A Loss For Words
It’s recess time, and Daniel* is yanking a coat out of Alim’s* hands. Alim wails, but doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t tell the teacher Daniel accidentally switched their coats. He doesn’t ask Daniel to give it back. All he can do is cry in a room with 23 second graders who can’t understand him.
Dying Memory
Chris Bell made a mistake during the summer of 1996 — over and over again. He had unprotected sex with a man, sometimes up to six times a week. Then, after he caught mononucleosis in August 1997, doctors ran a few tests. Bell, who had spent most of his academic career studying AIDS, was now HIV-positive.
Lost and Found
It is 8:40 p.m. on a Saturday and the place is practically empty. A blond woman in a black-and-red-striped shirt sits at the bar waiting to be served by a 20-something bartender with tattoos on her arms and chest. Stacks of empty beer boxes sit on the floor behind the bar. On the other side of the venue, a band begins setting up for tonight’s show. The club is unusually quiet.
Emerging Ink
Josh Blair, 25, spends his days going to the library for story time and to the park for play dates. But as soon as the clock strikes eight, he puts his 2-year-old son Ian to bed and plugs into his 4-year-old low-fi Dell desktop for a long night.