John Magisano was born in Hudson, New York in 1962. He was a student in the Seminar College (now Lang College) from 1983 to 1989. After leaving The New School he worked in a variety of governmental and non-profit organizations around New York City. He earned his Master of Divinity Degree at New York Theological Seminary in 1999. He has served various churches and served as Chelsea Community Church's Pastoral Counselor for 11 years (2004 - 2015). He currently serves All Souls Bethlehem Church in Brooklyn as their interim pastoral counselor. John recently retired from NYC Office of Technology & Innovation (OTI) as Senior Coordinator for Learning & Organizational Development. He lives in Flatbush, Brooklyn with his husband Xris and their feline overlord, Wolverina.

STAN WALDEN: Okay. Uh, it is, uh, 6:15 PM on November 2nd, 2023. And I'm sitting with John Magisano, uh, on the sixth floor at the University Center Library. And I've invited John today to talk about some of his memories, um, at The New School as a student here in the eighties. Uh, and John, I just wanna make sure that I have your permission to use or to record the conversation.

JOHN MAGISANO: Yes, you do.

WALDEN: Thank you.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: Um, well, um, John, we've talked at length, uh, prior to this instance, but, um, just for the record, would you like to introduce yourself?

MAGISANO: Sure. Uh, John Magisano. Um, I am a Lang College graduate. Um, when I started at The New School, it was called the Seminar College and became the Lang College. Uh, and my diploma says 1989. Um, and I—so I was somewhere in and around The New Schools from 1983 to 1989. So, yeah.

WALDEN: And I know you had, you started elsewhere, um, you started upstate?

MAGISANO: Yes. SUNY New Paltz. Um, much different school [laughs] different experience, different expectations. Um, and, uh, but I wanted to come to New York City, and it was sort of like, what kind of colleges do you have there? And, uh, this, here we, here we are, you know? [laughs] So, yeah.

WALDEN: Whe—I remember you saying that you'd started, you're initially introduced to some anthropological studies at, uh, New Paltz. Is that right?

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

WALDEN: Um, and you were sort of dissatisfied with some of the program there. Um, when you were looking at The New School, were you aware of a better program there, or was it, um, was there something else? Uh, just kind of living in the city in general?
MAGISANO: Uh, it was more the latter, wanting to just be in the city. And, um, and the fact that they didn't, here at Seminar College, they did not make you declare a major. Um, you got a liberal studies diploma, uh, a BA in Liberal Studies, and I had no idea what I wanted to do. Um, but, uh, I was interested in anthropology. The classes at New Paltz were really dull. And, um, mostly adjunct professors prevent—presenting their graduate theses, um, just by lecture and not very interesting. Um, but the other thing at New Paltz that was interesting was the Women's Studies program and the fact that it was very heavily lesbian, feminist, uh, at the time. And, um, if, you know, that was really where the action was around queer stuff at the time. Yeah. There was, you know, there were a few of us, uh, gay guys around, but the queer community was mostly a women's community. And, uh, I learned about feminism, and I did know that there were, um, I think I had a sense, I don't, didn't know anything explicitly, really. I was pretty foggy then, but it's like, okay, anthropology, women's studies, something about gender, they do something like that there. So, you know. Uh, but mostly it's in the city.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: And that's, and they're not gonna ask me to decide what I want to do with my life, so [laughs] those were the biggest selling points.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: That does sound exciting.

MAGISANO: Uh-huh.

WALDEN: I'm also curious to hear, um, I wanna hear about both sides, but the students, like what were your classmates like in that specific, uh, coursework at New Paltz? Were you finding kind of your peers, people you're excited to be around? Or was it still maybe isolated?

MAGISANO: Yeah, there were people who, you know, uh, certainly it was more exciting than high school and more welcoming than high school, that's for sure. Um, uh, and I did find a community there. Um, I, the few of us gay guys found each other. Um, but really, it, you know, it was all about the women. It was all about the lesbians. And they—Take Back the Night marches and, um, women's music concerts. And, uh, I, and I had no idea about any of that stuff before I got there.

[05:16]

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: Um, the classes were, you know, were challenging. Um, and, uh, just in a sense that they challenged my assumptions. Um, they weren't hard to study for or do the coursework for, that wasn't it. But, um, but it was people asking the kind of questions I wanted to explore.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: Um, but they were also really, really basic bootcamp for feminists. You know, here's how you be a feminist. Here's the history, Susan B. Anthony and, uh, the Isle of Lesbos. And, um, you know, the second wave of feminism, the right to vote, what happened, you know. Not much race and class stuff. It was all sure, you know, it was all, there was a little, but it was thrown in.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: Um, but yeah, it was, it was fun. It was fun at first, and it was challenging. Um, it just, it wasn't enough, you know? That's it. That's all. And I had to get away from a boyfriend.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: Um, we were never gonna break up if I stayed there.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: I knew, I knew I couldn't stay with him. So, um, so it was a geographic cure—

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: You know, in a lot of ways.

WALDEN: Yeah. This didn't occur to me last time we spoke, but, um, it's just interesting to hear this as a, as a center of, like, lesbian culture.

MAGISANO: Mm.

WALDEN: And, um, activity, uh, I think just my bias in being where I am, it's often the story, it's about gay men and the activity in the city. So it's interesting to hear this counterpoint. And where that was learning sort of thought leadership, thought leadership in terms of women's, um, uh, movement or kind of lesbian culture or politics. Like who were the figureheads, maybe, if any, at New Paltz at the time?

MAGISANO: At New Paltz, it was the women's studies professors.

WALDEN: Okay.

MAGISANO: They were, um, uh, mostly lesbians. Not exclusively, um, but mostly, and they were, yeah, they were the thought leaders. They organized huge women's studies, uh, conferences every spring, brought hundreds of people from around the country. Um, and it, again, you know, it was not overt. I, yes, it was overtly lesbian, but it wasn't, that wasn't the focus.

WALDEN: Sure.

MAGISANO: It was women's studies, but 85, 90% of the people who showed up were lesbians. And, um—

WALDEN: Do you remember any of the names of the professors?

MAGISANO: Yes. Uh, Betty Tallen was one. T-A-L-L-E-N. Um, Kristen Miccio was another M-I-C-C-I-O. I'm still actually a Facebook friend with her. Um, those are the ones, uh, one of the straight women, Nancy Schniedewind, I have no idea how to spell it. She was married to a, uh, a man, an anthropology professor, who started kind of a nascent, uh, men's studies, um, it was a course. It never grew into a, a program or a department. It was this one course, um, "Men and Sexism," I guess was what it was called. Um, and, uh, yeah, those were the ones I remember. Um, some others might, might come back to me.

WALDEN: Sure. Yeah. Well, then I remember you talking about Carol Cohen, um, when you got to The New School.

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

WALDEN: It sounds like she had a big impact.

MAGISANO: Oh, yeah. Turned my life all upside down. [laughs]

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: Um, in so many ways.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: Uh, so much of it—it was the, you know, just getting straight to the heart of—I mean, I was a brand new student here, and there weren't many student, new students every year.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: A small school, a hundred or so students

[10:01]

WALDEN: In the whole school, or per class?

MAGISANO: In the whole, uh, Lang or Seminar College. And, um, so I, and I had no sense of what the, the academic expectations were here. They were not ever really spelled out. I mean, I had like a 2.0 average.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: And they accepted me.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: Right? So like, okay. I guess, you know, and the, and the, and the, the admissions officer, Abby? I may think of her last name, um, who interviewed me, she said, I said, well, you know, my grades are really low. She goes, yeah, they're a little low, but from the way we're talking, I see you have potential, and I think you'll fit in nicely here. It's like, great!

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: You know? [Laughs] So, um, but the, you know, the academic, uh, expectations—I mean, Carol, there was no ramp up. There was like, no, you'll read this 500 page tome tonight and be ready to discuss it tomorrow. And have a, you know, have a 10 or so page paper about it by the end of the week. You know? Um, it's like, woo! So there was that. And she was about, about the most demanding in that way. Um, but in addition to that, it was like, uh, she, you know, the jump from the women's studies classes at New Paltz to her, and the class that she called "Gender in Society" was just so vast. Um, because at New Paltz in the women's studies classes, they never really questioned gender roles. I mean, it was all about women can do whatever they want to do. There's, they don't have to be housewives. They don't have to, they can be president if they want. They can be construction workers. And that was radical in that setting. Getting here to The New School and hearing Carol talk about how all gender roles are socially constructed. They're not biologically determined. I mean, first I'd never heard that language before anyway. And, um, so, you know, to get, to dive straight into the fact that there are no fixed gender roles, no matter what your biology is, just, it's, um, you know, that was really shocking, you know. That was really, really shocking. And she took an anthropological point of view and, um, brought us through studies of all of these cultures, uh, where gender roles were entirely different. Um, and not just, uh, humans, but throughout the, um, animal world as well. How, and and plant, you know, um, it's not all male-female. It's, you know, some animals are male and female, some are hermaphrodite, some are, some become female when the season demands it. Um, or the, the climate or whatever. And some, you know, some, some males are able to bear uh, offspring. You know, it's like, I had never thought of it, never heard of it, never, um, didn't know how much my, my own assumptions were just built on these.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: These unspoken understandings just inculcated through the way that I was raised, and the institutions that never consciously taught that. But that's what I, you know, I mean, I just absorbed it, and that's how I understood it, you know, so going, like, going from no real consciousness of any of that to, okay, here you are con—you know, you are conscious of it, of your, of your own, uh, constructs. The, what you've absorbed, here, we're gonna make you conscious of it. And at the same time, we're gonna tear them all down.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: You know? [laughs] So, so yeah, that was really, I think all of us in the class were just like, the first month especially, we were all just like, what the hell are you talking about? And how can we live after this after having everything shattered like this, you know? [laughs] Yeah, so.

[15:06]

WALDEN: How early did you take her class?

MAGISANO: First semester?

WALDEN: Okay, yeah, that's great.

MAGISANO: Yeah. Yeah. Um, the way they did, the way they taught you told you about the classes, and they presented you, you know, what was there, maybe 20 faculty? So the first day of school, you weren't, you were registered in school, but you weren't registered for any classes yet. They sat you, they sat us all down in a room. Um, the room is still there. I, I think it was the room with the Orozco in it over at, um, 12th Street.

WALDEN: I'm embarrassed to say I don't think I've spent a lot of time there.

MAGISANO: Okay. Well, I think it's on the fifth floor. Um, it's very beautiful, controversial. It was controversial during the Cold War, they put a curtain over it, the Orozco, uh, painting, because it had Lenin and Stalin.

WALDEN: Mm, okay.

MAGISANO: And so, you know, during McCarthy, they thought it better to just cover it.

WALDEN: Of course. Yeah.

MAGISANO: Rather than destroy it. And so, um, I, so they, we all sat in that room and all the faculty sat on a panel in front and described their classes.

WALDEN: Yeah. Wow.

MAGISANO: Um, yeah, there were, you know, it was some printed material, like a paragraph with the title, but really that's, they all presented, "this is what I'm teaching this semester." And, um, so from that, you selected your classes? And she was a very dynamic speaker. I barely understood a word she said. But she, but I, she looked like the women at New Paltz.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: You know, um, she looked like a fierce feminist dyke. Um, I understood at the time that she was bisexual, uh, and not, did not identify as a lesbian. I don't know what, but later on I knew she tried to have an affair with a student, so [laughs] with a female student. So, um, so yeah. I don't know if that, I, I don't know where she lands on the spectrum now.

