BLOOD LOSS

A Japanese American queer woman remembers witnessing the devastation of the AIDS epidemic in Los Angeles in the 1990s.

In 1990, 16-year-old Lane, who now works as a psychotherapist, attended an art exhibition themed around World AIDS Day. The experience kicked off the author’s involvement with ACT UP. Through her work for the organization, Lane met Cory, a gay Puerto Rican man living with AIDS. Although Lane identifies as a lesbian, she and Cory entered into a sexual relationship that exposed her to some of the worst aspects of the disease. For example, the author describes how one night, Cory begged Lane to bring him the pills he had collected for the purpose of suicide if the disease became unbearable. As she recounts, the author also had an intimate relationship with Steven, a Black novelist who died before Lane had the ability to reconcile with him after they had a falling out. Although these losses build across the emotional, passionate narrative, Lane consistently reminds readers that this “is a love story.” At its best, the book is a poetic yet often devastating account of the worst of the AIDS epidemic, as well as the profound intimacy Lane experienced during this period. “What is sex for?” she asks. “To whom and to what do we consent when we are in moments of deep crisis?....We are trying to pull each other back from the chasm of absence toward something we want to be connection, want to be life, want to be longevity, a promise even as we know it, is momentary, a flash-bang.” The final third of the book, which travels too quickly through the years between the first protests to the present, feels disconnected from the rest of the story.

A lyrical but imperfect memoir about activism around the AIDS epidemic.