For me, today is about Mark.
I went to a small boarding school in Switzerland. When I came back to the United States, I didn't fit in. I knew nothing about mowing lawns, or baseball, or Dynasty on TV. My cultural gaps were huge; my refuge was the library, where I sat, bored and awkward, flipping through magazines. Life magazine. Time. Newsweek. And in 1983, they were all about AIDS: A scourge attacking gay men.
Back then "it" was still a mystery, a decade before I would meet Mark, and only two years before Lydia would ask me to leave because of the Op Ed piece I wrote in The Columbia Flier ranting against America for their treatment of people with AIDS. "I'm susceptible to disease, and I don't want to get AIDS," she had said. I came back home of course. Her bark was not her bite, but thankfully I left for college soon after the rejection.
"I like women. I like men. Don't plan on children or a big wedding," was how I said it in 1985, not even knowing what any of it meant. That's when I met Mark, at a bar, a gay bar, in Washington, D.C. Fog, blown in beneath a spinning disco ball, bombastic music, and men in leather snorting poppers on the dance floor swirled before my eyes. Mark was the only object not moving that night. Shit, he was looking at me, as I was taking all of it in. We became fast friends. A newby, he showed me the ropes: what not to say, or do. "That guy'll fuck you all night if you're not careful," he once pointed out and said of a friendly fellow who kept buying me drinks. I was only 17. "You're fresh young meat--the stuff of feasts around here," Mark said, knowingly.
I didn't ask how he knew.
In time, I figured it out--what was for me, what wasn't. But not before I could have shared my lessons, about sex, and condoms, with Mark, who sat me down one Thursday night and said, "I tested positive for HIV today and I have to take these AZT pills, like, around the clock."
I met Claire shortly thereafter; we married a year later, and she didn't flinch when Mark got sick and we both knew we had to take care of him. His family had bailed on him, too. His friend down the block did part of the work with us; Claire and I had the 2 A.M. to 6 A.M. shift, he had the 6 A.M. to Noon window. Mark got worse, fast. He lost his sight, then his mind, and he spoke with an affected British accent as a result of it. He was from Michigan.
It was a long and ugly drawn out death scene. When the phone rang, you knew it was over--but it never was. When you'd visit him, you were sure he was gone--but he wasn't. I began to question god. I still do. No one, not the deepest, not the most foul of sinners deserved this ending, I thought. Claire and I did our best to protect his dignity as he faded into a messy horrible heap.
Today is what they are calling World AIDS Day, but to me its just Tuesday: another day without Mark, and what he and all of the departed wish for us: wisdom to stay safe, and a cure for HIV/AIDS.--N.B.
