Afterlife
A ground-breaking novel by the author of the celebrated AIDS memoirs Borrowed Time, Afterlife is the story of a new kind of widower--those survivors of AIDS who must try to learn to live and love again after great loss. Though they are very difference Steven, Dell, and Sonny have shared one wrenching experience: All three kept vigil together in the corridors of a Los Angeles hospital as, within days of one another, their lovers died. Now, after a year of gathering as a kind of mourners' club every Saturday night, each man must embark on a life after AIDS--the afterlife. Steven Shaw owns a travel agency on Sunset Strip which he ceded to Margaret Kirkham, his second-in-command, so that he can sit around his canyon house and fall apart full-time. Armored against desire, Steven nonetheless grows engaged against his will with Mark. Threatened with AIDS, Mark walks out of his job as head of a television production company and begins the process of furiously revising his life. Even as he enters into a touchy and uneasy relationship with Mark, Steven must confront the raging grief of fellow vigil-keeper Dell Espinoza. Dell resorts to petty sabotage and threats to get an indifferent Southern California to care about the crisis that has cost him his lover. In spite of the entreaties of his sister, Linda, he grows increasingly obsessed with hate-mongering evangelist Mother Evangeline. Dell's fury could turn to violence. Sonny Cevathas, the third widower, does whatever he can to deny grief, to avoid even thinking. A West Hollywood waiter, he more or less live in the gray Mercedes he managed to appropriate from the greedy family of his late lover. Relying on the gym and New Age platitudes, Sonny is determined to escape death by finding himself a rich new boyfriend. Instead he finds himself speeding headlong toward disaster. Just as Paul Monette's Borrowed Time defined AIDS for a generation, Afterlife is a vivid and startling novel about pain, survival, love, and unexpected joy.