GAY REALITY : THE TEAM GUIDO STORY (4 page)

S.L.C.  

AMERICAN GILSONITE re-assigned Joe to Salt Lake City—again. This time things were far more tolerable for Joe because Bill was with him full-time. The same could not be said about American Gilsonite which struggled measurably from 1992 until 1995, when a complete re-organization took place.

Joe was made the Vice-President of Sales and Marketing, but sales continued to decline as did revenues. “Business was rocky”, commented Joe. “By 1997 I came to believe that this was the beginning of the end! Fortunately, Bill came to the rescue.”

The three of us are sitting poolside and it is noticeable to me that Joe’s last comment has energized the usually laid back Bill.

“I worked in a real estate office. It’s the business I know best and I had always done well in it. If one is prepared to move around, a whole lot of money can be made in the real estate world.”

So they moved and they moved and then they moved some more. The formula? Buy condos, fix them up, sell them. The formula worked, while all the while Joe continued to grind it out for American Gilsonite. “Bill and I are really handy with home improvement type projects. I mean we are good. So, we kept working our plan, while at the company things were clearly disintegrating.

“I couldn’t bring myself to play ball and I pushed the C.E.O.’s buttons, the wrong buttons. In December of 1997 I got fired. It was certainly no surprise to me.

“But things were good for us”, offered Bill. “I’d opened the real estate business and we owned multiple places. It certainly wasn’t great being gay in Utah, but we had each other and that was plenty good enough. We’d both been through a whole lot before we found each other and we had few complaints, if any.

THE SCOURGE  

WE ARE together in the magnificently decorated condo in Laguna Niguel, California. It is Joe and Bill’s place which they bought in 1994. It is evident that they could be successful doing upscale interiors.

On this August night I sit comfortably, pad and pen in hand, on a lush couch. Across from me, on a matching piece, sit Joe and Bill. Behind them and off to the side, Michael Isom looks down at us from a bar stool. Joe is gently rubbing and scratching little Guido’s head and ears as I ask the three longtime friends for their first recollection of the emergence of AIDS.

Michael
: “It was about the early 80’s. Except for San Francisco, in the West it took longer to hear about it and get it. There were all sorts of rumors. ‘It’s airborne, you get it from touching, from kissing, from tears, from poppers.’ There was even a wide-spread story circulating that it was a Reagan administration plot to eliminate gays, blacks and even Haitians.”

Bill
: “In 1979, in New York City, I heard about Gay Cancer. A friend from the Center for Disease Control, in Atlanta, said ‘you’d better start using condoms. It seems to be sexually transmitted and really is a mystery.’ Not long after that, at a party in San Diego, I saw a guy who was really gaunt. It wasn’t much after that that I heard he had died.”

Joe
: “About the same time for me, I was in Sausalito. It seemed to be centered in New York and San Francisco. They referred to it as Gay Cancer and there was serious discussion as to whether all the bath houses in San Francisco should be shut down.

“I was totally in favor of doing that. I got into a very loud argument with a guy in a real nice restaurant. He thought closing them would be a horrible infringement on the personal rights of gays.”

Michael
: “I had someone, who I was intimate with, who died. We’ve talked about this and I can tell you that Bill and I reacted immediately. Joe took longer to accept it.”

Joe
: “In ‘83 or ‘84 a friend of mine, a gay activist, told San Francisco Mayor Diane Feinstein that this was lots more serious than anyone could imagine. He had learned that from a much respected medical team. About that time STD’s (Sexually Transmitted Diseases) were
very
common in the gay community, but some penicillin could easily remedy anything like that.”

Michael
: “In the 70’s it was completely wild. Out of control. We were having sex everywhere. In bars, in bath houses. It was crazy. And a whole lot to overcome.”

The three of them had lived through so much. How had they survived?

Joe
: “At first it was like a rumor. It seemed real, but what was truly safe? Was it just from intercourse, or kissing, or toilet seats, or what? There was total confusion.”

Michael
: “Education is everything! Unprotected sex is crazy. You are asking to die. Yet, there are still people today who are in the dark ages.”

Bill
: “I was trained and educated on how to avoid AIDS. Some are either uneducated or they just don’t give a damn. They don’t want to do anything about it, but they
must
know. To me, it equates to people who keep smoking.”

Michael
: “In the beginning it was horrible. When they were identified they were shunned. It was terrible. No one would even touch them! Scams were everywhere. Some responsible medical people tried all kinds of things, but there were many scams. The whole scene shocked me into the stark reality of it all.”

Joe
: “It came on in so many different ways. Some had no apparent symptoms, while others were easily identified right away.”

Each of the three was anxious to emphasize the horror of it all. There was no question that they were re-living some ungodly experiences.

Joe
: “We got scared of hearing things like ‘quarantine’. We’d have to admit it, at least to a doctor. So, I always, and still do, use a gay doctor, a gay dentist. I figured they would probably be a lot more aware.”

