Twenty-five years ago today - May 20,1983- I was a full-time reporter at the Philadelphia Gay News (PGN), the city’s queer weekly. I was living with my boyfriend in a run-down apartment in the “gay ghetto,” as we called it, area of town. Rent was $250 a month, which was not a bargain considering the condition of the place. It was all I could afford.

A strange new disease was afflicting gay men. The reports were coming in mostly from San Francisco and New York. We had some cases in Philly, but not like in those two centers of the queer universe. Most people in the City of Brotherly and Sisterly Love were living in denial. They had no reason to live otherwise.

Being a newspaperman, I was in a unique position to know more about this disease than most gay men. I had interviewed one of the city’s leading experts on what was then called the “gay cancer,” and he seemed to believe that we had an epidemic on our hands. I found myself waking in a panic at night sometimes.

Then, on May 20, 1983, an article in the U.S. Journal Science reported that a team of French scientists had found a virus that they believed was the cause of the disease. It wasn’t long before the actual virus was isolated for all the world to see.

It was the big breakthrough everyone hoped for. Soon, there would be a vaccine, maybe even a cure.

It didn’t happen.

Years went by and lots of people in Philly got sick. Many of them were my friends. I spent days researching and writing about AIDS and nights comforting and caring for friends abandoned by their families. All the while I kept wondering when I would see the spots on my arms or suddenly experience the fevers and the night sweats. I checked myself in the mirror every morning. Every cough was suspect. Every little ache was cause for concern.

It was the worst of times. I kept hoping I was having a nightmare and would wake up at any moment.

When the AIDS Quilt came to Philly, I was among the queer leaders asked to read names. I got through the first couple and burst into tears. I couldn’t finish my list. My friend Penny rushed up on the stage and hugged me. I dropped the piece of paper and we walked off.

In 1989, my father died. My mother followed nine months later. That same month Mama passed away, I buried several close friends and my cat of 14 years. I was so overcome with grief that I couldn’t think straight anymore. I eventually moved to San Francisco to get away from the graveyard that Philly had become.

Twenty-five years have passed since that first article linking the “gay cancer” to a virus and there’s still no cure or vaccine.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a radical southern Italian queer atheist with a website: www.avicollimecca.com