When Chris Aucoin first laid eyes on the man who would become the great love of his life, he was sitting inside a dark and crowded basement in downtown Halifax.
It was the spring of 1991 and he was at Wormwood’s Dog and Monkey Cinema, where the Nova Scotia Persons with AIDS Coalition was hosting a screening of the documentary Paris Is Burning. The group was raising funds to help those fighting the virus, which at that point was still widely considered to be a death sentence.
As Aucoin looked around the theatre that evening, he recognized nearly every person in the sold-out room, except for a
