A look at "Heaven's Coast" ~

I recently read a fascinating, moving and powerful text. Mark Doty's "Heaven's Coast" paints a real picture of the pains LGBT aging process, particularly in the struggle through illness. Doty's work is one of sheer elegance and grace, which uses the most careful selection of words to attempt to illustrate the love between himself and his partner of eight years, Wally. A story about loss and heartbreak, Doty uses meticulously crafted metaphors personalize his suffering and loss.

Wally is diagnosed to be HIV-positive by a Vermont social worker in May of 1989. From there, as his condition declines more and more, Doty uses words to cope with the reality that he will lose Wally.

But this is more than a text about loss. It is an attempt to humanize the reality of dealing with AIDS and homosexuality. Doty looks at the mere acronyms that attempt to distance us from AIDS, and personalizes all of them.

The text highlights the reality of the "taboo" that surrounds homosexuality. The idea is that if you walk in a room you can suddenly be infected by all of it - the AIDS, the HIV, the homosexuality. As an AIDS sufferer Amanda Heggs was quoted, “Sometimes I have a terrible feeling that I am dying not from the virus, but from being untouchable.”

As Wally ages, and his condition continues to become more and more grave, for Doty it becomes less about feeling like he needs to protect Wally from being poorly treated by nurses or technicians, and more about coping with the sheer magnitude of his inevitable loss.

Source: Heaven's Coast (book), Mark Doty