But Death's Acquisitive Instincts Will Win.

I Distrust Summaries, Any Kind Of Gliding Through Time, Any Too Great A Claim That One Is In Control Of What One Recounts; I Think Someone Who Claims To Understand But Is Obviously Calk, Someone Who Claims To Write With Emotion Recollected In Tranquility, Is A Fool And A Liar. To Understand Is To Tremble. To Recollect Is To Re-enter And Be Riven. ... I Admire The Authority Of Being On One's Knees In Front Of The Event.

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.

Death Is Not Soft-mouthed, Vague-footed, Nearby. It Is In The Hall.

I Can't Change The Past, And I Don't Think I Would. I Don't Expect To Be Understood. I Like What I've Written, The Stories And Two Novels. If I Had To Give Up What I've Written In Order To Be Clear Of This Disease, I Wouldn't Do It.

It Bothers Me That I Won't Live To See The End Of The Century, Because, When I Was Young, In St. Louis, I Remember Saying To Marilyn, My Sister By Adoption, That That Was How Long I Wanted To Live: Seventy Years.