This memory goes back a long time, or what seems far away, when AIDS was a new and terrifying phenomenon. And my friend Charles, a successful hairstylist in DC’s Georgetown was just diagnosed. It would be the last time I saw him. He was weak and open for good byes.

I greeted him, took his hand, looked into his eyes. There wasn’t much left to say, except to get the love I had for him across, expressed through the silent language of the eyes.

We grasp, it seems, at what is shallow, our likes or dislikes, such as what we think of Trump or how deep imagined conspiracies run.

Charles was dying. I needed to let him know I loved him. I hope I succeeded.