Volume Two of my “Memoirs” begins:

 

            “It was 1985, and San Francisco was reeling under the epidemic of AIDS.

            Our group, and group of friends, were shaken.  It began touching people we knew and loved and it appeared it could touch any one of us.  We didn’t know what to do.  … Because we lived those days walking through a nightmare.  And it’s memories won’t die.

            And then the hospitals, the doctor’s offices, the hospices, the sickrooms, the waiting.  And then the families, the mothers, the siblings.  And with them came the anguish, the ignorance, the problems.  And the doctors, the social workers, the dying counselors.  The books on dying.  The nuns.  The small meetings among friends, deciding what to do, deciding who would be sitting with whom, caring for them and helping them die. ...

 

            Dark and horrible memories.  The decade sunk into a black abyss.  Down we went, into pain and suffering and loss and death.  …”

 

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            On and on it goes, for pages and pages, for chapters and years to come.  There would be good times, of course.  We tried as best we could.  Our group of friends was always happy and up.  We were comics, we did comedy.  And as we applied ourselves to, first, just surviving and then helping the cause; we called upon our best instincts and worked hard.  In the end we were proud of what we did.

 

But I’ve thought a lot about it all and have decided not to offer here my “complete volume two” as I did with volume one.  This is not the place or the time, I feel, to relive those hard, recent years.

 

            Instead, I have used some selections from my memoirs in other parts of this site.  You can find many of our fine projects and art events in the TIME-LINE, for example, such as the floats we did for the AIDS Emergency Fund, “Stonewall 20,” “Care-A-Thon” and others, my art shows in Mexico and theater productions in Oaxaca.  In “Recents Writings” too, you’ll find selections about Mexico, the political situation, drag queens of the Isthmus and, of course, the work we did for the Common Front Against AIDS in Oaxaca.

 

            But the rest, for now, can lie where they are, unpublished.  …

 

 

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