February, 1991. On television, President Bush told the world his forces had begun firing on Baghdad.

People cynically referred to the war coverage as if it were a video game, but the first TV images took people's breaths away. It was the vision of Baghdad at night flashing under a hail of bombs.

Operation D-Day, the coalition's most ambitious action, yet, took place just a couple of days after George Bush announced the bombing. Although there were activists who felt AIDS and the Iraqi war had nothing to do with each other, some insisted that the issues were connected, so, of course Operation D-Day had an anti-war motif.

There was a pre-action meeting the night before the event. The weather was freezing and ice and snow streaked the cruel sidewalks of the city. The topper was that the organizers of the pre-action meeting lost the Soho space shortly before the meeting, because the contract got cancelled. So when Nathan arrived at the downtown address, he was met by a shivering activist and redirected back to the Center way up on 13th Street.

Nathan hiked there, arriving bleary-eyed and aching from the cold. He found at least a couple hundred red-faced activists, eager for the meeting to begin and deliriously happy.

Everyone seemed doubly motivated it seemed. Nathan's spirits lifted, and he even looked forward to getting arrested the following day.

By morning, the temperature seemed to have plunged even more, and the ice on the sidewalk everywhere was knobby and thick. The sky was icy blue with sickly yellow rays leaking over the violet skyscrapers. Nathan's lungs were like a couple of sponges, half-frozen, but still soaking up air.

The juggernaut of demonstrators numbered around a thousand, as far as Nathan could tell. It filled the streets in the Wall Street area. They carried mock coffins, placards and noisemakers. The media was there in full force, as were the police.

Agencies dealing with health and housing issues were among the many targets of the marchers.

"I feel as if my face has freezer burn," Nathan said to a co-demonstrator. It amazed him that so many HIV positive people were capable of braving the elements that morning.

In the afternoon, with the sky just as starkly blue and cold as it was at morning, the marchers broke up into smaller protest groups and did guerrilla theatre at various offices run by the state. There were a few arrests, but the main show was still to come.

The shadows grew long. The big climax at Grand Central Station drew near.

Nathan grabbed a cheap dinner of meatloaf, potatoes and greens at a diner near the station. He glanced at a newspaper and read up on the conflict in the Gulf. He begrudgingly admitted there was a vague connection between the war and AIDS, but he hated it when activists stressed that as much as they did. (Especially the leftists, whom Nathan didn't really respect very much.)

One anomaly, he acknowledged: the U.S. could not tolerate Saddam in Kuwait because he threatened the U.S.'s interests, somehow, whereas the U.S. had been complacent for so long on AIDS, despite the agony it had been causing its own people.

Nathan ran to the station and met up with Reggie.

The invasion of Grand Central's concourse began.

The sight of hundreds of activists blowing whistles and swarming over the dim marble floors jarred commuters. A banner that read, "Money for AIDS, Not for War" was attached to a bunch of balloons and sent sailing to the highest point in the dark, sooty ceiling. The activists collected at the gates in order to block the cops and block the commuters. The floor was a wild sea of demonstrators. The air roiled with the sounds of their chants and noisemakers, as if it were New Year's Eve, or a great Yankees victory.

"As soon as we sit, they'll start arresting us," Reggie called into Nathan's ear.

"Imagine," Nathan said, "if we had a two or three day sit-in. We'd close down the station, like college students closed down campuses back in the '60's."

"Don't count on it," laughed Reggie.

"I'm not saying I'd want it. I'm just saying - wouldn't that be crazy?"

There was an unexpected lull in the chaos, though. It was strange. As if a magic wand had been waved, and boom, half the tension flew away. There seemed to be a meeting going on among a lot of the activists and the chief organizers. Minutes passed. People stopped chanting and started talking among themselves.

The wait became long and rather boring.

Then, after a floor discussion Nathan couldn't hear very well, the entire sea of demonstrators started moving toward the steps leading upward to the streets.

"What's going on?" said Nathan. "We were supposed to stay here until we got arrested."

Apparently, a poll was taken. A large portion of the protesters agreed that their political statement had been made, so it was okay to leave the area. This amorphous mass was being lead up the elegant stone stairs to the bitter cold, outside.

"That's not right," thought Nathan. "We came here to get arrested. This is a disappointment. I bet we won't even be in the newspapers, now."

Nathan and Reggie kept trudging reluctantly towards the stairs. It took them almost ten minutes to cross the floor, there were so many protesters.

"You look heartbroken," said Reggie.

"I am heartbroken. You should be, as well! This was your turn to get arrested, too."

Others were confused, and felt disempowered. Then the crowd heard a scuffle from the street. It was followed by a wave of cheering. Cops were hurrying to the curbside. So were media people. When the crowd inside found out what was happening, they cheered, too, for people were getting arrested, after all, in an old-style sit-in on the streets of Manhattan.

Reggie and Nathan joined in.

This turn of events elated the activists. Ovations and cries of encouragement accompanied the arrests.

When Nathan was arrested, people inside the patrol wagon asked him, "You happy now?"

"Sure," Nathan said, with a reserved smile. They told him, "Good, because the boring part is just about to begin!"

For hours, the couple hundred activists who took arrests were kept in holding cells, men with men, women with women. They grew hungry and, of course, were tired. Some of the cops were good-natured and even sympathetic to the marchers.

"This is cute," one big policeman said with teasing disapproval, as he noticed how Nathan, Reggie and three other male activists were tangled up with each other on a tiny bench. Heads were resting on shoulders, legs on laps. "You look like a bunch of puppies in there."

Marissa sat with some of the other women in another holding cell. They spoke in low tones, but were having a lively discussion.

"Susan found another dish of rat poison outside her door," said one of them.

"Oh, Jesus - some people are so sick," said Marissa. "Was there another note this time?"

"Yes - something like 'All dykes must die'."

Marissa assumed that an increase in lesbian visibility in the media surrounding AIDS activism sparked these incidents.

She said, "Has anyone gone to the newspapers with this, yet?"

"We're about to."

"Tell Marissa what happened to Tara's window," said another.

"I heard," said Marissa. Someone had shot a couple of bullets into one of the women's apartment windows. "It isn't someone who's in the coalition that's doing this, is it?" Marissa asked.

"I'm afraid to even speculate," chuckled a woman.

Speculation went in many directions. Perhaps the psycho was a plant in the organization, put there by outsiders. Maybe he was a misogynist acting alone. Maybe it was an outside entity, altogether. Women were afraid there might be escalation. That would mean deadlier violence. Marissa shuddered, closed her eyes, and tried to nap.

It had been a spectacular day, but it had been an exhausting one, too. And as always, members like Nathan and Marissa felt that the day raised many questions, but left most of them unresolved.