Hi History Makers, Eric here. A few months ago we launched Making Gay History's Patreon

channel, a place where we're sharing new video interviews never before heard clips from

my archive that didn't make it into the episodes and more. If you're not a member of our Patreon

community yet, I hope you'll join today. Just $5 a month gets you access to these Making

Gay History extras, and you'll support us as we work to bring LGBTQ history to life

through the voices of the people who lived it. Find out more at patreon.com slash making

gay history, or go to makinggayhistory.com and click on the link in our homepage banner.

And thank you so much.

I'm Eric Marcus, and this is a first for me. And something different for this podcast.

After eight seasons of bringing you the stories of the LGBTQ civil rights movement through

the voices of the people who lived it, eight seasons of bringing you other people stories.

For the next six episodes, I'm going to share a part of my story.

Exactly 40 years ago, news first broke into the mainstream of a deadly new disease, a disease

that's come to infect tens of millions of people around the world. I was coming of age

and coming out during those first terrifying and confusing years of the AIDS crisis, as

my friends and neighbors fell ill and died. Those were years that I've tried hard not to

remember. They're also years I can't forget. Sometimes history is hiding in plain sight.

After decades of mining other people's oral histories, I'm digging into my own. I'm

returning to memories from 1981 to 1988, trying to reconstruct what happened because it

turns out it's part of our LGBTQ history and because ultimately it's the story behind

making gay history and how and why it came about. So yes, this season of making gay history

is different. It's an audio memoir, my own oral history. Remembering some of those we lost

...