In a December 27 New York Times Op-Ed , Patterson, the longest-serving employee at New York's Gay Men's Health Crisis, a psychotherapist in private practice and an adjunct professor at City College, relates concerns and bittersweet memories including "12 Years of Farewells" to now-deceased co-workers and G.M.H.C. clients and friends.

"Prevention is still the best defense," he writes, quoting the hot line's first supervisor, the late Jerry Johnson, who said, "Even if they found a cure tomorrow, it would take 30 years to clean up the mess."

Patterson poignantly exclaims that he'd be glad to "clean up" for the rest of his life were he to have Jerry Johnson working beside him again.

As he leaves his position at G.M.H.C., Patterson writes: "I am alarmed by the return of public indifference—or worse, the growing perception that people with AIDS are somehow receiving special treatment."

On November 12, the New York Times published questionable front-page speculations including even names like Project Inform's Martin Delaney who is reported to have turned thumbs down on the necessity for giving people with AIDS" funding for primary medical care."

Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg appears to complain that at G.M.H.C. "almost everything is free" listing "hot lunches, haircuts, art classes and even tickets to Broadway shows."

Another Times article penned by OUT magazine columnist Michelangelo Signorile, attacked the Gay Men's Health Crisis for reputed hypocrisy because, as Signorile charged, it hosted a fund raising party on Fire Island where drugs and unprotected sex ensued, thus contradicting the venerable organization's stated purposes.

Patterson is unhappy about other public-perception developments. "Slick" pharmaceutical advertising spreads use "robust models" and trivialize the grave nature of HIV-infections, he says.

For the conscientious hotline director the last 12 years have been "a time of immeasurable loss" including the deaths of three boyfriends, two childhood buddies, and innumerable persons he's counseled.

He tells of the many humbling frustrations he's known, as well as discouragement and sadness. Still, however, the retiring AIDS warrior been inspired, he says, by being witness "to the transcendence of the human spirit."