Before Night Falls

“I have always considered it despicable to grovel for your life as if life were a favor. If you cannot live the way you want, there is no point in living.”

This statement encapsulates the attitude that defines Arenas. For him, life is something to be lived according to the fullest expression of a person’s self; to compromise on life is to compromise one’s self. Stripped of the hope that sustained him through what he suffered as a result of living unapologetically under Castro’s tyranny, Arenas concludes that he no longer has a reason to live. As it kills Arenas, AIDS deprives him of his sources of comfort and motivation—writing and sex—to the point where he does not want to continue living.

“I think the splendor of my childhood was unique because it was absolute poverty but also absolute freedom; out in the open, surrounded by trees, animals, apparitions, and people who were indifferent toward me.”

Like much of his life, Arenas’s childhood is defined by the dissonant combination of freedom and privation. Deprived of parental love, he becomes independent from a young age, losing himself in the natural harmony of the jungle. In recollection, Arenas’s childhood is a time of enchantment and mystery as well as of loneliness and turmoil.

“To see all those naked bodies, all those exposed genitals, was a revelation to me: I realized without a doubt, that I liked men.”

This defining moment in Arenas’s sexuality occurs when he is six-years-old walking by the river with his grandmother. The naked group of teenaged boys bathing in the river awakens him to his desire for men. The image of these naked boys imprints itself in Arenas’s mind.