Asphalt Boogie: Life and Death in Gay L. A.

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I opened my eyes and peered around, befuddled, trying to imprint on something real. Antiseptic white walls displayed office prints of scarlet and olive-green airplanes dueling in leaden skies. Sparkling clear, chrome-topped jars filled with cotton balls, Band-Aids, tongue depressors, and unknown shiny instruments that bent the wrong way lined the walls on white Formica counter tops. A clean wide strip of white tissue paper scrunched under my bony ass, separating my 501's from the cool plastic of the examination table as I shifted my weight, trying for balance. Scents of alcohol and disinfectant tickled my nose, along with the familiar odors of Dr. Jules' one-milligram tar cigarettes smothered by Old Spice. I focused on the doctor's plaid cotton collar, trapped in a V of white smock, avoiding his diagnostic stare. No saliva remained in the world. My tongue formed words from a dry, dusty desert. "It certainly is different when you know for sure. Suspecting is one thing, but knowing is so final." My little-boy voice, squeaking and cracking, shamed me. Asphalt Boogie chronicles the life of Robin, a young homosexual, from the pre-AIDS 1970s, when gays in LA celebrated their lives in discos and their sexuality in bathhouses--through the black years of the AIDS epidemic, and into times of hope.