You weren’t surprised at what the doctor said.
Not really. You’d been feeling odd, just not quite right, not yourself. So there were tests, you were stuck like a voodoo doll, and you finally have a diagnosis. Thankfully, you’ll be fine, a few medications and there you are. You’re lucky; as in “Bitter Pill” by Clément Xavier and Héloïse Chochois, being sick can be hard to swallow.
It was a pretty big deal when San Francisco journalist Randy Shilts became the first openly gay man to write for a mainstream newspaper. Finally, he had a byline, a private office – and a phone that, on one of his first days, rang with an anonymous call. The person on the line asked Shilts to report on something that was happening in the gay community: young gay men were dying from a rare kind of cancer that was usually only found “in a few old folks around the Mediterranean.” Doctors seemed to be baffled.
But when Shilts tried to report on what was fast becoming a disaster, his editor at the newspaper turned his stories down. Ever the dogged journalist, Shilts continued to investigate, speaking to doctors, talking to gay men, and learning the depths of the crisis. He befriended the man who initially piqued his interest in the disease called AIDS, which was when Shilts learned that the bathhouses in the Castro, a gay neighborhood, were still open.
- Advertisement -
That, he believed, was one of the major ways the disease had spread, and he began a campaign to close San Francisco’s gay bathhouses. His efforts were met with criticism, hatred, jeering, and violence, though he continued to speak out.
When he learned that there was a “Patient Zero,” he realized something shocking: on one of his investigative trips, he met a handsome young airline steward. The man’s name was Gaetan…
In the decades-long story of AIDS, a lot has been said about the role of journalist and author Randy Shilts in the uncovery of it. “Bitter Pill” re-imagines what it might have been like to be Shilts then, and what he endured to tell the stories. It can be a hard tale to read, and one that may still ring with a tone of controversy.
Here’s the thing: this is a graphic novel, which is somewhat like a comic book. That can make it easier to read – certainly, it’s faster – but it’s also essential to read the afterword and interviews with Clément Xavier and Héloïse Chochois. There, they explain that they didn’t know much about Shilts and were unfamiliar with what happened back in the 1980s, but they were fascinated with his story and his work. This innocence might astound older readers; surely, it explains the freshness of this overall story. It also shows the importance of bringing this tale to every upcoming generation.This book may seem to lean more toward younger folks but a mature reader will get a lot out of it. For sure, “Bitter Pill” is a good dose of gay history.
