Being Ill Like This Combines Shock -

In New York One Lives In The Moment Rather More Than Socrates Advised, So That At A Party Or Alone In Your Room It Will Always Be Difficult To Guess At The Long Term Worth Of Anything.

Memory, So Complete And Clear Or So Evasive, Has To Be Ended, Has To Be Put Aside, As If One Were Leaving A Chapel And Bringing The Prayer To An End In One's Head.

True Stories, Autobiographical Stories, Like Some Novels, Begin Long Ago, Before The Acts In The Account, Before The Birth Of Some Of The People In The Tale.

I Am In An Adolescence In Reverse, As Mysterious As The First, Except That This Time I Feel It As A Decay Of The Odds That I Might Live For A While, That I Can Sleep It Off.

I Have Aids. I Am Surprised That I Do. I Have Not Been Exposed Since1977, Which Is To Say That My Experience, Myadventures In Homosexuality Took Place Largely In The1960s And '70s, And Back Then I Relied On Time And Abstinence To Indicate My Degree Of Freedom From Infectionand To Protect Others And Myself.