THE SHIRT

"He must have owned 30 of those shirts. And after he developed AIDS and it became clear that he was going to die, he asked my sister and me if we wanted any."

Like all the men in my family, my brother had a long name and took great pride in it—and not just the name, but the initials too. James Richard Clive Thatcher. JRCT. He was devoted to Brooks Brothers and wore only their button-down shirts, and at some point he decided to have them all monogrammed on the pocket. (They all had pockets because he smoked and that’s where he kept his cigarettes.) He must have owned 30 of those shirts. And after he developed AIDS and it became clear that he was going to die, he asked my sister and me if we wanted any.

He was the oldest, then me, then my sister, each two years apart. The three of us were very close and he always watched out for us. Once when I was in boarding school he sent me a $100 bill, saying he knew I probably needed some money. And one Christmas after our father died (Richard Edward James Clive Thatcher, also proud of his initials even though they essentially spelled “reject”)—leaving James the man of the house at age 21—he went out and bought pearl studs for my sister and me, saying as Dad was not alive, somebody had to make sure we were dressed properly. 

We grew up in Bermuda, but James went to boarding school, college and graduate school in Canada, and then settled in Toronto, where he was a head hunter. When I moved to New York, he came to visit all the time, or we’d meet in Provincetown on vacation. When my sister met her now-husband, who was married to someone else at the time, James predicted, “You're gonna marry him.” He liked to get involved. He gave good advice. 

He was incredibly charismatic, gregarious, extroverted, funny. Tons of friends. Political and well-connected. But he didn’t really come into his own until he got AIDS. He was so angry about having the disease, and he channeled his anger into action. He became much less concerned about reputations—his and other people's. He became more of a rebel, and did amazing activist work in the last two years of his life. He cofounded what would become the HIV/AIDS Legal Clinic of Ontario. Handcuffed himself to the Ontario health minister’s office door to pressure her into improving services for people with HIV and AIDS.

In his efforts to be able to pay for treatment, he convinced his life-insurance company to lend him money against his policy—the first person in Canada to do that. It wasn’t enough. A few days before he died, he recorded a video to be released after his death; he wanted the world to know that the government’s foot dragging on funding treatment had kept him from being able to afford drugs that might have prolonged his life, and he called for the creation of an observational database of HIV patients to track treatments and health conditions—which ended up happening. If you google James Thatcher, you’ll see that he was a hero to many. 

Throughout all this, he dressed more casually. But the shirts were still a big deal for him. When he was dying, he told us that they were not to be given to his friends. He had already planned that certain friends would get certain things—a fountain pen, a camera—but the shirts were off limits. He didn't want to think of anybody he knew walking around with his initials on their chest, and he made us swear that if we ended up donating the shirts, we would cut out the initials first. And so not long after his death, we found ourselves sitting in his empty apartment taking tiny scissors to a pile of expensive dress shirts. 

My brother died in 1993, when he was only 36. When we went to see him at the end, he got dressed in chinos and a Brooks Brothers shirt, saying it wasn’t appropriate for his sisters to see him in a hospital gown. This, despite being in enormous pain from a spinal tap gone wrong. Did I mention that he was proud? And did I mention that he was especially proud of being gay?

—Liane Thatcher

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Liane Thatcher lives in New Jersey and commutes to New York City, where she directs the studio of the artist Mary Heilmann. Though her brother would have loved his three nephews, his out and proud and tattooed niece would have really made him smile.