The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler? (32 page)

Thoughts of my relationship with my mother resulted in a numb ambivalence. Even though my mother had died the year before, the backstory of our relationship continued to be an emotional stumbling block for me. Knowing that she had done the best she could, having had the Wicked Witch of the West as her role model, I have tried to forgive her without denying the damage she inflicted on her kids. For most of my life I denied the level of her motherly dysfunction. It was only when I became a parent that I saw the reality of her pronounced narcissism, almost always putting herself before her kids, and became furious with her, a fury that didn’t abate throughout the last decade of her life.

But the recent car accident reminded me of a story that cast my mother as an empathetic and generous parent, contrasting with most of the less flattering stories I’ve shared with my daughter.

“I broke my collarbone when I was exactly the same age you are,” I told Tia as we drove home from school, fearlessly traveling on the same freeway where the accident had taken place.

My mother rode in the ambulance with me after I jettisoned off of my friend’s bicycle, which we were both riding, reveling in our mutual daredevil personas, zooming down the steepest hill in the neighborhood during a perilous St. Louis thunderstorm.

After the routine X-rays were studied, the doctor (to be played by Vincent Price then or Vince Vaughn now) began wrapping what appeared to be miles of bandages around my torso, creating a mummy effect. If I was going to be outfitted in an Egyptian-inspired getup, I would have preferred to look more like Cleopatra, but perhaps this experience saved me from eroticizing the world of bondage and discipline.

I tried to be brave as I stared into the eyes of my mother, who sat directly across from me. I realized that she’d lost the bravery battle when I saw several tiny tears slide down her face, seeing how tortured I was in my mummy outfit. We went home and I was unable to sleep. Not only was it appallingly humid, but also the “cure” increased the throbbing pain.

“Let’s go,” she suddenly said. It must have been after midnight.

“Go?” I asked.

“Back to the hospital. Come on, honey, I’ll help you get in the car.”

With the ferocity of a mama bear, my mother marched up to the receptionist and demanded to see the doctor who had treated me—“
immediately
,” she said, “Do you hear me?”

He appeared, looking a bit confused. “Take this off of my boy,” she ordered him. “Find another solution. Now.”

Even though she was only slightly over five feet tall, my mother was a mighty creature, causing the doctor, towering above her, to shrink. Within half an hour or so, he’d undone his sadistic handiwork, replacing it with a simple sling.

As I told Tia the story, I felt a wave of forgiveness for my mother, a physical manifestation of deep understanding stronger than I had ever experienced. Remember her goodness, I told myself, and forgive her blunders.

Forgive yourself, too, I remind myself. I am an imperfect parent on a learning curve, awash in the sensation of loving with renewed forcefulness and forgiving with reawakened gratitude.

I didn’t stop giving myself injections of the drug that would potentially rid my system of hep C; three times a week, I injected the magic potion into my tummy, alternating at four spots of entry (left and right of my belly button).

In fact, the trauma of the accident was followed by some pretty swell news. After six months, I had no detectable viral load for HIV or hep C. This was indeed the best-case scenario. My tolerance for the drug was also fairly good—there were none of the dreaded side effects that I’d practically been promised. When my doctor suggested that I’d likely need antidepressants, I refused. I was quite functional.

I had made a critical decision regarding the work I would perform in June: I would address the raging war in Iraq. Within a couple of weeks, I’d heard two stories on NPR that transfixed me. One was about a man identifying his son who had been killed on 911 by DNA from his heart, retrieved from Ground Zero. The other was the story of a father who, after being told that his son was killed in Iraq, chose to set the car that carried the government messengers ablaze.

Those two incidents haunted me; not since I’d written
intimacies
(fifteen years prior) had I felt such a surge of energy in terms of my writing. A third character appeared to me, then a fourth and a fifth. Finally, I had the seven characters who would comprise
Make Love Not War
.

As if all of this wasn’t worth rejoicing in, Jimmy Shaw, an actor I knew when he lived in L.A., was bringing me to Madrid to direct him in Jim Pickett’s
Dream Man
. It would mark Tia’s first trip to Europe.

