The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler? (21 page)

Entertainment Tonight
covered the filming, as did
Variety
and the
New York Times
; I was now officially the first publicly HIV-positive actor to portray an HIV-positive character on network television. It was getting a bit surreal.

I remember shooting on Valentine’s Day and true to the rigors of television, things were incredibly slow. Philip and I had dinner plans to celebrate the holiday and I began calling him every half hour, saying, “We’re just about to wrap.”

Even in that moment, I realized that I was putting work and my revived celebrity label before Philip. The night wore on until at least ten o’clock or so, and I finally called to say that we’d have to celebrate on February 15. I remember having a very sweet conversation with the show’s star, Chad Lowe, in the parking lot. “You’re very brave,” he said sincerely, “to be so open. Good luck to you.”

In a matter of weeks, I was on a plane to Sydney, Australia, to appear at the world-famous gayer than gay Mardi Gras. When someone told me that the men in Sydney were “like the men in Texas,” I initially didn’t get it, but it didn’t take long for me to see what an apt description that was. In other words, the gay men of Sydney had a cowboy mentality, which created an atmosphere of secrecy. There was not a single person in Sydney, during the summer of 1992 (winter in the States), who was openly HIV-positive.

The response to my show (I did a combination of
intimacies
and
more intimacies
) coupled with my openly gay and publicly HIV-positive stance resulted in almost more attention than I could endure. The reviews were over the moon and I was interviewed virtually every afternoon before my evening show—newspapers, television, magazines. It was a heady experience.

I honestly believe that I was being of service, even though I won’t deny that I loved being a celebrity, especially a sober celebrity. The clicking of a camera, the whirring sound of a tape recorder, the television camera zooming in for a close-up: I’ll admit, it was fucking intoxicating, even when I was accused of capitalizing on my HIV status. The houses were full; the theater was state of the art; the audiences were more responsive than any I’d experienced prior.

When I returned to Los Angeles after three weeks, Philip was not the same. Something had shifted and, although he wouldn’t admit it, he was not feeling well. All the telltale signs were there: diarrhea, weight loss and some difficulty with concentration.

Less than a year after Brad Davis’ death, it was worth noting that Robert Reed’s family and handlers insisted that he died from cancer even though his death certificate stated that HIV was a contributing factor. I thought back to our
Murder She Wrote
scene and remembered that he was a bit standoffish in my presence. I suppose I’d heard that he was gay, but his death from AIDS and the public denial were unnerving.

The duplicitous veil of secrecy confirmed the Hollywood manufactured image. The perception that the town overflowed with big-hearted understanding was as fake as a starlet’s boob job. An illusion. The insidious Hollywood homophobia surrounding AIDS was immutable, no matter how many benefits Hollywood congratulated itself on throwing.

Philip had come close to making the decision about quitting his job and going on disability. I suddenly realized that his fear of being fired was about “firing” himself. Virtually no one at the Norton Simon knew his status, although they couldn’t have missed the glaring symptoms. One day he admitted to me that he’d experienced some kind of vision impairment. Not one to dramatize, Philip said that he was parking in an area where there were mountains and suddenly everything within his sight turned upside down. I thought I had an encyclopedic knowledge of AIDS’ tricks, but this one was new. I asked him to repeat the story and he did, verbatim. He was clearly freaked-out.

I was scheduled to do a one-nighter in Frankfurt and the producers agreed to pay for Philip’s plane ticket. It was a grueling trip and our last excursion out of the country.

I remember being in a courtyard and getting a copy of
The L.A. Times
, which was not always easy to find overseas. One of our great joys was doing the jumble puzzle together. Philip could accomplish this feat effortlessly, within seconds. I was not bad but was considerably slower. On this particular day, he was first to grab the section of the paper with the puzzle, but he couldn’t get it; he could not untangle the letters to make a single word. Furious with himself, he practically threw the newspaper at me and said, “Here, you do it.”

“Honey, it’s not important,” I said, choosing not to touch the puzzle. The incident was like a yellow light signaling danger ahead.

