by Brad Fraser
When my doctor told me the result I couldn’t understand what he said. His lips moved. Some sounds came out. But I had no idea what they’d meant.
He leaned across his desk slightly and said again, “You’re negative, Brad.”
I refused to believe it. “That can’t be right.”
He shrugged with a sigh. “None of it’s absolute. We don’t know if it requires multiple exposures or if the strain of the virus has a more potent period. We don’t know much at the moment. Be happy. I’m giving you good news. ”
For the first time in what seemed like years a certain tension left my body. I was floating, flying, feeling sooooo relieved—and horny as fuck.
The thing I most wanted to do as I air-walked my way out of the doctor’s office was fuck someone’s raw ass and dump my load deep in their guts and have the same thing done to me.
That was the weird thing about a negative test at that time—the sense of triumph and dangerous invincibility that came along with it.
PART NINE
REMAINS: GENESIS
DURING THE PREVIOUS YEAR, through a series of small grants from Alberta Culture and the support of Workshop West, where actress/director Dorothy-Ann Haug had taken over as AD for a year while Gerry Potter took a sabbatical, I’d started work on what would eventually become known as Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love and later Love and Human Remains.
My frustration with most of the theatre I was seeing was the slavish dedication to the form of the “well-made” play. At that time the term meant a play that was, generally speaking, in two acts, used one set and had a cast of fewer than five actors. People talked a lot but very little happened. For me even the best of these experiences felt more like television than theatre. I found them predictable and tedious, and I usually left at the end of the first act because I already knew what was going to happen by the end of the second.
I was also aware of my literary Beat influences—Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, etc.—and trying my best to make my life interesting enough to write about. I’d always experienced life both inside and outside of myself—that strange ability to watch one’s actions as they unfold despite being involved in them that many writers talk about. I wanted to decode why people said the things they said when they often meant something quite different.
I’d learned to listen carefully from a young age, in the way that kids of emotionally and physically volatile parents do, discerning which tones and body or facial expressions indicated threat or reward. One learns to listen with the eyes as well as the ears.
In adolescence, like all boys who are shorter, fatter, uglier, somehow different, I learned to listen for the telltale murmur of a word—“faggot,” in my case—to pick it out of a cacophony of boisterous boy sounds the same way an antelope might recognize the susurration of the belly of a lioness in the grass and be ready for instant flight or fight. The difference for the shorter, fatter, uglier straight kids is they always had the queer kid to subject to the same treatment they received from their own tormenters.
I wanted to capture all those nuances in authentic language, not the stilted literary dialogue that so many older plays had, nor the stylized poetry of Shepard, Rabe and Mamet, which still tipped toward the literary. I knew it wasn’t just about words and images. What I was aiming for was jagged, irregular dialogue that felt closer to the way people actually communicate.
There were a few other things I knew I wanted to do. The first was to create a gay lead character who wasn’t wrestling with coming out, begging for acceptance or waiting to die from AIDS—someone who was just living his life like everyone else. The second was to create a female lead who was terrible at following society’s rules for how a woman should act, someone with an elastic sexuality that got her into trouble. The third was to challenge the usual binary gay/straight notion of sexuality.
I knocked out a sprawling collection of scenes and monologues that were read at Workshop West one afternoon. Responses were mixed but generally encouraging. I started another version, more honed down and focused. I had the tone and the characters, but I still didn’t have a plot.
Then one morning I opened the Edmonton Journal and read that the body of a young woman had been found in the North Saskatchewan River. She’d disappeared from a club a few days earlier and no suspects had been identified at that point. And there was this other weird connection: the place where her body had been found was the launching spot of the only canoe trip I’d ever taken in my life.
Months earlier, on my twenty-sixth birthday, Randy had invited me on a weekend canoe trip with two of his friends. He assured me the stretch of river we’d be travelling was safe for beginners, and he was right. It was mostly twenty-four hours of rather tedious exercise on a muddy, slow-moving river with excellent company.
In one of those unforgettable moments when my experience, my imagination and some outside stimuli collide, an idea was born. I asked myself, “What if Randy did it?” That thought led to the question “What if you found out your best friend was a serial killer?,” which led to a million other questions and possibilities and the central plot of the play.
Serial killers were not yet the hoary plot devices they would shortly become, and after reading Hunting Humans and a few other early books featuring fictional and actual serial killers, I became obsessed with them. The idea of people, mostly straight white men, who lived among us while actively hunting and killing other humans for complex psychological and emotional reasons was a horrifying reality, and its cultural resonances captured my imagination.
