A bartender for more than 40 years at iconic New York City hangouts such as “The Saint”, “Stonewall” and “Studio 54”, Sal DeFalco of Wilton Manors personifies the rise and evolution of HIV in America. But while he’s been able to beat the scourge for 35 years, his face has vanished from behind the bar at “Hunters” on Wilton Drive.
“I’ve gone from living in the light to living in fear,” says DeFalco, one of the most prolific male hustlers of the late 1970s.
On September 5, DeFalco was diagnosed with brain, throat and lung cancer and underwent surgery for the first tumor in his head on September 15, six days after turning 56th birthday. With his partner of 25 years Claude Tant at his side, DeFalco’s next operation is scheduled for this week.
His eyes well up as he laments an iconic life turned upside-down by the news, blaming his doctor for not catching the disease sooner. His voice cracks when he describes the loss of religious workouts to the pain of getting out of bed. “I walked in (to the hospital) as healthy as can be and walked out a dying man,” he says.
De Falco grew up in the New Jersey projects and ran away from home when he was 14, landing his first job at New York City’s Limelight, a Mafia-owned drag palace. At 19, he became one of the original bartenders at Studio 54, which was owned by Ian Schrager and the late Steve Rubell, who died of AIDS in 1989. He recalls a laundry list of romantic encounters with famous names like music mogul David Geffen, record executive Clive Davis, fashion designer Calvin Klein and singer-songwriter Peter Allen, who penned his Oscar-winning “caught between the moon and NYC” lyric as his flight circled above LaGuardia airport and DeFalco waited for his plane to land. Allen died of AIDS in 1991.
Today, as he fights for his life, DeFalco raises a red flag about what he calls new “communion parties” springing up at local Fort Lauderdale hotels, where new HIV drugs like Truvada give local gay men a misplaced sense of invincibility to unprotected sex that replaces last century’s foregone era of plain ignorance.
“(Unprotected sex) went on in bars, back alleys, bath houses and on the balconies of Studio 54 and The Saint,” says DeFalco. “If this (behavior) keeps up, there will be a new superbug that the government can really blame on us instead of the GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency) syndrome that they tried to blame us for then.”
