One winter night, late in January, Nathan stared with alarm at the figure trying to make its way down the street toward the Center. After a minute of braving the frigid air, the man said to Nathan, "You don't know who I am, anymore, do you?" But Nathan DID recognize him, and was shaken. This man was Sean's redheaded friend, who used to be so dynamic at the Monday night meetings. Now he was bent over and limping. KS lesions were on his face, and his legs. He was frail, unbalanced; his eyes shone and his breath was labored. Although Nathan didn't know him well, he was concerned about him, (not to mention shocked). As the icy wind agitated the naked trees, Nathan lent the man a hand, and said, "Let me get you inside. Are you in pain? Who are you looking for?" The man was slightly disoriented from fever. Suddenly, he groaned that there was pain in one of his feet. A lesion there had been ulcerating. Nathan firmly clasped him and directed him inside the tiny lobby of the old building. "We got to get you some help," he said. The man's eyes teared up from the sharp pain in his foot. People in the lobby stepped aside so that the man could sit. "Who are you looking for, here?" Nathan asked. The man tried to answer. Nathan didn't understand the logic of what he was saying, so he told the ailing man, "Look, my subcommittee is meeting upstairs. I'll see if a couple of them can take you home or to the hospital." Nathan motioned to the lesbian at the reception desk. She came over to sit with the man until Nathan got back.

Nathan raced to the upper floor of the building, and found his meeting in a side room. He interrupted and told them who was downstairs. As Nathan suspected, a couple of the patient's friends were on the subcommittee, so they followed Nathan back into the cramped lobby. "Let's take him to the Emergency Room," one of them said, when they saw the friend's condition.

"How did he make it all this way?" Nathan asked.

"He lives only a couple blocks from here..." one of the other men said. The ailing man suddenly blurted, "You don't have to talk about me as if I wasn't here!" He was furious as well as panicky. They touched him gently to calm him down, then bundled him up to take him to the hospital, a couple blocks away. He kept muttering that he came such a distance, because he was afraid he needed help. Then he corrected himself, and said he was looking for someone in particular. He didn't seem to remember the person's name, though. The friends pooled a few bucks, hailed a taxi and were off with him. (That was the quickest way to get him to the Emergency Room, even though it was fairly close by). The receptionist and Nathan exchanged a look, after the others departed.

Both he and the woman were shaken by the man's pain. The lesbian said her adrenaline was still pumping. "I just visited a friend of mine in the hospital," she said. "He went in there for KS, and now he's got TB."

"Are YOU going to be ok?"

"Oh, sure," she said, composing herself.

Nathan went to his meeting. The drug activists had much on their minds, of late. They were preparing already for the international AIDS conference slated for San Francisco in the spring. They were tracking treatments that were up for review at the FDA. And there was a growing controversy. Some outspoken leaders in the country said that too much money was spent on AIDS, and not enough on other diseases. Nathan and his drug buddies felt that this was simply an example of AIDS-bashing, so they wanted to address it, quickly. They started hammering out a position statement during the subcommittee meeting. It took two hours of cross talk before they finished a reasonable draft. During the meeting, Nathan kept thinking of that redheaded patient. Someone said that Sean was one of the man's friends. Nathan didn't know Sean well, but he doubted Sean would be of much use to so sick a patient.

By ten o'clock, that night, the meeting ended. Everyone had groused at each other, though they felt satisfied with their product. It was a clear statement about why AIDS should continue to get the research funding it had been getting, with regular increases, too. Nathan kissed his friends good night on the lips or the cheeks and headed home to his place in the East Village. "Thank God it's only ten," he muttered. He wanted to get to his apartment in time for a call from his lover, Reggie, who was vacationing in Los Angeles, that week. The trip involved a splashy protest on Wilshire Boulevard against efforts to cut federal funding for gay art.

Nathan got home (to a one-bedroom walkup he and Reggie had moved into together) and started to review FDA material, when the phone rang. It wasn't Reggie; it was Nathan's parents.

"We're wondering what your plans are for graduate school?" his Dad said. "We thought maybe this coming fall might be a good time to resume your studies."

Oh God, Nathan thought. He was too busy with activism to think about graduate school. He beat around the bush with his parents, then finally he said he'd look at some options, but that fall was out of the question.

"Your father and I can help pay for any trips you have to make, Dear, when you start looking around," his Mom offered.

"Thanks, Mom," he said, unenthusiastically.

Activism was the heart and soul of his life. He didn't want to put it aside. He told them about Reggie demonstrating in Los Angeles, and how cute he thought that was.

"That reminds me," said his Dad. "You boys weren't part of that disaster at Saint Patrick's Cathedral were you?"

"Well, yeah..."

"Oh, Nathan," his Mom cut in. "We were hoping you'd say 'no'."

"Mom, the coalition didn't become a powerful organization just by doing what the public wanted us to do. We became powerful by taking risks, whether people agreed with us or not."

"But did your conscience tell you to invade someone else's house of worship?" said his Dad. "The next thing you'll do is invade a synagogue."