It began as an inflammation, precisely at the points on my stomach were I stuck myself with the hep C medication. I initially thought that it was a reaction to the relentless retinue of shots. Then it began to worsen and the pain became untenable.

I routinely underreport my physical maladies (even to myself), believing that things would eventually heal.

After several days, I called the pharmacy and asked if I could be experiencing a “natural” reaction to the injections. Yes, she said, some of the drug could have seeped out and “burned” my skin. But in both locations? It seemed unlikely, but it was good enough for me to maintain my determined denial.

The yucky area was not going away and it became increasingly difficult to function. Finally, I went to the doctor, who diagnosed me before I even lifted my shirt.

“It sounds like a staph infection,” she said, and then she confirmed her suspicions upon seeing what had grown into two ugly, reddened patches of encrusted skin on my stomach. “We’ll confirm it by taking a culture, but I’m going to start you on an antibiotic immediately to see if we can stop it from getting out of control,” she said.

CHAPTER 61
               

She also explained that this particular form of staph was “epidemic” in L.A. and, because of our depleted immune systems, especially among HIV-positive men.

I traded in the hep C medication for a strong antibiotic that, after a week, had done virtually nothing. The infections were swelling and the severity of the pain became intolerable. So much physical movement comes from one’s midsection—getting in and out of bed, in and out of the car, walking up and down steps. I somehow managed to maintain my parental duties.

“You need to have it lanced,” the doctor determined, referring to one of the areas that had grown to the size of a baseball. “It’s not getting any better.” The doctor would later tell me that on that particular day in her office, she thought that I could have died, not uncommon among people with prolonged staph infections. Being immunologically challenged increased the likelihood of the staph’s reluctance to heal.

While the lancing would help alleviate some of the throbbing, the procedure itself would be maniacal and the aftermath would introduce a new kind of pain. Welcome to the world of Vicodin.

P.S. There would also likely be a scar. “No more underwear ads for me,” I jokingly told my friends in an attempt to hide any real concern, which would signal my petty vanity. Sex, for the first time I could ever remember, would be put on hold.

The surgery was not fun, but there was a certain relief, though that was disturbed by cleansing the wound every other day, a procedure in which the doctor scraped and dug to ward of any recurrence of the infection.

Slowly but surely, I began to heal. As hard as it was to admit to myself, I was glad that my sexual compulsion was no longer an option for me to escape, deny, or stave off how I felt. Finally—after how many years?—I was able to begin confronting an uncontrollable libido that had provided me with years of quick fixes but no lasting solution.

Here’s where my immersion into the acting process can get a bit bizarre. In addition to carrying around grizzly and bloody photographic depictions of the war in my script, I realized that I was also “carrying around” infected sores that I could use to substitute for some of my characters’ gunshot wounds. It certainly was an adventurous choice, one that seemed to play believably. I delivered two performances of
Make Love Not War
in unrepressed form.

In spite of the cumbersome bandage covering my tummy, Tia and I would make the journey to Madrid. My daughter and I arrived in late June 2005.
¡Olé!

Twenty years had elapsed since I first played the role of Christopher in James Carroll Pickett’s
Dream Man
: seventeen years since my first trip to Europe, performing
Dream Man
at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland; sixteen years since I tested positive for HIV; eleven years since Pickett’s death from the plague; ten years since I became the father of Tia Katherine Kearns.

It was two days before Spain would rule on whether to allow same-sex couples to marry and adopt; three days before
Dream Man
would open at DT Espacio Escénico as part of the Festival Version Original starring Jimmy with me in the director’s chair; six days before the anniversary of Pickett’s death, occurring simultaneously with the last performance of his play in Madrid.

In spite of a peripatetic pace in terms of getting the one-man play, in all its dark density, in shape, our precious week in Spain afforded me time to reflect, remember and rejoice. Perhaps I was responding to Madrid’s organic sensuality and spirituality. It was not only the insides of the gloriously adorned churches that were heavenly; there was a palpable sensation of unearthly energy on the street, where signs of faith abound. Maybe Madrid spoke to me because of the country’s progressive politics, unlike the divisive antics on America’s amoral agenda. My reveries were ineluctably reignited by reconnecting with the text of
Dream Man
, an aria of unbridled passion that had lost none of its poetic prowess.