WALDEN: That sounds like such an exciting way to start the semester, whereas now we log in, register, then go back to bed.

MAGISANO: Right. [laughs]

WALDEN: But that sounds like such an exciting way to get information, and maybe for the professors to give the information and for everyone to buzz about it.

MAGISANO: Oh, yeah.

WALDEN: That's so cool.

MAGISANO: Oh, it was, it was, and the level of engagement was totally foreign to me that the students hung on every word, laughed at all the jokes, were thrilled to be in that room. And I had just come from a state university upstate, where if they stayed awake for any of it, you know, that was probably the best you were gonna expect. You know, um, yeah. And there was all this buzzing and all this excitement and energy. Um, uh, yeah, I have, I have really fond memories of those, those sessions in that first one, especially.

WALDEN: Yeah, that sounds great. Were you living on campus at that point, or did you get an apartment?

MAGISANO: I lived in the dorm 16 or 15 Union Square West. I'm, it's right up on Union Square. Um, I think at 16th Street. I don't remember what the address is now, but the, uh, The New School and Parsons had about three floors of suites. And so I was lucky that year to land, you know, I had applied really late. They took me, they found me a spot in the dorm. Um, but they never actually updated my financial aid, uh, application. Um, and so my mother, my poor mother, she, she scraped together the money to put me in the dorm and to pay the difference in tuition. And, um, and it, and she never told me. I knew it was stressful on her, and I could see the stress, but she never told me how stressful it was to have that, you know, expense. Um, but they kicked you out after one year. You can only stay in the dorm for one year. And, uh, so yeah. Then I landed an apartment, um, from another student who was moving to Park Slope on, um, east, on 13th Street between A and B. And that's where I lived for, uh, the rest of the time. Yeah.

[20:27]

WALDEN: Okay.

MAGISANO: Yeah,.

WALDEN: Because, and that was a long time, right?

MAGISANO: Yeah. About, I was in that apartment about 10 years.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Or maybe, maybe not quite, maybe eight. Maybe eight or nine years. Yeah.

WALDEN: Was the suite where you initially landed, do you remember who you lived with and what that space was like?

MAGISANO: Hmm. Um, yeah. It was not real comfortable. Uh, they had loft beds because the rooms were really small. We, I shared with, I shared my room with, uh, at first with this just absolutely insufferable rich kid from Darien, Connecticut.

WALDEN: Sounds about right. [laughs]

MAGISANO: Um, and he, I mean, he was, you know, he was who he was. We were, we tried to be nice to him. He made it impossible. [laughs] And he kept, he didn't know how to handle the money 'cause he'd never been taught. So he was always eating all our food, and, 'cause he was running outta money all the time. Um, and, uh, so he was my first roommate. We kind of worked, he kind of worked himself out of the suite about halfway through the semester. And then I, I shared with a Parsons student, um, who was gorgeous and I had a big crush on, uh, so he and I were the gay guys in the suite. We didn't, he was a, he was a big emotional mess. And we didn't have, we did not have any kind of a relationship.

WALDEN: I knew you were out at the time, but was he?

MAGISANO: Yeah. Yeah.

WALDEN: Okay, okay.

MAGISANO: Yeah. Um, I came out early on in, I didn't come out the first day. I didn't wear like buttons or, you know, a dress or anything. But, um, I wanted to see how they, how they were, you know, the guys. And, let's see, it was two, the first guy from Darien, he was straight there, was Ken who was straight. Um, Kurt. And I, his name, last name's on the tip of my tongue, because he's a professor at the School of Visual Arts now. Um, musician, [Kurt Ralske?].

WALDEN: Okay.

MAGISANO: [Kurt Ralske?] Yes. And he was straight, but, you know, I, he was, uh, I felt comfortable, I came out to him first. He, Because he, I ran into a couple of them, um, at liquor store, and I had bought a bottle of wine. And I, uh, the one, the, not, not the one friend, but one of the friends that I knew, "I was, who had moved to the city from my town upstate, from where I live, where I grew up, I was getting a bottle of wine. So we, I could go to his house and, uh, have dinner with him and his girlfriend. And so they saw me in the liquor store, uh, Kurt and Ken, and Kurt said, oh, do you have a girlfriend?" You know, he saw me with the wine. He's like, "do you have a girlfriend?" And I said, I just, I almost spilled it, but I just, no, no. I do not have a girlfriend. And then later on, because, and because he was with Ken, and—

WALDEN: Sure, yeah.

MAGISANO: I just didn't want to, you know, I thought, I sensed that Kurt would be cool, but it—

WALDEN: Was Ken, the gay one, or the straight one?

MAGISANO: Ken was, is also straight.

WALDEN: Okay.

MAGISANO: Um, and, uh, Ken, uh, so, so I, when I saw Kurt back at the, um, at the dorm, uh, later on, I just said, you know, I wanted, I need to tell you something. When you asked me if I had a girlfriend, I almost said to you, no, I don't have girlfriends. And he goes, oh! [laughs] And he was, and he was just very cool, uh, about the whole thing. Um, his roommate, Jonathan, was gay. His name, I don't know, Jonathan, Jonathan Horowitz, I don't even know if he's still alive. Um, he was gay. And then, uh, my roommate, whose name has escaped me, the, the straight one moved out. The gorgeous Parsons student, Parsons fashion student moved in. Gary. Gary. Gary, I don't remember his last name. Um, he moved in. So then there were three, three of us who were gay. Um, one other guy. So there were six of us all together. Yeah. Six of us. Two room, three rooms with two each. One other guy, um, Orthodox Jewish guy—or observant, I don't know if he was Orthodox. He was observant. Um, and he was, he was totally cool too. He was fine. Uh, so I, you know, ended up with a really simpatico bunch of guys.
[26:07]

WALDEN: Nice.

MAGISANO: Yeah, um—

WALDEN: Did any of you hang out in the dorm? Or were you all just kind of out and about?

MAGISANO: We hung.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: You know, we hung out. We got high, we talked for hours. Of course, played loud music.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: And yeah, we hung out. Um, we didn't go, we didn't go out. Not, I mean, not with each other.

WALDEN: Sure.

MAGISANO: We go out, you know, with other, other groups of folks, but we didn't go out together, but we hung out quite a bit that first year.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: And then what else was it like, uh, kind of, the bigger picture? You talked about the classes you chose, um, kinda that initial dorm experience and then, you know, what was that first year like as you were kind of getting acquainted with the city, and being a student and learning, obviously a lot.

MAGISANO: Yeah. Oh, God, it was crazy. It was,

WALDEN: Because this is around nineteen eighty—

MAGISANO: Three.

WALDEN: Okay.

MAGISANO: 1983. And I got mononucleosis that first semester. Um, and just was exhausted all the time. Partying all the time, trying to learn how to study. Uh, and then of course, met Steve, my boyfriend. Um, and so we were screwing around a lot too. You know, so all of that. All of that. And then, and then I was trying to work, I had a, I did get a work study job, and I was trying to work, um, and I was showing up. I was showing up for that. I was answering the phone. And, um, so, but all of those, yeah, it was, there's so much to experience and totally overwhelming—

WALDEN: Totally.

MAGISANO: All the time. Um, and great fun too.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: You know?

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Great fun.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Uh, I would fall into deep depressions, but I would—they wouldn't last very long, but it would usually about, you know, "oh my God, I'm so behind in my schoolwork." That was usually what would trigger it, you know? Um, 'cause I was just constantly behind. And, uh, and again, you know, learning how to study that was really, that was probably the hardest thing. And then, but, 'cause I really, uh, you know, truth be told, I just wanted to move to the city. I didn't really want to study.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm, of course.

MAGISANO: Uh, um, so, uh, yeah. But it was very intense, very intense time. Um, Union Square, the Union Square was just a total wreck and full of drug dealers. And so much so that the RA, um, not, no, not even the ra, the, it was the dorm director. The dorm director said to us, the first day, "across the street is Union Square. Don't buy drugs there. Soon, you'll know drug dealers that you can know, and love, and trust, and you can buy your drugs from them."

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: "But don't buy in Union Square, because they see you and they'll say, oh, he wants Quaaludes. And they'll have aspirin, and they'll sell it to you as Quaaludes." You know, or he wants grass. And they'll crunch up some leaves from the ground and put it in the baggie and the, and they'll just take your money. Um, and, you know, not so much, "it's dangerous, you shouldn't do drugs," you know, he's—

[30:04]

WALDEN: Just being real.

MAGISANO: Yeah. Yeah. He was just being real.

WALDEN: That's necessary.

MAGISANO: Yeah. Yeah. And he earned a lot of credibility from us by being that way. Yeah.

WALDEN: It's smart.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: How'd you meet Steve?

MAGISANO: Steve was in class with me in the gender class. Um, and what did we do? How did that start up? We, um, we all went to, after class one time, we all went to, uh, McSorley's. Is that still there? I don't even know.

WALDEN: I think it, it sounds so familiar. Another [unintelligible, 30:54]. I'm pretty sure—

MAGISANO: It's, yeah, East 7th—

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Like—

WALDEN: I think it's still there.

MAGISANO: Between second and third or something. And, uh, McSorely's, they would bring you two beers at once. Watery, you know, watery tap draft beer. But they, it was McSorely's. They made it themselves. So that was, uh, that was cool. And it was cheap. And you drank enough, they bring you a plate of, they bring the table a platter of cold cuts and cheeses and stuff. So, cheap food, cheap beer. Um, so we went there one night and we kind of were talking, we were sitting next to each other and talking. And, um, and he was also taking the gender stuff really hard.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: Like, he was, he had been raised a little bit more religious than me and, I mean, liberal mainline religion, but still—

WALDEN: Sure.

MAGISANO: It was still, you know, a little bit more conservative. And, um, so all of this stuff was even more mind-blowing to him than it was for me. And, uh, and so we were talking about it, and then, um, and then a, a few weeks later, there was change happening within The New School at the time. Um, Jonathan Fanton had become president the year before. And he wanted to shake things up, and he wanted to, uh, um, things had not changed in The Nnew School for a while, was my impression. I don't know if that's, I'm sure that's not true. It seems very, like it had been very static for a long time. And then he came in, he was the new regime, and he wanted to change a lot of things, um, and thought, oh, the Seminar College could be a thousand people. And, um, all these, uh, all these old, tenured professors at the Graduate Faculty, which was here, um, you know, we have to find something else to do with them, and maybe we'll move them over to the Seminar College and, you know, take those professors who are really dynamic and bring them over—you know, it was all really, uh, it was all very disruptive to, um, to the community that I had just committed to, right? And, um, uh, Liz Coleman, who founded the Seminar College, um, and recruited all of those faculty, um, she had, uh, she'd resigned. She did not expect her resignation to be accepted, but she had resigned in protest for some of these things that Fanton wanted to do. And, um, she, like I said, she didn't accept, she didn't expect the resignation to be accepted, but it was. It's like, oh, okay. So, um, so then there was a community wide forum in Lang in the seminar college to, for Liz Coleman to explain to us what had happened and why she was going to be transitioning out. And, um, and so we, um, so yeah—I don't what happened that it was in the wake of that that everyone was really upset—

[35:01]

WALDEN: Uh-huh.

MAGISANO: And, um, so we all, we, we had thought about going to McSorley's after that, but it was too far away.

