One I knew was going blind from CMV, and it was tough at the time, it was still very early in the AIDS crisis and there was so much we didn't know. And cases like this one is how we learned.
A couple others (not together) did it after their first serious hospital stays. They saw where things were heading and couldn't go through anymore. Both were well short of 1995 (when I feel things turned around) when they did it and I'm not ever going to second guess their decisions.
One in the early 2000s, Idunno. He was otherwise so incompetent about everything else, it's hard to say if dying was the plan or not, but he died, and it was very avoidable. But Idunno if he intended for that outcome to occur.
It occurs to me I don't actually know if Chris did it or not. He moved back from CA, didn't tell anyone he was ill, and was dead and buried for a couple weeks before any of us, his gay compadres, knew anything was up. It was fast, whatever happened. His folks declined all contact with us, and none of us pushed for it either. I sent a sympathy card, a check and pictures of Chris in happier times. No one heard back anything. This was all pre-internet, late 80s. We'll never know.
Chris isn't in the he same category with me as Brian, but if not for Brian, he'd have been close. He was bright and handsome and friendly and ambitious. Went to Silicon Valley at the right time to have maybe been someone famous we would all know today, but it didn't happen.
I think of him often. What if Bill Gates of Jerry Zuckerberg was as handsome as Brad Pitt? There's an incredible timeline we didn't experience because we lost Chris way too soon . . . .
A couple others (not together) did it after their first serious hospital stays. They saw where things were heading and couldn't go through anymore. Both were well short of 1995 (when I feel things turned around) when they did it and I'm not ever going to second guess their decisions.
One in the early 2000s, Idunno. He was otherwise so incompetent about everything else, it's hard to say if dying was the plan or not, but he died, and it was very avoidable. But Idunno if he intended for that outcome to occur.
It occurs to me I don't actually know if Chris did it or not. He moved back from CA, didn't tell anyone he was ill, and was dead and buried for a couple weeks before any of us, his gay compadres, knew anything was up. It was fast, whatever happened. His folks declined all contact with us, and none of us pushed for it either. I sent a sympathy card, a check and pictures of Chris in happier times. No one heard back anything. This was all pre-internet, late 80s. We'll never know.
Chris isn't in the he same category with me as Brian, but if not for Brian, he'd have been close. He was bright and handsome and friendly and ambitious. Went to Silicon Valley at the right time to have maybe been someone famous we would all know today, but it didn't happen.
I think of him often. What if Bill Gates of Jerry Zuckerberg was as handsome as Brad Pitt? There's an incredible timeline we didn't experience because we lost Chris way too soon . . . .
The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it.
