To return to those halycon, ostensibly halycon, days: considering the emergency it would one day become, it may be difficult to believe that during the next twelve months the gay community in Paris (in which I include our gay micro-community at the Berlitz) contrived to talk constantly and compulsively about Aids yet at the same time refused to let it inhibit its own, hard-won right to personal liberty and unaccountability. If even half their morning-after tales were to be credited, my colleagues, with a single exception, went on leading sexual lives as reckless as they always had, and I went on fibbing as recklessly about my own. Aids was a matter for concern, yes - but in Africa, where the origins of the virus had finally been traced, and in America, where the moral majority, homophobic to a man (and woman, let's not forget), had been afforded a heaven-sent excuse to turn the clock back on everything militant homosexuality had achieved since the Stonewall riots. As Mick puts it, 'Straights can't abide the thought of us having it off together without being slung into the jug. So what do they do? They invent a disease just for gays!'