MAGISANO: We wanted to go somewhere closer. So we went to Paula's Saloon on Greenwich Avenue, um, a women's bar, but it was okay to be a man in there. Uh, and, you know, the women's, there weren't, never were many women's bars and those that were really didn't like to have men in them.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Because, you know, some of the few spaces they have.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

MAGISANO: But Paula's was cool. Very working class, very mixed, racially, and, um—

WALDEN: Interesting.

MAGISANO: Pool table. Uh, real dive of a bar, but run by some real, these tough women who had, you know, been through a lot. Um, so anyway, that we, we, that became our hangout after that. But that day we went over to Paula's Saloon and, um, all, a bunch of us, the group group of us went over there and I don't know exactly, I think alcohol has fogged my memory, but, um, Steve and I started making out and so that, um, that was that. And then, you know, neither both of us were really inexperienced in the ways of gay men's community here. We didn't have this whole idea of like, anonymous sex or sleeping around.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: It just, we, it was too scary for us. And so you found somebody, you stuck with them, and that's where you got your needs met. No matter what, how, whatever else the, what, you know, explosive, uh, young people with, with, with needs as big as the Grand Canyon, and no understanding, no self-awareness about, you know, how to negotiate any of that stuff. And, um, and that was, yeah. That was and Steve. [laughs] And we were, we would sit in, uh, most of the classes were on the 11th Street side, 65 West 11th, um, on the second floor. And there was a bench area hallway with our mailboxes and bench benches. And, um, and Steve and I, we would just sit there and make out, and everyone was just like, "oh, will you guys stop it!" You know? And we, we couldn't keep our hands off each other. [Laughs] It was, uh, yeah. It was—

WALDEN: That's exciting.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: An exciting time.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: Were you, so it sounds like you're kind of, I, were you like official or like, were you kind of boyfriends or is that how you conceived of yourselves, or—

MAGISANO: Official?

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Um, we, there was nothing official about it, especially, but we weren't seeing anybody else.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm, yeah.

MAGISANO: And we were big in public in the context of the school, and everyone's like, "oh, John and Steve," you know? And a small community. And, um, and so we were the identifiable ones.

WALDEN: Sure.

MAGISANO: You know?

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Um, and even the straight people were jealous of us. 'Cause they thought, you know, I mean, we were just so lusty and—

WALDEN: I mean, good for you! [laughs]

MAGISANO: Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Um, you know, it is, you know, we were too young and too, you know, just didn't know ourselves at all.

WALDEN: Sure. Well, it also sounds like there might have been also like an intellectual, like you were in the same class experiencing the same things.

MAGISANO: Oh, yeah.

WALDEN: And that's very special.

MAGISANO: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was a big part of it. Um, wrestling with those questions.

WALDEN: Yeah. You need someone you're comfortable to be able to talk that through with.

MAGISANO: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I, you know, that's one of the reasons I think that the, the experience at New Wchool or, or Seminar, Lang whatever, and Parsons would be different. There were a lot more gay people at Parsons. Um, uh, and they were much, they were, you know, it was a fashion school. They were flamboyant. They were strutting it.

[40:12]

WALDEN: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: You know, um, and the, the men, I'm talking about the men, you know, they were, um, very out, although I did, did get the sense that some of them weren't quite as out at home as they were here.

WALDEN: Sure. Yeah.

MAGISANO: You know, but, um, yeah, they, that there were just the, the numbers were much greater. Um, the, the Marxists in the graduate faculty were still not really on board with gay liberation. You know, it's like all petty bourgeois.

WALDEN: Interesting.

MAGISANO: You know, it's my, and again, just an impression.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

MAGISANO: Um, they thought we were naive act—you know, when we tried to be activists, they, they, you know, talked at, well, that's not how you organize. You organize this way. Mm-hmm. And you, the, you have to, uh, organize at, at, uh, at the point of production. Cultural stuff doesn't, is meaningless—

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: It doesn't, you know, so yeah. They were all in the, at the ones that were in the economics program, that's, you know, how I kind of, that was the sense I got from 'em. Yeah.

WALDEN: Yeah. That's really interesting. I feel like this plugs into a lot of these themes. Um, but I wanna start to think about this. I, you know, you're coming to the city, you're having these incredible experiences. Um, and, you know, I'm interested in how is, like, the early years of the AIDS crisis understood or experienced, um, during this time, uh, at The New School. And, you know, are you, um, is, you know, as you're kind of meeting this guy or other guys or navigating sexuality in the city, you know, is it top of mind? Are you trying to kind of push it to the side? Is it, do you have no choice but to confront it? Um, I also want to know, like, are you talking about it with your classmates or, yeah, I think just like, how is this cropping up in your life, if at all?

MAGISANO: It's a good, good set of questions. I think, um, definitely at first, it, we weren't thinking about it too much. Um, we knew about it. Um, we didn't have direct experience with it in 1983. Um, and, but it was in the air and, uh, in, and in a sense, we were not, one of the reasons we weren't dealing with it was because okay, we are, yeah, we're here in the West Village, but we are light years away from the gay community in the West Village. You know, we're really, we go to Paula's Tavern, Paula's Saloon, it's a safe place for us, but it's not The Anvil, you know, or the a Ramrod where they're doing fisting on a stage show, you know?

WALDEN: Right.

MAGISANO: It wasn't we, that was like, so far for, you know, we just, we knew that stuff was going on. We saw the publications, we saw, you know, we saw the, the flyers on the street and stuff, but, um, we, yeah, it was like, okay, we're gay, but we're, we're not gay like that, you know? [laughs] That was just horrifying to us.

WALDEN: And you keep, you're saying "we," uh, is when you're like—

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: Your group—

MAGISANO: Good question.

WALDEN: Can you describe your group, too? Like, who's your posse?

MAGISANO: Sure. Mostly, I think I'm talking about me and Steve. Um, I think that's who I'm talking about when I say that, because we had other friends who were not squeamish in that way, you know? Um, my best friend, he's, even after all these years, he's still, I don't see him much anymore. He was, he's still my best friend. Um, but he was a big. You know, he was fearless.

WALDEN: And this is a classmate?

MAGISANO: A classmate. Right. Also got to know him in this gender class. Um, yeah. Just fearless about this stuff. And he ended up at Lang College because, at Seminar college, because he thought he was going to the Adult Division, you know, the night school. He thought that's what he was applying for, but somehow he got— [laughs] got, you know, trapped—

[45:20]

WALDEN: Surprised.

MAGISANO: Yeah. Into, you know, he thought I'm, you know, "I had a few credits from the University of Florida. I'm gonna finish. I'm gonna go here and take night school and finish my degree. Well, now he got pushed into this, um—

WALDEN: What's his name?

MAGISANO: John Jusino. Uh, yeah. I saw him a few weeks ago. Um, uh, yeah. And he was just fearless. And I learned, you know, in, when Steve and I broke up a lot and got back together a lot. 'cause we just couldn't keep our hands off each other. Even when we were hating each other, we couldn't. Um, but in those interim periods, I would just hang out with John. We weren't lovers or anything, but I would go to the bars with John and just, I learned, this is what a lot of gay guys do, you know [laughs] and he—

WALDEN: What bars was he going to?

MAGISANO: Um, we would go to, and we had names for, we had derogatory names for all these bars. There was, um, Uncle Charlie's, which was right up the block from Paula's on Greenwich Avenue. Uh, there was right around the corner from, that was on 9thth Street, was the Ninth Circle and on, but the one that we made the most fun of was this little dive on Xristopher Streets, uh, Boots and Saddles, and we called it Suits and Girdles. Um, and, uh, so I'd go around, you know, he, it was an education for me. It's like, oh, well, this is, you know, I mean, we had the one gay bar in New Paltz.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Where it only got crowded on Friday nights.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: And, you know, there we'd go every other night that it was open, but it was always empty. And we had the whole place for ourselves. And then Friday night it was packed and there was all this sexual tension and, uh, almost desperate. And, um, and then they get to the city and it's like that everywhere, all the time. [laughs] You know? Um, and, uh, so yeah, I followed John around and, um, he just was a lot more experienced. And I've, he's one year older than me, but I felt like he's my big brother. Wise old man, you know.

WALDEN: An attitude.

MAGISANO: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and he really watched out for me too. He knew this was really scary for me, but, and then I was like, I was anything but a wingman. I was not—I was a drag on his good time, but he was really patient with me, and really, you know—

WALDEN: That's really sweet.

MAGISANO: Yeah. It really was. He was, he's a, you know, total character too. Um, uh, but yeah, I still, I love him dearly. Yeah. Yeah.

WALDEN: And you're, you're obviously still in touch.

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

WALDEN: Yeah. That's cool.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: Is he still, does he still feel like an older brother or—

MAGISANO: Yeah, somewhat. Um, it's more, at some point, it, that relationship had to change too. You know, I couldn't, uh, be as dependent on him anymore at some point, you know, so, um, and I'm the one, you know, who got married, got a house, settled down in so many ways, you know, um, and he, you know, he just, he really hasn't been successful in getting a relationship. He is had many, and he's in professionally, he's very successful, um, in publishing. Um, and, uh, but yeah, in some ways I've kind of grown up and he's kind of stayed—

WALDEN: Sure.

MAGISANO: In a spot. Yeah.

WALDEN: Were you two talking about AIDS and, you know, how is—these are important relationships and friendships that you have, and are these also places where you're thinking about these things? And talking through them?

MAGISANO: It's, that's where we started to really kind of pay attention.

[50:05]

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, we, I, I told you about it last time, but I'll repeat, but we had this speaker come to Seminar College, um, and she had, she was a volunteer with GMHC, maybe a doctor or nurse at St. Vincent's, I'm not sure. Uh, also somehow associated with the Community Health Project, which, um, was, is now the Callen-Lorde Center. I don't know if you're familiar.

WALDEN: No.

MAGISANO: LGBTQ, uh, health Clinic. My, my primary doctors are still there. Um, but then it was just, uh, it was, they had a office in the LGBT Center, and it had mer—it had come from a, um, the, a merger between the Gay Men's Health Project, which was what it was called, and the St. Mark's Women's Health Collective.

WALDEN: Okay.

MAGISANO: They merged, became the Community Health Project. And they were right in middle of HIV at that point. They were, you know, that was some of the only doctors who would actually take the patients and advocate for them. And, um, and so we got this, uh, woman, I think Eliza was her name. I can't remember, um, her last name, but she came and gave a talk, um, about it. And, uh, um, she—and I had kind of pushed that forward, I think, and this was, I think, before the article or maybe around the same time. But I can't remember exactly which came first. I think the, I think the, um, the forum that we had came first where she came to speak, and I had gone to the Office of Student Affairs, the woman who was running it, and said, um, you know, we should do this. We should. And the woman at the Office of Student Affairs, she was very supportive, but she said, well, we, we don't have any money to pay anybody. I said, well, maybe you can find somebody for free.

WALDEN: How were you aware of this person to know, to suggest it?

MAGISANO: Good question. Um, I, it was a circuitous route. I had, um, the New York Native was the publication at the time. Uh, Larry Kramer wrote articles for it. Um, Dr. Larry Mass, who was one of the first, um, AIDS experts, um, and who had been very active in the Gay Liberation Front and GAA, I think in the early seventies. Um, the newspaper was there screaming headlines about gay, about AIDS every week. Here's the numbers, you know?

