Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1
MAX
Max found the box in the very back of his closet buried beneath an accumulation of no-longer-worn clothing, bags of costumes and holiday decorations, suitcases, and a few boxes of old cassettes and VHS tapes.
At one time, this box contained the only legacy his twenty-five-year-old self thought he’d leave behind when he died: a panel for the AIDS Quilt. Max was sure creating it wasn’t what his doctors had meant when they told him to get his affairs in order because his T-cell count was at zero, and he was so sick they thought death was imminent, but it had been the only thing he could think of to mark his time on the planet.
The symbolism wasn’t lost on Max that he was digging this box out from under everything he’d accumulated in the thirty years since that doomsday pronouncement, nor was the irony that he’d had to retrieve it from the closet.
At one time, he’d displayed the panel in his living room as an act of defiance. Look, world, I fucking survived even though you were trying to kill me. But after losing so many friends—some of whom had helped him create it and for whom he had made panels—he’d wondered what he was actually celebrating and taken it down. Then tried his best to move forward and live a life he didn’t always believe he deserved to have.
Max brushed the dust off from the box, but didn’t open it. The weight of it in his hands as he picked it up and carried it to the living room was another bit of irony. It was so light in comparison to what it represented and the memories it brought to the surface, but he didn’t have to see it to remember all that. And today’s excavation had nothing to do with taking a walk down memory lane.
At one o’clock, Max was exactly where he’d agreed to be, sitting alongside four other men in front of a group of teens at the Sam Mitchell Queer Youth Center prepared to talk about his journey as a long-time survivor of AIDS. The panel—his panel—was displayed behind him: a white ribbon chalk outline on a black background, red hearts with the names of those he had already lost or was getting ready to leave behind filling the outline, his own name and years of birth and death sewn into the upper corners of the panel.
Max hadn’t looked at it. When he arrived at the center, he had handed the box off to Ess, one of the center’s residence supervisors, then gratefully accepted a cup of coffee from Diego, the center’s counselor and the organizer of this event, then gone to sit in one of the comfortable chairs in the front space while people bustled around to finish setting up.
The other presenters had arrived shortly after him, welcomed by Diego and Ess, given coffee, then all of them had been brought into the classroom and shown to the seats at the front of the room. The teens trickled in slowly, talking while their fingers flew over their phone screens, laughing with each other. They were vibrant in their youth and so free with expressing themselves.
Max couldn’t help but feel a pang in his heart, a combination of jealousy and grief, and wondered if this hadn’t been a great idea. He wasn’t usually this morose or morbid, and he’d welcomed the prospect of talking to the kids about his experiences when first asked if he was willing to do so. It was important that they know their history and also that it wasn’t the end of the world if they tested positive. AIDS was still out there, as were other STIs, and talking about it was crucial. Now that he was here, now that he was confronted with his own past, his own ghosts, and the young faces before him, he was having second thoughts.
“Having second thoughts?”
Max looked up at the question, and smiled at his friend. “Somewhat.”
Sydney Carlton—Cart, for short—smiled back at him. “I can imagine.”
Cart was the executive director of the youth center, a role he’d taken on the death of his first husband and the center’s founder, Sam Mitchell. Brain cancer had taken Sam whom Max had known as a passionate and tireless AIDS and queer rights activist. Now Cart and his second husband, Ry, were keeping Sam’s legacy alive. The baby cooing on Cart’s hip was a testament to the way life kept moving forward.
Standing, Max touched his hand to the baby’s foot. “I didn’t realize you and Ry had had another.”
“Yup. Mei was a baby trap and Ry’s sister agreed to be our surrogate again, so we decided to go for it, and ended up with this little hellion.” Cart shifted from foot to foot in the universal baby-parent rock. He turned slightly so the baby faced Max. “Meet Xian.”
“Nice to meet you, Xian, I’m Max.”
“Max is a good friend to your daddies,” Cart continued. “He knew your b?bá’s Sam, and he’s helped us out many times.”
Xian cooed contentedly and tried to stuff his fist into his mouth while Max fought against the boulder that had lodged itself in his throat. He thought he had himself under control when Cart reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.
“If it’s too much for you, you don’t have to say anything. The kids will understand if you tell them it’s harder than you expected.”
Max was on the verge of taking the out Cart offered him when he caught sight of a young man entering the room as if he was trying to be invisible.
“Ah,” Cart had followed Max’s gaze and turned toward the entrance just as Ess caught sight of the newcomer and rushed to greet him with a happy shout. The young man looked like he was about to bolt, but Ess caught him first and wrapped him in a tight hug.
“Good for you, Ess,” Cart said, and Max could tell the comment and nod was for what he was observing, especially when Cart turned toward Max again. “I do hope you’ll stay and talk, there are definitely some people here who need to hear what you have to say.”
At that moment, Diego stepped to the front of the room and asked for everyone to take their seat. Cart patted Max on the arm, then stepped away to stand on the side, bouncing a little more as the baby started to fuss.
It was too late to make a run for it, so Max sat in his chair, and listened to Diego welcome everyone and thank them for coming.
“It’s been forty-three years since the first death due to AIDS was recorded in this country,” Diego said. “And though we’ve come a long way since then, according to CDC statistics, more than 30,000 people will become infected this year. Which is why we asked these wonderful people to come and talk to you about what their lives are like, and how their status has affected them.”
The counselor gestured at Max and the other people at the front of the room, and Max took a moment to take them in. He knew a couple of them from volunteering, but the other three were strangers, and he wondered if they were all as conflicted as he was, wanting to help the teens understand and revisiting ghosts of their own. From their expressions, and the glances a few of them made at Max’s quilt panel, he thought he was correct. It was difficult but necessary.
As each person introduced themself, Max found his attention drawn back to the young man who’d arrived while he was talking to Cart. Something was familiar about him, but Max could not figure out why. He was too young for Max to have known him anywhere but from the center, but too old to be one of the current teens Max had met during his volunteer shifts.
Nevertheless, the young man kept Max’s attention as he slowly realized he might not be able to identify who he was, but he definitely recognized the young man’s expression. Shell-shocked, defeated, terrified. Max had seen that look all too often on his friends’ faces, and then on his own when he received his diagnosis.
HIV might no longer be the death sentence it was when Max was younger, but it still changed the way you saw your life playing out. Depending on who and how he’d gotten the virus, it could alter the way you interacted with other people, the amount of trust you could give them, the sense that you were going to wind up alone for the rest of your life.
Max had lived through all that, the feeling of being a walking corpse still surfacing even after all this time. His heart went out to this young man, and he knew, if he got the chance, he had to talk to him.
Then it was his turn to speak and tell his story.