This essay originally appeared as "Visions of Preston," in Looking for Mr. Preston: A Celebration of the Writer's Life edited by Laura Antoniou, Richard Kasak Book, 1995.

Though AIDS has affected every profession, it has been particularly devastating to the arts. AIDS has killed more talented people than any historical event since the Holocaust.

One of the brightest literary lights to be taken from us by AIDS was a personal and artistic favorite of mine. Perhaps our most prolific gay writer, John Preston (1945-1994) has written or edited a total of twenty-six gay-themed books, not to mention a series of "straight" adventure novels written under a pseudonym.

In 1983-1984 alone Preston put out the book version of his SM cult classic Mr. Benson (which originally appeared in Drummer); the novel Franny , Queen of Provincetown; I Once Had a Master, the first of the Master Series); and Sweet Dreams, the first of six Missions of Alex Kane.

This literary output impressed me, then the book critic for Miami's Weekly News, and inspired me to anoint Preston the "Author of the Year" for 1983-84. I wrote him a letter to that effect and he graciously replied, thanking me and supplying me with a photo and personal facts for my article.

My "Author of the Year" article was the start of a literary relationship of sorts between John Preston and myself. I continued to send Preston clips of my reviews and he returned the favor by sending me copies of his books, notices and his always delightful Christmas cards.

It was about this time that Preston learned he was HIV+, which led to a temporary halt in his prolific writing schedule. Happily for literature, Preston resumed his writing career as editor of Hot Living (1985), a safesex fiction anthology, and Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS (1989).

The publication of Personal Dispaches led to Preston's first appearance at the Miami Book Fair International, as the moderator of a panel of the same name that featured Dispatches contributors Larry Duplechan, Andrew Holleran, Paul Monette and Edmund White. Preston's participation in the AIDS literary panel gave me the opportunity to meet my idol face to face for the first time. From the audience, Preston cut a formidable figure, while in person I found him to be both stern and serious, jovial and friendly, a literary lion at ease among his subjects.

Though Preston's health declined steadily during his final years, his spirits were sustained by his prodigious writing, his speaking engagements, and his involvement with a series of young, literary proteges. A native of Medford, Massachusetts, Preston chose to live out his final decade in Portland, Maine, where he was active in the local gay and AIDS communities. Preston's community consciousness is evident in The Big Gay Book (1991), a still useful, in-depth resource for gay males everywhere that truly lived up to its name.

One of John Preston's literary projects at that time was the anthology Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong (1991). John encouraged my offer to contribute to Hometowns, which allowed me to discover another facet of his complex personality. As an anthology editor Preston was the consummate professional, quick to point out the weak points in his contributors' work while at the same time sensitive enough not to hurt their feelings when doing so. Preston's work as an anthologist provided many gay writers with the opportunity to express themselves, and launched many a literary career.

The publication of Hometowns led to John Preston's second appearance as moderator of a panel at the Miami Book Fair. This time I had the honor to be a panelist, along with Andrew Holleran, Christopher Bram, Steven Saylor and Bob Summers.

For me the high-light of that weekend was not the panel itself but the opportunity to socialize with John and the other panelists, not to mention the hangers-on who came by to shine in the reflection of his light. Accompanied by a nineteen-year old "protege", no doubt a literary perk, John dominated that weekend's cocktail party and dinner conversations as masterfully as he did the panel, always allowing the rest of us to say our piece and have our moments of glory.

I was not to see Preston again until May of 1993, when he returned to Miami to receive a well-deserved Lambda Literary Award for the anthology Member of the Family: Gay Men Write About Their Families.

A self-styled "pornographer", Preston was proud of his erotic fiction. For John Preston "and for many other gay men [myself included], pornographic writings were how we learned the parameters of our sexual life. We could have more than a simple ejaculation with a nameless partner, if we wanted. Pornography was how we developed our fantasies, both sexual and emotional." Much of "the dark lord's" gayrotic fiction was the product of his final years, when he defied the sexual negativity of AIDS with his own sex-positive message: The Heir (1986); The King (1992); Tales From the Dark Lord (1992); and The Arena (1993). Preston also established a canon of malerotic fiction with the two Flesh and the Word anthologies he edited in 1992 and 1993.

In My Life as a Pornographer and Other Indecent Acts, a collection of Preston's best non-fiction work, Preston made "an attempt to show just why I think [pornography] is important, why it's worth looking at, and why .. it's very funny." In the title essay, which was adapted from a lecture he delivered at Harvard University (April 15, 1993), Preston wrote that "Pornography has made me be honest, about myself and some of the most intimate details of my life and my fantasies. ... Once I had exposed my own sexual fantasies, my most intimate desires, I feared little else about self-exposure as a writer."

As I was then first trying my hand as an gayrotic fiction writer, I learned much from John Preston's honesty, his example and his encouragement.

The last time I saw John Preston was during Columbus Day Weekend 1993, at the OutWrite Conference in Boston, where Preston was one of the keynote speakers and I one of the panelists in a workshop on book reviewing and criticism.

Though clearly affected by his illness, John was in high spirits, affectionate in a reserved, New England sort of way and still concerned about the future of gay writers and gay writings. Though I already missed the deadline for Friends and Lovers, his next anthology, he encouraged me to submit an essay. The posthumous publication of Friends and Lovers, edited by Michael Lowenthal (one of Preston's most brilliant proteges), was a living memorial to our most influential gay writer and editor.

On Saturday night of the OutWrite Conference Weekend many of us went to Boston's Ramrod, a men's levi-leather bar, for a book signing party held in conjunction with Preston's Flesh and the Word 2. Joined by Flesh and the Word contributors Michael Bronski, Michael Lowenthal and Scott O'Hara (among others), John signed autographs and worked the crowd like a seasoned politician.

I was impressed but not surprised to see hardcore leathermen and bears flock like groupies around Preston, shaking his hand, buying copies of his book and telling him how his writings have changed their lives. These men, the much-maligned "clones" (who Preston praised and defended in his controversial essay, "Goodbye, Sally Gearhart"), were this writer's preferred audience; "gay everymen" who might not be "political" in the strict sense of the word but who act out the goals of gay liberation in their daily lives and who have stood by one another through the most devastating epidemic of our times.

Preston's passing left a gap in their lives, just as it did in mine. His work will endure as long as there are gay men willing to say "yes" to our selves and to our sexuality.