Rent: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical by Jonathan Larson Page A

it.
    To this end, he waited tables at Hamburger Harry's, in the theatre district, where he met and began dating Brenda Daniels, fellow waitperson and modern dancer. She was tall, with short, spiky hair, and had tremendous talent. She was teaching at the Merce Cunningham Studio and was well aware of the threat that was enveloping her community of dancers: HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, had been identified as the virus that causes AIDS. And it was tearing through the lives of the dance company, like it would in the fashion, nightclub, theatre, and film communities. Rock Hudson, a very handsome matinee idol of Jon's mother's generation, had shocked much of the nation when shortly before he died he disclosed he had AIDS. His ravaged appearance underscored the viciousness of the illness.

    Throughout the mid-eighties, as the hole in the ozone layer grew, celebrities were trying to heal the world's ills with the pop songs "Do They Know It's Christmas" and "We Are the World." In New York City, crack cocaine had started to work its way into the lives of the vulnerable, and the homeless population was exploding, with almost 25,000 people living on the streets and in the shelter system. Jonathan, who subscribed to the New York Times no matter how poor he was, absorbed these facts and saw many of them outside his window while living with two roommates, two cats and working his three shifts a week, now at the Moondance Diner. He spent the rest of his time, writing a musical version of George Orwell's 1984 that he'd been unable to secure the rights for, and Superbia, a futuristic allegory about bottom-line mentality in an orbiting studio where everyone lives on and for the camera. Both musicals were set in a world where Big Brother greed and lust for power supersedes the individual's hopes and dreams.
    The heroes Jonathan created kept trying to restore those hopes and dreams. And in pursuit of his own, he had developed good relationships with ASCAP and the Dramatists Guild, being invited to workshop his material.
    But in 1986, nothing he could have imagined would have prepared him for the news that his childhood best friend, Matt O'Grady, was about to tell him when he arrived at the Moondance Diner and ordered a milk shake. Best friends since they were six, they had played on their tree-lined street and swum in the neighbors' pools. Matt's welcoming Irish Catholic family blended seamlessly with the liberal Jewish Larsons, and theirs were, perhaps, the only two families in White Plains to vote for George McGovern in 1972. They went to school together, and in high school, when Matt realized he was gay, the first person he told was Jonathan. Jon never judged, he listened and cared. So that day, when Matt settled in at the counter at the Moondance, as he often did for a visit with Jon, all seemed well. But Matt had news; he was HIV positive. For Jon, in that moment, HIV had gone from being in articles in the New York Times and the wrenching stories of friends' friends wasting away and dying from AIDS to looking into his best friend's eyes and praying that Matt would somehow survive. It was an apocalyptic disease. For the 28,712 people in the United States who had progressed from being HIV positive to having AIDS by 1986, 24,559 had died by year's end. Matt's diagnosis had a profound impact on Jonathan's life. It would accelerate everything, because, I believe, it started an invisible stopwatch. Time could run out.

    By 1989, a year after Libyan terrorists had brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and medical waste had started washing up on the beaches of Long Island, people were listening to Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy" and trying the antidepressant Prozac. Jonathan had won several prestigious awards and grants for Superbia, but with each new draft, his hero's and heroine's outcomes diminished. In a late draft, his heroine chooses to electrocute herself by touching the wires inside her MT (media