Tim Barrus in the New York Times
What is the point of writing when the entire world hates you. I was lost in hate. It was a python. It wrapped itself around me and squeezed until all the bones were pulverized. I would never write another book again.
The publishing mountains were now too strewn with dangerous rocks to climb. I was sitting on the pier at Higgs beach in Key West. Staring toward Cuba. Living a block from the Hemingway house on Whitehead. The crowded trolly swollen with tourists would go by and the announcer would proclaim with big speakers that you had reached the southernmost point in the United States. I had reached the lowest point I thought a human being could go.
I was accused of writing a book for the money. Of not being truthful about who I was. All of this was true. I knew it was wrong when I was writing it. But I wanted to live. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to be eaten by a virus.
Today, I am sorry I wrote that book. I apologize. I have so many inside me I want to write.
That book won a ton of literary awards. It was on the New York Times most notable list. But more than any of that nonsense, it gave me the opportunity to buy health insurance. Every dime from that book went to health insurance.
Remember the good old days when you died because you could not get your hands on antiretrovirals. I was now getting them. It was a lease on life. Publishing was a lease on hate. I would stare toward Cuba. Lost and found. A boat growled by. The name painted on the hull said Pilar.