I went out to buy Charlie a birthday present for the party. Weather was good and it’s the height of the tourist season, so Powell Street cable car turn-around was packed. The AIDS preacher is now being counter-picketed by a pair of protestors, a white woman and a black man, holding up signs about compassion and reason in dealing with the disease — a word of sense badly needed among the Powell Street evangelists.

Walked down to Waldenbooks and bought a copy of Our Mutual Friend, then to headlines where I bought a stuffed dinosaur for Charlie, which a patient clerk wrapped for me.

It’s hard to convey to younger people today how very present, how very visible, the AIDS epidemic was back then. An HIV diagnosis was still a death sentence. On any San Francisco street, but especially in the Castro, you could encounter young men in their twenties or thirties reduced to skeletons, walking slowly and painfully with canes.

I still have and occasionally read that copy of OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. The dinosaur was to add to a collection of plush stuffed dinosaurs Charlie collected. No idea why.