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: This week it's 50. Next week it's 250, then it's 700. Then it's, you know, they just were raising the, the alarms and really, uh, were the only ones it seemed like. And so I thought, oh, let, there's a, a writer there. Let's get this writer. Um, and we couldn't get, I don't remember why we couldn't get the writer, or maybe she wasn't available, or maybe we just couldn't find a way to reach her. I'm not sure. Um, but there was a lesbian in school who was a nurse. One of the few people, like over 21. [laughs] She was about 20, 27, 28, uh, a little older than the rest of us. Um, June Bogan. And June, um, June had volunteered at Community Health Project. And so she said," John, let's go over there and see if they have," you know, I know "I'll, we'll talk to the medical director." Maybe she can recommend somebody. Um, and so we did. And that's, you know, that's how we, we found her. We, and, uh, yeah. That's how. And—

[55:23]

WALDEN: And they came and talked about basically the experience in a healthcare setting of what this looks like, or—

MAGISANO: It was very basic how to protect yourself.

WALDEN: Okay.

MAGISANO: That's what it really was. You know, use condoms, cut down on your number of partners. There's no cure, and we don't know yet what causes it. And so if you get sick, you're screwed because, you know, we don't, we can treat the symptoms, but we can't keep you alive. You know, that it was that kind of presentation. Um, and, uh, so yeah, it was just basic how, you know, how to protect yourself a little bit about here's what we're seeing over at the clinic. You know, um, guys coming in, uh, with lesions and we are the first doctor they've seen since, you know, in forever. Um, and they're dying in three days, you know? Um, yeah. They, she talked a little bit about that. Um, and it, you know, it wasn't that well-attended, I guess maybe 15 or 20. Um—

WALDEN: Was it mostly men in the audience or men?

MAGISANO: I don't think so. I think there was a few of us. Um, but I think it was, I think it was, uh, I think the, the gay women came out of to support us. And then there were four or five of us gay guys. Me, Steve, John Jusino, a couple of other guys. Um, and the rest were, you know, just people who were interested, were straight people who were interested. Yeah.

WALDEN: How do you, do you remember how you kind of kept sane? Like, you know, you walk away from something like that and like, how bleak is that? And then how do you, you know, at the same time you're young and you want to make the most out of your life and this wonderful opportunity you have in the city. Do you remember kind of how you juggled those things?

MAGISANO: Uh, drink and get high. That was a lot of it. Um, and there was a sense that I thought, I'm safe 'cause I'm just with Steve and I'm not screwing around and I'm not, you know, having a lot of partners. And, um, so there was that as well. That sense that, okay, it was more about, you know, I did my civic duty. I'm not so at-risk for these various reasons. Uh, but I want to do something for the community or the cause you know, that it was kind of like that. Um, and that, those, the compartments.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: That's what, yeah, how, you know, I stayed sane.

WALDEN: Totally. Yeah.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: Um, and then of course, you know, the reason I reached out to you was because of the article you wrote—

MAGISANO: Mm.

WALDEN: "AIDS Terror and Me."

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: Um, and I saw the date was 1985, that that was published in a Lang newspaper. Um, so by that point you'd been in New York for a few years?

MAGISANO: Only two.

WALDEN: Yeah. So not, yeah, not long to get to that point.

MAGISANO: Yeah, not too long. Yeah. Yeah.

WALDEN: Do you want to talk about what led up to that? Or kind of, you know, what was the breaking point and had you been writing much prior to that as a way to kind of like express or reach people or—

MAGISANO: No, no. I was writing for school. And, um, you know, writing my papers, it was very, you know, it was very, very writing-intensive, which, you know, I'm sure you understand. Uh, and I didn't have a whole lot of energy for just for writing, um, without, that was not related to school. Um, I was trying to figure out how to get active. I wanted to be an activist. I, sitting around talking in schools all the time. And, you know, sitting around talking about this stuff, reading about it, um, talking about social change, not doing anything about it except talking. Uh, and, um, so here was, uh, the school paper, which, fairly new, and okay, so here's a, a place where I can write a piece for, and that I'm pretty sure they'll publish it and I can, you know, feel like I did something. And, um, uh—

[01:00:40]

WALDEN: Did you have to pitch this?

MAGISANO: No.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: I don't think I did. [laughs] I think I wrote it—

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: I think I typed it up and put it in a box somewhere. The mailbox. Yeah. I did. I can't, I have no clue as to who did—I have no recollection about who, like, did the copy editing or the designing or actually publishing the newspaper.

WALDEN: Right. Yeah. Did you ever get any sort of reaction from the staff or fellow students after you, that was published?

MAGISANO: Good question. I hadn't even remembered that I wrote it. [laughs] You know, you sent it to me. Um, I think the only reaction that I got was from like, you know, very small circulation. There weren't that many people reading it. Uh, but the people in the school in seminar college, they, yeah. They read it and they, um, it was all maybe "Oh, good piece of writing," you know, nothing substantive, you know. Um, but it was all shaped around that, what I had learned in Carol Cohen's class, you know, about, um, the, just the way that social forces create spaces for communities to develop, to develop and, um, and that this thing that we called the gay community, 'cause we haven't even like fought, fought it out over the word lesbian yet to be included, never mind B and T—

WALDEN: Right.

MAGISANO: Q , um, that it was fragile in that, you know, I really, I felt like with this thing, with not just with, uh, not just with AIDS, but the whole social reaction at the time of Reagan and the religious right. And, um, just that resurgence of, you know, things that we somehow lulled ourselves into thinking was settled, um, that people were just gonna stop coming out. That they came out, you know, coming out had, was a revolutionary act come—you know, in the seventies after Stonewall, it's like, the biggest change you can make is to come out, because when people know you, that's going to change their attitude. And then social structures will change because attitudes change. Um, and it's like, okay, well, you know, attitudes and social structures, attitudes are getting worse. Social structures are not changing. Or if they are, they're not changing for the better, and then comes, and then AIDS comes along. And why is, why would anyone come out of the closet into this world? You know, that's kind, it was kind of, I don't even remember if I said that explicitly in the article, but that was what was really shaping my thinking at the time. Um, and it's like, yeah, okay, I, it's like I, the closet is not an option for me anymore. I can't, you know, I'm already, how am I gonna get safe? How, where am I gonna, how am I gonna be safe in this world? Um, because hell, I'm out of the closet now. Everyone knows I can't, you know, pretend anymore. And, uh, it's not even that I'm not going to go back in the closet. It's more like I can't. You know, I just can't do it because I've already signed my name to do many things, you know? Yeah.

[01:05:18]

WALDEN: Um, well, the cool thing that I've learned about you is that, you know, this, you know, you said you're asking yourself how do you get involved and do something? And from what I understand, you've done a lot since then.

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

WALDEN: And you were around and present for a lot of the activity kind of going on outside of school and in organizations, um, happening around, uh, downtown.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: Um, and beyond, um, I know you said you were at, some of, you were at the ACT UP meeting where they're talking about the name ACT UP—

MAGISANO: The name, right.

WALDEN: Um, so I'd love to hear, you know, just you talk about some of those initial like, uh, interactions with those, the fledgling movements.

MAGISANO: Sure, sure. Um, yeah. Okay. That's some fun stuff. And that mostly happened, that was all that came after I, before, before I actually got enough credits to get a diploma. But after I kind of separated myself from full-time being in the community in the Seminar or New School or Lang community, um, I, um, yeah, I, the, what was it? There was the, it was right around the time of the passage of the Gay Rights Bill in New York. Um, and that was, was that '84, '85, like eighty something, eighties or mid eighties somewhere. And that was really exciting. That was, there were demonstrations all the time. There were flyers everywhere. There was meetings of all kinds. There was rally down at City Hall, my first rally at City Hall and, um, starting to see the factions in the community.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Um, and I looked around for something I could get involved in that was, you know, I want to do—it has to be practical. It can't be, you know, it has to have a real impact. I don't want to join a discussion group. You know. Um, and, um, so I joined the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats, uh, which had been, um, it had grown up, it had been founded, I don't know, 1977 or so. Uh, and Allied with another democratic club in the West Village, the Village Independent Democrats, which still exists. And, um, so they were very progressive, uh, and they had been attacked in—this was what attracted me to them—they'd been attacked in the New York native by this, uh, really conservative, wealthy, gay man who had it. He, um, he wrote a column, I don't remember the name. Some, I think he, did he use the name Stonewall Jackson or something? Okay. I don't know. It wasn't his real name. [Leonard Goldstein was the name of this columnist in the NY Native]

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: And, uh, he was always writing this column, and it was, it was, he was making a joke. He, you know, but we all took him way too seriously. Um, he was writing, uh, about, you know, Ed Koch for so many of these people. This, he was their lodestar. He was, you know, they knew he was closeted, but he was good to a few of them. Um, all men, all, um, fairly, all certainly all white. All connected. All pretty wealthy. He was the first one to hire any openly gay guys in city government. And, um, but he was a wretched person and he was just awful. And he was racist, openly racist. And, uh, selling the city to, I mean, the city that you see now that is so wealthy and has so few spaces for people who are not wealthy, is a result of what he started. And we hated him. We hated him. And he never would address AIDS. If you've seen, you know, if you've seen "The Normal Heart," the play by Larry Kramer, Koch just would never address aids because he thought, you know, he can't even express any sympathy in public 'cause people will then think that he's gay, you know, um, and so yeah, he could be nominally pro-gay, but that was going too far. That's the federal government's job. That's not the city government—well, you know, it's spreading like wildfire. And so the first in the gay community to really start to challenge him, where this, was this club, the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats, they had been, uh, run by these guys, these Koch people. And this group came in and took them over before I joined, this Gay and Lesbian Progressive Action—Lesbian and Gay Progressive Action. L-G-P—L-P-G—They used to joke about ladies pro golf—

[01:11:23]

WALDEN: [laughs]

MAGISANO: Association. They would, you know, call themselves that. Um, but this group of progressive, uh, gay men and women, um, and they, you know, wanted to push progressive policies. They wanted to elect gay people, and they wanted to, uh, make a lot—they were all white. We were all white. You know, but they wanted to make alliances with communities of color. They wanted to, you know, not be one-issue. And they wanted to, they didn't want people to, they were tired of these Koch gays representing all of us.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: And so they had engineered a coup in the club, um, made all the paper, made all the gay papers, made the New York Native, and enraged this guy who wrote these columns, and he called them communists and they, you know, against free enterprise system and all of his stuff. And, um, and so I read these columns of his and I'm like, this is the place for me. You know, he had the wrong, he had the, if that was the impact he was looking for, he he had it. 'Cause I went and joined them because of—

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: His red [unintelligible, 01:12:41] and [laughs]. You know? And I made great friends there. And, um, so, and they, they supported Carol Bellamy, another closet lesbian who was running against Koch in that election, I believe. Uh, I think it was 1985, I think it was. Or '86. I, yeah, I don't know. No, it was '86 because, I think the next election was 1990. So I think it was '86. Carol Bellamy, uh, she was the, the city council president at the time. Different, uh, city council structure that from what we have now.

WALDEN: Okay.

