18

MONDAY

Thanksgiving day of 1995, I might have rolled over and gone back to sleep, but there was a man sneaking a cigarette off my friend’s vanity. “Hi, Christian, how ya doin’?” my friend mumbled. “Ooh, sorry, I didn’t want to wake you. I’m leaving you a dollar.” he said. My friend told me, “This is Christian. He was the first Marlboro Man.” We shook hands. Despite a chest tube and the occasional oxygen mask for an ongoing AIDS-related respiratory infection, Christian could not resist the occasional puff, for which he always overpaid. My friend lived upstairs from a Marlboro Man with full-blown AIDS on Market Street in the Castro. It sounds like a story line from Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, but, by now, most everybody has a story for the first time AIDS became flesh to them. Today, the hairstylists at Harlow are stepping up to do their part for AIDS funding, specifically the D.C. AIDS Ride. The well-coifed can make a well-timed visit to the stylist while Harlow hosts “Cuts for the Cure,” a day of hair cuttery with all the proceeds going to the D.C. AIDS Ride. Schedule yourself in from 10 a.m.-8 p.m. at Harlow Hair Design, 1607 Connecticut Ave. NW. $18-23. (202) 332-1800. (Ginger Eckert)