Aids Is More Than a Water Cooler Joke

None of us can accept the idea that Patricio is going to die. Now I see death in his eyes as we talk on the sofa in his and Gonzalo’s house in the south of the city. From the half-open door, we can see the garden with its stone fountain and the children with their tricycles and nannies. It’s a sunny morning, an optimistic morning. “I’ll recover,” Patricio says. “I still have a lot to do.”

He is a kind man with a short beard, olive eyes, a Semitic nose. A porcelain prophet. I will come to know everything because of his illness. He developed bags under his eyes, his skin went pale, dried up. First he developed catarrh, and a cough; then bronchitis. The true scare was when he began to lose weight. And then they admitted him to the hospital.

They cut open his chest to get to his lungs. Twenty-five stitches soaked in merthiolate. The biopsy was unsparing: tuberculosis and “something else, it’s not very clear,” the doctors said. They needed to conduct further studies. Isolate the room. Only enter with surgical masks. Don’t kiss the patient. Don’t touch him. Exile.

Patricio faded momentarily. Pain had him in its grasp. Sadness took hold of his flesh, his countenance, his movements, his being. Gonzalo stayed by his side. He asked for time off from work. They’ve lived together for three years. He and Consuelo, Patricio’s mother, took turns caring for him. 

One Wednesday, a few days after the biopsy, Patricio called me on the phone: 

—Bambina, I have aids.

I didn’t have time to swallow my cry, nor cover up the silence that followed. 

—Bambina... talk to me! 

As if from a distance, I heard myself say: 

—Patricio, what are you going to do?

—Wait…but just a little. I don’t intend to die in desperation. 

—What are you thinking? 

—Ask one of your psychiatrist friends what pills I should take, and what dosage. 

—I promise. 

That morning was different than all the others I have experienced over my nearly thirty years of life. Aids. It’s in fashion. The newspapers talk about it. The television, too. Even the radio. It’s a juicy subject. The usual judges have given their usual verdict. “They’re perverts. It’s a punishment, like a mark on the forehead. You shouldn’t even shake their hands. They’re doomed. They’re all going to die.” All? I don’t know, but Patricio? He has a name, a face, a history. He’s my friend, not a statistic or a black-and-white photograph. They’re all going to die? Patricio, too?

My first call to a psychiatrist friend. 

—Are you crazy? How are you going to carry that burden? 

A second call to a psychiatrist friend.

—You’re crazy. You’ll feel guilty about it for the rest of your life. 

The rest of that day, I went back and forth between which guilt I wanted to take on: that of sharing responsibility for Patricio’s death, or that of leaving him on his own. I made a third call. 

—I’m sorry. Just look into it, it’s an intimate affair. 

—I understand, Bambina. It’s not a problem, really. 

As of that Wednesday, aids ruled Patricio’s life. His time began to divide into moments he didn’t know how to fill with life, or to empty with death, because his hospital room was not exactly hospitable, and the nurses were neither Florence Nightingales nor followers of Hippocrates. “How long have you been a sinner?” “Why don’t you live with your parents?” “How often do you engage in unnatural relations?” Patricio swallowed his tears, hardened his jaw, endured the pain and humiliation like pieces of rock that had gotten under his skin. 

—What do you do in these situations, Bambina? Do you accept your fate or fight against it? 

—I don’t know. Maybe first we have to understand. 

—Understand what, Bambina? 

—Our fate. 

—Mine is inscrutable. 

—Everyone’s is. 

—Mine is death, one on one, for the sake of dignity. 

When he left the hospital, he didn’t go straight home. He wanted to go for a walk in Viveros de Coyoacán. Surround himself with green, with dirt. Gonzalo and I went with him. For the first time in several weeks, Patricio had excitement in his voice. “I’m sure it’s all a mistake. Sometime this week they’ll call me and apologize for the error.” We lied to him, saying, “Of course, that’s what it was, you’ll see.”

As we walked under the trees, Patricio breathed in deeply. “Oxygen and good food are all I need to fight any illness. Maybe some exercise, when I get my strength back.” Having convinced himself, he leaned more on our arms. I desperately tried to hold back the urge to cry. I rested my head on Patricio’s shoulder; he and Gonzalo looked each other in the eyes, smiling silently. 

