It’s 1978, and disco rules. Donna Summer may be acknowledged as one Queen of Disco, but for gay men, Sylvester is the Other Queen. The falsetto singer has suddenly gone from drag infamy to hit records without giving up the gowns. “Dance (Disco Heat)” is hustling up the pop charts, and “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” isn’t far behind. Sylvester and his background singers the Two Tons O’ Fun are whipping up audiences of every raced and sexual persuasion with spiritual voices and sinful rhythms. Whirling and twirling and shrieking out gospel-inflected dance floor exhortations like Little Richard’s kid sister, this San Franciscan man in glittering couture looks and sings as if he’s just seen God…boogie.

From a September, 1988 essay out of The Village Voice titled Stayin’ Alive by Barry Walters. This essay ends a week of readings from The Faber Book Of Pop.

Now it’s 1988, and Sylvester has AIDS. He’s joined the People With AIDS group of the San Francisco Gay Pride March in a wheelchair. Although he’s just 40 years old, his thinning gray hair, sunken features, and frail body make him look 25 years older. This is Sylvester’s first public acknowledgment of his illness, and the transition from glamour maven to out patient has made him almost unrecognizable. The few who spot him cry, or gasp in shock, or applaud his bravery. For almost 20 years, Sylvester has been an icon of San Francisco nightlife: outrageous, bold, proud. Today, Sylvester is a symbol of a totally different San Francisco – a gay man struggling to stay alive.

This beautiful, touching and sometimes maudlin essay replays Sylvester’s career highs and lows. How he started singing with his mother in church, how he was taken under the wing of an evangelist who molested him: “I was abused by and evangelist when I was seven, eight, and nine! He really did a number on me, but it never made me crazy. But you see, I was a queen even back then, so it didn’t bother me. I rather liked it”

He became a member of the hippy drag outfit known as the Cockettes. Eventually he recorded a few minor albums before laying down the disco gauntlet for all of the ‘Frisco queens with his hit Dance (Disco Heat). Every Record company had a gay-dominated disco department because:

The world wanted to party, and no one knew how like gay men.

Before he made his disco move, Sylvester was no of the music. “I was just not into those skinny black girl singers who would ‘ooooh’ and ‘aaaaah’,” Sylvester recalls. “I wanted some big bitches who could wail.”

But there was still something missing in Sylvester’s new r&b approach. He got what he needed from Patrick Cowley, lighting man at the City disco, the Bay Area’s largest and most important gay venue. Cowley had kept his songwriting and synthesizer experiments secret until his homemade remix of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” became the local rage. Impressed, Sylvester asked Cowley if he wouldn’t mind making similar synth additions to what was originally a ballad, “You Make Me Feel l (Might Real)”, and another uptempo cut, Dance (Disco Heat)”. The two songs became top forty singles and turned the next album, Step II, into gold. Sylvester had finally arrived in the lap of mainstream America, stiletto heels and all.

As Sylvester’s disco career seemed to fade, friends started to become ill with unknown, and uncommon illnesses.

”We had gone on a tour of South America around 1979 or ’80,” Sylvester recalls, “and during the tour, Patrick got sick. We all thought it was the food. When we got back, he never could get completely well again. Soon he was coming down with everything you could imagine, and no one knew why.”

Some assumed that Cowley’s illness was a psychosomatic fear of success. In truth, the possibility of never recovering drove Cowley to produce more. But he kept getting sicker, and eventually pleaded with Sylvester to unplug his life support machines. To give him something to live for, Sylvester told Cowley that he had to recover so they could record together again. Miraculously, Cowley pulled through, and for $500, the pair made, “Do You Want To Funk?”

Shortly after it became one of the biggest dance hits of ’82 and gave Sylvester the needed career boost, Cowley’s death became one of the first publicized as resulting from AIDS. “At the end, he really got bitter, “ Sylvester says. “The doctors didn’t know anything – he died of some kind of pneumonia.”

After a minor club hit in 1986 off the album Mutual Attraction:

A hacking cough cut recording sessions for the next album short. Sylvester was hospitalized with pneumonia, and diagnosed with AIDS.

About his coming to terms with the disease he says, “Who was I gonna hide the disease from? I’m gonna die from it – if indeed that’s what will happen. If I kept it a secret, what good would that do? I’ve been doing AIDS benefits for many many years, long before it became fashionable. It would be ridiculous to be secretive about it now.”

With houmour he adds: “It’s not that I didn’t want to think the worst, because I’ve been a queen long enough. I’ve been gay for 41 years – I’m 41 years old. I didn’t need to take the AIDS antibody test. I know what I’ve done. Why would I waste those $90 when I could go shopping?”

The essay ends with a note of hope.

Just as his recording of “Do You Want To Funk?” with Cowley was an attempt to give his dying friend the courage to stay alive, the second wave of success Sylvester had from that song was a symbol of the struggle to keep the party alive despite AIDS. And for a while, the politics of dancing shifted from moving ahead to holding onto the small freedoms of pleasure. Now the party lives on in picket lines, in benefits and in rallies to keep those like Sylvester alive.

Sylvester died December 16, 1988, two months after this article appeared.

At my blog, T.M.L. you can find samples of Sylvester and Cowley’s work.