sex!”
Still, only in 1998 was his immune system seriously weakened. He was ordered by his doctor to start a rigorous medication regime. He then endured another unexpected humiliation as he approached a close gay friend, a scientist employed at a pharmaceutical company. In a phone conversation he asked him about the side effects of the medication prescribed to him. Instead of a friendly, soothing piece of advice, he received an irate response: “‘Get used to it!’ he yelled at me.” As Jeff repeated the response that left him shattered, his face was flushed with anger. I was acquainted with this friend and his partner, whom I had met at CBST many years before. It was at their home at a Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) dinner breaking the fast that I had first met Jeff. This couple was often mentioned in our conversations. Yet despite that friend’s heartless reaction, when Jeff moved to Long Island he looked for an apartment in a neighborhood close to their residence. But since that episode Jeff had avoided mentioning his medical state in their presence, aware it was not a welcome subject in their exclusive Long Island neighborhood.
However, another blow awaited him from the same couple a few years later. They were planning to register for domestic partnership, a status granted to gay couples by the state. The medical expert’s partner indicated to Jeff that he would be invited as one of the two witnesses needed for the event at the mayor’s office. Jeff responded enthusiastically to the prospective invitation, which symbolized close friendship as well as a major political achievement for gay people. But as the scheduled date of the event approached, the partner tried to dissuade Jeff from attending, assuming it might oblige him to set out for the occasion too early in the morning. Jeff responded he would stay awake the night before to be on time for that great moment in his friends’ lives.
On the day of the happy occasion, Jeff arrived in good time, wearing his best suit, and waited in the corridor outside the mayor’s office. He now recognized two other acquaintances ready to attend the ceremony. Then, waiting to be called as a witness, he realized to his embarrassment that he was not one of the two witnesses invited to sign for his friends to confirm the legal procedure. Deeply hurt, he spent a few days in bed depressed and humiliated as never before. He felt he was not respectable enough for his “decent” affluent friends. They must have considered him a lower-class, sleazy, irresponsible, HIV-polluting gay man. As he tried to understand why he had not been told about the change of the appointed witnesses, the partner grew angry and asked him to stop nagging him on the subject. With no excuse forthcoming on their part, Jeff abandoned that friendship of many years. It was now a year since he had seen them last.
Jeff now returned to our own story. With tears in his eyes, he told me about the predicament he experienced whenever we got together: “I thought, here is my friend, an anthropologist who writes about the life of gay men. I should have told him about the suffering I go through and that of many others.” But he could not bring himself to confront another loss, which seemed inevitable in view of his observations of the frightened and brutal reactions of many gay men. Naturally, he was relieved when I accepted the embarrassing revelation with no overt sign of panic or disappointment. Moreover, he now suggested helping me connect to other HIV patients among his acquaintances, who might share with me their stories of infection and the ways they had accommodated their unhappy circumstances.
Obviously, I was relieved I had no need to employ my own devices to dig up what seemed to be the full story of Jeff’s HIV affliction and the reasons he had hidden it from his anthropologist friend. But would I have ever gotten to know that story if Jeff had not suffered a health crisis in my presence? Does this impromptu “happy ending” to my story diminish my own uncertainty about the accuracy of ethnographic reports? Have I to reconsider other descriptions and quotes related to Jeff? More generally, how much deception and naïve assumptions about the truth of our informants’ reports enter our scientific writings? On the other hand, are ethnographers as open and honest with their subjects as they expect them to be in return? Do we, in our “non-professional” daily life, always encounter 100 percent truth as presented to us by our family, colleagues, and friends? Simmel warned us long ago about that basic element in social relationships.
The Ethnographer’s Own Gray Behavior
I now turn my introspective observation onto my own assumed trustworthy treatment of my informants. I remember the long period I kept secret from another close informant the fact that I knew his ex-boyfriend. I met Nigel, a black engineer, at a lecture we both attended in 2003 at the LGBT Center in Greenwich Village. We developed a friendship that continues to this day (see Chapter 10). Early in our acquaintance he told me in detail about the painful separation from his boyfriend, a relationship that had lasted some two years. However, about a year later I got together with Peter, a black academic I had met a few years earlier at another Center group, SAGE (see Chapter 3), that I observed for a few months. When we first met in 1999, we developed a strong mutual interest and thereafter met regularly at the Center and other places. However, in spite of my deep empathy with Peter’s position on various issues under discussion, I felt I was unable to accommodate his expectation for a more intimate relationship, which might have eliminated the researcher-informant distance separating us. Not having seen him for a long time, I told Peter about the sites of my present observation engagement. He immediately suggested that I might be familiar with Nigel, his ex-boyfriend. I was amazed by the coincidence of my close acquaintance with these two separated lovers. I answered that I did know him but then made an unwise promise, at Peter’s emphatic request, not to tell Nigel about that discovery.
Peter was still infatuated with Nigel, and at our renewed association, he spoke endlessly about their life together and expressed his longing for his lost love. I soon realized that Peter needed my company as a link to Nigel and as a sort of pseudo-therapeutic treatment. At this stage, it was not my close friendship he wished to regain, although he went out of his way to spark my interest and often invited me to join him at meetings of various social groups. What started as part of my role as ethnographer turned into my new task of analyst of sorts. To my embarrassment, I found myself telling Peter he should forget Nigel, free himself from a hopeless love obsession, and look forward to meeting new partners for a gratifying relationship.
Nigel likewise had often related to me the story of his life with Peter and the reasons that made him give up that relationship. I believed there was no hope of Nigel resuming his relationship with Peter. In fact, he made every effort to avoid any contact with him. I was careful not to divulge to Peter any sensitive information about Nigel. Nevertheless, I deeply regretted my promise to Peter not to tell Nigel about our acquaintance. This was not the common situation of ethnographers avoiding passing any information among subjects they communicate with in the field. Instead, I felt that I was playing the part of a double agent, dividing loyalties and betraying a close friend, talking about him behind his back.
Moreover, I was worried that eventually Nigel might discover my secret anyway, and would accuse me of treachery. I was afraid of losing Nigel’s friendship and trust, particularly as he had become a major link for me to an organization that I was observing at that time. But it seemed too late to inform Nigel about my close acquaintance with Peter. I often imagined Nigel’s angry reaction and my sordid disgrace once he discovered my hidden friendship with Peter.
I wrestled with that discomfort for a few more months. But gradually the idea of maintaining the secret became easier to endure as I was meeting with Peter less frequently. The timing and the trigger of its revelation came unexpectedly, just before I exited a train that Nigel and I had taken back from a Sunday afternoon stroll through a street market. I do not remember the exact reason he mentioned Peter, but I admitted in a neutral tone that I had met him some time earlier at another group meeting. Since Nigel was staying on the train while I was getting off at the next stop, there was no time to discuss my sudden announcement. To my surprise and relief, he did not mention my sudden confession when we met a week later.
I did not delve any deeper into Nigel’s
