Today is World AIDS Day. In the summer of 1992, when I was doing a summer writing workshop in Cambridge, MA, I met John Preston, an acclaimed journalist, author, anthologist, and tireless activist for LGBT rights, when I interviewed him at home Portland, Maine. We became friends. He formally named me and two other writers as literary protégés that December, forcing me to legitimize my identity as a writer in my own mind, which is where such legitimacy always has to start. He published my early essays in handsome hardcover anthologies, and impressed upon me the responsibility to someday nurture and mentor young writers in my turn. I took this picture of him with Joan Nestle in Boston in October, 1993 for the dustjacket of Sister and Brother: Lesbians and Gay Men Write About Their Lives Together (HarperCollins, 1994) which also included my essay "Alex." He died in April 1994 of complications relating to AIDS. I remember John Preston every December 1st, and I speak his name aloud—with gratitude, inspiration, joy, sorrow, and with love. Speak all their names.
