He's abrasive and sanctimonious, while others, such as Bruce, are not, but fighting the same battle. You can feel Ned's rage on the pages, his rage that is so unbridled and, frankly, justified that the reader is both put off but also in full agreement with him. Larry Kramer uses this story to indict the media, the government, and those who chose to remain silent on all sides. And all the while, a generation is lost to AIDS, the virus that at this point didn't have a name. Ned continues to hunt and persist for answers and justice, no matter how much it alienates him from those outside the movement and inside alike. Ned is angry and outspoken, and he and his less outspoken friends form a group to try and raise funds and attention, while those that they know and love start to succumb, including Ned's boyfriend and lover Felix. But society around him, politicians, the media, even his own peers, would rather remain silent with their heads buried in the sand. Ned's response is to make it political, to raise awareness, to demand that the world start noticing this insidious thing that is infecting and killing gay men with no end in sight. It opens with him and some friends at the doctor's office of Emma, a Polio survivor who has overseen the many, many cases of this strange new disease. It concerns Ned Weeks, a gay Jew living in New York whose friends and acquaintances have started falling ill to a mysterious and deadly new illness.

The play takes place over the course of a few years on the early 80s. Because that, my friends, is exactly what A NORMAL HEART did to me. What a way for David and I to say goodbye before he goes to Greece for the summer and then Berkeley for grad school! No doubt crying so hard snot is running down our noses.

But, big surprise, after reading it I feel no better prepared, and if anything it's probably going to make the experience that much more emotional and devastating. I decided, in an effort to steady myself for the no doubt devastating blow that this movie will commit upon me and my person, to buy the play from so I could read it. To which he and I started freaking out and clung to each other, him out of love for the original text and me out of being totally riled up from his reminders and vague knowledge of the subject matter. I had been getting facebook posts of teasers, of articles of when it would come out, and finally, last Sunday during our weekly GAME OF THRONES date, the trailer aired.

For the past few months, David has been reminding me that HBO is making a TV version of THE NORMAL HEART, the emotional, angry, passionate play about the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and how it was handily ignored, devastating the gay community. So I've mentioned my person David before.

The normal heart 1985