William died the next day. After his death, I learned about the ordeal he had suffered; while hospitalized in another hospital, he felt ashamed for people to know he had AIDS. He preferred to go home rather than be in the special ward for AIDS patients. “If they don’t discharge me, I’ll jump from the top floor of this hospital,” he told the doctors. They let him go home, and when he entered a coma, he was taken to another hospital, which turned out to be more homophobic than the first.
My friend was not a special case. Hundreds of young people suffered for “having sinned” against the Bible. Tomás, a nineteen-year-old boy, told me that he was not afraid of AIDS but of the “punishment that awaits me in heaven.” I asked him what he expected to find when he arrived, and he said that Christ would condemn him. His eyes had sunk, and he was covered in sores caused by herpes. “God has made it very clear: homosexuals are condemned to hell,” he said in a low voice.
Others decided not to be visited to keep their homosexuality hidden and spare their families from
“embarrassment.” Joaquín, the son of a businessman, preferred to be treated at home rather than in the hospital so that his nephews would not be rejected for having a homosexual uncle.
Francisco’s mother fought in a different way. She made her son “repent” of his past homosexuality and not associate with his friends anymore. “But Doña 179
Beatriz, how can you not let me enter the house if we have been companions for years?” his partner pleaded. “And whose fault is it that my son is dying?” the woman expected.
Other people promoted the most unusual “spiritual cures” for their loved ones. Carlos, who had been an atheist, was given a statue of Christ on the cross with a red-light bulb that turned on and off. Pepe’s mother, a young man from Cartago, gathered her neighbors to pray. For one or two hours, they would pray and beg for Pepe’s forgiveness.
Parents, siblings, children, and relatives had good intentions. They did not want to see the sick suffer physically or spiritually, and since they knew they could do little to cure the body.