The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler? (23 page)

I barely recovered (from the filming and fantasy phone call) before I headed to Australia for my second gig at Sydney’s world-famous Mardi Gras. While any movement toward parenthood was put on hold while I was out of the country, this was an enviable job and I was honored to have been invited back after a heartfelt triumph the year prior. I performed
Rock
throughout the week and reprised
intimacies
on Sunday matinees for the Aussies during the month-long engagement.

About a week before my final performance in Sydney, I attended a dance concert that was being performed in the same theater where I was working. One of the pieces depicted a torturous love-hate relationship between two men, one of whom was obviously in the throes of AIDS.

Danced with a pronounced sense of both masculinity and fragility, the supple
pas de deux
embraced the eroticism of death unflinchingly. The twentysomething boy-man who played the survivor was distractingly hot—from where I sat, anyway.

Our paths crossed, literally, in the upstairs dressing room immediately following the performance. He was all sweaty. “That piece was really beautiful,” I heard myself saying, and then wondered if I had actually said, “You are really beautiful.”

He returned the compliment. “Your show is amazing,” he said. “I want to see it again before you close.” Big smile. “I’m Dean, by the way.”

He offered me his hand and we shook, while our eyes accomplished the rest.

“I’m rushing to coffee with a friend,” he said, slightly lowering the heat on our exchange. Without him seeing, I managed to scribble my name on a piece of paper (with the phone number and room number of the hotel) and slipped it in his bag (along with his moist jockstrap, I fantasized).

“Have a good show,” he said as he picked up the bag.

“Have a good coffee,” I said.

About three hours later, I returned to my hotel room, checked to see if there were messages (none) and began the usual postshow puttering.

The phone rang.

Let it ring at least three fucking times, I ordered myself. About halfway through the third ring, I grabbed the receiver and, as nonchalantly as possible, said, “Hello?”

“Hello,” he said, with that unmistakable Aussie accent. “I have a piece of paper here with your number on it. But I can’t seem to read the name.”

I wasn’t sure if he was serious or teasing. “It looks like ‘Maniacal,’ he said. “Is this Maniacal I’m speaking to?”

Now I was beginning to laugh. “It’s
Michael
,” I said.

“Michael? Are you sure? You’re not
Maniacal
?”

“I am very definitely maniacal,” I said, “and I will seriously consider changing my name if you’d like.”

Dean Walsh arrived at the hotel about twenty minutes later, sweaty all over again, and we spent the entire night glued to each other, moving back and forth from the bed to a large window overlooking the magnificent harbor. We placed extravagant room service orders throughout the night, culminating with a sinful breakfast in bed. Even the poz-neg negotiations (who could do what to whom and all that jizz) didn’t overshadow our steamy romance.

I don’t think we missed a single night of my remaining stay, basically engaging in the same offstage
pas de deux
and never once did he call me anything other than “Maniacal.”

It was not the first time I’d had sex since Philip died. However, this was the first time I’d made love with another man in more than four years. I left Sydney in love. Or at least some version of “in love,” and that felt good.

Like many of these over-the-moon trysts, my relationship with Dean blossomed into a unique friendship.

Returning to L.A. brought the idea of fatherhood back into focus, but there was something else I wanted to do with the rest of my life: play Camille.

CHAPTER 42
               

Ever since seeing Charles Ludlam’s
Camille
, an intoxicating rendition of the classic, I wanted to play the tragic heroine in Ludlam’s skewed version. Comparing the story of a prostitute finding true love as the plague ravaged her with the parallel scenarios of many L.A. party boys, experiencing love for the first time as AIDS consumed them, seemed almost eerie.

Even though I shifted into work mode, I was unable to downplay my quest to become a dad. Before making the definitive decision to adopt, I tried to get parenting out of my system by fathering in ways that appeared to be less life altering. I told very few people that I began spending one evening a week working with kids with Down syndrome. I did an art project with kids with disabilities at Children’s Hospital. Instead of pacifying my desire to be a dad, these experiences confirmed my needs.

