"Everyone was afraid:" Growing up LGBTQIA+ in Raleigh during the AIDS crisis
While "Pride Month" and the LGBTQIA+ community are "out" and common in 2022, it hasn't been long since members of those communities were struggling for acceptance, even survival in North Carolina.
"If you weren’t around back then, I don’t think you know how dangerous it was to be out and gay in the 80s," said Karen Waters, who graduated from Athens Drive High School in 1983 and was coming of age as a lesbian woman in 1980s Raleigh.
"Today LGB people can go just about anywhere without feeling like we may be killed for our orientation. We can go anywhere now," she wrote in a first-person essay about her experiences.
Waters would grow to establish an LGBTQIA+ publication called The Triangle. Publications were incredibly important for communication in the gay community, especially during an era when they were so feared by the general public that even being seen in a gay bar could get you fired – or worse – attacked.
Waters said, "My wife says I'm jaded. I'm a dark person. Because you don't lose six roommates and not be touched."
She lost 50 friends from 1983 to 1995 to AIDS.
"It was a very tragic era. It was fun, but it was also full of death," she said.
It could be hard for nearly any person in modern times to imagine watching 50 people die and not being sure if you would be next. At an age when she should have been watching friends graduate college, get new careers, get married or have children, she was watching them die.
Waters recalls sitting in a funeral for one of those many lost friends, and people in the crowd – including herself – were afraid they could get AIDS from the mosquitos.
Back then, recalled Waters, it was also referred to as "The Gay Cancer."
"Everyone was afraid. And straight people were especially scared," she said. "Just a hint that you were gay got you kicked out of most places."
The popular cultural movement of 'free love' from the 60s and 70s was stopped dead in its tracks by AIDS, and it made LGBTQIA+ members of society a target.
Prepared to suffer, die for each other
Especially in the beginning, AIDS had very little research being done, and the gay community had very few resources for knowledge or protection from the disease ripping through it.
"Not only were you dying, but your neighbors hated you, and you couldn’t get a job. And the government wouldn’t even admit it was a disease," said Waters.
"It was kind of like COVID," she said. "In the beginning, you just didn’t have any information. People were scared. With COVID, people blamed China. With AIDS, people blamed the gays."
So many members of the LGBTQIA+ community had to make a decision. They stuck together. Even though they were afraid of catching AIDS themselves in the beginning – before more research and science helped provide a broader understanding of how it spread – they chose to stick by each other, to stay close, to support each other. And sometimes, to watch each other fade away – then grieve together.
"Hospitals wouldn’t all take AIDS patients," said Waters. Often times, if one of her friends got AIDS, they would simply go home to their family and never come back.
Waters recalls a place called the Hustead House opening in the early 1990s. It served as a hospice house for people with AIDS, set up near Rex Hospital.
"People were going nuts about having 'those people' living near them. The neighbors protested, sent out inflammatory flyers to the news and did whatever they could do to keep the house from opening," she said.
However, the neighbors eventually came to accept and even appreciate the Hustead House being nearby.
"Within a year, the neighbors were breaking bread, bringing food over. It was groundbreaking," she said.
Waters recalls bringing loads of Christmas presents to the house, when a local gay bar rallied together to ensure their friends with AIDS had a happy holiday.
In those days, AIDS was a death sentence. If you found out you had it, you knew you were going to die.
"Losing that many people so quickly was hard on me. I was not even 30 yet and had lost almost my whole circle of friends from my early 20s," she said.
According to Waters, the wave of people her age who lived through the AIDS crisis deal with survivor's guilt even today.
Gay bars and other safe LGBTQIA+ spaces in Raleigh
In the 1970s and 80s, LGBTQIA+ spaces were often pushed to the edges of the city. In Raleigh, that meant the Warehouse District. However, there were a few other havens sprinkled around the city.
One of the earliest gay bars in Raleigh was called The Mousetrap, and it opened in the 1970s. Later, it became Glenwood Park.
"Glenwood Park was a lesbian/drag queen bar that was owned by the same guys who owned The Capital Corral, or CC’s," said Waters.
The CC was, according to Waters, a "cowboy Levi, leather cruise bar for white, gay men only."
"We were always pretty sure they only operated Glenwood Park simply for a tax write-off and a place for lesbians, drag queens and people of color to go so they would stay out of CC’s," she said.
Like any era, it was a complex time in history. Even amongst the LGBTQIA+ community, there was division, even segregation.
"I never met a trans man until the 2000s," said Waters. "There was a lack of surgeries, and it wasn't considered acceptable. We had lesbians who wore male underwear.
"Terms were different. We didn't understand yet back then," she admitted.
In short, the transgender community was not very visible.
Waters also shared that the Black LGBTQIA+ community was almost entirely separate from the white community when it came to bars and hangout spaces.
There was a bar for Black members of the LGBTQIA+ community called Zebras off of Poole Road, explained Waters. But she was never allowed to go inside.
"I only went there once, and I wasn’t allowed in. I waited in the car while my Black friends went inside," she said.
In short, the stories and experiences of the white LGBTQIA+ community in the 1980s were likely very different than those of the Black LGBTQIA+ community.
There were a few bars that were not considered 'gay bars,' that were still welcoming to the LGBTQIA+ community. Waters emphasized the important role of Sadlack's and the Players' Retreat.
In fact, it was someone at Sadlack's who first suggested Waters should start a paper for the LGBTQIA+ community.
"So I started it. I had lots of writers, lots of readers. I ran the whole thing by myself. UNC has the whole thing in their archives," she said.
Even today, Waters is well known in the LGBTQIA+ community for her work writing about gay history and issues.
