journeys a little more bearable and a little less lonely.
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
—Dylan Thomas
AUTHOR’S NOTE
On writing about the AIDS epidemic in a time of Covid-19.
This is a work of fiction. Still, works of fiction carry their own truth, truth that transcends “facts” and “dates” and “names” and can speak beyond a specific time or a particular people. And in this current moment, we are in need of all the truth we can get.
I find a peculiar symmetry that, just as I am bringing one defining epidemic of my life to a close with this book, another epidemic begins. There are similarities between them beyond both being caused by viruses— a retrovirus earlier, a coronavirus now. Once again, we have a president slow on the uptake, realizing too late that he has a national health crisis on his watch and displaying an almost callous lack of concern and leadership. In both epidemics, it has been doctors and public health officials who have had to provide that missing leadership, often requiring them to delicately skirt political obstacles, egos, and ignorance— though in the earlier epidemic they were aided (some would say, terrorized) by AIDS activists fighting for their lives. And once again there is no vaccine, no cure to help stop the spread of contagion. (Contrary to some uninformed sources, the CDC has not found hydroxychloroquine to be effective against the coronavirus. They also strongly advise against ingesting bleach.) It took thirteen years before protease inhibitors transformed AIDS from being a death sentence to a manageable chronic condition, thirty years before the approval of a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) that can help reduce the risk of becoming infected. We expect the timeline to find a vaccine for Covid-19 will be much shorter.
But there are also significant differences between the two epidemics: This time it is not happening to “Those People,” but to all of us. This time our government swung into quick(er) action, its delay measured in months, not years.
Another big difference: This time people care. Resources and funding for research were readily made available. The media provides daily updates on numbers infected and numbers of those who died. Mayors, governors, the White House itself have given daily briefings. Also a major difference, this time we know what we are dealing with and began to marshal a nationwide response, however clumsy and uncoordinated, to combat it. For much of the first two years of the AIDS epidemic, it was a mystery why gay men were getting sick and dying.
Many of the emotions amid this current epidemic are familiar: anxiety, fear, grief at the loss of loved ones, “anticipatory grief” of yet more losses to come. But there is no shame, no stigma in getting Covid-19— unless you were among those who loudly decried it as a political hoax. That could be a bit embarrassing.
Today, once again it is the poor and communities of color who are disproportionately affected by this epidemic due to limited, little or no health coverage, and an ongoing legacy of racial inequality. As in earlier epidemics, there are always “those people” who are not us. Until they are.
There were benefits and lessons learned from the AIDS epidemic, gained at a terrible cost: medical advances, advances in public health policy and strategies for tracking and combating an epidemic. Also, societal advances in the decriminalizing and de-perverting of gay people in the public’s mind. What gay activists had been asking their queer brothers and sisters to do for decades— coming out to families and friends, to coworkers and fellow church members— was finally accomplished, often by a terrible necessity. (“Mom, Dad, I’m gay . . . I’m also dying.”) The AIDS epidemic became the occasion for young gay men in San Francisco, in Los Angeles and New York City, to “come out” to their families back in Iowa, in Vermont, in Louisiana and Wyoming. As a friend once said, “It’s a helluva way to come out of the closet.” People across the country began to discover that “those people” were their own sons, and brothers, and nephews and uncles, that “They” were us. “They” always had been.
What will we gain this time? I wonder. What benefits and lessons will we learn? It’s too early to yet grasp the full impact of this epidemic on our lives, but we already suspect it will be profound, wide-reaching, deep and lasting. Many of us realize we will never be returning to “Normal.” And maybe that’s okay. We can do better.
At the very most, we can hope that our global community— humanity— will emerge from this viral crucible stronger, wiser, more compassionate, guided by the better angels of our nature. History tells us that some will; and it tells us some won’t, not until a vaccine is finally developed and deployed against our human ignorance, our bigotry and prejudices. And even then, there will always be the anti-vaxxers.
At the very least, we may come out of this current pandemic with a better understanding of who we are as a people, and as individual persons, so that when we, too, are finally “summoned,” we may depart with more wisdom, greater self-awareness, and perhaps not so much strangers to ourselves.
Alan Rose
Lewis River Valley
Washington State
June 2020
There once was a Chinese philosopher who dreamt he was a butterfly.
The dream was so real that he wondered whether it had been a dream.
Or was he a butterfly, now dreaming he was a Chinese philosopher?
Prologue
In the Victorian Alps, some 150 miles north of Melbourne, there lies a vast plateau at six thousand feet called the Bogong High Plains. Part of the Great Dividing Range of Australia, it stands isolated and austere, composed of rock and heath and grasslands. The region was once sacred to the Yiatmathong people. They would climb its higher elevations to escape the antipodean summers’ heat and there listen to their ancestors’ songs carried on the winds. The Europeans who followed were more accustomed to the sacred being enclosed within a building, and with their arrival the aboriginal people were soon decimated, their ancestors’ songs lost, and the land, once sacred, became grazing ranges for the White Fellas’ sheep and cattle.
In 1936, three men— Mick Hull, Howard Michell and Cleve Cole— attempted the first winter crossing of the high plains. Overtaken by a blizzard, they became lost and wandered for five days in sub-freezing temperatures. Hull and Michell survived the ordeal, but Cole died from exposure. Two years later, a hut was constructed in his memory as shelter for others caught in the area’s changeable weather. In the decades since, there have been reports of a lone figure seen wandering over the heathlands. When approached, he vanishes and no trace of him can be found.
I am haunted by dreams of the Bogong High Plains.
Chapter One
Déjà Vu, All Over Again
[10:00 p.m., Friday, February 24, 1995,
Providence Hospital, Portland, Oregon]
I’ve been here before: Walking down the corridor of some hospital, bracing myself for what I know is coming, pacing myself for what I know will be required. At the nurses’ station, they direct me to the second-floor waiting room where I find Sandy, arms crossed as if holding herself together. She stares out the window at the city’s night lights, sees my reflection in the glass, and turns, her face tight with anxiety.
“How is he?” I ask.
Eyes red, she shakes her head— “Not good”— then puts a hand to her face, and her shoulders begin shaking. I reach out and we fold into an embrace. She sobs once. Be strong. Be strong, I want to tell her. I need you to be strong.
We hold each other like that until she