MAGISANO: They changed the charter. So the person who was, is the speaker now was, or no, no, the public advocate—the person who's the public advocate now in that, that office was the president of the city council then. And they took all the power away and made it into the public advocate in the charter change. But that's how it was then. And so she ran against Koch. Um, she was not that great. She didn't, she had decent politics, but she the most, you know, know the, she, the key thing was that she was running against Koch. So we were gonna support anyone running against Koch. So that was the year. Yeah. That was, yes, that was '86. And there was bubbling going on in the, in the community. Um, you know, AIDS was, was taking up more and more space, um, in the consciousness and it just, in the activities. And, um, and that, that year to, there was the march, they had the silent vigil, the march down to the piers down Xristopher Street, the AIDS vigil, it was called, I think. And before that, I'd been to a few of them before that year. Candlelight, you know, everybody holds candles, walk down to the river, um, say names of people who have died. Uh, very, very solemn, very calm, very, you know, uh, serious. That year in '86, it was not silent. People. We got down to the river, got down to the piers, and people were, men were just screaming their, the names and crying and weeping. "I still love you, Kevin." You know, just falling down in tears and just giving voice to this, you know, all this grief and, and rage. And there was a photographer, um, she was there, a woman, a lesbian, but she had long hair. And so I guess this guy thought that she was straight and he punched her in the back and he said, "straight bitch!" he says, um, "exploiting our pain" or something like that. And she's like, "what?" You know? Uh, but that was like jarring. It's like, okay, no more of these, they're not, these vigils are not gonna be solemn anymore, you know? Um, and then in '87 it was when ACT UP, you know, just exploded on the scene.

[01:16:44]

Um, and I think it was about the third meeting of the group. They—Tuesdays at the Center, that was the thing. They, there's a speaker series at the LGBT Center on Tuesdays. They had a, they just had random people. I went to see Anne Meara there and, you know, just whoever they could get to come. Fran Lebowitz, whoever they could get to come. Uh, but one week they had Larry Kramer and he just was ranting in his rageful way, which he, you know, always did over there, "our community is dying. They're killing us, and we are killing ourselves, and you are killing your brothers." You know, just very accusatory. And "what are you going to do?" And, you know, just they, people took that as a challenge. And, um, I wasn't there at that one. I heard about it. I was at, not, and I was not at the next meeting, which was the following Monday night, but I was there at the next one.
And that's when they were bandying about with names. And, uh, there were several. The only one I remember is the one that I thought was the better one. Cure Aids Now. CAN. Um, that didn't get any votes. Uh, this one guy and Ihave been corrected in my memory. I thought it was this one guy, Dr. Barry Gingell, um, who thought up the name and proposed it, but no, I was corrected. It was Avram Finkelstein, who, if I'm not mistaken, was also the one to do the Silence = Death symbol of poster. Um, and he, he said, you know, AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, Power ACT UP. And so there were, that was one of three names voted on, and that one got all the votes. And, uh, my, I was thinking, oh, this is stupid. What? It's a stupid, theatrical name. It doesn't tell what we are really about. It's all, you know, uh, it's just, you know—

WALDEN: Did you come up with CAN?

MAGISANO: No.

WALDEN: Okay. So no—

MAGISANO: I didn't, uh, I did not.

WALDEN: Okay.

MAGISANO: Um, no, it was—

WALDEN: Just another option.

MAGISANO: I do know who came up with CAN. That was Michael Petrelis. Who is, uh, he's in San Francisco now. Um, and he's still, he was all, he was a, he just was an individual troublemaker for, you know, his whole career. I think that's still what he does. I don't know how he lives, but it's all about outing people and accusing other, you know, if you don't do, if you're a gay person, when you don't do what I say, you're anti-gay, you know that, he's that way. But he was stuck with ACT UP. Um, uh, but he, he was the one who suggested that one, but even he preferred ACT UP than the name. Um, so yeah. So that's, that's the story about the ACT UP name. That's a lot of zeitgeist to get there.

[01:20:30]

WALDEN: No, no, but I mean, it's, it's the whole, it's all relevant and pertinent.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: I remember you talking about, and this might be backing up a little bit, but, um, was it Robert Rivelli?

MAGISANO: Mmm.

WALDEN: Um, and I think, you know, to be able to tie, um, all of these stories are like, such key parts of this mosaic, and to be able to make it, or just to understand more specifically kind of like how, like where Parsons or the New School even just, um, fits in. Because I think what I'm like always, um, kind of shocked to remember is that, that St. Vincent's is just a few blocks away. And so, um, you know, you're talking about the speaker who came in and there, there's that kind of connection with the nurse in your class. But, um, yeah. Do you want to talk about, um, Robert Rivelli—

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

WALDEN: Um, and I'm also just curious to know, you know, if you've remembered anyone else who you were aware of in the community at Parsons, or sorry, at Parsons or the New School that was also impacted.

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

WALDEN: Especially in those years as like that rage is building and that reaction and it becomes more and more relevant to more people.

MAGISANO: Sure, sure. Um, Robert was really, the fir—is certainly the first person I know, I knew to get sick, and the first person I knew to die. Um, and, uh, I, he was, he was just wonderful. He was just a wonderful guy. Um, huge mountain of a man. I, I don't know, 6'5'' and big, hairy, muscular bear, and looked so butch. And then he'd open his mouth and butterflies, just, you know. It's, uh, and he, and, uh, he had been Liz Coleman's, um, assistant. Um, and they were, it was just a sight to behold, to watch the, watch them interact. Um, they both loved opera and they would talk about it endlessly. And, um, La Traviata was, you know, on the ensemble on Channel 13, you know—

WALDEN: [laughs]

MAGISANO: Metropolitan, just endlessly talk about it. And then they were always, um, so they verbally affectionate with each other, just, "oh, Robert, dear, would you," you know, "take care of this for me" "Yes, yes. Liz, my dearest," you know, they just very effusively talking to each other. And, um, and he was very motherly to all of us too. He just, you know—

WALDEN: And, um, they worked in an office together, so—

MAGISANO: They did. Yes.

WALDEN: Liz Coleman, she was a Dean's secretary?

MAGISANO: She was, Liz was the dean.

WALDEN: Okay. Yep. And he was her secretary, right?

MAGISANO: Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

WALDEN: And that was the dean of Lang.

MAGISANO: Dean of Seminar. Founder and dean of Seminar college. Right.

WALDEN: So yeah, you, you and your classmates sort of had a ton of exposure and interactions with them.

MAGISANO: All the time. Yeah. It was so small, you know, so, such a small place. And, uh, they're such big personalities. And, um, uh, just another woman who was around at the time was, uh, Janet Signorelli, who was, I think she was, I don't know what her actual title was, but she would just take care of a lot of things. And her and Robert, um, New York City, Italians, you know, just—

WALDEN: Mm-hmm. Stick together.

MAGISANO: They were great. And, uh, she would just take care of things. Like if you needed a piece of paperwork for your financial aid, she got it. She, I think what later became the Office of Student Affairs, was what she was doing before there was a title like that. Um, and, uh, and then Robert, um—my friend Ken, my one of my suite mates, a straight guy, uh, was doing work study, uh, had a work study job in the dean's office, working with Robert and Liz. And, um, and Robert started to get sick. And the, you know, the, the testing was not great at the time. And, um, I remember, you know, I was in there one day and Robert was having a hard time seeing something. He, you know, he just asking Ken, you know, to read this form 'cause he just, he couldn't make it out his eye, you know? And he really was not feeling well. It was clearly not feeling well. And Ken was really worried about him. And I said, and, and I could just see that Robert was not well. And I said, "Ken, what's going on with Robert?" And Ken says, "I don't know, they can't figure it out." But he goes, "but it's not AIDS." He says—

[01:26:18]

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: 'Cause that's what the first thing that we all thought was, Robert, big gay, he's sick. Is it AIDS? Um, and, uh, and he just, you know, he went, he actually got very ill at one point, was in the hospital, St. Vincent's, I believe, um, for a few weeks. And it got better. And he came back to work. Um, and we were all like really, really happy to see him. Uh, and he stayed pretty well for a long time. And then at that point, it was, you know, after Liz left, after Liz resigned, was there for the rest of the academic year, and then she was gone.

Um, the new dean came in, Peg Jacobs, we all hated her. She just wasn't Liz. We weren't fair to her, but she just wasn't Liz. And, uh, it wasn't the same. And, um, so we were, we were mean to her, but she was also imperious, and she just didn't treat Robert very well. You know, she wasn't overtly hostile to him, but she just, there was not the chemistry, you know? Um, and so Robert ended up quitting. You know, he just, he resigned. He was not, he was not doing well health-wise. He wasn't totally debilitated yet, but he just, you know, the stress, I think from, of working for this person and trying to develop this, uh, a relationship with her was just too stressful. And he is like, "okay, it's time for me to go." And he did. And then he, um, and then we, we heard, uh, that he was getting worse and that he had gone back in the hospital. And, um, and then the next time we heard he had passed. Um, they had the funeral down here at [St. Joseph’s Church] the Catholic Church on Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street, West, or Bleecker Street, or Waverley, I, something like that. I think it's around Waverly. Um, uh, and it was, uh, a lovely funeral, you know, but our first, our first AIDS funeral.

WALDEN: And you said there was a lot of a number of New School people there in attendance?

MAGISANO: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, peg Jacobs came that was gracious of her. Um, I don't rem—I'm sure Liz Coleman was there, but I don't recall seeing her. Uh, I remember, um, there was, uh, a lesbian, actually a lesbian couple, both of whom worked at The New School, um, in and around, you know, they do the seasonal work. They'd be registration temps.

[01:30:00]

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: Or they'd do administrative work in the dean's office or something else. But they were always around, but they were very active in the parish. And they facilitated the funeral, uh, along with the priest there. Um, and, you know, told stories about Robert and his brother, spoke for the family, and, uh, yeah. It was, and it was lovely to see a brother, you know, standing with his—

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Gay brother who died of AIDS.

WALDEN: Yeah. Um, do you remember being aware of anyone getting sick or even passing away from your New School community during that time?

MAGISANO: During that time? No. I think I heard later that about a few. Um, this one fellow named Craig who has since, you know, I lost touch with him. And then, you know, when I left, I, we weren't really friends. Um, we were friendly, but not, and he was really smart. I really admired his mind. Um, but then, yeah, I've seen him referred to in the past tense among, you know, among, uh, there's a couple of Facebook groups. Uh, that's it, you know, talked about Greg, and you know how they, people remember Greg.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: What a great guy he was.

WALDEN: Do you remember his last name?

MAGISANO: I do not.

WALDEN: Um, I cut you short earlier. You're talking about, um, your work after leaving The New School, um, starting, uh, in that sort of activist realm. But there's a lot more that happens too. Um, and, you know, you kind of have your professional life and your spiritual life too. So, um, I think to be able to like, continue to thread the needle—

MAGISANO: Sure.

WALDEN: I'd like to hear about that too.

MAGISANO: Sure. Um, where I really got involved with AIDS in a big way as a cause was, um, after leaving school and getting—I had a couple of little jobs, but, you know, just to keep just to keep going. Um, they weren't what I, they weren't in the field I wanted, um. Do you, I'm sorry, I gotta ask you a question. Do you do design, do you do architectural—

WALDEN:, architecture.

MAGISANO: Yeah. Interior as well? Or no?

WALDEN: Uh, no. It's the Master of Architecture program.

MAGISANO: Okay.

WALDEN: But I mean, we're, we're touching a lot of spaces and the lines are blurred, but I'm an architecture student.
MAGISANO: Okay. Well, my first job out of school was with this, with the National Council of Interior Design Qualification, NCIDQ, which is still a certification that interior design, uh, practitioners have to keep. Um, that was, I lasted about three months there, but that was really, I, and answering the phone, "NCIDQ."

