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consequence the rate of HIV infection was going down).
    What had happened? No one seemed sure. Certainly that generalized anomie of which so many young people complained in the early 1990s could not be ignored as a contributing factor: ours is an age of suicide, and what is unprotected sex anyway but—toborrow a phrase from Wilde—“a long, lovely suicide”?
    As for the gay teenagers themselves, the ones interviewed spoke not only of despair, but of exclusion; solitude; loneliness. Think about it: when everyone you know is HIV-positive, when everywhere you look HIV-positive men and women are banding together to form not merely families but a society—to serve the needs of which whole industries have cropped up—how can you not feel that you have been left behind? Bear in mind that this condition was unique to a few urban centers, San Francisco chief among them: cities in which the HIV-positive had their own magazines, rites, habits and philosophies and language; to weary further an already wearied word, their own culture. More potently, with one another (or so felt several of the boys interviewed) the HIV-positive could flout the totemic restraints of “safer sex.” Infection threw them free from caution, and so they could throw caution to the wind, and with one another do what they wanted, as much as they wanted, while on the outskirts the seronegative watched meekly, enviously, nursing their fear.
    It is hard for me—a child of a different (and perhaps more life-loving) age—to imagine a world where early death is the norm, and where therefore life itself may begin to seem like a death sentence.
    I thought about this article for months after I read it. Then I read a biography of Bosie, and the present and past did their alchemy. Out of the flames Anthony and Christopher stepped forth, naked, almost fully formed.
    As for the counselor, he is a character about whom, in my mind, an aureole of profound uncertainty hangs, perhaps because his private cowardices and hypocrisies reflect my own.
    I leave him now, to follow Christopher down Market Street to the Café Flore, where at a sunny table Anthony awaits him. Passing these boys, and being told that one was HIV-negative and the other HIV-positive, you might very well confuse which was which, since Anthony looks flushed and vigorous, while Christopher is haggard, thin, his chin pimpled, his elbows scaly with psoriasis. Across from Anthony, who drinks an iced cappuccino, he sits down shyly. “You look great,” he says. “Did you get your hair cut?”
    â€œChristopher, don’t waste my time. Tell me.”
    â€œHow long has it been since you moved out?”
    â€œI don’t know—two weeks.”
    â€œTwo weeks and three days.” Christopher smiles. “So I hear you have a new lover.”
    â€œMan, do we have to talk about this now? Can’t you see I’m sweating this out? I have to know. I deserve to know.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause if you’re positive, I did it to you. And that’s something, if I’m going to have to live with, I need to start coping with.”
    â€œIf I’m positive would you stay with me? Take care of me?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThat’s blunt.”
    â€œI have to be blunt. Like I said, you scare me.”
    â€œOr I could sue you … like what’s-his-name with Rock Hudson. Say you lied and told me you were negative.”
    â€œAs if I have any money for you to get.”
    â€œOh, I wouldn’t do it for money.”
    Anthony stands. “I don’t have to listen to this,” he says. “I want to know, but not that much.”
    â€œI’m sorry. Sit down. Please sit down. I’m speaking from grief, can’t you see? I’m angry because I love you, because I grieve losing you, can’t you see that?”
    Anthony is silent. He sits down. Then he says, “If you loved me, you wouldn’t have