Trent, Grant

I remember a very bright, extremely handsome, charasmatic and kind man, Grant Trent for whom I worked in 1982 to 1983 at The Ivy, on Hayes & Gough St's in San Francisco. I was a student at The American Conservatory Theatre that wonderful summer in this great city. In the fall I attended CAL Berkeley. I know Grant fell in love with me at the time. I was 31 years old and I thought he was old at the age of 39 years. I am now laughing at this! He had a wonderful smirking sense of humour delivered with a Texas twang. The city and rampant progression of what was soon to be known as AIDS, frightened me and I soon moved away in the spring of 1983. It was a time of frightening uncertainty as to what was swirling around us, the Gay men of this city - a vortex of diseases and rapid death, like flies dropping! I thought if I could get away from this cauldron of demise, I might escape whatever it was that was happening! Too late, although I am still alive to this day! Why, I do not know? But to visit SF again makes me extremely nostalgic and deeply sad. I am then like a ghost in a graveyard. I will NEVER forget this wonderful, beautiful man, GRANT TRENT!

Grant was my very first love when I came out in 1976. It was pretty intense with romantic get aways to Santa Rosa and dinners at Burtons and Fanny's in the Castro and his newer restaurant Ivy's near the new Sympony Hall. Playing tennis together was so much fun. Grant was irresistibly charming and so sexy with his deep voice and humor. When he failed to commit, I started dating again and fell in love with a man from LA and ultimately moved to LA. When I visited SF in subsequent years, Grant told me he had AIDS and it broke my heart. I admit I felt grateful I was HIV negative and never got the incideous disease that killed so many of my friends. My last visit to Grant was when he was near the end and hospitalized at Desert Hospital in Palm Springs. I remember being shocked finding his dinner tray still outside his room in the hall when I arrived because the orderlys were afraid of going into his room and I brought him his dinner. Grant was skin and bones, his eyes sunken and suffering. Memory of him still burns bright.