I hate to drive and I cannot read a map, so Philip always did the driving, but he grew very agitated with the traffic, the directions and my ineptitude with the map. It was not a pleasant trip.

Shortly after we got back to the States, I got an unexpected call early one morning. “I had a car accident,” he said. “I’m okay. I hit a parked car. I don’t even know how it happened.” He sounded dazed.

“Maybe you should go home,” I suggested.

“No, I’m fine,” he said, sounding anything but.

In the early evening, I received another phone call. “I accidentally hit the rearview mirror on the driver’s side and practically knocked it off,” he announced, now sounding embarrassed and scared.

“I’m gonna come over, honey,” I said.

“Philip,” I said when I got there about twenty minutes later. “I’m going to take you to the doctor tomorrow. You’ve got to find out what’s going on.”

I reminded him of the other vision episode. “Something is wrong with your sight,” I conjectured.

He was too vulnerable to argue. His regular doctor enlisted a specialist who was more adept at dealing with brain and vision idiosyncrasies.

“Dementia,” the doctor said. “It sounds like the early stages of dementia. Your peripheral vision is obviously jeopardized.”

“He shouldn’t drive, right?” I asked, wanting to hear it myself in front of Philip.

“Absolutely not,” the doctor said.

As I drove him back to his house, I didn’t shun the reality, knowing that he’d try to minimize it. “Sweetheart, it’s time for you to stop working.”

“Yes,” he whispered.

This was the beginning of the final scene in the last act of Philip Juwig’s life, but we had one urgent thing to accomplish: our Renewal of Promises celebration, more commonly referred to as our “wedding.”

I had another gig at the Source Theater in D.C., performing
Rock,
and while I was reluctant to leave him, another part of me wanted to leave, to escape the inevitable.

We spoke on the phone at least once a day. He’d decided to visit his brother in Long Beach, the only relative who hadn’t refused to attend our bash, to be held on August 30. His parents flatly declined (no surprise there) and his sister, who he thought would come through, said that her “religious beliefs” wouldn’t allow her to celebrate her brother’s happiness as his life was coming to an end.

I received the call from his brother shortly after noon, D.C. time. “Philip had a seizure,” he said, “and he’s in the hospital.”

“Oh my God, is he conscious?”

“Not now, but they expect he’ll come out of it.”

“I’m coming. I’ll get the first plane out. What hospital?”

“What about your show?” his brother asked.

“Fuck the show. What hospital?”

CHAPTER 39
               

I was staying with Father Smith, an Episcopalian priest and a devoted friend. “Father Smith,” I yelled, and he came running. I had already begun stuffing things into my suitcase.

“Philip had a seizure. He’s in the hospital. Can you see if we can change this plane ticket so that I can leave as soon as possible?” I only half realized that I was crying, that choking cry that sounds almost like heaving.

Father Smith was on the phone in seconds, securing the next flight out and calling a cab to pick me up. “Should I call the theater?”

“Yes, please,” I said. “Tell them I’m not coming back. I can’t. I’ll stay with him now, no matter what.”

“Okay, sweetness,” he said.

I’d never packed so quickly in my life. I swear I was on the plane to L.A. in less than two hours from the time I received the call. My greatest fear was that he’d die before the plane landed.

He didn’t die, but he also didn’t respond. I think his brother and a couple of our friends believed that, like in a movie, the sound of my voice would rouse him. This wasn’t a movie. Or a television show. Or an AIDS play.

The person I most wanted to meet me, as the doors of the elevator on Philip’s floor opened, was there: my most comforting friend Dale. She went in the room with me, squeezing my hand, literally and figuratively.

I babbled at him, mostly repeating, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Dale had also been through a number of AIDS’ demises. Anyone who was active in the theater knew many of the plague’s victims. She was particularly close to Joe and David. And although she would commiserate with me about Philip’s shortcomings, she had grown to love him.

Dale suggested that I go home and get some sleep so that I would be prepared for what was to come. I asked the hospital staff to call if there was any change.

When I checked the following morning, he was responding. They would observe him for a day or two, and then he could come home.

