Books for Living: A Reader’s Guide to Life by Will Schwalbe

Author:Will Schwalbe [Schwalbe, Will]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Self-Help, Creativity, Literary Criticism, Books & Reading, Body; Mind & Spirit, Inspiration, Personal Growth, Mindfulness & Meditation
ISBN: 9781444790795
Google: vmB5DAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B01FPGY5VI
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2017-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

The Gifts of the Body

Losing

WHEN A WRITER DIES, all the books she or he might have written die, too.

I first heard about AIDS in an article in the New York Times on July 3, 1981. I was soon to be nineteen and had just finished my freshman year of college. The headline was “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” Scary. But not too scary. I mean, after all, it was only forty-one.

So I didn’t give it much thought. The next year, I took a break from college. I went to Los Angeles in what would have been my fall term junior year to make my fame and fortune in television. I found work as a temporary secretary, a substitute English teacher, and a production assistant for a television show; then I landed a job as personal assistant to a director. He needed someone who could type and drive. My driving isn’t nearly as good as my typing. In fact, it’s terrible. But he didn’t seem to mind.

I was twenty, living on my own in Los Angeles, and I went a little wild. I had a boisterous group of pals, and we would meet nightly at a bar called Motherlode before heading off to dance at Studio One (which had the motto “For the Eighties”). To the intoxicating beat of “Muscles” sung by Diana Ross and “Searchin’ ” by Hazell Dean and “State of Independence” by Donna Summer and “Mickey” by Toni Basil and “Maneater” by Hall and Oates, we would gather, dance, gossip. It was a motley crew: a larcenous kept boy with shoulder-length blond hair; a gorgeous dancer I adored (he is still one of my favorite people), who could hold a pencil between his pecs; the dancer’s volatile roommate, who had a wickedly caustic sense of humor—these were a few of the gang. We had endless time for one another and never seemed to have to buy a drink: they simply appeared. In our crew there was also a blandly handsome fellow named Edward. Edward and I weren’t particularly drawn to one another, but if the lights came up and there was no one else left around we might just go home together. Or at least we did five or six times, and wound up doing just about everything two guys could think of to do.

Then Edward stopped showing up night after night at Motherlode, and eventually I called him. He felt terribly ill, he told me, but he wasn’t sure what was going on: he kept losing weight; his glands were swollen; he woke up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat. He was a little scared, if only because no one could figure out what was wrong with him.

I offered to take him out for a meal if he was up for it, and we went to IHOP, the International House of Pancakes. I made him eat their chocolate-chip pancakes—to put some weight on him, and also because they are so delicious. That was the last time I saw Edward.

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