The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler? (20 page)

We visited on All Saint’s Day (November 1), a national holiday in France. It was raining, enhancing the quixotic atmosphere. As we approached, carrying pastel-colored flowers we’d bought at the Metro Station, all you could see were dozens and dozens of umbrellas of every size, shape and color. The cemetery was packed, a full house, largely with adoring fans.

We found Isadora first. Then Oscar. And Proust—there was a young Asian boy delicately placing a single, blood-red rose on Proust’s headstone. Jim Morrison, Molière, Gertrude and Alice. The divine Sarah.

The most spectacular grave site, however, was that of the tragic songstress Edith Piaf. We heard her voice, emanating from a small but capable tape recorder, before we actually saw her patch of dirt. “La Vie en Rose”—in French, of course. A spry little queen of indeterminate age, with screamingly bright red hair and a beard dyed to match, was attending to Piaf’s grave—watering the multiple bouquets of flowers, polishing her headstone—all while humming along with his beloved diva. His every move was pronounced, as if he was appearing in a silent movie.

In retrospect, I can see that this juxtaposition of art and death, beauty and pain, romance and reality, would recur repeatedly during our time together as a couple.

After our idyllic day, I tried to initiate sex, but Philip was virtually nonresponsive. I pressed on. “We’re in fucking Paris, for Chrissakes,” I wanted to yell. “When in Paris, aren’t you supposed to make love? Fuck your brains out?”

Awake all night, I was silent, trying to find an explanation for his shutting down. Angry and hurt, I wondered if this was yet another man who somehow triggered my fatherless-boy script.

Somewhere between visits to the Louvre and Versailles, we talked about it.

“Philip,” I said, trying not to use my this-is-a-big-deal voice. “I just don’t get it. It seems you just turn off. Is there a reason? Why?”

He looked at me blankly. “I don’t know,” he said.

A long pause.

I persevered. “We’re in Paris, your favorite city in the world; we’re celebrating a year together; we’re lucky to be alive. And you don’t want to make out?”

“I don’t know why,” he said. “I don’t know.”

I believed him. His emotional vocabulary was virtually nonexistent. It was the reason it took him so long to come out to his parents; he wanted to avoid confrontation. They gave him the “We love you but the Bible says” speech, and although he didn’t admit it, he was both hurt and empowered by their conversation.

His coming out certainly made our relationship stronger and I realized that intimacy could be found in acts that were not always sexual. His knowledge of art was a definite aphrodisiac for me. I felt the puppy energy of a student learning to appreciate a world that I’d flirted with but felt was out of my reach. Philip’s enthusiasm encouraged me to embrace art in a way that I previously told myself was only for smart people. I was uneducated and not nearly as sophisticated as people might have thought. Philip was a card-carrying bon vivant.

I continued to work as an impassioned activist-artist with a mission. I wrote articles, I taught, I gave speeches and I toured. And toured. And toured. I tried to balance the personal and the professional, but I’ll admit that my career drive was often stronger than my marriage drive.

We did exchange rings on our first-year anniversary. We actually wrote vows (we called them “promises”) and read them to aloud to each other, just the two of us, in his bedroom, bathed in candlelight. Then we made love. We were each other’s husbands in ways that mattered, and there was never a question in my mind that our commitment would be until death did us part. It may not have been the perfect marriage, but I knew it was the healthiest relationship I’d ever experienced with another man. It was progress.

I remember us going to see
Longtime Companion
at the restored Vista Theater in Silver Lake, which was packed with gay men in varying degrees of distress. The pain of the audience members was palpable; it hung in the air. I had already immersed myself in so many projects about AIDS that I didn’t have the cathartic experience that many of my brothers had. The only time that I cried during the film was when Philip went to the bathroom, leaving me sitting there next to an empty seat. “He’s going to die first,” I thought. I knew it; at that very moment I knew it and never thought otherwise. It was a fact.

