Monday, January 08, 2007

Twofer Book Review

I Know You're Out There: Private Longings, Public Humiliations, and Other Tales from the Personals
by Michael Beaumier.

As editor of the personals for the Chicago Reader, a big city independent weekly, Beaumier has a unique perspective into the pursuit of love and does his best to recount memorable stories about strange clients, chatty co-workers and the ranking of the personals department in the pecking order of a newspaper. I'll give you a hint, not real high up there.

What Beaumier tries to do by sprinkling in tidbits from his life (his large Irish catholic family, his lush mother, the death of his infant sibling, his homosexuality and failing relationship) into the book doesn't work for me. I went in expecting funny stories about personal ads and got a side of Augusten Burroughs. That's not to say that I didn't like the book as a whole. Beaumier's life story is actually the stronger parts of the book, making the title and back cover synopsis all the more frustrating. But the harsh reality is that Burroughs life is more interesting and therefore, I'll stick with his memoirs.

My Pet Virus: The True Story of a Rebel Without A Cure by Shawn Decker

Thankfully, this quick read by the living with AIDS author Shawn Decker was exactly the opposite, in that it also mislead me but I was pleasantly surprised by what I experienced in reading the memoir rather than being disappointed. The back cover quote reads "I was destined for a life of medical drama from day one. I was born in the month of July, and my horoscope sign is a disease (Cancer). The symbol for Cancer? A crab - the sexually transmitted critter. Not only that, my parent's named me Shawn Timothy Decker, which makes my initials S.T.D." and so I imagined a tragic weepy detailing the life of a gay man who contracts HIV in the days before anyone knew what was happening. Wrong.

Shawn Decker was a kid with a problem with his blood. It's called hemophilia. Much like the deceased Ryan White, Shawn was a victim of the misunderstood beginnings of HIV and AIDS here in the US, a victim of a bad blood transfusion. But unlike White, Decker has lived well beyond expectations for over 20 years with not only HIV but a nice helping of Hep C as well.

Decker painstaking details what it is like to have zero expectations from a young age because every says that you will eventually die. Decker had no desire to finish high school, let alone college. Never got a real job. Lived with his folks. Until that is Shawn hit 21 and decided that he was going to live with the disease and not just die from it. And thankfully, he is quite the writer despite his lack of education. His life story is wrought with more humor than horror and giving voice to someone who was a victim of circumstance is a welcome insight to me, even if it is 20 years too late.

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