Summary

The Prologue describes the 2013 funeral of Spencer Cox, a leader of the movement the fight AIDS. Like many activists, Cox became an expert of medical science of AIDS with no formal scientific training. His funeral was a gathering of AIDS activists from throughout in New York City. The author notes that 1996 was a turning point in the fight against AIDS, when new, effective drugs were introduced to allow patients to live a normal life. Nonetheless, the activists present at the funeral continued to suffer from the trauma caused by the devastation of the 1980s, when thousands of gay men died from the disease. Cox and others realized how stigmatized their community was and never fully recovered, regardless of their medical prognoses. This trauma was exacerbated by a general feeling that modern gay activists, many too young to have been alive during the AIDS...