Denver, Colorado

The hospital room was dark and cold; it stank as a room will when a body is rotting, dying much too slowly. Sounds: a low hiss of air from the air vent, another hiss of a ventilator, a machine that beeped just like they did on tv, and the indescribable noises of a man's body breaking down for the final time. The man in the bed was the only person in the room; at regular periods, a nurse would enter, perform some prescribed task as rapidly as she could and then leave, praying that the information from the CDC was correct and this disease couldn't kill her if she was just careful enough.

Robert Sean Donohue had been dying for nearly three years, but he had only known this truth since last July. That's when the kid he'd spent the night with had made some comment about weird marks on his back and Bob had no choice but to see Dr Agnew, and Dr Agnew had told him what he had known from the moment that boy — the last one he'd ever made love to — had said, "What's that on your back?"

Fuck enough pretty boys, Bob had said to himself as Dr Agnew pronounced his death sentence, and you'll get it. And he'd gotten it. Had had it for some time, so the kid probably had it, too, and everyone else he'd screwed for the past few years. Bad enough he was going to die, he got to die knowing he'd killed others, too. I might as well have driven my car into a playground full of kids. The gay flu. AIDS. God's vengeance on the queer Sodomites of fallen America.

His last warning.

Robert Sean Donohue had had his last coherent thought the previous afternoon. He had thought of his mom, glad she had died the year before, glad as he had been since his appointment with Dr Agnew that she had smoked nearly two packs a day for over forty years and had been killed by them before learning her only child was a pervert. A faggot. A damned faggot, truly damned. That had not been his last thought, however, just the thought before the last one: gratitude his mom had not had to know the truth about her son. His last thought was a sweet one: David. The one true love of his life, the best three months of his life until David had decided that being queer in America was just too awful and had fled to Europe and had left Bob behind. David, beautiful and sweet and such a coward. He had ripped Bob off before leaving, nearly five hundred dollars and his stereo, no note to say goodbye, just gone one evening when Bob came home. Evelyn down the hall had seen David leaving, had talked to him as he carried his bags down to the cab, had told Bob where David was going, had gotten drunk with him that night and let him fall asleep on her couch, sobbing and wondering why he was destroying himself. The next day she told him to dry up, get up and get on with his life, and he had done just that. And in the moments before his functioning mind — that part of his mind that was what remained of Bob — had shut down for good, he had remembered David and the first time they had kissed.

A perfect thought for dying.