million people. we're filming this interview at a restaurant called catch at the corner of castro and market street. i was living just a couple of blocks here when i read those first stories about this new disease. that was the summer of 1982. by the fall of 1985, almost everyone i knew was dead or dying. people began to get skinny. we saw people die all around us. on one block in my neighbourhood, everybody died in the span of two years. ultimately, over 20,000 gay men would die in this neighbourhood. i actually acquired the virus in the winter of 1978, 1979. i did not begin to show signs of that infection until 1992. i got very, very sick very, very quickly and came close to dying in 1994 before i got access to one of the very