He was never the same.

And neither was I.

The barrage of the disease’s symptoms escalated as the big wedding day approached. I honestly didn’t know if he’d make it. At one point, we were figuring out how many bottles of champagne to order for seventy-five guests. He became irate at himself because there was no way he could figure it out.

His weight plummeted, along with his lucidity, on a daily basis.

Because his parents were not attending our wedding, I felt it was important that my mother make the trip, if she promised to behave. “He’s very sick, so I need you to promise me that you’ll not drink to excess,” I said when I called her. She knew that I was serious and she did promise.

Philip hung on, although he was gravely ill when the day arrived. Many of our friends had not seen him in this compromised state, so it was a shock to them when they had to be led to a table where he sat, sunken and frail, but with a big, goofy grin on his face.

Contrary to the belief that having a life-threatening disease results in an emotional transformation, AIDS rarely changed anyone’s intrinsic personality. Deathbed reversals are the manufactured scenarios of novelists, lyricists and poets. In other words, if you were an asshole before you got sick, you’d likely remain an asshole until your final breath. You might even become more of an asshole. Likewise, if you were sweet and funny, you’d likely become sweeter and funnier, not sour and dour.

Philip defied this broad-stroke generalization in a way that I’d never witnessed. As each day unfolded, he became increasingly open, emotional and demonstrative. His snobbery? Gone. His anger? Gone. His fear? Gone. He was his core self, the man I knew was there all along. His dwindling strength decimated the walls he’d so meticulously crafted.

There was a childlike purity in every word he uttered, even if it didn’t make much sense. It made more sense to me than withholding.

In fact, his newfound disposition seemed to eclipse his ravaged physical state. How he looked was not what people noticed. How he projected a certain joy was what everyone at the party commented on.

My mother was on her best behavior. She generously gave Philip motherly attention in the days preceding our Renewal of Promises and throughout the magical night. In much the same way that I knew Philip had an angelic little boy he kept under wraps, I knew that she had not completely squelched her maternal instincts.

Jim Pickett and Torie Osborn, a powerful activist, presided. Philip managed to stand, albeit a bit shakily, under a swath of fabric (“robin’s egg blue,” he had said) that served to create a sacred space.

Our Renewal of Promises:

Michael: I promise you warmth when there are no blankets, nourishment when there are no vitamins, stories when there are no movies.

Philip: I promise heights when there are no ladders, adventure when there are no roller skates, comfort when there are no pillows.

Michael: I promise to teach you the color of feelings.

Philip: I promise to teach you the feelings of color.

Michael: I promise love everlasting, knowing forever will never be long enough.

Philip: I promise love today, knowing this moment is enough.

Michael: I promise the stamina of a friend.

Philip: I promise the steadfastness of a brother.

Michael: I promise the playfulness of a suitor.

Philip: I promise the passion of a lover.

Michael: I promise the commitment of a husband.

Philip: I promise to be a loyal Ethel to your Lucy.

Michael: I promise to be a loyal Lucy to your Ethel.

Philip: I promise never to forget the plays in London.

Michael: I promise never to forget the paintings in Paris.

Philip: The pyramids of Egypt.

Michael: They are all you.

Philip: They are all you.

Michael and Philip: They are us.

To borrow an overused showbiz expression, “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”

In her book,
Coming Home to America
, Torie stunningly described the wedding: “The crowd at the wedding was very mixed. Many of the guests were straight friends and family from their hometowns. In addition there were radical AIDS activists who identified much more with civil disobedience and ‘die-ins’ in public protest than with the private rites of love. (‘Who ever thought we’d love a wedding so much?’ gay writer Paul Monette asked me there.) AIDS fighter and playwright Jim Pickett’s usually acerbic and irreverent wit melted into purely sentimental paeans to gay love as he emceed the event. The stillness in the air was palpable as Philip, an art curator and international traveler now emaciated by AIDS, and Michael, an openly HIV-positive and gay actor, serenely stood there and looked into each other’s eyes in front of the friends and families and said their sweet, funny, simple vows of commitment.