I took a big step and met with a lesbian couple willing to consider my playing a part-time dad role with their infant. The negotiations with these two strong mommies were intense. Our inability to come up with a plan to satisfy everyone’s complex emotional baggage forced me to come to a conclusion. What I wanted, clearly, was a child of my own.

Assuming that my greatest support would come from my gay male buds, I began telling a few of them. The reactions were disheartening. The responses ranged from, “Aren’t you being selfish?” to “Are you crazy?”

Those responses forced me to do more self-questioning. Was this just an indulgent scheme on my part, prompted by the wave of deaths I’d lived through in recent years? Or did I truly have something special to offer a child? And was that “something special” enough? If I was to die sooner rather than later, would it still be a worthwhile experience for my son or daughter?

Other questions were unavoidable. Was I too old? Could I find the financial means to fulfill my child’s needs? Could I adjust my career, making domestic life the priority? Was I behaving morally?

I’d begun an aerobics regime to prepare for the stamina that “becoming” Camille would demand. The class was filled with women, mostly in their thirties and forties, from the hood, which was known for its artistic and bohemian denizens. Many of them were moms who dragged a kid or two to class.

I’d study every exchange, every reprimand, every smooch. Would I have what it takes? Eventually, I began confiding in these women, most of whom were simply acquaintances. Some of them knew I was HIV-positive; some didn’t. They certainly knew I was gay.

Not one woman—gay, straight, young, old, rich, poor, black, white, educated, uneducated—questioned my desire to be a dad. Not one. It was the response I had hoped to get from my peers and didn’t.

One of the most intimate things I shared with several of the women concerned the physical longings I had begun to experience. Although men have since described the exact sensation to me, I thought it was strictly female. Maybe my immersion in the role of Camille was coloring my daily life.

No, it was normal to experience physical sensations of longing when seeing a child playing ball with his dad on the playground. Or to become breathless with identification when seeing a mom hug her child. Men have biological clocks, too, and mine was ticking.

I called Joe Ferry, the lawyer-daddy, knowing he’d be able to offer some nuts-and-bolts adoption advice. He suggested I contact Pact, an adoption alliance that connects unorthodox adoptive parents (read: single, gay and lesbian, over forty) with hard-to-place (read: ethnically diverse) babies.

Filling out the paperwork required by Pact was laborious. At no time was I asked if I was HIV-positive. The only question referring to HIV was: “Would you be willing to take an AIDS test?” I checked the “yes” box.

My application was wholeheartedly approved by Gail Steinberg, one of Pact’s founders and facilitators, who felt that it wouldn’t take long to find a match since I had no preferences in terms of the baby’s race or gender.

By the end of the year, I learned that Kenyetta Burke, a young black woman in Texas, due to deliver in April, was enthusiastic about having a single gay man adopt her baby. In addition to Pact, Vista Del Mar, a local L.A. agency, and the El Paso Adoption Agency (representing Kenyetta) were involved in the proceedings.

Vista Del Mar conducted a home study, which required a medical report. I was temporarily panicked. Even though the report did not pose any direct questions about HIV/AIDS, it contained a vague question that concerned me: “Do you know any other reason why this person shouldn’t adopt a child?” Only after convincing a doctor friend that I would have a will drawn up to provide for the child in the event of my death did he answer the question “no” and sign the official report.

With only three months to prepare for the momentous occasion, I began paying some of Kenyetta’s bills at the beginning of the year. I also began developing a support system, getting names and entertaining suggestions from friends and acquaintances. One person told me about a gay dad’s group and put me in touch with one of the members, who gushingly welcomed me to the “gay daddy’s boom” and asked me “what organization” was handling my adoption.

The following morning there was a loaded message on my answering machine from a scolding Gail Steinberg: “Someone left a message during the middle of the night, saying one of our clients is HIV-positive. You’re the only one it could be.”

CHAPTER 43
               

I initially lied but retracted my lie almost immediately. I wasn’t the only one who behaved badly. Gail was unforgiving. “What’s in your head?” she said, as if she was talking to a toddler. Within hours, she’d taken it upon herself to notify both Vista Del Mar and the El Paso Adoption agency of my status (which I later found out was illegal on her part).

