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Voices from the Frontlines
An ongoing series of interviews with AAC staff and volunteers

March 2008 Staff Profile
Chris Wittke

How long have you been at AAC, and how long have you been in MA or Boston?

        I moved to Boston in the spring of 1985 to finish my delayed college education and get a lucrative degree in creative writing. After that I worked at Gay Community News for the last five years of its existence, first as a typesetter because I wanted to learn a transferable skill, I kid you not, and then as Features Editor. I wrote a lot of copy about gay sex in the age of AIDS.

        I’ve been at AIDS Action since June, 1993, which somehow means I’ll be having my 15th anniversary this year. I’m not sure how any of this is chronologically possible, given how young I am. I must’ve moved here when I was 12 or something.

        I had been unemployed for almost a year after the paper went out of business and my morale was terribly low. I couldn’t bear the rejection of the job hunt process so I kind of slacked on applying for jobs unless I was sure I was really qualified for a position. Oh, who am I kidding? I applied for no jobs until I saw the ads for the new Public Sex Environment Outreach program AIDS Action was creating and I shouted, “Eureka! The perfect fit for me!” David Aronstein, the Prevention Director at that time, called me a couple of hours after I interviewed for the Outreach Worker position to ask me why I hadn’t applied for the Coordinator position. So clearly, my insider knowledge of the world of public sex in greater Boston and my willingness to share everything I knew came through and they hired me to run the program.

What was your first job at AAC?

        My progression through different positions here at AIDS Action parallels the ever-shifting funding sources and restrictions as well as our internal strategies for targeting and refining prevention priorities over the years. There have been a lot of titles and they reflect not only how our thinking about prevention has evolved but also the strings that often come with public funding.

        Let’s see, I’ve been the Public Sex Outreach Coordinator, Gay Male Prevention Manager, HIV Prevention Manager, (which had several focuses over the years including working as part of the team that created the still-fabulous Peer Action program), and since 2004, I have been the Field Supervisor for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Behavioral Surveillance Survey (NHBS) in Boston. When we surveyed men who have sex with men in 2004, which we’re preparing to do again this summer, my job involved asking guys about their sex lives and drug using behaviors as well as their exposure to prevention programs like the ones I helped create back when I started. So in a way, I’ve come the proverbial full circle.

        My involvement with the AIDS epidemic happened because I was an out gay man in the 1980s with a functioning sex drive who wanted to be as healthy as possible. That meant bringing an AIDS activist sensibility to my writing as well as my personal life. It meant going to the March on Washington in 1987 and being lead by Whoopi Goldberg in an “F-You!” chant at the Reagan White House. It meant being at the first unveiling of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt that weekend and being utterly decimated by the enormity and eloquence and tragedy of it. It also meant memorial services and obit reading and ACT UP/Boston demonstrations and Queer Nation Kiss-Ins for positive gay visibility as well as the reclaiming of healthy sexuality after the anti-sex backlash of the early- to mid-’80s.

As AAC’s longest-term staff member, what has changed the most and what has been most constant?

        It’s sort of odd being the Unnoficial Queen of AIDS Action now, which is an imaginary title I bestowed upon myself when Larry Kessler retired, because I’m relied upon to contribute a little something to the institutional memory of the agency. Because I was around during the first wave of the epidemic (though not employed here then) and then the subsequent waves, I do have a particular perspective I can bring. One of the most significant differences between 1993 and 2005 at AIDS Action is that back then, everybody in every department had people in their personal lives who had been very sick or who had died of AIDS. Nowadays people have been moved to work on the epidemic without necessarily having experienced that kind of personal devastation and loss in their lives. Believe me, that’s much better and I wouldn’t go back to the bad old days for anything.

What do you think of Boston’s Gay community?

         The interesting thing about my work in the gay community, which was on the front line for the first couple of years at AIDS Action and then returned there four years ago with the NHBS research project, is how much it has increased my appreciation of gay men in Boston. It’s far too easy and really played out to go on and on with the same old clichés about “Boston Attitude” and how there’s “no gay community” here. It’s hard to resist repeating this received wisdom but if people would stop and really examine the situation they’d realize it’s simply not true.

        However, I think people who suffer through the lack of daylight and the often frigid temperatures of New England winters come by their lack of gregariousness honestly. It takes months for our muscles to unclench and for us to not be hunched over and buried under layers of clothing with our faces down as we walk down the windy streets. It must be a piece of cake to be open and friendly and outgoing in warmer climates.

        Having said that, I can’t tell you how receptive and open we found the guys to be when we conducted our survey in public sex environments, bars, clubs and countless gatherings of the many social and athletic organizations that the gay community in the Boston area has created. That goes for everybody from the Gay Men’s Chorus, to Gay Volleyball, to the Bears to bowlers to Fensgoers, softball players and the incredible folks at The Pub in Lynn and on and on. There are so many places where the great diversity of gay men in this area have created welcoming, safe spaces for each other and for non-gay-identified men who have sex with men, it’s very impressive. But you have to go find these things. You have to think about what your interests are and then go looking, because there’s likely some sort of organization organized around that interest of yours.

        Doing this work has really changed my life and given me such a positive outlook about the Boston gay community and it really has lead me to challenge people when they repeat the same negative b.s about Boston. I call people on that all the time now, it’s my mission.

If you could talk to all of the gay men in Boston, what would you say?

        There’s not any one message that would be applicable to all of the gay men in Boston because that’s an incredibly diverse and wide-ranging group of people. But in general, I’d like to let a hell of a lot of gay men in Boston know that through my research work on NHBS I have learned that gay men in Boston are generous with their time and care about the health and well-being of their community. I’d urge them not to let the bad PR about Boston attitude grind them down and become a self-fulfilling prophecy and I’d advise them that the single easiest step toward stopping that is to not perpetuate the stereotype by repeating it. Gay men around here are very creative in their organizing groups and clubs for their various interests and I have seen many such organizations being open to newcomers who walk through their doors. I’d also advise somebody who can’t find a group for their interests to consider organizing one. Ultimately I would love to thank all of the gay men in Boston both respondents and business owners/managers and club organizers, who have been so open and supportive of NHBS. If I had to boil the message down, it’d be: “You’re fabulous!”

Why do you do this work?

        I do this work because I read the first New York Times article “Mysterious Cancer Striking Gay Men” on that 4th of July weekend in 1981 and I knew the world I had been dabbling in and was about to come out more fully into had just had a bomb go off in it. The following week Arthur Bell in The Village Voice accused the Times of wanting to ruin every gay man’s holiday at Fire Island and I thought, “This seems like a much bigger deal than ruining a holiday weekend.” I do this work because of the abject terror I lived in for several years, and for the anger and the rage we tapped into a few years after that, and to continue the reclamation of pleasure and our sexuality that began a few years after that. I do this work because I have to, and because as I realized when I saw that AIDS Action Help Wanted ad in 1993, “Eureka! The perfect fit for me!”