Contributors

ERIC ROFES, 40, is an author and community organizer living in San Francisco. He has been a board member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and has served as Executive Director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center and San Francisco's Shanti Project.

GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO(1313-1375) was an Italian poet, storyteller, and friend of Petrarch. He wrote the Decameron, a collection of bawdy tales, after the Black Death raged through Florence in 1348.

ANTHONY TOMMASINI, 45, is a freelance writer and pianist. He has written for the New York Times and the Boston Globe. For more than five years he volunteered for the AIDS Action Committee hot line in Boston. He lives in New York City.

SANDRO COSTA*, 23, works in a newspaper distribution office. He studied aerospace engineering and English literature at the University of Southern California.

ROBERT NEWMAN*, 40, is a health-care administrator who lives in a Boston suburb. Living and coming out in San Francisco in the mid-seventies was his major formative experience as a gay man. Single, but looking, he enjoys hiking, classical music, and traveling.

PAUL FIELDING*, 35, is manager of the furniture department in a department store. He grew up in a lower-middle-class rural town in Connecticut. He enjoys interior decorating, buying and selling antiques, and hiking. Paul has lived alcohol- and drug-free for the two years since his interview and hopes to continue on a healthy path of recovery.

CLAUDE DUPONT*, 34, was raised in Haiti. He is the regional coordinator for an agency that does corporate training about disability issues in the workplace.

SAM PAPPADOPOULOS*, 30, has an A.S. degree in animal science, a B.S. in education, and hopes to pursue a master's in social work degree. He has volunteered for the Boston HIV-Negative Support Group, Boston Jacks, and community events that raise awareness of HIV in underserved communities.

MATTHEW LASALLE*, 31, is a meeting planner for an insurance company in Boston. He grew up in New Hampshire. Influenced by his relationship with an HIV-positive partner, he has become more active in AIDS volunteer work, most recently by organizing a corporate team for the Boston-New York AIDS fund-raising bicycle ride.

DON WILLET*, 33, works in the field of HIV prevention and education. He believes HIV-negative men need to envision a place for themselves in the future in order to remain uninfected. He and his partner of 12 years are new adoptive parents of a 10-year-old boy.

RYAN JOSEPH*, 52, manages a desktop publishing group at a university in Boston. He is active in the school's gay and lesbian caucus, participates in an HIV/AIDS support group there, and has produced brochures on resources available for people with AIDS and people who have tested HIV-negative.

FRANK RUGGERO*, 40, a first-generation Italian-American, is in recovery, working for spiritual, mental, and physical balance. He finds art and restoration projects nurturing. He volunteers at a gay health center and at a rehabilitation center. He has been a fan of Barbra Streisand all his life.

NATHANIEL MCNAUGHTON*, 34, is an HIV educator whose work includes HIV-test counseling. He grew up on a farm in the Midwest and rode a horse to his one-room schoolhouse. He enjoys reading Chinese poetry.

JAMES DOUGLAS*, 44, trains HIV-test counselors and coordinates HIV counseling, testing, and support services for a metropolitan public health department. He stopped working as a visual artist in 1987, partly in response to the AIDS epidemic. He is currently back in the studio exploring images related to eroticism, gender, survival, and loss. His Radical Faerie name is Cupcake.

MARK DOTY, 41, has published three books of poetry: Turtle, Swan; Bethlehem in Broad Daylight; and My Alexandria, which won the National Book Critic's Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was nominated for the National Book Award. His companion of 12 years, Wally Roberts, died of AIDS in January 1994. He lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

WILLIAM I. JOHNSTON, 32, grew up near Boston and graduated from Harvard College in 1985 with a degree in visual studies. From 1987 to 1993 he worked on the hot line of the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts. Since 1991 he has been a volunteer facilitator of the Boston HIV-Negative Support Group. He lives in Watertown, Massachusetts, and is a mathematics textbook editor for Houghton Mifflin Company. HIV-Negative is his first book and his first book design.

William I. Johnston

The author thanks the following for their help: Robert Aron, Frank Berndt, Gail Beverley, Warren Blumenfeld, Arlen Brown, Steven Cadwell, Barry Callis, Audrey Carneski, David Casti, Woody Castrodale, Chwee Lye Chng, David Christina, Ken Cinelli, Carol Cosenza, Sean Crist, Prentice Crosier, Terry Dash, Inês Esteves, Elizabeth Evans, Richard Fleming, David Gray, Ralph Hakim, Ray Hardin, Paul Hastings, Doug Hein, Audrey Helou, Sue Herz, Michael Howe, Joe Huffman, David Johnson, Robb Johnson, Jeff Jones, Marvin Kabakoff, James Kaczman, Eric Kristensen, Walter Kulecz, Alon Lavie, Matthew Lena, Michael London, Andrea Lonon, Michael Malamut, David Martin, Malinda Matney, Richard Mattoli, Laurie McDonald, Cynthia McKeon, James McQueston, Brad Miyasato, Tom Moon, Ken Nimblett, Walt Odets, Steve Palmer, Maurice Plourde, Danielle Potvin, Daniel Reid, Eric Rofes, Mark Rosenstein, Helen Rubel, Jim Sacco, Rachel Schochet, Jim Sellers, Michael Shelton, David Sheppard, Charles Solomon, David Speakman, Jeffrey Stone, Henrik Storner, Larry Stratton, Kit Wessman, James Wood, and E. J. Zita.