Letters from the Inside, Michael Swango, #110

Dear Kelly---

You and I once discussed the critical but rarely mentioned factor in storytelling and suicide prevention: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? The key to any author's success is: Can they keep the reader interested in what will happen next?

As I write this, your Mexican weekend with Amir has happened but I don't yet know how it went. Do I want to know what happened next? ABSOLUTELY! I've already told you that both characters in the KK-Amir love story are fascinating and multi-layered. It is a story that you have already written down in detail, bit by bit, piece by piece. My God, Kelly, the tiny portion of the story that you have told me via your blogs and letters is easily a short story, or a chapter or two in a novel.

And believe me, you don't need a definitive ending for the story to be told in detail. I've already told you that I think you and Amir have more happy and sad and exhilarating and terrifying moments and episodes ahead of you. That is the nature of a love story.

OK--Just received your most recent letter. Again, written before your weekend w/Amir. Brilliant shocking pink paper! Will delvei not the always scintillating details next time, but let me thank you for the words to that amazing poem by Yeats:: SAILING TO BYZANTIUM


Believe me, I am not a poetry guy [not that there's anything wrong with it!] Besides Sailing to Byzantium, I can't tell you about another poem by Yeats or almost any other classical potet that were studied and memorized by generations of British, European and American scholars.

Of modern living poets--I have only read in detail Maxine Kumin (there's a whole story behind that). And of couse, anyone exposed to e.e. cummings can't help but be interested and recall bits and pieces...
---buffalo bill's defunct
---how do you like your blue-eyed boy, mr. death?


However when they are good, they are very good and can stab at the heart like almost nothing else.

I took a moment/and three came to mind:

>To An Athlete Dying Young
>Stop All the Clocks...
>And a poem I first heard in high school for God's sake, and never forgot: RICHARD CORY

If, somehow, this escaped your education, go online and read it NOW. But I suspect you are familiar.
And thank you for SEND IN THE CLOWNS.

Now to some of the things you mentioned in your previous letters:

Wow Kelly when you get sick, it really hits you hard doesn't it? Fever, flu, chest, throat, congested, sore, laryngitis, green good from your eye...

At this point I was thinking Andromeda Strain, and wondering if the letter would end with: The remainder of the decedent's letter is classifed by the CDC.

But , you survivied...mute, blind in one yee, enrtou tot being a "feverish Helen Keller"---antibiotics hurrah!

Again, I know m uch of this is ancient pre-New Year's Eve but you really can't compare him to John/and if you truly believed Amir ws a sociopath, I know you would not be going to Mexico with him. Again, ancient talk, I know. I await your post-Mexico Amir analysis/discussion.

I hardly know where to begin regarding this twisted tale of John in your novel about his history with HIV/AIDS. May I recommend the book, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON by Randy Shilts, who sadly died of AIDS before the advent of retrovirals in the mid-90s.

First of all---a perhaps stupid questoin/but as Dr. Lecter tell us in Silence of the Lambs: To begin, to know you must return to the first principles. So here goes:

Has anyone ever seen John have blood drawn for an HIV test and followed that blood to the lab with no interaction with John and seen a positive test?

You see my point, I am sure. It would not AT ALL be beyond the will or scope of a sociopath to fake a positive HIV test/even in a decades long hoax that gets out of hand.

But assuming the premis is true, his purported history of said disease puts him in an extremely small, almost infinitessimal percentage of extremely fortunate people living with HIV.

Trust me, sociopaths love to feel special and unique.

John is either lying or misremembering when he says tha the contacted HIV in 1985 before it was called HIV. Survey says: WRONG!

The illness that would be known as HIV/AIDS was first recognized in the US in June 1981. One of its original acronyms was GRID: Gay-related Immuno-Deficiency but by 1983 HIV was identified and named. Lab results actually showed cases of AIDS in the 70s.

There were no long letter/number combos.

His virtually unique status as an asymptomatic HIV "carrier" is even more remarkable given the fact tha the claims to have been infected during sex with a man. I assume unprotected anal sex with John as the reciever. This produced particularly deadly infections in those early days. You know how m any gay men died of AIDS in the 80s and 90s.

Again--there are cases of documented HIV infection with no symptoms, no illness, no progressoin and no medication ever needed. These people are intensely studied for obvious reasons. And they are very, very rare.

Occam's Razor tells us to search for the simplest explanation: Only two apply here:

1) The rarest of medical caes (he never took AZT especially when it was the only drug available in the 80s for HIV?
or
2) Uninfected.

Now the girlfriend situation is also most remarkable. In the novel, we learn that John had a girlfriend for six years. A woman who he was sleeping and traveling with.

Once again---and here we must be medical and specific--how many times did the girlfriend have sex with him--unprotected...hundreds?

Remarkable that she remains uninfected.

Your comment towards the end of that novel chapter says it best "IT IS ALL VERY INCONGRUOUS AND ODD."
I don't have enough evidence to know definitively either way---but there is clearly more to know...perhaps, some of the info that "cannot be discussed" yet will give us the answer.

So perhaps that can be addressed in future chapters....

Sorry to have m ade so much of this letter about such an unpleasant topic but putting aside the evil of what he did to the novel's protagonist and some of the other women--the story as a story is utterly fascinating. It touches on so many subjects---love/obsession/deception/disease...Kelly if you begin to tell your story, EVERYONE will want to know WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Thats TWO amazing stories to be told.

***

Because I've gone on for so long I can only briefly touch on another subject I want to get into much more deeply and will in next letters:

Your questions regarding the firm the Young Prisoner's Handbook are--as always--to the point. Will answer what I can. Definitely a subject for a short story.

And I love your strength and willingness to stand up for what you think and want. I love, love, love that in a woman. Many men do not, as I'm SURE you know.

You see, conflict and disagreement, sometimes intense, are absolutely part of two people getting to know each other/learning what each other think.

So you do want to see that [hours and hours of a] snuff film of my life. Fair enough, I can assure you, nothing about it would be boring.

And regarding "POINT TWO" I can admit when I've been wrong and have made assumptions with limited knowledge...Point taken, and point accepted.

And your last lines of that paragraph are brilliantly true: It is the things sex makes us do that are endlessly fascinating (obsession) or beautiful (love) or horrendous (murders of giflriends or wives) .

So again, I perhaps spoke too soon. My apologies. See, I'm not so awful!!!

And of course will continue to discuss sex when it seems appropriate or just mention it to tweak your sensibilities. (Maybe I am awful...)

Anyway, bottom line. This letter is only a start. So much to discuss. More to follow. And news on teh weekend to be sure. .

Take care of yourself, Kelly. Stay warm---lots of winter still to come. Thinking of you.

Your friend,

Michael.