Illustration by D.G. Strong

Eddie Socket is a marginally employed Oberlin graduate with no medical coverage living on the lower East Side of Manhattan with his college friend, Polly Plugg, with whom he shares everything but sex (well, with one experimental exception). He’s chosen his own surname as a match for Polly’s, so there they are, a hole and something to fill it, complete unto themselves. Eddie is gay and uncloseted but not especially lucky in love. His favorite activities are going to the movies and taking long baths. His favorite question is “Who am I quoting?” He’s a human repository of movie scenes, show-tune lyrics (especially Larry Hart), Shakespearean soliloquies and the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. In short, he is a character after my own heart. Last month, while grieving for the loss of another friend with similar attributes, I was drawn again to Eddie. Call me a self-destructive fool, but I’ve always felt that the only way out is through.

About a third of the way through John Weir’s The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket, first published in 1989 and winner of the 1990 Lammy award for best debut novel, Eddie apparently passes unaware through asymptomatic HIV infection directly to Kaposi’s sarcoma and full-blown AIDS. Thus begins his “irreversible” — and tragic — decline. This is a story unlike other AIDS stories of its time or in retrospect. Eddie does not frequent back rooms or line up at the Hudson docks. He was barely a teenager during the age of disco, and most likely he never sniffed a vial of amyl nitrate.

So what does he do? He doesn’t have the money or the moneyed friends to fund a last European adventure. He may read Death in Venice, but he’ll never get there in person. Though he sees his own life in the context of old movies and F. Scott Fitzgerald novels, he is not delusional or prone to extremes. He eschews high drag, keeping his old grungy clothes on his back, and mentally stages his burial at Woodlawn next to Herman Melville, “who understood yearning and obsession and who had loved Nathaniel Hawthorne, a beautiful, icy man with an ivory-sculpted brow, and a big, big barn.” It’s no coincidence that Eddie himself is in love with a Hawthorne equivalent, complete with barn.

It’s strange to look back at these AIDS novels as a piece of history when the disease itself is pandemic. Though I know people who are doing well on sophisticated antiviral cocktails, the news from third-world countries is inescapably tragic. And in our own country, among our own friends, the narrative continues, having little to do with population studies or clinical trials. Sex is always more than the act itself, with a cast of characters that extends beyond the boundaries of every Gayborhood, and with all manner of hurt on every side. Looking back on Eddie Socket, I’m less certain that he’s a real character, but I’m not sure how much that matters. Even John Weir says that the earlier novel strikes him as “overwritten.” (His second novel, What I Did Wrong, came out in 2006, to a generally disappointed response.) Even if Eddie Socket is more mythic than real, the story itself still resonates for this reader. Eddie remains unforgettable. I want to introduce him to all my friends, especially those with money and real estate who could give him a much-needed handout and a little bit of fun on the side. Just call me yenta.