Today is my birthday. I’m now 69 years old, an age I was sure I’d never see.
Normally at this time of year I’d begin the process of laundering cycling clothes, sorting out gear, and getting ready to pack so that by the next Sunday morning (that would be May 31st this year) I’d be on my bike at 6:30 a.m., beginning a trek from San Francisco to Los Angeles after having spent the previous ten months training and raising money for AIDS/LifeCycle. ALC, as it’s known to its friends, raises money for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Jeffery Goodman Clinic at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. I’ve been doing this for a long time—every year except one beginning in 1999—and I have no intention of dropping out now.
For obvious reasons there will be no bike ride this year. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any fundraising. In fact the fundraising will be far more serious simply because COVID-19 has greatly taxed the ability of non-profits, including AIDS service organizations to raise the money they need to operate.
Please keep reading past the fold…
Last year’s AIDS/LifeCycle raised almost $17 million, a record. They were budgeted for $18 million this year. The decision to cancel the ride was made early enough so that the benefiting organizations were spared most of the production costs of the event. They reduced the goal to $13 million. As of March 15 the ride had raised $6 million. Normally this is the time of year when donations increase. But as of this morning the total had only increased by $1.3 million. The problem is that the money that’s donated goes directly to cover the cost of services; expenses of the ride are paid afterwards. The organizations are both midway through their budget years so what gets provided daily to all sorts of clients is based on the assumption that the budgeted funds will be there. This is of course the reality for all non-profits (as well as for businesses). They are in the position of trying to meet their obligations, much of them based on contracts with local, state and federal government, without the means of continuing to do so.
I can’t tell you how exactly many clients each organization serves; the numbers are in the thousands. Services are varied and they exist not only to help those who currently live with HIV but also to prevent new infections. This goes well beyond simply giving HIV tests and making sure that people with HIV have access to medication though those are central functions.
Some of the services the Foundation and the Center provide are targeted to people without means while others (HIV and STI testing and treatment, substance abuse treatment, support for seniors and in particular LGBT seniors, outreach to members of marginalized communities with elevated risk of contracting HIV) are available to all who request them. A not insignificant proportion of the client bases of both organizations are either unhoused or are at risk of becoming homeless.
There are outreach programs targeting people of color, transgender people, sex workers. There are programs for people who lack access to health care either because of poverty or due to discrimination in the provision of services, a significant issue for transgender people. Substance abuse is a serious problem within marginalized communities and despite some fifty years of progress the LGBT community as a whole is still marginalized in many respects. The issue leads not only to increased risk of infection but also to decreased access to medications for those who do become HIV-positive. It leads to homelessness. That’s why substance abuse counseling and treatment are integral to the work of AIDS services organizations like the Foundation and the Center. Just so nobody is under the impression that HIV/AIDS services are irrelevant to the coronavirus epidemic I hope it would be obvious that the people who are at risk of contracting HIV or of progressing to AIDS are the same people who are at increased risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2 and of not being treated properly if they get sick.
Why am I so insistent on continuing to raise money for HIV services? It’s simple. I’ve been HIV-positive since the end of 1980. I’ve lost two partners and numerous friends—160 that I can enumerate with precision and probably at least that many who I lost touch with during or even before the epidemic started. The fact that I’ve always loved cycling certainly plays a role in my choice of fundraising events. Have fun and save lives? What’s not to like about that?
But that’s not the half of it, at least for me. The very first published report about what would soon become known as AIDS appeared on June 5th, 1981, just a few days after my thirtieth birthday. And it later would turn out that I had already been HIV-positive for six months at that point. I was thirty, had begun a career, had a nice place to live after relocating from New York City to DC the previous fall. I wasn’t a bad guy but I wasn’t particularly mature given my age. All of that changed and changed rapidly. I don’t think anything could have prepared me—or any of my peers—for what happened over the next few years. Dealing with all of that loss and the emotional pain was not easy for any of us. The reality is that I keep riding as a means of healing the pain and acknowledging the fact that I am lucky to be alive at a time when so many of the people I cared about are gone.
Last year I raised almost $15,000 for AIDS/LifeCycle 2019 and that’s been my goal for this year. So far I’ve raised $8,330. That’s a really nice number and it rather shockingly puts me in the top 100 fundraisers out of almost 3000. But compared to last year I have to admit it’s disappointing and almost one quarter of my total comes from one person: my mother (who did 22 AIDS Walks before hanging it up in 2010 at the tender age of 85). I have no illusion that I’ll actually achieve my goal but I do hope I can raise at least a bit more between now and the end of the week.
So if you’re in a position to do so, please click this link. And help me save a life or two. I’m closing with another picture, this one of bikes parked in advance of ride-out. It’s what I was looking forward to seeing this week but it’ll have to wait until (I hope) next year.