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As a politics-obsessed Georgetown freshman, Sean Strub arrived in Washington, DC, from Iowa in 1976, with a plum part-time job running a Senate elevator in the US Capitol. But he also harbored a terrifying secret: his attraction to men. As Strub explored the capital's political and social circles, he discovered a parallel world where powerful men lived double lives shrouded in shame. When the AIDS epidemic hit in the early 1980s, Strub was living in New York and soon found himself attending âmore funerals than birthday parties.â Scared and angry, he turned to radical activism to combat discrimination and demand research.
Strub takes readers through his own diagnosis and inside ACT UP, the activist organization that transformed a stigmatized cause into one of the defining political movements of our time. From the New York of Studio 54 and Andy Warhol's Factory, to the intersection of politics and burgeoning LGBT and AIDS movements, Strub's story crackles with history. He recounts his role in shocking AIDS demonstrations at St. Patrick's Cathedral and the home of US Senator Jesse Helms. By the time a new class of drugs transformed the epidemic in 1996, Strub was emaciated and covered with Kaposi's sarcoma lesions, the scarlet letter of AIDS. He was among the fortunate who returned, Lazarus-like, from the brink of death.
Body Counts is a vital, inspiring memoir about this deeply important period of American history, and with an astonishing cast of characters, including Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Keith Haring, Bill Clinton, Yoko Ono, and others.
Paperback, 432 Pages, Orig.Published 2013, This Ed. Publ. 2014
Author: Sean Strub