On our way to Amsterdam to see the Van Gogh exhibit, we spent some time in London. Seeing Ian play Kent in
King Lear
at the National is an experience to cherish. I felt like I was sixteen and experiencing Shakespeare for the first time. Philip knew about art, but I knew about the theater.

We visited Ian in his dressing room, and he could not have been warmer or more interested in what we were doing. I told him about
intimacies
and he responded, “Oh, like Ruth Draper.” Of course, he would know about the legendary performer who was the Mother of Solo Monologues.

While the open sexuality in Amsterdam was to be commended, the two things I will remember from our trip were the comprehensive collection of Van Gogh’s work and our visit to Anne Frank’s house. Those experiences were linked by the tragic deaths of an artist and an activist.

Attempting to deconstruct the madness of Van Gogh, especially while studying the paintings and drawings that he did in the last year of his life, was not possible. Nor could I completely absorb the dwelling where that young girl waited to die, writing so that she could make sense of her world.

I came close to feeling their desperation, knowing that they spun pain into beauty, but my mortality and my artistic outpourings were not as urgently threatened. Not yet.

CHAPTER 37
               

I was on tour, performing at the Source Theater in Washington, D.C., when I got the word that Brad Davis had died, making him the second prominent Hollywood actor to succumb to AIDS.

In addition to his homoerotic presence in
Midnight Express
and
Querelle
, Davis also starred in Larry Kramer’s highly charged
The Normal Heart
.

As they had when Hudson died, the press sought me out for comments; in fact, at one point the network morning shows were vying for me.

The producer of
A Closer Look
(NBC) made a shocking proposal. “I’m not making assumptions,” she said, “but if you happen to be HIV-positive and want to discuss it, we’ll handle it very sensitively.”

Had someone told her? What the fuck? “It’s certainly not dependent on your appearance on the show,” she said.

“Can I get back to you?” I said, realizing I’d just outed myself in terms of my status. I got on the phone. Obviously, the first person I had to tell was Philip. While he’d acknowledged to his parents that he was gay, he had not told them he was HIV-positive. If they happened to see the nationally telecast show, they just might surmise that Philip, by association, was also positive.

He listened carefully and understood how powerful it would be in the bigger picture.

“I can’t go on television and talk about Hollywood homophobia without telling the truth about myself,” I said. My public persona was something Philip was never comfortable with and we both knew that this would only increase my visibility.

“You’re right,” he said, meaning it. “You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t do it.”

I called the producer back, and arrangements were made for me to be driven by limousine from D.C. to Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, where the show was taped. To add to my anxiety, the driver was running late and I wound up dressing in the car and arriving, breathless, minutes before I went on the air live.

Faith Daniels was the host, and although I didn’t know it, they had not told her what I was going to say. At the very top of the interview, with Brad’s wife, Susan Bluestein, on one side of me and the show’s host on the other, I said, “I have something I want to say.” My voice was quivering.

“I am HIV-positive.”

I remember Faith Daniels reaching out and touching me, not the usual protocol for a talk show host. But her touch soothed me.

That was only the beginning of a press blitz that was a bit overwhelming. The following day,
Entertainment Tonight
visited me in DC, doing a lengthy interview before I went on at the Source Theater, which was standing room only. It turned out to be the lead story that night in September of 1991.

My husband told his parents to watch.

As the year came to an end, we took an extravagant trip to Egypt, cruising on the Nile, stopping at the spectacular sights. I don’t exactly know when I came to this realization, but it might have been in Egypt. There we were, surrounded by some of the most magnificent historical art in the world, and I was riveted on the people. I certainly appreciated every breathtaking tomb and each of the majestic pyramids, but it was the children, brown faced and ebullient, begging for pencils or pens, that I remember. Not to mention the grown men with their silken black long eyelashes, walking down the street holding hands, entwined in each other.

It was the vacation of a lifetime for both of us and, as we floated down the Nile, a sense of eternal life and immortality was palpable.

While performing in New York, I received a phone call from funnyman Bruce Vilanch. “I’m helping with an event honoring Elizabeth Taylor,” he said, “and she’d like you to be part of it.”

