It's hard to estimate how many authors we've lost to AIDS over the past 30 years. How many books will never be written, will never be read.
The names of the lost include those known and less known: LeRoy Whitfield, Harold Brodkey, Paul Monette, Manuel Ramos Otero, Essex Hemphill, Michael Foucault, Reinaldo Arenas, James Merrill, John Preston, Vito Russo and Randy Shilts. They mingle on the list like guests at a cocktail party.
But the plague inspired some powerful works of literature as well: Borrowed Time by Paul Monette. Angels in America by Tony Kushner. And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts. The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer. The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals by Samuel R. Delany. Someone Was Here: Profiles in the AIDS Epidemic by George Whitmore. Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men edited by Essex Hemphill. The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White. Heaven's Coast by Mark Doty. The titles themselves, when read together, are poetic enough to form a virtual haiku. They also make me curious to read the works with which I am unfamiliar.
But there has been little discussion of the many readers we've lost to the disease over the past three decades. That's right. The book lovers. The nameless, faceless audience of people who won't be sitting in on that monthly book club meeting, or hovering around the water cooler championing the latest new novel. But just because they haven't been counted properly doesn't make their absence any less real. Allow me to tell you about one such reader of books who was lost. He wasn't famous and he didn't travel in fashionable circles. He wasn't the first book reader to be taken, and sadly he won't be the last.
His name was Jimmi B.
I keep his last name hidden behind a single initial because his mother would have preferred it that way. I'm not sure if she is still living, but I know she did not accept her son's orientation. She blamed Jimmi's gay friends for making him gay, for giving him the gay disease, for taking her beloved son so far away from her that she could never again hear her sweet son's laugh. His laugh used to bubble up from deep inside of him such that, once it started, it could not be stopped.
I have a series of amazing black-and-white pictures of Jimmi and I in front of a wall of graffiti near Clark and Wrightwood. My brother Clyde Okita took these photographs. This was years before my brother suffered a stroke, squelching his photographic aspirations. ( The pictures with this column are from the series. ) The huge words "DREAM/FAST" are painted on the wall. In another picture from the series, Jimmi and I are leaping exuberantly in front of the wall. We are magical, we are flying, we never come down.
Jimmi worked as a nurse at a large hospital in Chicago and aspired to be a writer. He was African-American and was a very close friend. For a few sweet years on Surf Street, we were neighbors, too. Losing him was one of my deepest losses during the plague years. "If I ever test positive, I'll kill myself," he once confided in me. Well, of course, he did test positive. In the few years that followed, he didn't show many symptoms. Though he said he found himself getting weaker, and as a result was reluctant to go out to movies or to eat. He was afraid he'd fall asleep. Once during that time he threw a party for me. But overall, he definitely kept a lower profile. No more late nights dancing, no more 3 a.m. pancakes at Golden Nugget.
One day I called his house only to find his home phone was disconnected. I thought that was odd. I called the hospital where he worked. "Could I speak to Jimmi B.?" I asked. They had me hold for what seemed like an eternity. Then a man returned to the phone and said four words which I'll never forget: "Jimmi B. has expired."
Not "I'm sorry to tell you that Jimmi B. has passed away." Not even "I'm sorry to tell you that Jimmi B. has expired." Just the facts, man. Just the facts. When I asked for the cause of death, they said they couldn't tell me anything else.
I tried to reach his mother, but I knew that she and Jimmi had a very common last name, and I didn't know her first name. I thought of our mutual friends. Kenneth would have been the best lead, but I didn't have his number. About a month later, I bumped into Kenneth on the street and he told me Jimmi had, in fact, died of AIDS-related pneumonia. That his mother had a small, private funeral and did not invite his friends. He would have called me but he didn't have my number either.
So let's have a moment of silence for all the readers, all the lit lovers, we've lost to AIDS. For the Jimmi B.s and Julie C.s of the world. Some who we knew personally, most we will never know. Here's to a good friend who loved beauty. A beautiful poem or story would make him wince. Why does beauty make some people wince? I think because for that moment it makes us aware of how lucky we are to have experienced that beauty so completely, so ravishingly. And we feel sorry for any other human who cannot experience this feeling. And maybe because we sense how sad we'll be when the beautiful moment is over. The way Jimmi B's life is over. He died circa 1990. It's strange to think there are young people who have never known a world without AIDS in it. I hope someday they will.
Jimmi did not live to see the birth of the Kindle, though he would have adored the gadget and surely have bought one. Likewise his passing spared him the bittersweet closing of Borders bookstores across the country. I think he would have enjoyed the droll, acid wit of David Sedaris—though it would have left him hungry for books with a little more meat on their bones, a little more gravitas. I think he would have found a novel like Michael Cunningham's The Hours breath-taking for its language, and clever interweaving of eras.
A lot happens in 20 years. Jimmi's death pre-dates Facebook, the horror of 9/11, the advent of iPods, the Harry Potter books, the movie Brokeback Mountain, the Tea Party, and the first African-American president. Sometimes I wonder how I would explain these things to him. If Jimmi had lived, if he had not contracted the virus, he would be fifty-something today ... instead of always being thirty-something in my mind. I think I'd still recognize him. He'd have some gray hairs by now, and maybe a wrinkle here and there.
And he'd have a Kindle. He would definitely have a Kindle. One of those little electronic books from the future. A future that some of us are still lucky enough to be a part of.
Dwight Okita's novel The Prospect of My Arrival, is now available. He is also a member of Invisible to Invincible ( i2i ) , Chicago's cool, queer Asian alliance.