The house received him well. The old wooden sofa that we had all gone to Puebla to buy, the benches transformed into planters, the art nouveau vase, discovered by chance in La Lagunilla. Now here we are, serenaded by Albinoni, Patricio insisting: “Beauty is important, Bambina. You have to surround yourself with it.” Between notes, we discuss painting: his weakness. His dream, to hang a Picasso in his bedroom.

I look at him. He must have been a beautiful child, an extremely sensitive one. I’m sure he was afraid of the dark. I don’t know, I’ve never asked him. Friends for over ten years and one doesn’t know these things… It’s the adult Patricio I know. Perfectionist. Loyal. A master of affection. Respectful of rituals: tea on Sundays, New Year’s. Above all else, friendship. Always willing to accompany someone on a shopping trip for a picture frame, to help sell their possessions in a moment of crisis, to thus comfort his friends. His beloved is punctuality. “Oh Patricio, you don’t seem Mexican,” is our eternal complaint.

He’s also quiet. “You have to be silent in order to understand,” he explains when we complain about this. He’s never satisfied with his life. Whenever he gets what he wants, he’s off to pursue something new: another job, another project, another trip. He spends his life traveling. “I’m sure it was in New York, there was this gringo that picked me up in Black & White. Fuck! The most expensive affair of my life.”

Without saying anything to Patricio, we avidly read the news about aids. The plague, a cursed epidemic? Divine punishment, nature’s revenge? We don’t believe any of it. But one thing is certain: Patricio has aids, he’s going to die. And we can’t stop it. We call him every day. How are you this morning? How did you sleep? Do you feel any improvement? But no, the disease advances, just as the doctors said it would.

We also wait. We live in suspense. We go to bed angry every night, fear our only blanket. We wake up staring at the telephone. Patricio spoke to each one of us individually. Consuelo had the hardest time accepting it.

By being so close to Patricio, we forget about Gonzalo. About his fears. His doubts.

Ever since this all began, he has become more taciturn. Then I see his eyes water, focused on a horizon only he can see. One evening, we talked about the abandonment of some friends, the solidarity of others, the fragility of life. We discussed our discovery that the most contagious thing about aids is fear (“yes, a fear that makes you forget your loyalties”), our efforts to not take it personally. Suddenly, he covered his face with both hands. With a different tone of voice, he confessed: “There’s two sides of me, one that shouts: ‘run, get out of here and don’t ever come back’ and another that tells me: ‘don’t abandon him.’”

Patricio takes five boxes of Bactrim per day. His stomach can’t even handle the fat-free broths and purees that Consuelo prepares for him the night before, dropping them off before she goes off to work. He’s been vomiting since Tuesday, his nauseas won’t let him eat or take his medicine.

It's Thursday. I call him insistently, but always get the answering machine. I can’t help but think that, when he dies, his voice will remain on that recording. When night falls, I run to the hospital. I pause, upset, before the glass door. Visiting hours: from three to four-thirty in the afternoon. It’s eight in the evening. I don’t think, I go in confidently, heading to the emergency room. I ask for Bed 106. “But you can’t go up right now.” “Yes, of course, thank you.” I don’t care. I rapidly climb the stairs. I stay calm all the way up to the second floor. I head straight to the room with the plaque outside reading ‘101-106.’ It’s the last bed, next to the window. I draw back the dirty curtain. Patricio’s asleep. If it wasn’t for the bubbles in his IV, I’d think he was dead. He rests his hands on his chest. His expression is peaceful. His pallidity, pregnant. By his side, I caress his legs, feeling his emaciation. I’m frightened by the violence of his knees, so abrupt on the flatness of his body. 

Minutes go by. Suddenly Patricio opens his eyes, smiling. 

—How clever you are, Bambina. 

—I was worried. I hadn’t heard any news since yesterday. 

—I came in for a checkup and they told me that if I went home, it’d be to die. 

—Oh, so it’s not true you want to die, then. 

