READ: Blue Pills by Frederik Peeters

At one point in 2008, my friend Jodi and I were in Book Soup in West Hollywood. She remembered many years later I nearly got a parking ticket when we were about to leave. We were in Book Soup, just looking about, and we split up briefly at one point (it's such a rather small space, frankly), and I was at their then-new graphic novel section. there really wasn't much that grabbed my attention aside from two books, Adrian Tomine's SHORTCOMINGS (a gift for the best friend) and Frederik Peeters's BLUE PILLS.

When I was finally home, I read BLUE PILLS and I cried and cried as I read it. It's a memoir, telling Peeters's story about meeting his girlfriend Cati and her son, and how they came to be together. Cati and her son are HIV-positive, and Peeters tells us how it was that their relationship came to function, how wonderful it was, how mired in uncertainty it initially was, and how, ultimately, there wasn't necessarily anything spectacular about it. And I cried because for a very long time at that point, I was still having a lot of difficulty with my own then-recent diagnoses.

Christ.

I remember so many nights of not sleeping and thinking about it. Feeling as if I was off-limits, thinking that no one would want me, that I was broken and damaged, and that I was sentenced to an isolated life. I remember as I'm reading BLUE PILLS, when Cati tells Fred of hers and her son's infection, how he reacts, because it wasn't how nearly everyone I knew did. And it made me love him. The romantic in me made me think that even though this was a memoir, guys like Fred were only fiction. I cried because he seemed, rightly or not, hesitant but honest, and still very much willing to take the chance, you know? Ah! It all seems a little muted now, but I remember how great I felt for Cati! I wanted him to want her and he did!

And I remember when talking about Cati's son, when Fred begins to think about this child's future being forever tied to the medical system, and whose live will potentially end in sickness, I was broken apart again. Because that is how I felt, how I foresaw my life. And it didn't matter that everyone seemed terribly upbeat, including my doctor. All I saw, much like Fred, was a life forever linked to a hospital and pills. Blue pills for Cati and her son.

I think this comic did more for me at the time when I needed it the most than anyone or any other thing did. Because it wasn't talking in bullshit: it's direct and a little difficult to read through, but it gave me a glimpse at something other than what my brain had cooked up for months prior. It showed me in rather obvious way that it didn't need to be the end of anything for me, just adding a few more steps to life. And it illustrated very much how a lot of us who're HIV-positive so feel such guilt for seemingly inflicting ourselves upon others, how many mistakes lead us to where we are, and how scary it is to face the world sometimes.

This is the most important book in my life since 2008. Peeters got me. And I'm not even sure if that was his intent. But it accomplished so much for me than I think I can ever be grateful for. Perhaps you think this is all hyperbole. Whatever. I'd read other things (around this time I also read Shawn Decker's MY PET VIRUS, which in trying to talk to people about, they'd rather talk about their asshole boyfriends) and talked to several people about being HIV-positive, but everyone seemed to be either too blase, or too gloomy for me to ever get something useful out of it (I remember telling my doctor then that if "living with HIV" isn't such a big deal, why did everyone around me burst into a little chaos of tears around me). It's one of the instances in my life wherein comic books seem to have more value and truth and love and anguish and even hope than the rest of the universe has.

What I find curious now, even after just re-reading it is that one of the medications I take are blue pills.

[cross-posted everywhere.]