FATHER FIGURE

Picture it: New York City, 1983. It was the dawn of the HIV epidemic in America, when love and loss were practically synonymous for those in the queer community. As the plague raged, killing tens of thousands of gay men in a matter of years, our government did virtually nothing to stop it. It was a time of lawlessness, a time of integration, and a time to revolt.

Richie Jackson, then 17, had just started attending New York University, where he discovered there was a queer . As the celebrated TV and theater) notes in his new book  , “It was as if I’d joined a secret society, bound together by oppression, and we reveled in our clandestinity even as we fought to assimilate.”