AUGUST 7, 1998 GAY PEOPLE's ChroniCLE

BOOKS

A vivid, personal account of the early years of AIDS

The Fragile Circle

by Mark Senak

Alyson, $12.95

Reviewed by Scott Seomin

When the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of the first protease inhibitor in December of 1995, the AIDS epidemic experienced its first dramatic change. These drugs, when used with AZT or ddl, proved to be extremely effective at inhibiting viral replication. Many people living with HIV saw their viral loads drop to nearly undetectable levels and experienced something unheard of in the AIDS war-hope.

For the generations too young to remember when AIDS was dubbed Gay-Related Immune Deficiency or "gay cancer," as well as those who lived through the horror of the epidemic since it began, this optimism can be dangerous, for hope can be deceiving and breed forgetfulness. It is vital to our history to remember the fear, ignorance and the overwhelming sense of helplessness that AIDS brought with it in the 1980s. As we mourn the friends and spouses we have lost, we must celebrate those who showed love and courage during times of ultimate despair.

We must never, ever forget.

In his moving memoir A Fragile Circle, author Mark Senak helps some to remember the history of AIDS while educating others. As a young lawyer living in Manhattan, Senak went from volunteer to employee of New York's Gay Men's Health Crisis when the now $30-million-a-year service organization was located in the basement of a brownstone in Chelsea and staffed with about a dozen workers.

Senak's initial work with AIDS patients was on the front lines of the epidemic, as he prepared deathbed wills for gay men who never expected to need them at such a young age. Senak's metaphorical imagery of this daunting work is vivid:

"Doing a regular will for a person with AIDS that was a bunny hill," he writes. “Doing a deathbed will was like skiing down a steep mountain and seeing that just ahead a few yards, there was no more snow."

This first-person account of the AIDS horror tells a three-part story spanning ten years, with each chapter offering hard-to-ignore statistics. In 1981, for example, 301 cases of AIDS were diagnosed, and 150 people were dead of AIDS in America. By 1997, 547,742 cases were diagnosed and 233,475 people in the U.S. had died of AIDS. As terms such as PWA (person with AIDS), Kaposi's sarcoma and HTLV-III (an early name for HIV) became part of gay men's lexicon, Senak slowly becomes an activist without shame. "Shame," he states, “along with the disease, would be one of our most deadly enemies."

Much has been written about AIDS and more is certain to follow. Senak's tome, however, is a rarity inasmuch as he not only experienced the epidemic holding the hands

of dying friends, co-workers and clients, he survived it.

Sadly, the numbers of gay men who can give a first-person account of this disease are few. It is the early days of the epidemic which are the most disturbing, the saddest, as society often allowed fear to stand in the way of sympathy and understanding. Gays—including the author-lived in daily consternation as they searched their bodies every morning for the tell-tale purple Kaposi's lesion.

“AIDS paranoia, in fact, became a standard lifestyle for many gay men," Senak notes. Until a test existed to detect the virus that causes AIDS, gay men waited in terror. "Hell is fear, nothing more or less," the author writes. "Looking into the mouth of hell teaches you something important. After a while of looking at it, it just can't scare you anymore."

Senak learned this lesson through his obviously draining vocation, noting that "by working in AIDS, I felt on some level that I was doing the only thing I could to control the madness around me."

One-third of the book is a poignant tribute to the author's late spouse Joe, a model/ actor/waiter who succumbed to AIDS in 1987. The detailed account of the couple's meeting, courtship and domesticity, albeit lengthy, is cathartic for the reader as well as the author. Senak, unfortunately, seems resigned to not finding another love: "Loving Joseph was forging myth into being-writing the poem of perfection—and no act in my life

Curbside

Melancholy, Baby 0.1113, 84

3 CAN

I SAIL THROUGH THE CHANGING OCEAN TIDES?

I GUESS I SHOULDN'T HAVE PUSHED YOU GUYS INTO GOING THERETOGETHER.. I FEEL SORT OF RESPONSIBLE.

1998 BY ROBERT KIRBY

DREW,

WHAT'S

WRONG?

AW, IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT! PLUS, YOU TALKED HIM OUT OF KICKING ME OUT OF HERE! YOU'RE SO GOOD. TO ME, BABY!

will ever match it."

The couple's journey also includes Senak's guilt: he writes that remaining healthy felt like "a betrayal to every PWA."

The milestones in the discovery of and the fight against AIDS are chronicled in A Fragile Circle, including Rock Hudson's death, the approval of AZT and the heterosexual world's awakening through Magic

SIGH'S NOTHING...JUST FEELING A BIT "STEVIE"# LATELY.....

HOW'RE YOU COMING ALONG ON MY STORY? FINISHED YET?

YEAH..

UH, No, I UH..

Johnson's announcement that he too, was HIV-positive.

"One had the sense that most of America had been shaken down to its very foundation with this news," the author writes of the Johnson revelation.

Senak, who moved to Los Angeles after Joe's death, reveals a close relationship with another diagnosed celebrity-Midnight Express actor Brad Davis-for whom he advised and secured medical treatment.

It was Davis who finally persuaded Senak to get tested for HIV himself—a test he advised clients to take but ironically avoided himself.

Senak has dedicated himself to the memory of lost friends and lovers as he writes with humor, compassion and honesty. A Fragile Circle should be required reading in high school history classes, for it reveals man's triumph through love and courage during a time of ignorance, fear and terror. While the author admits emotional turmoil at times, he notes that he has encountered "an insight into both the capacity of human warmth and the degree to which we can fail."

His own life may be full of loss, sadness and desperation, but Senak remains strong: "I wouldn't have chosen this life," he writes in the epilogue, “but I wouldn't trade it either."

Ohio native Scott Seomin is a freelance writer living in West Hollywood.

BY ROBERT KIRBY

YOU HAVEN'T EVEN LOOKED PAST PAGE ONE. YOU DON'T WANT TO READ MY STUFF ANY MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE DOES. WHY DO I EVEN TRY ANYMORE?

AW, DREW, DON'T BE LIKE THAT... I REALLY WANT TO READ IT, BUT I'VE HAD TROUBLE CONCENTRATING LATELY. SPECIALLY AFTER SATURDAY'S BIG FIGHT WITH KEVIN AT THE BEACH.,

NICKS

SOON

♫CAN I HANDLE THE SEASONS 5

OF MY LIFE?

GLUG

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