The scenes dealing with AIDS [were hard to write], because I was tremendously concerned that I not be trivializing the issue, but I also wanted to show the ways in which AIDS becomes utterly matter-of-fact in our lives, especially here in San Francisco.
We have been living with it for six or seven years. As long as I've known my lover, we've been dealing with his anti-body status: checking his T-cell counts. And we do that while we're planning our vacations, or preparing dinner, or going to the movies.
And so far, the AIDS literature that I've seen has dealt only with the cataclysmic aspects. I haven't seen anything that portrayed the way two men stop on the street to casually yammer about the latest drug at the buyers club, and then go on their way, as if they'd been talking about the weather.
That fascinates me. AIDS isn't a single moment. It's a journey.
[...] I'm not writing escapist literature at all. I'm trying to show how — dealt a certain hand — you can cope with it.
And the message that comes across, I hope, is that love and affection and generosity do have some sort of value. They're not trivial at all. They are very hard things to pull off. They're very unstylish in novels today [he laughs], and, I don't give a shit. They can remain that way until the day I die.
I know that I'm gonna keep writing this way; it's really all I have to offer.
— Armistead Maupin, interviewed by Adam Block, "Teller of Tales: Armistead Maupin Gets Radical," OutWeek Magazine No. 19, October 29, 1989, p. 41.
