Life during the Aids crisis

Russell T. Davies became famous by writing about the lives of gay men; but in his teens, he was anxious about his sexuality – and it may have saved his life. He was living in Swansea, and as a “horny” 17 year old, he was excited to learn that there was a gay sauna in nearby Newport. “I used to think, ‘I could go and have lots of sex in that sauna right now,’” he recalls. Eventually, in 1980, he plucked up the courage to seek the place out – but then walked on past, “scared of men and sex and becoming what I am”. Now, he realises that going in would have opened the door to that world of casual sex, just at the wrong moment, says Decca Aitkenhead in The Sunday Times. The UK was on the cusp of the Aids epidemic

– but when he started to hear rumours that gay men were being killed by a mystery virus, he was incredulous. “I thought: ‘This is ridiculous; it can’t be true,’” he recalls. “A disease that affects haemophiliacs and Haitians and homosexuals – how impossible is that?” Partly, he accepts that he didn’t want to believe it, because it would “stop the party”; but when his friends started dying, it was impossible to ignore. Now, he has written a drama series, It’s a Sin ( see page 31), which tackles the question of why some HIV-positive men had unprotected sex, despite knowing they could infect others. “Those people have been for decades portrayed as villains... criminals, in fact.”

But it wasn’t like that: many of them were just “ordinary boys being as stupid and as horny as any boy ever is. And scared,” he adds. “And in denial.”