TO THE ONES WHO DANCED THROUGH THE FIRE

A letter from Jessi Morris

Dear reader,

I was in my twenties in the 90s. A raver. A romantic. A witness. I fell in love with music before I ever fell in love with people, because in those sweat-drenched warehouses, something sacred happened. Strangers became kin. Smiles lit up dance floors like strobe lights. We held each other with no fear. For a few hours, the world forgot its cruelties.

But beneath all that joy was a shadow I couldn't ignore. I was terrified of HIV.

MTV played PSA after PSA. Condom ads pulsed between music videos. I wasn't gay, but I knew this wasn't just a "gay disease." My pattern recognition told me: this virus doesn't care who you are. It would spread. It already had. Every sexual encounter came with a pulse of fear. Even when I was careful, I knew how quickly care could dissolve in the heat of the moment.

I'm South African. I watched entire villages collapse under the weight of AIDS. I saw children raised by grandparents because their parents were already dead. The virus was everywhere—across continents, through every layer of society—but still the stigma clung like smoke.

In 1992, I lived in Portugal for a while. I asked a man I was dating to get tested. The doctor told him I should be the one tested—because I was from Africa. That was the level of ignorance we were dealing with, even in the medical field.

And then there were the boys on the Amsterdam bus. It was 1993. I met two gay men from London who had both just found out they were HIV positive. They weren't going to Amsterdam to mourn. They were going to live. To dance. To reclaim joy before the world stole more of it. We exchanged addresses. We wrote letters. I still wonder what happened to them. I hope they danced all the way through.

Whole of the Moon was born from those years.

Steven's story isn't about recklessness or punishment. It's about love. He didn't "deserve" what happened—none of them did. He contracted HIV not through promiscuity, but by falling in love with someone he trusted. That's all. That's everything.

This book is for the ones we lost. The ones who were silenced. The ones who stayed. The ones who stood at bedsides. The ones who couldn't cry until years later. The ones who still carry names in their bones.

And it's for you, if you ever needed a story that says: There is no shame in falling in love.

There never was.

With love, always,

Jessi Morris