*New York Trilogy* follows the lead characer, Perry, from his days as a student at New York University to his initiation into the gay scene, the early days of the AIDS crisis, and his first relationships. When I began writing this book, I didn't realize that it would eventually become a historical record of a particular time and place, but that is true of any work of art. Between the devastation of the AIDS crisis, which has literally wiped out an entire generation of gay men, and the economic transformation of New York City in general, and the East Village in particular, the East Village and New York city of today are virtually unrecognizable from the places I first started writing about in 1981.