The “lady” who headed the agency in El Paso delivered the news to Kenyetta, telling her I’d be dead “within a year and so would Magic Johnson.” I was demoted from hero to pariah at Vista Del Mar in spite of the fact that I attempted to explain that I was “not in denial.” Joe Ferry, in fact, had created a will specifying what would happen to my yet unborn child in the event of my death.

Kenyetta’s unfazed reaction was initially troubling but would become more understandable as the due date approached. I was waiting by the phone, prepared to jump on a plane when given the word, when she called—the day before she was supposed to deliver.

She was in West Hollywood and demanded that I provide her money to go back to Texas. This was after several suspicious charges had been submitted to me, foreshadowing something I didn’t want to face.

It only took a few days to learn that she was in the process of selling “my baby” to a gay couple in West Hollywood. Her modus operandi was to deliberately target gay men because of their marked emotional vulnerability and healthy financial resources. Yes, ma’am, I had been scammed.

Vista Del Mar, acting morally but not legally, decided I could not adopt through them but I might consider being a foster parent. I would have to go through training and present a letter from my doctor, predicting my life span. Dr. Stephen Uman, my straight, Jewish doctor, who looked like he had stepped out of a Chekhov play, wrote a letter stating that he found no medical reason why I shouldn’t become a parent. He avoided any soothsaying.

However, part of me felt like the botched adoption was a sign that I shouldn’t be a full-time dad, so the idea of foster care seemed a reasonable alternative.

Jim Pickett’s health was rapidly deteriorating. What would it be like to juxtapose the sound of exuberant children with the unmistakably distinct sounds of a dying man? Jim shuffled from room to room, creating a symphony of wheezing, sighing, farting, coughing and muttering sounds as he roamed aimlessly. To suggest that his movements triggered long-buried memories of my father was not hyperbolic.

There were fireworks, literally and figuratively, on the Fourth of July weekend. Jim was hospitalized on Friday.

On Saturday morning, my first foster care situation presented itself: two young boys needed “respite care” while their parents vacationed. They would be with me for only three days and two nights, but it would be parenting for real.

On Sunday, a splashy article appeared in the Sunday
L.A. Times
(titled “HIV Positivist”) to coincide with an imminent one-nighter at Highways.

Jim died on the fourth. At this point in the seemingly endless list of AIDS deaths, my response was fairly robotic. I’d virtually said good-bye to him onstage at Highways the night before he died. Why was my emotional life easier to express onstage than off? It was safer in the glare of colored lights with the sound of an audience’s collective breathing.

Offstage, I was all cool business, arranging every detail of his cremation, calling people, setting up a memorial. I had become accustomed to storing my feelings, putting them on hold until my next performance.

It seemed that the boys’ vacationing parents had had time to read the paper (at the very least, the headlines) over the weekend of the Fourth and mentioned my HIV status to the director of Vista Del Mar, a man whose liberal agenda stopped short of including fags with HIV. While it was my understanding that they were not filing a complaint, he freaked out and decided that now I must give Vista written permission to reveal my status to any potential temporary or permanent foster care situation that arose.

Had Vista Del Mar ascertained the HIV status of any of their other foster parents? Unlikely. Were any other foster parents on their roster asked to reveal medical issues that are essentially protected by law? It is one thing for me to talk openly to the
L.A. Times
and quite another for someone else to pass along information that could potentially harm me.

I refused Vista’s demand and approached another gay-friendly foster care agency, which promised not to reveal my status. Vista capitulated and within a few days, a baby girl arrived for a temporary stay. This was a new experience—changing diapers, making formula, staying awake most of the night. But after ten days, it was very difficult to say good-bye to this little bundle.

The most challenging scenario began in September with the arrival of two brothers who needed “more stimulation” than they had been receiving in the foster care system and would be living with me for a few months. In spite of being HIV-positive, I was the one chosen by Vista to provide stimulation.