I keep this book close at the house. I found it at a Library Sale, for a couple dollars. It's a First Edition.
"After Midnight: The Life and Death of Brad Davis" by Susan Bluestein Davis, published in 1997. This details the marriage of these two. It primarily encompasses their battle with AIDs when he is compromised. It's a stunning achievement for his wife and she's brutally honest before, during and after the fierce battle was waged and lost.
Brad believed stoutly in the Albert Camus declaration..."A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once."
Susan finishes this work up deftly at the Epilogue..."...And I see many errors. Those nights during our early days together in New York when I would wake to find Brad slicing his arms with a razor. (he'd been repeatedly raped by his mother) Why did I refuse to see Brad for what he was, a deeply troubled young man? Why did I think time would improve him? Why didn't I insist he get professional help for his obvious emotional distress? These questions will stay with me the rest of my life.
And I wrestle with even more troubling questions about myself when we first learned that Brand was HIV-positive. How could I have blamed Brad, blamed the victim, for bringing this plague upon us, including our innocent child? And more than my anger, I regret my coldness, how I closed myself off when Brad was reaching out to me, how I turned away from the man who needed me more than he had ever needed me. I think now of my actions and I regret them more than I can say.
But I know now what lay at the root of my actions was fear, whether it was the fear of disease and death, the fear of losing our livelihood, or simply the fear of losing love. My life with Brad was a battleground, but not between two people, but between those two opposing emotions, fear and love. Brad was my partner, not my opponent, for he also knew great fear, perhaps even greater than my own. He was my confidant, my strength, my mate, as we faced our fears together. Reflecting the Camus quote that Brad loved and that begins this book, ours was a life filled with extremes, but it also had moments of greatness.
I miss Brad. There isn't a day that goes by that my thoughts don't turn to him for comfort, for guidance, and for humor. I know Alexandra feels his absence even more acutely. Her father was a difficult man, but as wrote to her in that final letter, he was, he hoped, also a good man. If there is any meaning to this book, it is that---that as troubled as he was, Brad Davis was a good man, that he was capable of great love, and that he was loved greatly in return."