Then Bill surprised me.

Bill
: “AIDS is
not
a gay disease! Drug users share needles, intercourse occurs everywhere. In the United States it may be primarily a gay disease, but not in Africa, Asia and Europe.”

Joe
: “And a whole lot of husbands are actually gay and pass it on their wives. It’s really bad.”

I confirm to them that the fastest growing AIDS victims, percentage-wise, in the U.S. are heterosexual women.

Joe
: “Anybody having unprotected anal sex, gay or straight, is absolutely crazy.”

Michael
: “Any kind of sex, not just anal.”

Bill
: “The big problem now is that the masses no longer see AIDS as the death penalty. The medicinal ‘cocktail’ has deluded people into thinking that it can save them. They are wrong.”

How bad was it? What did you personally witness?

Michael
: “I had to stop counting all the friends of mine who died. It just went on and on.”

Bill
: “There’s nobody left. At the very least 60-70% of my friends in San Diego are gone.”

Joe
: “I was going to date a guy. We went back to my place and before long he took off his shirt. He had these grotesque lesions all over himself. It sickened me. I told him I couldn’t have sex with him. He was in complete denial. He tried to convince me that the lesions were an unusual disease that ran in his family. It took a good six months for that guy to admit what he really had.”

But didn’t you tell me that the two of you had, at one time, rented this very condo to a friend with AIDS? A friend who died here?

Joe
: “That’s right. I had a natural prejudice to renting to him. It was such an unknown!”

Bill
: “I felt just the opposite. We could provide a beautiful place for a very sick friend. It was a warm and fuzzy feeling—at least for me.”

Joe
: “Well, I felt that way, but not until he had actually moved in.”

How did you three beat the odds?

Bill
: “I think that I’m still here because I’m blessed, genetically. I wasn’t particularly safe at first, but fairly soon I started playing it completely safe 100% of the time.”

Michael
: “From about ‘76 to ‘82, when the thing was going completely wild, I was in a committed relationship and that saved me.”

Joe
: “Just plain old dumb luck!”

All three confirm that they had had sex with men who have died of AIDS. Bill is the most emotional, but Joe and Michael have been right there in the trenches as well.

Bill
: “We’ve all been exposed to it and I feel a real guilt about that. Why is that guy in the coffin, not me? The CDC should be studying us—the survivors!”

They are all deep in contemplation.

Bill
: “I’ve been asked many times how I survived. I have really got no idea. For quite a while
everybody
I knew had AIDS.”

MOTHER  

THROUGHOUT MY many interviews with Bill and Joe it is quite evident that each of the (human) Guidos has a very special and loving relationship with his mother. In fact, each has a strong bond with the other’s mother.

Margaret Bartek is a stunning woman by any standard. Stately, regal, beautifully dressed. Soft, sweet and open. Stylish, somewhat short gray/white hair. A warm and tender smile. She is, incredibly, 89 years old.

She agrees to meet me at the Hilton Hotel near Sea World in San Diego. I offered to save her the drive, but she declined.

After cordial hellos, I ask, “Do you mind if I use your real name in the book?”

Without a second’s hesitation she looks me right in the eye and responds somewhat crisply, “I wouldn’t be here if I cared about you using my name. I’m 89 and it’s because our Lord and Savior and his Mother are taking such good care of me.”

Bill had let me know that his mother is completely immersed in her religion. I notice that she is wearing a small lapel pin which reads “God Bless You”. She is a walking, talking example of a Norman Rockwell mom.

I want to be careful with this woman. I really want to draw her out and am fearful of her possible sensitivities to some of my upcoming questions. That concern was a waste of time.

“It’s obvious to me that Bill feels very close to you.”

Without so much as a blink of her sensual eyes, she replies, “All homosexuals are close to their mothers, don’t you know? They don’t have kids, they don’t have a wife, so they love their moms more than most.”

Any concerns I harbored regarding her degree and depth of response is completely allayed.

“When did you first sense that Bill might be gay?”

“My first real inkling was when he got out of college and he wasn’t getting married. Then it got confirmed when his sister, my daughter, just came out and told me.

“It was hard. You know, he’s Catholic. I just try not to think about it.”

It is clear that she is very conflicted by the realities and contingencies of the situation. Without prompting, she glides right into her deeply held desire.

“My prayer for them, you know both Bill and Joe, is that as they age, they stay together, play checkers, sit by the fire. I don’t know if there’s sex involved, or if there ever was.”

She stops and contemplates, never once ceasing to look me right in the eye. “Oh, I know there’s sex, but I try not to think about that.

“It’s really a contrast. My first son marries every woman he meets, three of them, and my youngest is never going to get married. He commits a sin every time he gets in bed at night. I’m very religious. I just came from Mass.” Without any change in her expression she bores in on me. “Are you homosexual?” I respond that I am not, while realizing that not once, so far, in our conversation has Mrs. Bartek uttered the word gay.

GUIDO