—I don’t want to die, I want to kill myself. 

—Always with the same idea. 

—I want to cry. 

—Cry, then. 

—How do you cry, Bambina? 

—Think about the worst, the most painful thing you can. 

—This is the most painful thing. 

—Cry, then. 

—I can’t. 

—When the desire comes, don’t hold back. 

—I’ve never known how. 

—Not even as a little boy? 

—When I was a little boy, yes, but only when no one was looking. 

—Cry at night, when you’re all alone. 

—At night I go crazy. 

—From fear? 

—And desperation. 

—You don’t sleep? 

—No, because then I dream. 

—What do you dream? 

—That I have aids, that I’m going to die. 

—Patricio, death is your decision. 

—What’s within always depends on what’s without. 

—If you really decide on it, you’ll die. 

—I can’t wait. Look at me, every day I weigh less. I want to still be a person when I die. I want us to avoid my agony. 

We fall silent. We say farewell from a distance. He waves goodbye as if he was in a train pulling away from the station. I raise my hand to answer, but I hold back. I take some steps, lean down and kiss one of his knees. 

As I climb down the stairs, I’m filled with rage, an immense desire to slap death with my own hands, to open the only window left to me to escape this fucking sense of desperation.

It’s three-thirty in the afternoon. Those of us who still come to visit him wait in the hospital hallway. It’s like we’re going to the movies or out to eat. We enter, two by two. Consuelo and Gonzalo are the only ones who can come at any other time of day, up to eight o’clock at night, after which Patricio must face his demons alone.  

When everyone else leaves, I stay behind with Patricio. I sit at the foot of his bed. Not saying anything, we look into each other’s eyes with an understanding that transcends our pupils.

He suddenly pulls back the sheet, lifts up his white hospital gown and shows me the purple flower on his abdomen. There’s no fooling him. 

—Skin cancer, typical of aids. 

I don’t reply. I don’t know what to say. I refuse to express a hope that I don’t actually feel. There’s another silence. He’s the one who breaks it. 

—Bambina, what’s the point of stubbornly holding on to life, struggling for each second, embracing it as if it was this great thing? 

He falls silent again. Then he speaks: 

—Besides, I don’t want to feel trapped by the fear of dying. No more, Bambina, no more. 

As I drive home, I realize he’s right. I’m still lost in our lengthy embrace, our look of complicity, our last kiss. I head down Insurgentes. I pass the intersection where I had to turn. I drive towards the old highway to Cuernavaca. I soon find myself surrounded by the colors of the countryside, which decided to look peaceful today. Like a fog that descends on a park, I’m overcome by a melancholy as I think about those things we will no longer share, an inner peace because the waiting is over. I will no longer wake up hounded by a contradictory feeling that says please let it be today, please let it never come. 

Tomorrow, life will be the same. This landscape will look identical. The city as well. Like every day, I will wake up before seven, I’ll put on the same clothes as always and I’ll drink my usual coffee. At nine, I’ll arrive at work. Patricio, oh how I wish I knew how to pray so I could pray for you. The same as ever. And my friends will call me up to invite me out, or perhaps we’ll never see each other again in order to never have to talk about this. And Gonzalo will go far, far away. And Consuelo will stay, and will have to erase his voice from the answering machine. Patricio, where are you now? At exactly six o’clock, I’ll leave the office. The shouts, the laughter, the noise. No more special permission to leave early to be able to go to the hospital. I recall the night I snuck in to see him. His smile when he opened his eyes. Patricio, I hope that today you’re able to cry. This holiday season, we’ll go to the sea, just like our trip to Puerto Escondido three years ago. I don’t know why the sea makes me feel so alone. Patricio, solitude has its rules. I imagine that what’s to come will be a question of building walls, filling in gaps, letting the months pass.

There are no longer any greens or blues or oranges to comfort me. It’s a dark night, there’s a new moon. It’s a shame that you can never see the stars from the city. But here, how many there are! It’s after eight. I should turn around and head back. I should be at home, waiting for the call. The air has become thick. Tears, how absurd they are sometimes. The hours, how few there are.