WALDEN: Gosh. [laughs]

MAGISANO: You know, it's so weird. Um, but after that, and, and I had started to get involved in politics in, uh, in GLID when I was at that job. And then I got the job at Community Board 3 on the Lower East Side. And that's where I started to get really involved with HIV. And that is where, um, it was when I was there was when ACT UP got organized. And, um, it started to take off before, you know, it happened, I think I, it was about, I was working at the community board about a year before that stuff started to happen. And I had been, uh—there was a, a guy on the, on the community board who, um, Don Lorimer was his name, and he's, as far as I'm concerned, still legendary in, uh, in HIV circles. But he died in 1993. He's been gone forever. But, um, he developed models for predicting where, you know, how transmission was gonna take place, the epidemiology, which, I didn't know that word. I learned that word many years later. But that's what he did. Um, he was a member of the community board, and he wanted to get the community board to be active on HIV. And he was kind of my mentor on all of this stuff. Um, and he got a, he got the community board to found a committee on HIV. Um, even when they were all saying, "no, that's a West Village thing, we're, you know, we're on this side of town." And, uh—

[01:35:25]

WALDEN: It's amazing to think that it's the same city. And yet there's this, you're talking about factions earlier. Like this is a different kind of faction.

MAGISANO: Totally. Different country, different just, uh, yeah.

WALDEN: So who can you say, like, who—you're in the community board?

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

WALDEN: Or working with it. And so who's living in the Lower East Side at this time? Like, who are you working with in that?

MAGISANO: Yeah, yeah. Oh boy. That's a—talk about your factions.

WALDEN: [Laughs].

MAGISANO: Um, there were, there was the, uh, it was really on its way out there, still remnants over there. It's not totally gone. But the Polish community, the Ukrainian community, the Russian community, um, all who really hated each other from World War II, you know, um, but would find common cause, you know, on some, you know, something to do.

WALDEN: Sure.

MAGISANO: And usually it was, they would unite against the Latino community, which was also a, um—the Latino community and the low income housing movement, they were very much overlapped down there. Uh, very, uh, yeah, really weird stuff. The the low income housing activists, mostly white, or not, yeahy a lot of them were white, were doing something very, you know, colonial, really, is how I would describe it for the poor Latino community. They couldn't act for itself, you know. It just—really, really ugly. But, um, uh, they, yeah. They had such a condescending attitude, and so superior. And, um, and so in comes Don Lorimer, this white gay guy who lives on the Lower East Side, and, um, he wants to, he's talking about AIDS. And he's getting everybody talking about aids. And he got the Low—he got the Jewish people from Grand Street, uh, the Orthodox, uh, one woman ran the social service committee on the community board, and very conservative, but she, but he brought her along. She was voting for methadone clinics and needle exchange.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: You know?

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Uh, and all of her allies were like, 'what, Estelle [Rubin], what are you doing?" You know? And she's like, "well, you know, "uh, she's like, "he made the case. He has the data. What can I say?" You know? Um, and so there were, there, there was, that was the tradition, those were the traditional factions, um, that had been there since, like before the 1950s.

MAGISANO: Yeah. You know, they moved in, the Latinos moved in. It had been a, traditionally an immigrant community. Lots of immigrant communities had—

WALDEN: Right.

MAGISANO: Had landed there. Um, and then here comes the sixties with the hippies and the, uh, the artists.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: And, uh, so they are, they're, you know, the beatniks, the painters, the, um, all, a lot of whom were, you know, heroin addicts, you know, uh, they land there. And in the meantime, there's this wholesale disinvestment going on in the property. Right? Um, this, uh, landlords were just, had just stopped paying their property taxes and stopped taking care of their buildings. And so the city just seized thousands of buildings, um, and held them, uh, in lieu of taxes, and took ownership of them and didn't secure them very well. You know, a lot of 'em were abandoned. Everybody moved out. A lot of them, the tenants held on and managed to, you know, uh, managed to stay. But in many cases, like where I lived on, uh, 13th Street between A and B, the whole north side of the street was abandoned. Um, and there were squatters living in all of them. So that was the next movement, was squatters, who then kind of became urban homesteaders. Um, but the, uh, and with, and HIV, over there was among squatters drug users, and then in the Latino community very heavily because, just because of sexual activity, sexually transmitted as well— and the, you know, their overlap drug, you know, drug people, um, Latino drug people. Latino drug dealers, sex workers. Um, you know, it's all just kind of.

[01:41:13]

WALDEN: Comes together.

MAGISANO: Yeah. Um, and, and Don Lorimer was developing epidemiological models to figure out where this, you know, he was mapping was what he was doing. He was taking data from the Department of Health and mapping where the cases were and where they were likely to go. And nobody had done that before. Um, and he found that, you know, in some, there were blocks that were gonna see one in every four people develop HIV.

WALDEN: Wow. Yeah.

MAGISANO: And, you know, it was remarkable. And I mean, and it pretty much played out that way. It really did. Um, and then go on a few years, and then the, uh, there's huge lesbian presence over there. Um, and then, and, uh, then you got towards the early eighties, the kind of the drag performer community started to grow over there.

WALDEN: You said, you said early eighties, you mean early nineties, or was that early eighties?

MAGISANO: No, I think early eighties.

WALDEN: Okay.

MAGISANO: I think that when the, uh, all around the clubs, you know.

WALDEN: Sure.

MAGISANO: It was the Pyramid Club, um, couple of other places. Um, but they, the, the drag community grew up around there. And then, uh, I guess it was by the, by the late eighties when, uh, Wigstock sort of happened. Um, the first Wigstock, probably 1988 or '89, you know, Wigstock at all?

WALDEN: I'm, I've, I've never been, unfortunately.

MAGISANO: They don't have it anymore.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: You know—

WALDEN: It's changed.

MAGISANO: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It changed a lot. But that was, um, there was Wigstock with the drag community, and there was ACT UP these militant, you know, young gay men. Um, and it seemed to me, it seemed very dichotomous. It's like, okay, these, these, uh, performers like Lady Bunny and these ACT UP types who took themselves so damn seriously, you know? And, uh, but they, they blended and melded [laughs] and it became quite a thing.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Um, the, with the ACT UP presence at Wigstock, the first year, I remember seeing, they had a little table in the middle and a guy wearing a skirt, and not even a good wig, you know, uh, but he was trying to fit in and, uh, get, pass out the literature and, you know, uh, and then the next year ACT UP was all over it.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

MAGISANO: You know, and they were, they had the best outfits, and they, the best wigs. And Yeah, it was, it was a done deal at that point. Yeah. But—

WALDEN: And after you left, uh, school, uh, were working for the community council. City Council? And—

MAGISANO: Community board.

WALDEN: Community Board, Lower East Side.

MAGISANO: Right.

WALDEN: Were you still living, um, in the East Village? Okay.

MAGISANO: Yeah, yeah.

WALDEN: What was your sort of personal world, um, you know, you left school, you're still in the city. You're involved in this fascinating overlap of communities and concerns. So like, what's, like, when you get home from the day, like what do you, what's on your mind? Or like, what do you—

[01:45:08]

MAGISANO: Well, yeah, it was, it kind of the first job that I had to take seriously.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Right? So I was exhausted.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: You know [laughs] at the end of the day. And, uh, um, but I was still hanging tight with John Jusino from the school. Uh—

WALDEN: Were you living alone, or, um—

MAGISANO: Yeah. Yeah, I was living alone. And then, um, actually John moved in with me for a couple of months because he had nowhere to go, but it was such a, apartment was such a dump, and the building was such a dump. John couldn't stand it. I really didn't care. I, you know, it's like, I, I don't care. Um—

WALDEN: Can you describe the building and the, your apartment?

MAGISANO: Yeah. Yeah. Lower East Side tenement. Built to fall apart, really cheaply built. And, um, and then after it was built, the apartments that used to take up, you know, the whole side of a building got split into two. So it was essentially a railroad flat. Um, a bathtub in the kitchen, a little closet for the toilet. Um, and this, yeah, one bedroom, you know, really, which was just a closet. Um, a closet with a window. So that made it luxury. Uh, um, but it just cheek-by-jowl.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: With the apartments across the air shaft. And, uh, in the summertime, you know, nobody had air conditioning. It was so hot. All the windows were open. You'd hear the, whatever people were having parties or loud arguments in Spanish or whatever language. Uh, and, um, and I do remember it was late May and school was done, but I still had one paper to finish writing. And I had my electric typewriter. And I'm sitting on my bed and all the windows are open 'cause it's got really hot and I'm typing, typing, typing, and, uh, just writing my paper. I knew I had, I had to get this done. I, you know, before whenever, um, couldn't go to sleep until it was done. So it's two in the morning and I'm typing, typing, and there's banging on my pipes, you know, banging, banging, bang, bang, bang. And I'm like, I don't know what that, I dunno what's making that noise. I'll just go back to work. And [laughs] I did. And then the banging was even more louder and faster, and I'm like, oh, I'm making too much noise with my typewriter.

WALDEN: Oh, gosh. Yeah. [laughs]

MAGISANO: And so, you know, I had to close my windows and, um—

WALDEN: Wow.

MAGISANO: You know, just sweat it out and write the paper [laughs].

WALDEN: Wow. Yeah.

MAGISANO: Just very tight spaces. Lots of people. Lots and lots of people. Um.

WALDEN: What a visceral way to be reminded of your proximity.

MAGISANO: Yes, yes. Uh-huh.

WALDEN: Did you, you know, you lived in that space for a long time. Did you intervene at all? Like, were you painting the walls or were you kind of—

MAGISANO: I did a little bit. I painted once. Um, didn't help really. Uh, but I was, yeah. Well, I had, I'd started dating a guy, um, who actually was, he was a AIDS administrator at Beth Israel Hospital, um, when they had a big AIDS ward. And so, and I thought, and, you know, he was very well established and very, you know, I would go to his apartment on the Upper East Side, um, which was just perfectly appointed with, you know, art and paintings and upholstery. And, um, and I'm sleeping on a, like a piece of styrofoam on the floor, you know, in my house. And the walls were just ugly and a mess. And, uh, so I thought, okay, I'm have to, at some point I'm gonna have to have Errol over, so I'll paint, you know, I'll throw some white paint—

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: On these dingy walls. And that's what I did. And it didn't help. The bathtub was still in the kitchen, and this kitchen sink was still all rusty. Uh, you know, the, uh, yeah. And the light, you know, I was on the second floor, so the, there was no natural light that came in. And, um—

[01:50:08]

WALDEN: What was the address?

MAGISANO: It was 510 East 13th Street.

WALDEN: Just curious to see if it's still there.

MAGISANO: Oh, it's still there, yeah. Um, it's much nicer now. It's was sold, uh, probably a few times now, but I think I still know one guy in the building.

WALDEN: Okay.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: Yeah. Still there.

MAGISANO: I think that's, yeah. Yeah. Danny, Danny and I didn't know Danny. I actually didn't get to know Danny when I lived there. I got to know Danny, um, when I got sober and started going to meetings, and Danny was going to meetings, and then we looked, it's like, kind of familiar. "Didn't you live," you know?

WALDEN: Oh my gosh. Wow.

