... By chance I became aware of AIDS early on. For three months in 1980, I lived on the couch of a college friend in New York City while I hunted for lodging that I could afford on my pitiful starting salary as the writer of an in-house newsletter for the advertising department of The New Yorker. My friend was a resident in pediatrics at a city hospital and he was gay. Despite the grueling hours he spent treating sick children, my friend did manage to enjoy the thriving downtown gay club scene with some frequency. This was the heyday...