Love Ruins Everything, Karen X. Tulchinsky, Press Gang Publishers, 1998
Nomi Rabinovitch is a Jewish lesbian from Toronto currently living and working in San Francisco. One day, Sapphire, her lover for the previous three years, breaks up with her, and Nomi is crushed. She crashes for a while on a friend's couch, and has a few dates which don't turn into anything. Sapphire suddenly wants to get back together, then, just as suddenly, doesn't want to get back together. While Nomi ponders her future, her mother, still living in Toronto, tells Nomi that she is remarrying and that Nomi's attendance at the wedding is expected. She meets cousin Henry, also gay and suffering from AIDS, victim of a gay-bashing attack.
Henry and Roger, his lover, have met a man named Albert from New York who has spent years researching the theory that AIDS was created by the US government and given to gays through bogus hepatitis vaccinations. Albert thinks They are trying to silence him, leading to the thought Henry's attack may not have been simply random violence.
Meanwhile, Nomi runs into, and falls for, an old friend named Julie Sakamoto. When Nomi was younger, she had a major crush on Julie, and finds, to her delight, that the feeling is very mutual.
Don't skip this because of the subject matter. Enjoy it because it's emotional, real, funny and a wonderful piece of writing about life in the 90s.
No comments:
Post a Comment