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Living And Dying in 4/4 Time by Paul Gallotta; Upstart Press; 205 p.; $12.95. 
Living and Dying in 4/4 Time began its literary life as Paul
Gallotta's AIDS Diary, portions of which appeared in Fort Lauderdale's
City Link weekly around World AIDS Day (December 1st) since 1994.
Gallotta's Diary made many readers aware of the AIDS epidemic and, it must
be said, of Paul Gallotta: "People would stop me in bars, supermarkets and on
the streets telling me how they started wearing condoms because of what
they'd read. Some even offered to prove it."
Others felt that Gallotta's writing was too good to be limited to a throwaway rag in South Florida. "I've been writing an AIDS Diary for a local newspaper for about 5 years when a client of the agency I worked for said it would make a good book," Gallotta said in an interview. "I said 'whatever.' He did the legwork and proselytizing without my input or assistance." Upstart Press took a look at Gallotta's diaries, liked what it saw, and the rest is history. Though Living and Dying in 4/4 Time is Gallotta's first book, it is by no means his first writing experience. "I've been writing professionally since I was 14, almost 30 years [ago]. Mostly in the music press, but some political and hard news as well. I've written for publications like Circus Magazine and Billboard, the Miami Herald and a lot of travel magazines." When I first met Paul Gallotta (1993), he was assistant news editor for South Florida's gay community newspaper, The Weekly News. Gallotta stopped writing full-time in 1994 and became a case manager for Center One, a AIDS-service organization in Fort Lauderdale, though he continues to write theater reviews for City Link. Still, once a writer always a writer. "I started writing as way of coping with things I didn't understand. I'm not much for confrontation, so when I find myself stuck in a situation that doesn't make any sense to me--which is pretty much a daily thing - I write it down. Again, it's not meant for general consumption, but [it] helps me cope, and thus far it has prevented [me from] heading to the state capitol with an assault weapon."
Gallotta began both his AIDS work and his journal in 1985, when he volunteered for the Gay Men's Health Crisis buddy program in his native New York. Gallotta's AIDS work took a break after he moved to South Florida in 1989 but resumed when he joined the staff of Center One. Working in a job where the clients tend to die on you can be a depressing experience but Gallotta's sense of humor always manages to keep him this side of murder or suicide (or shooting state legislators in Tallahassee). Thus, in spite of the book's dismal topic, I often found myself smiling at Gallotta's wry descriptions of people and places, especially those that I recognized. Needless to say, Gallotta changed most of the names to protect the guilty. Living and Dying in 4/4 Time is nothing if not brutally honest. Gallotta is willing to show himself in a less-than admirable light, especially during his early, "drug-addled" years. Not willing to mince words about himself, Gallotta is equally frank about the people around him. Gallotta's dysfunctional family gets its share of knocks, as does his previous lover, the aptly-named "Dick". The gay communities of New York and South Florida are also dissected, and deservedly so, for their less-than adequate response to the epidemic. Nor is Gallotta willing to canonize his clients just because they have AIDS. Not even the greatest caseworker could keep a client from indulging in destructive or risky behavior, and Gallotta admits that he's had to walk away from a client more than once. That Gallotta managed to survive and thrive in such an environment speaks volumes for his character. When Paul Gallotta began his AIDS work in 1985, most of the clients in AIDS-service groups were white gay men, like Gallotta's friends and co-workers who succumbed to the epidemic. However, by 1998, Protease Inhibitors "changed the face of AIDS". Now "I hardly ever get a gay white male client. . . . Increasingly, clients are disenfranchised types. Mostly junkies, illiterates, the elderly, aliens, and especially their girlfriends." These people don't have the supportive community that gays were forced to create, which meant that Gallotta often has to stand-in for absent spouses, relatives and friends. There is little this side of crime that Gallotta wouldn't do to help his clients, in one instance pretending to be "Father Paul James from the Pastoral Care Ministry of Fort Lauderdale" in order to reconcile a client with his mother. "I view myself as sitting in the passenger seat of a speeding car with Jesus behind the wheel. Although in honestly, sometimes I feel like it's Charles Manson driving. I don't really have much of a choice but to go along with what's happening to me and try and learn from it, then use what I learn to help the people I work for." Though AIDS is definitely not over, Paul Gallotta's own life has taken a turn for the better. Having dumped "Dick" some time ago, Gallotta has lived "for four and half years with probably the most tolerant man this side of Gandhi. He has temporary custody [of] a little girl who serves as a constant reminder that God does in fact have a killer sense of humor." Gallotta has also written a play, St. Francis Adagio, which he characteristically calls "a light-hearted, old-fashioned screwball comedy about the end of the world." Also based on Gallotta's experience as an AIDS caseworker, St Francis Adagio recently had its world premiere at the Hollywood (Florida) Boulevard Theater. |
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