MAGISANO: Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Um, yeah, that, so, yeah. But I think he's still there.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: I think he's still there. And he had one of the nicer apartments. He, he got the apartment that, um, the landlady had, and she had died. And so the family still owned the building, but they rented out that apartment, and he, he got that apartment. I got, when I moved in, I just, uh, it was just a hellhole. And I really, I had no, I didn't even have a lease. I had, you know, it was month-to-month, and I was paying cash, and I didn't have any kind of rights to say, can you repair this? Um, eventually we got leases, but by that time I was like, I—yeah, I'm gonna move. If I can get outta here, I'm going to do it. So, um, so yeah.

WALDEN: Um, yeah, I we're, we've been going for a while. Um, I could keep going, but I, I know that's, uh, I don't wanna assume that on your behalf. Um, uh, but I do want to like, as we maybe start to wind down, um, sure. Uh, you know, I, I'm curious to know, I asked you initially, like when you were in school, like, how were you coping? What's, like, you know, there's this crisis that's going on in the background while you're just, you know, living your life. Um, and, you know, I'm curious to know that, what that looks like as like, you, um, kind of entered your career and more of like an adult, independent. Um, and, um, you know, we talked last time about your, um, your kinda spiritual life and your involvement in a church.

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

WALDEN: Um, and I'm wondering if that's, I'm wondering how that intersects or has intersected with, um, like, uh, you know, you've survived this crisis, and like you have, you've, um, and you're also like, you got to see such a specific part of it. Like, your work in this, um, a community board?

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

WALDEN: Um, you know, you get to see it from so many different angles. And so you've, like, you're, or I'm, I wanna use the term expert, like, you've, like, you're this, like, you have this like, in your mind and experience and like these names and these dynamics. Um, so when it comes to like thinking and reflecting on, um, you know, there, like the city put up a memorial like outside of St. Vincent's.

MAGISANO: Right.

WALDEN: And, you know, that is a mechanism for people to—

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

WALDEN: Look at something and to remember to observe and like, give their respects. And, you know, for some people that's enough. For others, it's the opposite.

MAGISANO: Mm.

WALDEN: And, when I've talked through this like, project and my interests with you, it's like, there's, my concern is that there's like, you know, I'm learning so much myself, um, and that's motivated by conversations that I've been part of, um, that I'm worried, enough—you know, people aren't always privvy to those for a lot of reasons. And so there's this history that's there that is really painful and difficult, and you can't just bring up in a, you know, off the cuff. Um, and so, um, I think what I'm trying to ask is like, how, has it been important for you to kind of observe, I think, first to mourn and then to kind of observe. And, and maybe it's changed over your life, but, you know, some people just wanna move on and they probably don't really want to think about it. And that's really fair. Um, I think as someone who's, like, wants to learn and to know, um, I, like, I want to ask because I, I just, I don't know, and I worry that people in my generation aren't interested in knowing 'cause they don't really have to be. Um, and so I don't know what sort of relationship you have with this history. Like, outside of me asking you these questions, are you, like, is this top of mind? Is it mid-mind? Is that low-mind? Is that not in your mind at all? Like, how are you, how do you relate to this history? And it's like, how do you, do you think people should be relating to it in one way or another? Um, so that's a lot. But I, I'm, that's kind of what I'm, I want to pull out.

[01:55:50]

MAGISANO: That's really a great set of questions. Um, well, you know, there's all of this. I mean, there's a, there's a few ways to, to talk about it from my experience. Like, um, one of my, let's see, I moved into Stuyvesant Tow—in this, this, yeah. This is a long way around.

WALDEN: Sure.

MAGISANO: I have to go there.

WALDEN: Yeah. Of course.

MAGISANO: I moved into Stuyvesant Town in 1992 or three maybe. And so we were, that was before the, that was before the treatments, you know, the protease inhibitors came. Um, but it was also after the peak of AIDS activism, because somehow people, you know, ACT UP kind of burned itself out by 1992 when Bill Clinton was elected. It was like, okay, we just, we can't be angry anymore. We just can't sustain this level of rage. Right? And so now we have a new president. Okay, we've accomplished something. Maybe now let's get on with life. Right? Didn't work out like that, but that was kind of how we were feeling. And it was then in nine, uh, uh, '90, '95, that I had my, uh, one of my dear friends, a bar buddy, uh, David Wilcox, got sick and came to live with me. He lived in a three floor walk, a five, five floor walk-up on Avenue B and Third Street. And he couldn't live there anymore. 'cause he couldn't walk the stairs. He needed an elevator building. And, um, he asked me if he could move in, and I said yes right away. And it was also a strange time for me 'cause, um,

MAGISANO: I was, I had broken up with a boyfriend, Terry 'cause we were both raging addicts and alcoholics. And I got, I started to get sober and I couldn't be with Terry. So I sent him back to Tennessee where he still lives. And we still talk now and then, um. So Terry moved out. Dave moved in almost like within a week. Um, and was, you know, not, he was going, you know, he was not doing well. He really was not doing well. So, um—

WALDEN: When did you say this was?

MAGISANO: This was '95. Um, and so he died in '96. He died in January of '96. And I actually, um, I met him through Xris, who later became my husband. All of us went to the Tunnel bar on the east, on east first, on First Avenue and East 7th Street. That was our hang again, gone many years now. But that was our hangout. And, um, so, uh, so Xris and I had kind of, we tricked at the bar. You know, we'd met at the bar and went home with each other. And, uh, then we didn't, you know, really, we stayed friends, but we didn't really date after that. Um, and then we both got sober on our separate journeys. Him through therapy, me through 12 Step. And then, uh, and that was '95, early '95, March of '95 was when I took my last drink and smoked my last joint. And Dave moved in by April or May.

[02:00:50]

MAGISANO: And Xris and I had—Xris had moved to Brooklyn. 'Cause he needed, he couldn't stay in the East Village and be sober. He needed to get away from his, those bars. So he moved to Brooklyn and we lost touch with each other for a while. And then he tried to call Dave on the phone and found that the number had changed, uh, to my phone number. And he called, he didn't realize it was my number, but he called and I picked up the phone and he goes, "John?" And I was like, "yeah, yeah. Who's this?" "Xris, I'm looking for Dave. Why is this your phone number?" You know? And I explained to him, "well, Dave has moved in." And that's how Xris and I got back in contact with each other. So me being with Xris is, you know, really makes, you know, it, does it make it front of mind? Not every day. Not all the time, but it's always there. Yeah. It's always there. That we—Dave brought us back together in a concrete way, and that we share this history that we lost so many people.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: We lost so many people. That's there all the time. Um, and we move on, but it's there. And then on a larger sense, I think getting, you know, addressing your question, I think there's so much, there's maybe not as much as there was a decade ago, but it's still there. But going back 10, 15 years, the PTSD really started to, uh, manifest in the community. You saw people who were, who had been heroic AIDS activists and doctors and medical professionals start to just decompensate and become, uh, wildly addicted and, um, depressed and self-destructive in a major way.

MAGISANO: And we lost a lot of them at, you know, right around there. 2005, 2006, 2007.

WALDEN: Interesting.

MAGISANO: You saw a wave. Um—

WALDEN: Did you understand that, um, anecdotally, or did, was there a broader dialogue or discourse around that?

MAGISANO: I heard about it anecdotally with individuals, and then there started to be some writing and, uh, articles. Um, one person in particular, actually a couple, there was a doctor from St. Vincent's, who just totally, I, and it was a Latino guy and I can't remember his name, but he would, had been a very prominent AIDS doctor. And he lost everything. He just, um, became heavily addicted to cocaine and, uh, lost his medical license and, um, just became a total mess. And he did finally pull himself out of it, you know. There was another guy, um, Spencer Cox was his name.

Big, just major force in ACTUP and in the treatment and data committee, which was the, like the heart of ACT UP with pushing treatments and drug trials and storming the NIH and, you know, but also like learning medical literature, learning research protocols, and pushing, pushing, pushing for, you know, stuff to move and not—and get outta the labs and be, you know, for, to remember that actual people's lives. Mm-hmm. were, were at stake. Um, Spencer, um, Spencer had HIV and, but he, and the protease inhibitors actually never really, never really worked for him. Um, brilliant thinker, political thinker, medical, you know, uh, medical research thinker, HIV strategist, you know, policy. Just the whole package. And he, he, um, founded, uh, something that didn't, ultimately did not fly. This research institute where he wanted to study the PTSD of AIDS survivors.

[02:06:11]

It didn't, they couldn't get the funding. 'cause it was no longer sexy in that way. Um, and when that fell through, he, uh, totally threw himself into, you know, to recreational drug and sex. Um, and, uh, he'd always hated the Chelsea boy look. But now he went to the gym and pumped himself up and, you know, got to be the quintessential Chelsea boy. And he really threw himself into that Chelsea boy lifestyle. And, um, and then he, when he died, it was huge news. There was a huge memorial. It was right around the time of the movie, um, how to, "How to Survive a Plague." Um, and he was one of those talking heads—

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: In that movie. He was big in the movie. And he died right after the movie was released. And so it was huge in the, you know, he pushed it, you know, his death pushed it out into the air that this is happening.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: That these, you know, the, all of this PTSD from unresolved grief and, um, you know, all this rage that, you know, never really went away. It just kind of, we couldn't sustain it anymore. You know, where did we take all of that into, they took it, a lot of people took it into self-destructive behavior. Um, and, so, there's been, you know, in that way, there—a lot of public processing happened in, you know, it is about 12, 14 years ago. I found a lot of that public processing of what happened to us, um, was out in the air. It's kind of, you know, it's certainly not, hasn't been sustained. I think a lot of people have healed in a lot of ways. Um, but I also think like what you bring up around the lack of intergenerational communication on this, um, I think it is a real thing. [Laughs] And I think that there's, you know, I mean, this was why, I mean, you are reaching out to me. It's like, oh my God, somebody wants to know about this, you know. Um, 'cause gay men my age and older, uh, you will just find a lot of resentment of younger gay men because they don't want to hear it. And you'll find, and I can't speak from it for the speak to the other side, but my impression is we're also angry at the young generation, younger generation for not knowing this stuff.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: And we treat them with that anger, and why would they want to talk to us?

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

MAGISANO: You know?

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: So there's that, you know, there's that disconnect that, um, is really real.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: Uh, it's, and then, you know, the, all the age dynamics that play in, it's like, um you know, we in my generation, were like, oh, well, you know, wait until they get our age. You know, they'll find out they're not so cute and that, you know, they think everything's so good now. You know, there's all this projection about how we used to act.

[02:10:19]

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: And I don't actually think that younger gay men, I don't think they have the same, I don't think you all grow up in the same world that we did. The world is fucked right now, you know? [Laughs] I don't think, uh, I really, yeah, I don't, I see people my age acting like this. Um, like we had a party at my house a few weeks ago, and, uh, some of us few people over, and we had, we had, like, we had a couple who were radical fairies who were in their seventies, Xris and me, who were, were in our sixties, um, and then we had, uh, some younger couples who were here, were there, um, and we remark it's like, wow, this is insane. This, we, we've never had the, you know, we usually it's just our neighbors who show up. Why did all these people show up at this point? But they did. We don't know why. Uh, but it was great. And, um, this young couple that Xris knows from his, his, um, his, uh, botany activism and uh, garden design stuff, um, they were having this really intense conversation. And, uh, and John Jusino, my best friend, he was there. That was the last time I saw him. And he's, uh—so John and I are sitting there hashing out old times, just laughing about stuff. And, John has a real biting edge to him, very sarcastic, very, uh, and I love it.

