Just reading Borrowed Time (a few years back) left me with strong feelings of a painful and dark epoch, I can't even imagine how harrowing it must have been to live through it and come through to the other side. Godspeed and long live to him.

All of Paul Monette's writings are worth reading. As a young gay person, after reading Borrowed Time in particular, I am now painfully aware of how lucky I am to have been born when I was. Meeting people who have lived with HIV for a long time when I moved to SF just reinforced that.

It may feel like the country is going to hell and the world is fucked sometimes (though I think the trends are actually more positive than people think :) ), but at least in this one area the last twenty five years have produced miracles. A death sentence has become a manageable chronic illness and, with PrEP, you can even avoid seroconversion in the first place. Wow.

Since I am under 30 y/o I never really understood what AIDS meant to the generation that dealt with it head on. To me it was background noise of red ribbons, charity walks, and celebrity tributes on television. When I went to college one of my mentors (an immunology researcher) gave me a copy of And the Band Played On (http://fave.co/1LMbq5A) and it opened my eyes to the real physical, emotional, and political history of AIDS in the United States. I recently saw the movie adaptation and it was decent but the book is just incredible. It's one of those history books that reads like a thrilling work of fiction.

I have a cousin who has been HIV positive for at least 25 years. He's not sure exactly when he contracted the disease but he has a good idea of the time-frame based upon the activities in which he was engaging at the time.

When he was diagnosed, he and virtually everyone else assumed it to be a death sentence. He may well die early because of it but he's in middle-age and still going strong.