and my dad said, "oh he has this skin cancer called kaposi's sarcoma."re are some gay men that are getting it." and within i think 2 months, steve was dead. and it was pretty much a succession of deaths of my family throughout the next decade. my step dad bill died in '87. my dad died in '91, after a really grueling six months of me taking care of him. you know, i was 19 and i was on a break from college and was really at my wits end and exhausted from taking care of my dad i called up my auntie eddie and i said, "can you help?" and within a week, he'd organized 40 people to do round the clock shifts. he was the only other person in the room with me and my mom when my dad died. at that point, everyone had died except for a handful of stragglers who i now hold near and dear to my heart. my aunties. it was a powerful family. there was a lot of love. and they modeled for me how to survive an epidemic, even if you were dying while doing it. ♪