In 1983, when Kls Nomi died of “gay ncer,” the unrground punk-opera sger was mostly unknown beyond his small circle of iends and fans. It’s...
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GAY OF THE DAY: KLS NOMI
“I don’t thk he was any way beg anythg that wasn’t himself, which was pretty gay as far as I knew, ” the artist Kenny Scharf said. Kls Nomi died alone, thirty years ago this month, the breathls, late summer days of “gay ncer” at Sloan Ketterg on the Upper Wt Si.
Punk their subversn of nventn and celebratn of the absurd, they were also fiantly fun at a time when Print Ronald Reagan wouldn’t so much as say the word “gay” or addrs the fact that AIDS was quickly beg a panmic — one that would claim Ricky as one of s earlit high-profile sualti. Four of the band’s five origal members did, fact, intify as LGBTQ: Ricky, Schneir and Strickland as gay men, and Pierson, who was volved wh a man until the early 2000s, is now married to a woman. “Back then, was lled GRID [Gay-Related Immune Deficiency].
News of the disease first appeared the paper as a Lawrence Altman science story 1981 unr the famo headle “Rare Cancer Seen 41 Homosexuals, ” though was kept off the ont page until 1983, largely due to the homophobic tennci of then–executive edor A. It was more so the nnotatn of AIDS—that was a “gay disease”—which emed unmentnable.