Subduing the
Demons in America
An Interview with John Giorno

By Bill DeNoyelles

Part 8

Kissing, Intimacy and Affection
“Something happened in America in the seventies that lasted until around 1980. It began to end when people began dying of AIDS which was 1981-’82, around there. There was a sexual freedom that existed among men that was truly unique. We know all the givens–The Village People, Studio 54, The Mineshaft, dissolving bad and good, dissolving all these concepts and liberating to levels that had never been achieved before.

“All this depends on mind. This thing that could be called a hungry ghost realm as a kind of a cartoon depiction where people aren’t satisfied, constantly cruising is only a hungry ghost realm if you view it as such. The very same behavior of being constantly sexually turned on often had to do with drugs. Like after you had sex you wanted more. If the mind isn’t so grasping one just views it as a continuation of sexuality. It’s like who you’ve cruised and gone with and are making it with. Rather than viewing it as hungry ghost situation you can view it as a continuation of sexuality or sexual energy continuing to flow. Then it’s not a hungry ghost realm but more of a bliss realm. As with anything it is how the mind perceives it. The Mineshaft could’ve been viewed as a hell realm. People being tortured, laying in shit and being shit on. To somebody whose really stoned there’s no distinction between bad and good because of the drugs, not because of the realization of one’s mind. There’s no pure or impure. The endless cruising of the baths or various sex bars of those years could be seen as an exact description or movie of a hungry ghost realm when viewed a different way. If there’s no suffering involved it’s a bliss realm. Those realms have a funny look.

“It’s clean, it just looks dirty. That’s where that comes from.

“It was another level of promiscuity that occurred both in the United States and Europe. Men who would now be considered heterosexual were, as a block of men excluding the gay people, 70% or 80% bisexual in 1978-’79. I’m one the men who made it with them. You could pick up a guy who was married with maybe 2 or 3 kids at the urinal in Grand Central Station. Guy’s would get off from work early, call their wife and go to the baths for 2 or 3 hours. Guys who today would be considered perfectly straight. They would go and have fabulous sex. Business guys who were really straight guys who would do anything– suck dick, fuck and get fucked. It always amazed me. It was about 80% of the guys out there. I’m not just making this up! It was really a sexual freedom amongst men.

“They didn’t think of themselves as bisexual men, they didn’t think of themselves as gay men, they didn’t think of themselves as any particular thing. They were having a good time. I made love to a lot of these guys and it was much about kissing, intimacy and affection as it was sex. Then what happened was AIDS hit and all the sudden it stopped. That’s when those straight guys cooled it.

“It took me until 1985 to get the picture. I’d still go to the baths or go fist fuck for fourteen hours. My lover would say ‘John, don’t you read the New York Times it’s not Legionaire’s disease!’ It took sort of that kind of mental slapping to get me to stop. Everything that had been accomplished was gone. It was like the catastrophic failure of one’s life. I’ve always viewed being gay as a heroic activity, going beyond the call of duty. Something that had to be done to benefit people.

“Now it’s very much about surface. Probably because of AIDS. Back then everyone was stoned, perhaps a little too stoned. When you’re stoned all the time you don’t quite think of your body in that way. Now you have to be or at least appear to be perfectly healthy. It also has to do with this other thing that happened in the eighties and nineties about being rich and trying to keep that lifestyle. Having huge amounts of money. The holistic thing of living forever as well as being attractive. Your money supporting this beautiful person who can get anything they want.

“One was incredibly depressed in the early to mid eighties because of the devastation of AIDS. In 1984 I started to deal with it by my starting The AIDS Treatment Project out of this depression. In the spring of 1980 I had met a former lover who told me his roommate died so suddenly, horribly and fast. I realized in those early years that what people with AIDS needed most was money. They were getting sick, losing their jobs and apartments. People would come home from the hospital to find their furniture out on the street. Week after week I’d hear this.

“In 1984 the last thing I wanted to do was fundraise. I had done that for the Anti Vietnam War Movement and the Buddhists, I thought ‘Fundraise? I’d rather die myself!’ But it’s like an addiction, right? What happened was that I realized I had to do something. It was easy because some of the people on the poetry records like Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson and Husker Du would offer their royalties. Husker Du were the first ones to offer their royalties to The AIDS Treatment Project. It took on its own life and you realized you were not fundraising you were helping somebody else. I wasn’t raising money for an organization. It became great because I was helping people directly, one on one. It wasn’t abstract.

“It still goes on today. It’s changed, it’s shifted into people with medical problems. Often poets, artists or people with little money or resources who are like 50 years old and suddenly have a stroke. I still work at it everyday. I get asked by somebody to help and we get a little bit of money and we give a grant. Because we’re not-for-profit we can create a fund and their friends can give money easily. We do that for anybody. It was not consciously that I did this. It came out of the despair of what was happening to mostly gay men.”

December 7, 2002
© 2003 Bill DeNoyelles

Bill DeNoyelles is an artist, writer and meditation teacher whose visual works can be seen on Greasetank.com. He is currently at work on a treatise about the golden age of fucking called, Ghost Dance : The Gay Frontier of Outlaw Sex and Art 1963-1983.

Part 1: Subduing the Demons in America
Part 2: Money, School and Drug
Part 3: Balling Buddha
Part 4: Up Against the Wall
Part 5: The Process
Part 6: Dial A Poem
Part 7: Grasping At Emptiness
Part 8: Kissing, Intimacy and Affection

Pornographic Poem/John Giorno