From: bongo@alumnae.caltech.edu (John Bongiovanni)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: My brother has died of AIDS
Date: 9 Jun 1996 04:15:21 GMT

I'm really not quite sure how to start this. I'm not much of a poster in
this group, or even in Usenet. Some of you may know me, either through
direct e-mail contact, or by reputation (what little I have), some of
you I've spoken to on the phone, and in rare cases I've actually met
some of you (and never been disappointed). But largely I don't make myself
all that known because largely I keep to myself.

Apparently I'm not the only one in my family who does that.

My brother Raymond died of complications due to AIDS on Wednesday, 5 June,
in Manhattan, NYC. I didn't even know he was sick. Nobody in my family 
really knew. He kept his AIDS a secret from us.

I still don't know all the details. I was in Auckland, New Zealand, on a
business trip when it happened. I live in Perth, Western Australia. My
younger brother did a good job of detective work in tracking me down
to my hotel the way he did to tell me the news. I made my way back to
Perth to better coordinate things, which included 8 hours of plane flights
and 4 hours stuck in Sydney Airport due to engine problems. 

On arrival, I found that there would be no funeral, but a family memorial
service would be held at my brother Joey's place in Vermont on Monday. It's
impossible for me to make that, and it makes me feel only a little better
that one of my sisters in Oklahoma won't make it either because of surgery
she's just had.

In case you're wondering, I come from a large family. Fifteen children,
all from the same parents, born between 1937 and 1961. One of my sisters
died in a car crash in 1989 (a few months after I moved to Australia, I
had to miss that as well). I'm the second youngest, born 1959. Raymond was
number 11, born in 1954. To add some irony, when Raymond died, it was already
6 June 1996 in New Zealand, and I remember thinking wistfully that morning
it would have been my parents' 60th wedding anniversary if our mother hadn't
died in 1982. I'm not sure what my father's reaction to Raymond's death was,
but my younger brother (Michael) told me that when my father's new wife
was told, she said he'd probably be sad for a while, but then forget it,
his Alzheimer's is so bad. He's 86 this year.

I last saw Raymond on the event of my father's 80th birthday in 1990. It was
planned months in advance and I made a special trip from Perth to attend.
When I reminded Michael of this last night, his comment was "Oh, so you
remember him when he was chubby. I envy you that." Raymond apparently had
some lingering illnesses for at least a year, and had lost considerable
weight. But he denied having AIDS, lying point-blank to one of my sisters
when she asked. They only found the truth when they found the AZT among 
his medications after he died.

But that's the way my family can be, including me I must admit. We're
fiercely independant, we live our own lives, we don't like pushing our
problems on other people, we keep to ourselves. I guess my living in
Australia is an extreme case, but the rest of the family is spread all
over the US, and at times some of my brothers and sisters have also
lived outside the US. (When I first moved to Australia, one of my
sisters was living in England, causing me to state that the sun never set
on our family.)

Our personal lives were just that, personal. "It's none of your/my
business" was the unspoken rule. I had a feeling Raymond was gay, as
I do about other siblings, but he never brought it up, so neither did 
I. Similarly, I never brought up my own homosexuality, because it
wasn't really something I thought my siblings needed to know. Only one
of my sisters is openly gay, and has been for over 15 years now. Her
lover is like another sister to me (like I need one :).

This whole series of events ties into my own recent coming out to my
family. When I travelled to Minneapolis last Novemeber to meet ,
I stayed with my brother Tony in LA, and I told him about myself then because
it seemed to me he was involved. Even though I wouldn't have minded if
he had, he didn't tell anyone else.

More recently, in the past few weeks, I've been making plans to return
to the US, eventually moving to Boston to see if  (who lives
there now)
and I can start a real relationship. There are lots of complicating factors,
like my house/mortgage, and the undeniable possibility of things failing
between us (things are pretty strained already, I must admit). Changing
countries being such an expensive procedure, I had planned to stay
with family while working odd-computer-jobs until I had enough to move
into my own place in Boston. So, again, I came out to family members.
I had actually planned to stay with Raymond, but now that will not be.

Michael had been staying with Raymond the past few weeks, and I had been
in email contact with him about staying at Raymond's, but he didn't tell
me about Raymond's worsening condition, probably out of respect to
Raymond's privacy, and the expectation that he'd get better. My business
trip to New Zealand came up with only two days' notice, and Raymond's
condition worsened almost on the day I left.

When Michael called me in New Zealand to tell me Raymond had died, I didn't
ask about AIDS, though it was on my mind. When I got back to Perth and
finally got in contact again, this time I did ask, and was told the truth.
People are heartbroken, to be sure, but they're also angry at Raymond for
keeping this to himself.

Michael says he's been talking to Barbara (my out sister) about the situation
with Raymond and how it came about. Barbara says it's because, as children,
our parents never really taught us how to love. Michael and I don't agree
with that, since several of us have found love. But it was only when we were
talking then that Michael came out to me (confirming my suspicions).

Why am I telling 100,000 people this? I had to tell someone. I couldn't
tell  because he's apparently busy with gay pride events in
Boston (which
is somewhat understandable, because I had told him I'd be in New Zealand
for another week). I'll be able to talk to him Monday evening.

But I had to let people know what happens when you take privacy to extremes.
And even intelligent people (Raymond went to Harvard, and I went to Caltech)
can be incredibly stupidly pig-headed at times.

I hope that when Raymond's memorial service takes place, and the family
comes together, they can realise that we need to work on being friends,
because being family just isn't enough anymore.