As someone who was in San Francisco throughout the AIDS crisis, I watched several friends die of the disease. I remember the fear and trembling of the early days, when people spoke of “GRID” or Gay Related Immunodeficiency Disease” and were afraid to form new relationships for fear of having to soon deal with the question of whether it was safe to have sex. I remember the shattering speed in which the disease attacked its victims in the early days, when a diagnosis was a death sentence and you would probably be gone inside of 18 months.

It’s World AIDS Day. Today I remember Charlie Halloran, a wonderful hatmaker and dancer; James Bergeron, a dancer and performer with whom I performed, and whose writing I published in Frighten the Horses; Joah Lowe, another dancer I appeared with on the same bill in Men Dancing 1984; Ed Mock, who founded a dance studio in San Francisco and also appeared in that show; and James Tyler, a dancer who was one of the members of Mangrove, a contact improvisation group.

All gone in their 30s or early 40s. How poor San Francisco is today without them, the tens of thousands of men who were children of the 60s and 70s, whose art was so beautiful, whose courage was so great.