World AIDS Day

In the late 1970s- early 1980s I lived in the Castro District in San Francisco. I don't remember exactly when I started seeing the notices about " Gay Cancer" in the window of the Star Pharmacy on Castro at 18th street, but I do remember the cold feeling that this was something that was going to be very big and very bad.
In those old days in SF an apocalyptic feeling permeated my beautiful City. It was a very strange time - I watched my celebratory proud neighborhood turn into a place of fear and sadness. I remember a lot from back then, but every year I especially remember the following friends: Kenny, Brad, John, Timothy, Dave, Jay, Jimmy, "Don The Con"(long story), and Bill. And from my extended family, Aurelio . It was a bad time. It's not over.

Prior Walter: "This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all. And the dead will be commemorated, and we'll struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come".

Tony Kushner, Angels In America: Perestroika