at all. It is not just a matter of being afraid of catching the illness, but the fear of unwittingly spreading it.

"I feel like a leper," said a friend of Mr. McCalister, a 27-year-old management consultant who has been celibate for months. "I feel I'm imposing every time I hug someone."

This particular friend says that in the past he was not always monogomous, that having different sexual partners was a part of his style of living. A former lover is dead from AIDS; so are at least 13 of his acquaintances.

Although none of his friends know, he suffers from swollen lymph glands and has been diagnosed to have AIDS-related complex, a possible precursor of the disease. He is convinced that he will not live to see the age of 35. He has already written a will, and says that if and when he is diagnosed as having AIDS, he will commit suicide.

The Crowd at the Doctor's

It is 8:30 A.M. and the waiting room in the seventh-floor office of Dr. Alvin E. Friedman-Kien is crowded. Mr. McCalister first went to Dr. Friedman-Kien when his condition was diagnosed. He also sees Dr. Kenneth B. Hymes at the office, at First Avenue and 30th Street.

But the truth is there is little that Dr. Friedman-Kien, Dr. Hymes or any other physician can do for a patient with AIDS.

"I can't cure them," Dr. Friedman-Kien said. "But I can treat their acute infections. I can comfort them. I can give them care and consideration."

On this particular day there was a 34-year-old artist's assistant, a 29-year-old superintendent for a midtown office building, a 35-year-old lawyer and a 31-year-old buyer for a midtown department store.

Every one of these healthy-looking young men, like Mr. McCalister, is suffering from AIDS.

"It's all very depressing," said the artist's assistant, who had just completed giving the nurse samples of blood and semen before rushing off to work. He has told his family but not his co-workers.

"I know as much as the doctors," said the lawyer, who has told only two friends that he is ill.

"I didn't think I was a promiscuous person," said the buyer, who has told no friends that he is ill but goes weekly to a support group sponsored by the Gay Men's Health Crisis. "How did I allow this to happen to me?"

The buyer spoke of going home to his apartment and being so overwhelmed with the terror of dying that he cannot remain alone. He can no longer sleep, so he passes his evenings at a local bar and just sits there, watching other people.

Reaching Out, and Hoping

Kris Lewallen is an acquaintance of Mr. McCalister, who said he was not shocked to learn that Mr. McCalister had AIDS.

"Every week I hear of someone who has AIDS," said Mr. Lewallen, a 29-year-old writer.

"When I heard of Patrick," he said, "of course I thought, this could have been me. I can't go anywhere where it doesn't come up: 'Who's the latest person who has it?'

"I'm not having sex, period. A gray cloud is hanging over our entire community."

Ironically, Mr. McCalister does not think of his life in grays. These days, he said, he has hope. He has written his will but does not want to think of dying. He looks at this period as a time to reach out to his family, to his friends, to others with AIDS. He hopes his participation in an experimental drug program might eventually lead to a cure.

Mr. McCalister celebrated his 24th birthday recently. He did not want a party. What he told his friends he really wanted was to be able to celebrate his 25th.

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