Before good treatment was widely available something like pneumonia could kill you if you had AIDS which was tearing through the gay communities in major cities at the time. These men basically built rave culture, ran most of the fashion houses, ran magazines(think GQ), and built a lot of popular culture in the 80s/90s. There was a culture of celebrating life in the face of gruesome and painful death. Magazines an zines from the community of the period often listed dead editors in memoriam while sardonically listing current editors as the future deceased.

These guys were smart, delightful company, and a lot of fun. Some were my friends. Some remain in my pantheon of artists. I still sorely miss Keith Haring. They also flagrantly violated guidelines that would have kept them alive, like keeping it in your pants or at least not fucking every guy in the bathhouse bareback. This was the rule, not the exception. I watched this happen in terror when it was called GRIDS, then when it was called AIDS. These guys, I am sorry to say, almost always brought on their own gruesome and painful deaths.

That's really interesting. My only connection is hearing second hand about the city in the 80s from my in-laws and listening to Andrew Sullivan talk about the magazine scene.