Nathan said, "HIV may increase among young people. The Church shouldn't block safer sex education." His parents groaned.

Nathan felt as uncomfortable with the Saint Pat's thing as his parents did, but wouldn't admit it. After a while, they said "goodbye".

He tried to resume his reading.

The aftermath of the Church demo was hard to forget. The coalition had another one of its electrifying Monday night meetings, attended by swelling numbers. There was an outpouring of everyone's view. "...I loved it... It was brilliant..." someone said. "We should never back down from the Church," said another. A third pointed out, "At least our worst fears didn't happen. There wasn't any major violence. It went spectacularly, and we won." A woman, a veteran activist, said, "I'm not Catholic, but when I heard the communion wafer was crushed, I was shocked. I felt actual pain, and think people shouldn't forget, even in a protest, that you've got to show some respect for the beliefs of others." A key member of the coalition, one of its "stars", said he hated the demo. He was an HIV positive man who had been arrested inside the Stock Exchange during the action against Burroughs Wellcome. He had a background in law and had been one of the coalition's most resourceful members. He said the protesters had made the mistake of stealing focus from AIDS issues, and drawing attention, instead, to the tug-of-war between activists and the Church. Many a New Yorker would have agreed. In any case, some of those arrested at the Cathedral plea-bargained for lesser charges and got off lightly. A handful was refusing to plead guilty, and so a trial loomed on the horizon. Perhaps a high-profile one. Nathan poured himself a beer, in his kitchen, and wondered if he would ever do civil disobedience, himself. If he did, he suspected it would be for a treatment issue, because that was where his loyalty lay. The rest of the coalition made him a little skeptical, at times. He felt the group attracted eccentrics, who enjoyed rebelling for the sake of rebelling.

The phone rang in the kitchen.

"Reggie," he thought.

"Nathan," a woman said on the other end. "This is Alexandra. I have to talk to you."

"Are you okay? Speak a little louder. The traffic's kind of loud where you are."

"I'm not really okay, no. I have some bad news about Anton."

"About Anton?" Nathan asked. "Is he hurt?"

"Not physically... Can you meet me?" She named a bar. He put the beer in the frig and slipped out.

The shadows at the bar were dense. So was the noise, but he and she found a spot that was quiet. He always liked Alexandra and therefore was worried about her as well as about Anton, given her tone of voice. He watched her for a moment, taking in the sight of her foaming, wavy brownish-blond hair, her expressive face, her lean and rather short build. She was an impressive, articulate woman, with a lot of presence, even though she didn't have a lot of physical stature.

"What happened?" he asked. Alexandra explained.

There had been a rift developing between Anton and some activists in the Southwest. (Anton was out there working on the campaign dealing with opportunistic infections.)

"A rift?" Nathan asked.

"Honey, Anton has dropped out of the entire movement."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"Some really horrible back-stabbing happened. They targeted Anton, but more so, a friend of his. Now, Anton just wants to wash his hands of the whole movement."

Nathan couldn't believe it. He asked who the friend was. She told him. Nathan had never met him. He thought of Anton, that short man with his Samson-like ponytail of blond hair and that sturdy build. Although never a member of the coalition, specifically, Anton was one of the brainiest activists in the movement, and Nathan and Alexandra loved him.

Alexandra said, "I don't know if I can go on with my activism, if he won't be around, anymore." She told him the whole story.

While working with non-coalition folk in California, Anton and his friend had a run-in with some Principal Investigators out there. In private, the friend (who was not a coalition member, but known to the coalition) made some sharp comments about the investigators. Rival activists who had always resented the prominence of Anton and his colleagues told the principal investigators exactly what Anton's friend said against them, causing the friend enormous loss of face.

"What did Anton's friend say?" asked Nathan.

"I'm not at liberty to describe it. He shouldn't have said it, but he said it in a moment of anger. Anton forgave him, and felt the other activists should have, too."

"Who were the back-stabbers?" Nathan asked. "Some of the more left-leaning members of the movement?"

"You'd think! But no. They were treatment activists, just like some of the ones in the coalition. And they weren't even coalition members! Their competitiveness outdid even those guys."

After a pause, Alexandra said, "We have to remember that one of Anton's best friends died a couple of months ago. And Anton's been overworking. I get the feeling burn-out is catching up with him."

"Well, I'm dropping out of the movement, too," said Nathan.

"No!"

"It won't be the same without Anton."

"There are others who'll be working just as effectively. People in the coalition, for example. Aaron, Mark, Jim, David ... Garry ... They're good writers and have good contacts in D.C. ..."

"I know, I know...," said Nathan. Nathan admired most of the treatment activists. Aaron, he always looked up to. And same with that East Village playwright, who wrote such articulate pieces for the local gay press. But Nathan was depressed by this news. Alexandra and he looked into their drinks for a while. Nathan said, "I'll stay if you stay."

Her eyes moistened. She sighed and said, "All right."

Nathan was afraid of the rumors that groups in the Southwest were fighting internally. He didn't want major cracks to open in the coalition, as well. And he was afraid of a domino effect: that once other chapters of the coalition fell, so New York's would fall.