When Elizabeth Stone was a young Brooklyn teacher, she encountered Vincent, a passionate student who stood out among his peers at Bensonhurst's New Utrecht High School. Over the years, Vincent maintained contact with Stone, sending her a Christmas card each year, without fail and without much information about his life.
So, when she received a box of his diaries -- all 3,500 pages of them -- she was surprised. She also knew that it meant bad news. In fact, Vincent, then living in San Francisco, had died of AIDS and wanted his diaries to form the basis of a book and he determined his former teacher was the person to do it for him.
"A Boy I Once Knew: What a Teacher Learned from Her Student," published in hardcover in May by Algonquin Books, is the result. It is Vincent's story, but also Stone's memoir of teaching, learning from students and a meditation on memory and mortality.
We recently caught up with Elizabeth Stone just as she was about to embark on the book tour that will bring her to Milwaukee, Wed., July 17 for a free 7 p.m. event at Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop, 4093 N. Oakland Ave. in Shorewood.
OMC: You were obviously taken by surprise that Vincent left his diaries for you. Did you come to realize why he chose you for this task?
{INSERT_RELATED}ES: I've thought a lot about this question over the years, and the only conclusion I've come to is that Vincent thought of me as someone who saw him generously and not judgmentally. Beyond that, I think anyone who dies not only wants to be remembered but wants to be permanently memorialized. When Vincent's own friend Ronny died, he memorialized him by creating a panel for the AIDS quilt. When he saw Ronny's panel in the context of the whole quilt, he was disappointed at how small and inconsequential it looked.
I think he wanted something more for himself, a memorial where he wouldn't be lost in the crowd. That's when I think he began to think of me. In one of my Christmas cards to him, I had told him that I was a writer, and perhaps he thought I was his best shot at immortality. In his deathbed letter to me, he told me what he most feared was that his diaries would get into "the wrong hands," and I've come to believe that to Vincent that meant hands that would hide his diaries away. My decision to donate his diaries to the Gay and Lesbian Archives of the San Francisco Public Library grew out of the belief that Vincent wanted his words to reach people. And in the archives they can reach people directly, unmediated even by me.
OMC: How hard was it to do the book for you since you didn't really know him all that well? It had been years since you'd seen him and even those seemed to be fairly brief encounters.
ES: It was as hard -- or as easy -- as it is to imagine a character in a book we read. When you think about it, I had 3,500 handwritten pages from Vincent that chronicled his daily life until the very day before his death, and even his handwriting told me something about him. As he began to get really ill, for instance, his handwriting changed and became less round. Eventually, when he developed neuropathy, it became almost indecipherable. His handwriting was one of the ways I knew him.
I also knew Vincent because I lived his life with him day by day, I saw him evolve over a period of 10 years. The hardest part in getting to know him was finding a mental image to replace the 14-year-old he had been when I last saw him.
OMC: Do you think it would have been harder to deal with some of the things in his diary if you knew him better?
ES: Absolutely! I think if he were my brother or my son, I would have found it intolerable to read his diaries. Almost impossible. Even not knowing him, his life-threatening sexual behavior -- to himself and to others -- unnerved and upset me. If he had been a member of my family, I would have been so angry at him that I wouldn't have had room to feel much else.
OMC: You mention in the acknowledgements that there may be things in the book that Vincent's sisters would have liked to see omitted? Do you think they're pleased with the book anyway?
ES: They've told me that they recognize their brother as he appears in the book, that I "got" who he was which is the biggest compliment they could pay me. So for them, now he's alive forever in the pages of this book, like Keats' boy on the Grecian Urn, forever piping and forever young.
Vincent had loved Amy Tan's writings and if you've seen the book, you know Amy Tan was very complimentary about the book on the back of the jacket. In fact, my editor gave it to Amy Tan to read, only because in his diary Vincent mentioned reading one of her books. After Vincent's friend, Carol, read the book, she said, "Imagine! now even Amy Tan has heard of Vincent."
OMC: Do you think Vincent was hoping that maybe his experiences could help others in the same situation?
