44 11 Ifound a post card of the old chief in a card shop and pinned it on the wall over my bed, hop ing to con jure the boy I’d lost. I turned and saw Tanya, lean ing on the door jamb, and I gave her a sheep ish glance. “Don’t pine, Shame. Do some thing con struc tive.” What was she, my big sis ter? Well, sort of. And then she was rush ing around, gath er ing her things, shov ing fold ers, fly ers, cards into her back pack with its ACT UP but tons and Queer Na tion stick ers plas tered all over it. There was an ACT UP meet ing that night and she was head ing there. She went all the time, was on a com mit tee even. I’d been be fore, but my at ten dance was spotty, pred i cated more on a vague sense of guilt, on right eous anger, and be cause it was the scene for cute boys with the sex ap peal of rad i cal pol i tics. I’d gone to street pro tests and taken pic tures, but I didn’t like to think about the ac ro nym too much ex cept for how not to get it, and when I spent too much time think ing about it, I got de pressed and par a noid. And I was afraid of de pres sion and par a noia al most as much as the ac ro nym. I pre ferred Queer Na tion kiss-ins at down town de part ment stores. Tanya turned and looked at me as I sat and stared at her col lect ing her things. “Come on.” At the ACT UP meet ing, I just sat there and lis tened, slouched next to Tanya with her set jaw, sur rounded by the ear nest multi tude, who 45 ranged from the leather-jacketed pierced in tel lec tu als who ran the show to as sorted hot young art fags and des ic cated ’70s-era guys—men who’d seen so many deaths, I feared they were death it self. There were bouncy, ro tund baby dykes and men ac ing butches, smil ing holy men, re as sur ing Venus of Wil len dorf sex work ers, and sev eral male cou ples with their hands gripped so tightly their knuck les were white. There were guys who looked like they’d never have been at such a meet ing if it hadn’t been for the great equa lizer of the ac ro nym, and there were the wack jobs who ex isted among all scenes in San Fran cisco and could be found wherever sub ver sives gath ered. Tanya got up and spoke and said some thing about Bur roughs Well come and AZT, and then they spilled out of her—ac ro nym after ac ro nym: CDC and NIH, FDA and PWA, PCP, ddI and ddC, Com pound Q. She was the real thing and I ad mired that and knew then that’s why I sorta liked her de spite how we clashed over things around the house. But I still hated those ac ro nyms more than I liked her and wanted to swat them away like mos qui toes. “I think I’m gonna go, Tanya,” I whis pered to her after she’d sat down post-speech. She put her hand on my thigh to keep me there, but I squirmed free, in con sol able de spite the play ful antics of the mod er a tor, who had a lamp shade on his head and strings of Mardi Gras beads across his chest. He looked at me, grin ning, when I got up: “Bye,” he minced. I waved sheep ishly, mor tified at the pub lic flir ta tion that put me on the spot. Off I went to walk and ru mi nate, hur ry ing up 18th Street from the meet ing at the Women’s Build ing, and through Do lores Park, which was liv ing up to its name just then, misty and shad owed in the grow ing dark ness. And in spilled the fog, huge banks of it over Twin Peaks, si lent, crash ing and break ing like a slow wave, then creep ing and foam ing around cor ners, slip ping...