 You know, we'd party all night and come out in the daytime and pretend like we weren't gay. We were active in our mainstream communities, in our churches, and we felt that at the mid-80s level that we had this serious education of our own community. That we could not point the finger any longer of why we were the way we were because we were gay, why we were black. There was no more excuses. By the time the mid-80s had rolled around, people were dying every week of this disease called AIDS.