After the Madrid trip, I would get the blood results that I’d anticipated. The hep C viral load was soaring again, indicating that stopping the regime allowed the virus to outwit my system. I was disheartened. At some point, I’d stopped taking my magical protease inhibitors. This was not some wild whim; in fact, many doctors condoned taking “a vacation.”

I had grown sick of the daily reminder that I was nowhere near a state of wellness. Off the meds, I felt like I had a bit more energy, but my HIV viral load returned with a vengeance.

I had begun getting treatment at AIDS Healthcare Foundation and had decided to take advantage of some of their services that extended beyond the drug therapy. I met with a social worker, who, in a neutral tone of voice, asked, “Are you depressed?”

For the next few seconds, I could not breathe. I could not speak. I could not answer the question. I could not admit something that I’d been denying for more than fifty fucking years. It was like I’d forgotten my lines. What’s my cue?

Was I depressed?

“Are you depressed?” she repeated.

Well, was I?

CHAPTER 62
               

“Yes,” I answered. One word. Three letters. An honest utterance that would alter the course of my life. Depressed, yes: like Jim Pickett, like my father.

“I’m going to make an appointment for you to see the psychiatrist,” the social worker said.

I felt a sense of relief that only someone who has managed to maintain a secret for their entire life would understand. For me it was far more dramatic and scary than coming out as gay or coming out as being HIV-positive. At long last, my secret was released and, along with it, my sense of shame for being a fraud. I had put on a good show with the skills I’d acquired as an actor, to convince myself and anyone in my orbit that I had never been and would never be the D-word. Not me. I play the Glad Game. The
L.A. Times
coined a word to describe me: “positivist.” The artistic experience, not to mention becoming a father, had proven an antidote to any trace of depression.

Think again. Finally, I began to accept my depression. There were so many mitigating factors that led to my admission, including my work with the mentally ill population on Skid Row, the two brushes with death and a bona fide diagnosis of “low-grade depression.”

The shrink prescribed an antidepressant. It worked, almost immediately, as if a certain mind-set of exhausted hopelessness was lifted.

And there was an antidote to feeling low. I was delighted to appear at the San Diego Gay and Lesbian Film Festival because it meant a short vacation for Tia and me in one of our favorite cities.

We had a perfect father-daughter day, taking long walks and finding fun spots to get treats. Our hotel was located adjacent to Balboa Park, where Tia made good use of her skateboard.

After the late afternoon screening and an early dinner, Tia became inexplicably melancholy and uncharacteristically argumentative. The mystery was solved the following morning.

“Daddy,” she said, after breakfast in the hotel’s penthouse. “My friend Amanda had her period.” This was a typical way for a ten-year-old to communicate something that was uncomfortable—by substituting someone else’s experience for her own.

“And did you have yours?” I guessed, correctly.

She shook her head affirmatively, resulting in a moment of intimacy that was embarrassing but bonding.

On the occasion of her eleventh birthday, I found myself trying to perfect my daughter’s coiffure; more precisely, her newly acquired weave, which consisted of fake straight hair entwined with her not-so-straight natural head of hair. Even though the hairstylist who wove the creation was a black woman and proud of it, I pondered the political correctness of Tia’s bob. Thinking back to when I was in the throes of the adoption process, the question had arisen, during the high-stakes courtroom proceedings: “How will he take care of her hair?”

Tia’s concerned blood relatives disregarded the obvious attribute of my gayness; according to popular stereotype, we are natural-born hairdressers. You don’t have to major in black studies to know that the hair of African American women can be a Big Issue.

Well, I’m proud to report that this single dad has managed to literally maneuver the twists and turns of my black daughter’s hair in the same way that I’ve negotiated other equally important aspects of Tia Katherine’s upbringing.