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Preface This book grew out of rage and grief, my own, of course, but also that of others. During the 1980s as a Roman Catholic priest, I struggled with the awful and initially limited knowledge of an epidemic, first called “Gay Related Immune Dysfunction” (GRID), later Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). At the hospital bedside of sick and dying people, beside their families, friends, lovers at funerals, and in the horrible solitude of my own room where I read my body daily for any signifier of disease, I was confronted by the human need to make sense of this epidemic. During the 1990s and now, as an academic, activist, and public intellectual, I have wrestled with the purposes of social and cultural analysis in the midst of a public health crisis. One result is this book. A book is not written so much as it is built, and this book, as much as most, relied on a large construction crew. Michael Vella, professor of American Studies at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, who served as my mentor in this book’s early life, provided caring and careful critiques of it at every stage. Patrick Murphy, in the English Department of Central Florida University, and Cecilia Rodríguez-Milanés, director of Women’s Studies at Central Florida University, provided searching questions that led to its further improvement. Anonymous reviewers and series editor, Charles Simpson, for the State University of New York Press afforded me what every writer desires: a sympathetic, careful, and critically fair reading , with recommendations for revisions. John T. Dever, my former Communications and Humanities Division dean at Thomas Nelson Community College and now executive vice president of Northern Virginia Community College, has been both an inspiration and a mentor. Educational leave provided by Thomas Nelson Community College permitted me seven uninterrupted months to research and write. The members of the monthly Gay Men’s Book Group of Hampton Roads (Virginia) have been encouraging friends and alert readers, and I ix am particularly grateful to Lee Hanson, Kirk Read, Charles Rhodes, and Charles Ford for their comments on drafts. My hosts in New York City, the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, made it possible for me to spend weeks and months for several years doing research in the city. My longtime friends, Rev. James Gardiner, SA and Rev. Joe Cavoto, SA, have provided me with ideas and contacts. Laurence Pagnoni has also been a guide and patron in the city. Those with whom I conducted interviews generously shared their time and lives, among them Douglas Petitjean, the late Keith Christopher, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Steed Taylor, Tim Miller, and Samuel R. Delany. Many Internet correspondents replied to my e-mail queries to Listserv groups. My best “bud” John Elliott has always encouraged me to run the race to the end. My psychiatrist, Howard Weiss, M.D., provided good counsel and good meds. Dr. Michael Schiefelbein, professor of English at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tennessee, provided guidance and encouragement at a critical juncture that helped me bring this book to publication. Dr. George Greenia of the College of William and Mary injected me with his enthusiasm as needed. Several research institutions have been invaluable in this study. The library of Regent University, the institution founded in Virginia Beach by televangelist Pat Robertson, was, not surprisingly, a trove of fundamentalist discourse on homosexuality and AIDS; and, like most libraries, it was also admirably stocked with work by gay writers and postmodern critical theorists. “Know your enemy” cuts both ways. Local research libraries at Old Dominion University and the College of William and Mary provided both reference and source materials. The New York Public Library has been invaluable in research for this study, in particular the Main Reading Room staff and the librarians of the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs room at the Central Research Library, and the staff of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, particularly those in the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive. I am especially indebted to the National Archive of Lesbian and Gay History, whose staff (Richard C. Wandel, archivist and Nancy D. Seaton, project archivist) and volunteers made me feel at home and supported my work in more ways than I can count. My greatest debt, however, is to my parents, Thomas Lawrence Long, Sr. and Lucy McVey Long, who believed in this work, and without whom it would not have been completed. x AIDS...

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