MAGISANO: But if, you know, it's, if he's not your best friend, you—

WALDEN: Watch out.

MAGISANO: May not understand. Right. You may not get this, you know, that he, I wanna say he, he doesn't really mean it, but he may actually really mean it. Uh, you know, it's just that way. Um, and Xris was talking to these, these, these young men, and he, uh, brought them in to where John and I were sitting talking, and, uh, he says, um, these guys have a question about gay history. And John just was like, "do I look that old?" You know? And he, and he, you know, he just got this like, real crusty attitude. And, and, and I, I just burst out laughing because it is perfect John reaction to things.

WALDEN: Uh-huh.

MAGISANO: And then, um, and then so I'm willing to discuss, right? So it's like, okay, what's your question? Ask, nd I'll, if I know, you know, we'll talk about—so they had a question about something, uh, and I may, it may actually have been, how did ACT UP get named? Whatever it was I told, I had thoughts and I shared them, and they were like, uh, they were really interested. They wanted to know. And after that, John, uh, just said, he goes, are there any, what is it—"Do you have any other questions about gay history you wanna ask?" You know, and he was just really surly. And, but, you know, in his own friendly, this is his way of being friendly, but you're not gonna understand that unless you know him for decades. Like I do, you know? [Laughs] Uh, and but it just is like, why, you know, if you're gonna act like that, why would anyone—

WALDEN: Mm, Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: Approach you to ask you, and then, but then you're gonna resent them for not knowing.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: So, you know, we we're just spinning here, aren't we? So—

WALDEN: It's some backwards defense mechanism.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: Well, to, I, you know, I think like what really got me excited and curious about this conversation is, I mentioned it before, but, um, I don't know in how much detail, uh, in any case, you know, in this class we had last semester about Stonewall and its legacy and contextualizing it and kind of burnishing that legacy, um, when, you know, we spent the whole semester talking to death about what do we do, right? Um, and as I was doing my own research and kind of thinking about, you know, this, uh, like the kind of chapters of activism. So there's like the Stonewall, you know, throwing the brick and everything that happened after that, and then, you know, that kind of step forward and steps back in the meantime, and then AIDS and, you know, ACT UP and, um, you know, this community, grassroots, grassroots work that you're talking about, there are all these little steps forwards and backwards. And, um, to me it just seems like, oh, well, you know, if we're peeling back the layers here and we're trying to think about, you know, activism now and what's needed now, like Stonewall, and then, okay, what happened in between? AIDS. When I mentioned AIDS, you know, there, like, you know, one of the reactions was, you know, "we're talking about this really happy, really joyous time. Why would we bring it down with this thing?" Um, and then what was really, you know, one of the concerns that was shared was like, well, I would worry about, you know, this isn't me talking, but this is someone else saying, I would worry about like, centering basically white men's stories. Um, which I understand as like, probably, you know, looking back, those are the stories that have been highlighted.

[02:16:17]

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

WALDEN: But to your point, and like what you're observing at this community level, like obviously that wasn't the case in terms of who was impacted.

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

WALDEN: There's these many intersections that are happening, which, you know, all of those, like, those canons should be unearthed and, you know, made more apparent to people.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: But there's just these like layers of hesitation to this conversation that seemed really disturbing.

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

WALDEN: Um, and those just, as long as those aren't, and I think that people, um, I think people might feel a curiosity, but those layers remain there as people continue to feel kind of scared to dive in and explore. Um, so in the meantime, we just kind of had this stalemate of, um, you know, like a sassy elder kind of wanting to kind of, you know, maybe, uh, hamming it up or putting on the schtick, but also, like, you know, for someone who doesn't have the gumption, who isn't gonna push against that, they're, you know, they're, they're gonna leave the conversation not knowing any better.

So, um, I appreciate you being so open with, uh, this infor—like, these stories and this context. Um, so yeah, I think there's, like, there's really, it's really hard to come across instances where we can learn about this in like a really, like layered way. Mm. But also, I think it's, it's so important to get this personal aspect to it because as long as it's like data or kind of large trends, like AIDS in New York. Obviously it was, you know, it's this chapter in history that you can like tie to these bars, but it's like, well, you know, who is inviting, you know, their sick friend to their house because they can't get it to the, the five floor walkup.

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

WALDEN: It's like these, I feel like for me to have this really, um, like this, these personal, um, kind of this entree into this history, like making it any less abstract is like really critical.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: And so that's why I think I'm really interested in like, who is here? How did their kind of presence here, how does that, how does its tentacles kind of get into the history and all the dynamics? So I, yeah, I just really appreciate the opportunity to like, start to put that together and to like, make it a little more like tangible and just like—

MAGISANO: Sure.

WALDEN: Alive. 'cause you know, like we have, we're surrounded by survivors and like, I, you know, I wish we were surrounded by more, but there's, yeah, there's, I think like, um, I think it's just hard for us to, to us, meaning kind of people in my generation to kind of, uh, get the gumption to bring it up and to really, um, yeah. I think like, I really want to know. And I think, I can't think, I can't imagine I'm the only one. Um, so—

MAGISANO: Mm-hmm.

WALDEN: And yeah.

MAGISANO: That's fabulous. Yeah. I love it.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: And I, Yeah, no, I'm like really pleased to be able to talk about this stuff.

WALDEN: Mm-hmm.

MAGISANO: And, uh, that somebody is asking, you know, um, yeah. And what you say, you know, I mean, I got, I could talk for hours and hours. I, um, about how we move, you know, move forward. There's the waves of activism that then get followed by some institutionalization, you know, and things kind of get hardened. Um, you know, ACT UP barely exists anymore, but HousingWorks is a huge organization and doesn't only deal with AIDS anymore, but they're multimillion dollar, you know? Um, and they, and they, and you know, there's others as well, like the Gay Community Center, the LGBT Community Center was squatted by the organizations that, um, you know, were first housed there, and now it's a multimillion dollar.

[02:20:38]

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: You know?

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Uh, but of course with that comes, well, we have to deal with funders and state regulations and, you know, boards of directors.

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: And, um, so the, you know, the movements become institutions and then new movements have to have to come because the institutions aren't movements anymore, you know, then, and, hh, I could go on, uh, my visceral, uh, uh, disgust with the non-profit world from having worked in there for so many years, I just, like [laughs] just—yeah. It's, don't I, no, not going back there. I'd rather work in government with all its mess and even in the church, which all with all its mess than with, you know.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

MAGISANO: With, you know, how do we get the next big grant?

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: And should we rename the organization after them, you know? [laughs].

WALDEN:, yeah. Oh, God.

MAGISANO: For the donors, you know, it's like—

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Like the Vera List Center.

WALDEN: Yeah. Right.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: Well, I think that maybe that's an interesting note to leave off, if I can ask one last question.

MAGISANO: Yes, absolutely.

WALDEN: On that topic, you know, like, um, maybe because, you know, the AIDS Memorial's a few blocks. It's, well, I guess it's interesting because you said, you know, 12, 14 years ago around the time—well, I guess the AIDS Memorial kind of was open 2016, or was it earlier?

MAGISANO: Yeah, yeah. No, it was about 2016.

WALDEN: So not long after you're talking about people kind of reconciling with this PTSD, um, you know, I think with the memorial, maybe there's a sense like, oh, we're good. We did it like it's done, we're done. Remember, like, we have this that we can point to, so we don't really have to, like, there's no ritual or kind of, you know, maybe you have the symbol, but where's the ritual and where do—

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: Like, it's obviously a process.

MAGISANO: Right.

WALDEN: Um, so do you have a reaction to that memorial or the idea of this kind of being like, plopped down, um, versus like, what did you get versus what do you need, um, in a more—larger, more abstract sense, or like, even spatially, like do you need a different kind of space to experience that memory in?

MAGISANO: I'm actually impressed by that space. Um, I don't get over there much. Uh, certainly not with the pandemic, but, um, but I, you know, I've spent some time over there and I admire it. I admire the, you know, the, I'm not sure if that, that triangle bubble or bubble structure does that much for me. Um, the, the water feature, the fountain moves me a little bit more. And the, um, the Walt Whitman, uh, writing moves me a lot. And, um, but all of it is like, okay, I, you know, I mean, when we are all gone, that's just gonna be a park, really. You know, it's just a park. Nobody—it's not gonna serve that same purpose where you can sit and reflect a little bit, um, which is fine. You know, what, what else is there? I, you know, you can't ask for too much more. Um, but so I do, yeah. Going over there and just being reminded is important. Um, I would rather that St. Vincent's was still there and that I could sometimes go in the chapel there.

[02:25:02]

WALDEN: Yeah, yeah.

MAGISANO: You know?

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

MAGISANO: Um, but it's not um, you know, and the center, the community center doesn't look anything like it used to when I was hanging out there all the time. Um, no, not even remnants. I mean, it just has been totally renovated, uh, any sense of the beginnings there seem to have been eradicated, at least that it feels that way to me. Um, so what I, what do I need? I, you know, spatially that's a really good question. I, there's more, there's, it's wrapped up with grieving, not just around AIDS, but with the communities that are gone and the, um, the types of spaces and people that have been just pushed out. Like there's no Paula's Saloon anymore. There's no, uh, Suits and Girdles anymore. There's no, um, the piers are beautiful and the park is beautiful and I wouldn't want, I wouldn't want that not to be there, but it doesn't resonate like those rotting piers that we used to go out on and hang out and, um, yeah. That was, and before I got here, the west side hi, the elevated highway and, uh, the guys who used to cruise the trucks down there, that was big for them. And that never, you know, that was gone by the time I got here.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

MAGISANO: And so that, it's not a thing for me.

WALDEN: Right.

MAGISANO: Um, but, you know, if there was— I miss that, even if I was kind of grossed out by it sometimes and horrified by things that I saw down there.

WALDEN: Sure. Yeah.

MAGISANO: Uh, that West Village, um, uh, vibe of, you know, cruising up and down Xristopher Street and stopping in The Badlands or Ty's or, um, Boots and Saddles or, um, any of those bars that don't exist anymore. Um, even while I didn't really, you know, but I, yeah, I did, I hung out a lot in bars, but mostly it was to drink and not so much—

WALDEN: Sure.

MAGISANO: Which is why the East Village bars were more comfortable for me.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

MAGISANO: Just there wasn't so much, uh, of that cruising energy that just made me real uncomfortable.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah. I've heard people say similar things.

MAGISANO: Yeah.

WALDEN: Yeah. Yeah.

MAGISANO: Yeah. And it was fine for the people who liked it and who were great with it. It, it just always made me feel inadequate and not cute enough and, um, not brave enough and like, you're really going to fist somebody, you've never even learned their name?

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: And I was like, first of all, that just grosses the whole thing just grosses me out. [laughs].

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: It's like— [laughs]

WALDEN: Yeah.

MAGISANO: Um, but then I would hear people, you know, before my time talk about, oh, well, you know, when, uh, when the Ramrod was here and, um, oh, the other, the Mine Shaft, you know, they talk about those and those were gone by the time I got here too, so. Yeah.

WALDEN: You're always too late for something.

MAGISANO: Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. And God knows how would, how I would've felt today, , those places. I have no idea, but yeah. Yeah.

WALDEN: Well, I mean, this has been incredible.

MAGISANO: Yeah, it has.

[end of recording, 02:29:22]