NONFICTION - April 28, 1996

FIRST COMES LOVE by Marion Winik (Pantheon: $23; 255 pp.). When Marion first met Tony in 1983 during Mardi Gras in New Orleans it was love at first sight. That’s right folks, not just lust, although Marion (a self-described romantic poetess) could barely contain herself around Tony (a gay ice skater). This is a story of true love between two people, each with enough personal hurdles to stop any athlete, so that, between them, they are gold medalists in the relationship event. He’s gay and hurt by past relationships, by his father and by the failure of his talent to uphold a career in ice skating. She’s hurt by past relationships, and by what looks like an addiction to heroin (not to mention the use of vast quantities of other drugs and alcohol). Tony eventually finds himself in the bulls-eye for AIDS--much sex and heroin use in the 1980s--and Marion finds herself increasingly sexually frustrated, having been momentarily distracted by the births of three children. But they are a family, and they stay a family through Tony’s suicide, assisted by Marion. It’s an honest book, in the way that people who have to step outside convention to create new systems, frameworks and family structures have to be honest, and Winik is about as strong as any survivor I’ve ever known on paper.