We met at a friend's Super Bowl party over 10 years ago. I’m no real fan of the sport although I will check out the phyne players on either team. When it comes to the Super Bowl, I am only really down for a fabulous halftime show. In 2007, Prince did the honors and his royal badness did not let us down. I noticed this brother a few minutes before my friend introduced us. Within minutes, we found ourselves a little corner off the kitchen where we could focus without interruption. He was playful and blunt about his desires, and that turned me on. “I don’t like no bread,” he told me. “Just give me the meat.”

1981 was a magical year for me. Alexander Godunov and Judith Jamison performed “Spell” as guest performers at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s opening night gala, Dream Girls was on Broadway, Diana Ross had a hit called I’m Coming Out, and Tom Browne had an R&B hit called “Thigh High” (Grip Your Hips and Move). I cheered as a University of Oklahoma Cheerleader in the Sun Bowl as Oklahoma beat the University of Houston 40–14. Life was good. I still believed in a world with endless possibilities. However, by the summer of 1981, I’d heard about an illness that was primarily affecting white and Black gay men in L.A., New York City, and San Francisco. The sickness, then called GRID (Gay-Related Immunity Deficiency Syndrome) was infecting and killing gay people. Many Black gay friends believed we had no worries if we did not sleep with white men. They were wrong.