ES: In the last few days of Vincent's life, when he was racked with pain, he agreed to come to the hospital for a catscan, even though it was, for him, a monumental and painful effort to do so. His doctor told him that the catscan wouldn't help him personally, but what that what he could learn from it could help him help others. So at an enormous physical cost to himself, Vincent went for the catscan. I do think he wanted to help.
OMC: Have you had any feedback from readers yet? What sort of response is the book getting?
ES: I've gotten very gratifying letters from people all over the country. Some are gay HIV+ men who are grateful that an ordinary man like Vincent -- whom they identify with -- warranted a book, some are teachers who identify with my involvement and experiences and want to share their kindred experiences with me, and some are hospice workers, or nurses or doctors who feel I've give voice to the experiences of grief and loss which they live with daily. The majority of my letters, though, are from people, ordinary people -- parents. brothers, sisters, lovers -- who have lost someone they loved to AIDS.
OMC: How have you responded to the book? Has it been a good experience, perhaps more like a bittersweet one.
ES: I think writing it has been a good experience. First of all, I feel a sense of satisfaction that I've saved Vincent from oblivion, by giving him a life in the book as well as by giving his diaries to the the SF archives.
Beyond that, although I didn't know it for the first few years that I worked on this book, I was dealing with my own issues relating to death and grief and loss. The death of people very close to me always left me sort of numb and frozen, and in writing this I was learning how to respond differently. In fact, I learned this from Vincent, who went numb when his first friend, Ronny, died. But by the time his friend Eddy died several years later, he knew how to mourn much more effectively.
There were concrete steps he took to help him mourn -- for instance, talking about Eddy, getting just the right photographs of Eddy, celebrating Eddy's life by going to Eddy's favorite restaurant, writing about Eddy in his diary. During much of the time I was writing this book, my mother was in declining health and I was afraid that when she died, I would once again go numb. When my mother did die -- just a few months ago -- I knew that I had finally learned -- from Vincent -- how to grieve, and how to get beyond grieving, not stuck in the middle of it. It also brings me pleasure that my mother has a cameo role of her own in this book. She read an early version of the manuscript and liked her own appearance. She was something else, my mother.
OMC: Any other thoughts?
ES: Two: Writing this book allowed me to understand that almost all of us are engaged in relationships with the dead in one way or another. Not grieving but something we get to after grief. These are silent relationships in our culture, not facilitated, not acknowledged and not remarked on, except in special instances -- for instance we know Mothers Against Drunk Drivers was started by a woman whose daughter had been killed by a drunk driver and who was finding a way to memorialize her daughter.
Also, all those roadside shrines which are so carefully maintained -- those are manifestations of someone's relationship to a loved one killed in a car accident. We also have a public holiday or two -- for instance Memorial Day -- which are public days of remembrance, but that one always seemed to be just for people who knew people killed in wars.
But working on this book and talking to people, I saw how many people have gotten to a terrain beyond grief, not where they are preoccupied with the dead but where they are engaged in ongoing relationships with the dead. It's what the Mexicans celebrate on Day of the Dead, a happy holiday where they bring their loved one's favorite dish, or soccer ball, or CD to the cemetery.
Another thought: AIDS has been swept under the carpet far too soon -- sort of "whew, now we've got that licked with AZT and all, and now we don't have to think about it." But the news from the international AIDS conference this week says otherwise. We do have to think about AIDS.
There's now a whole new generation of kids who only know by hearsay about the epidemic proportions AIDS reached in the '80s and '90s. The rate of undetected AIDS in cities is on the rise all over again in people between 15-29. That's a recipe for a return of the epidemic. AIDS isn't a dead disease like smallpox. The same kind of vigilance that goes into publicizing the wearing of seat belts has to go into promoting safe sex and HIV+ testing. I have two sons, 16 and 20, and I know their friends have been reading the book. That makes me feel like I'm doing my own part in AIDS prevention. The book is ultimately Vincent's affirmation of life, but it also brings home the reality of his illness.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
