Destination Unknown

This book is obviously very personal for Bill Konigsberg, who like his closeted narrator Micah was a New York City teenager in the late 1980's, when having AIDS was a death sentence. Micah is well aware that coming out means facing almost universal homophobia, fear, and the belief that nobody cares if you die. That's a lot to handle, especially for a chubby Jewish kid who is completely ignorant of gay culture (he still proudly wears a Members Only jacket - look it up, kids) or the support and activist networks that have sprung up around the illness.

CJ is the charming, beautiful, troubled twink who introduces Micah to all that he is missing - the music, the clubs, the self- help groups who deliver meals to the sick. Micah is enchanted by CJ but also afraid of what he represents. Their relationship faces almost insurmountable obstacles, and as Micah starts to meet more people with AIDS, he wonders if he is strong enough to bear it if either he or CJ become another AIDS statistic.

Although the stakes are deadly serious for the book's characters, there's quite a bit of humor, especially during the MCs late-night phone calls. The epilogue, written by Micah in the present day, shows a man who has experienced both love and loss (there is a HEA for him and CJ, but only after one of them contracts the disease and miraculously hangs on until an effective treatment is found).

As a cishet white woman who is a little older than Konigsberg, I lived through the epicenter of the disease without ever being personally touched by it. Destination Unknown reminded me that while I was worried about getting into graduate school, an entire generation of men were worried about surviving the next few months. For today's teens, this book must feel like ancient history, but I hope it finds a wide audience so they can understand why their elders carry around so much grief, guilt and anger along with their pride.