This reminded me of the time I was nominated for Saga King in my senior year of high school. Rather than telephoning the five nominees, someone from the committee personally knocked on each one’s door to deliver the dramatic news.

I was ecstatic. The Saga Court was mostly rich kids and all of the boys, except for me, were sports stars. When I told my mom, she said, “They must be playing a joke on you.”

My initial reaction to the Elizabeth Taylor invitation was to hear the reverberation of my mother’s voice, thirty-five years later: “They must be playing a joke on you.”

The adult me realized that it was utterly sincere. The bill included Carol Burnett, Carol Channing, Gerardo (remember him?), Nell Carter and me, among others. I was allotted a certain amount of time to perform and decided to do a beautiful poem written by Michael Lassell from the point of a heterosexual man losing his gay brother to AIDS.

Although this has never been confirmed, I feel certain that Dame Taylor had seen my moment on
Entertainment Tonight
; otherwise, how would she know about me? Maybe someone within the AIDS social services community told her. I was truly honored.

I would go with Philip, my mother and my friend James Cronin (who was assigned to keep an eye on mumsie). Cronin had many roles in my life—traversing from student to personal assistant to treasured friend.

And, as well as anyone could be, Cronin was “good” with my mother. The gala took place at the Bonaventure Hotel. I was given the royal treatment—a personal assistant for the day, a sumptuous hotel room to get ready in, and a limousine at my disposal. Mommy flew in from St. Louis for the very special occasion.

She wound up doing everything within her power to destroy my big night. Although I politely asked that she not start drinking in the afternoon, she defiantly did and was lurching into drunkenness by the time the limousine picked us up. She was belligerent, cruel and angry. She hated everyone and especially anyone female, including Miss Taylor. She had nothing nice to slur about anyone.

I was embarrassed because of Philip and Cronin, both of whom dealt with it like stoic soldiers in the midst of unfriendly fire. She resented the two of them, but no one was the recipient of more vitriol than I. I was her target.

I should have been able to predict this. Why did I delude myself into thinking this time would be different? This time she would be proud of me instead of jealous and mean. She could not bear being in a room where she felt belittled, unimportant, invisible. She should have been the honoree, not Elizabeth Taylor. She should have been reading poetry, not her son.

I thought back to the line, “They must be playing a joke on you.” She felt undeserving of success and God knows she passed that gene on to me, but I was determined to not let it control me. Only when my accomplishment could be fodder for her narcissism did she appreciate me. I was simply another man that she used to fill her tragic emptiness.

Back at Highways, my home away from home,
Rock
premiered. My follow up to the
intimacies
characters would be scrutinized and I determinedly felt that I needed to find a subject that contrasted my gallery of ostracized misfits. Who better than Rock Hudson?

After delving into the life of Hudson, I found that actually portraying the star would be far less theatrically compelling than looking at characters (including Marilyn Monroe) who had crossed paths with him (including myself).
Rock
became a brew of truth, myth, conjecture, gossip and headlines by keeping the tragic figure offstage and bringing him to life through other voices. It worked.

The show attracted a variety of industry types, including then closeted Michael Jeter, who had parlayed a Tony Award for
Grand Hotel
into a successful television and film career. After a performance, several of us went to a nearby coffee shop where Jeter snottily attacked
Rock
’s basic premise, which was a plea for everyone, including actors, to come of out the closet.

CHAPTER 38
               

Jeter’s diatribe was very disconcerting since it was the first time I had ever met him (he was brought by a friend of mine) and I refused to be defensive. I just let him carry on about the fact that I had “no right to tell people what to do with their lives. Or judge them for not coming out.”

Jeter conveniently came out as a gay man after amassing a small fortune on television. He subsequently came out as being HIV-positive when he learned that a tabloid was going to press with his secret.

Jeter’s behavior that night was precisely what energized my raison d’être.

Post-
Rock
, I was cast in an AIDS-driven plotline on
Life Goes On
in which I essayed my first role in a wheelchair, complete with monstrous makeup to create the illusion that I really had AIDS. Talk about bizarre.