Serial killers were the AIDS virus given flesh. Communities of minorities were often their most common victims. Ultimately the attack/infection was both random and somehow expected, which hinted at the idea of “deserved.” The murder and disappearance of sex workers, hitchhikers and queers was given none of the press coverage of the murders and disappearances of white college girls.
The play was never meant to be a whodunit, and the productions that try to present it that way almost always come across as twee. Rather, it’s about the devastation of learning that someone you love is not the person they claim to be. Most people can relate to that.
After a year of work I finally completed the last scene of the first draft. The feeling was hugely cathartic. I sat in the stiff kitchen chair I had to use in those days, rocked, wept and hugged myself—genuinely moved by what I’d just finished. I pulled myself together, laid my hand on the considerable pile of papers that gave testament to my accomplishment and realized I didn’t have a title.
Years earlier, when I was working at Boots ’n Saddle, a police poster for a missing person had been put up on the wall of the bar. The poster was headed “Unidentified Human Remains” and featured the facial reconstruction of a man who’d been horribly murdered and dumped in a septic tank just outside Edmonton years earlier. His identity, let alone who killed him, has not been discovered to this day. A story about the mystery appears in newspapers every decade or so.
The poster fascinated me so much that I eventually took it from the wall and put it on the bulletin board I’ve always maintained in my work area, filled with ideas, notes and pertinent or inspiring newspaper clippings. I found it chilling that someone could disappear and be so little missed that no one contacted the authorities. The high-cheekboned, dead-eyed face reconstructed over the victim’s skull could have been almost anyone—including me.
However, as a title, the phrase “unidentified human remains” wasn’t quite enough. There needed to be a twist that gave some indication that this was much more than a murder mystery. That’s when the phrase “and the true nature of love” came to my mind. The two ideas seemed ridiculous together, which was perfect.
The title may have been perverse, but given that the play broke with every other tradition, it fit. As I typed it onto the title page for the first time I actually giggled, knowing I’d just made a script t
hat was already a hard sell even harder to sell. I sent it out to every theatre in Canada.
From most of them I got the terse “this play isn’t right for us” response, with a few disapproving comments about the play’s darkness and nihilism. Urjo, who responded to every script he received and should be anointed for doing so, was, again, not impressed. He felt the serial killer plotline was melodramatic and unnecessary and suggested my multiple settings, quick action and physical requirements showed a shocking lack of knowledge about how the theatre worked.
I sent him a letter addressing his musings and signed off with “Thank you for your comments on the play—and fuck you.” So much of Remains was written as a reaction against precisely what Urjo preached; ending our relationship with a “fuck you” felt not only right but obligatory. When I saw him again years later, he laughed at the memory in good humour.
One night I got a call from John Moffat. We’d stayed in touch over the years, evolving a friendship mostly by phone that was surprisingly intimate despite the distances involved. When he said, after some uncomfortable preamble, “I have AIDS,” I wasn’t surprised, but I was heartbroken. He revealed that he and Larry had both been diagnosed and were already manifesting symptoms, thankfully of conditions that could be treated. He thought I should know in case I hadn’t been tested. I told him I was negative. He was relieved, but I could tell he was also feeling that “Why me and not you?” thing every intimate partner whose sexual partners weren’t infected felt. We cried as if we were together and continued to hang on the phone long after every possible cliché about strength and hope could be exploited, saying nothing, listening to one another breathe, contemplating death.
That moment with John is just a snapshot of what was going on in most gay people’s lives at that time. The community was quickly dividing into those who were negative and those who were positive. I knew there were guys who’d tested positive and weren’t sharing the news with anyone, and I didn’t blame them a bit. The ignorance about the disease and the demonization of the gay community were worse than ever. It was a time of great paranoia. People with AIDS were being fired from their jobs and evicted from their apartments.
Feeling stultified and in need of a change, I moved to Calgary.
* * *
—
None of the theatres in Edmonton had shown the slightest interest in producing Remains or anything else I’d written. I had no real relationship with the theatre community there beyond Workshop West.
Earlier in the year, when Dorothy-Ann Haug had invited me to accompany her to Calgary for the inaugural Blitz Weekend of Alberta Theatre Projects’ playRites Festival, dedicated entirely to new Canadian plays, I jumped at the chance. I saw all three of the produced plays that weekend, including a Sky Gilbert play. I remember thinking, “If they’ve produced Sky’s play they might produce mine,” which is what put the idea of Calgary into my head.
This decision was further reinforced by the knowledge that Calgary would host the Winter Olympics the following year, 1988. This was the talk of the Alberta service industry because Calgary was going to need us, and lots of us.
Walden’s was dying a slow death in the faltering economy. It was time to go.
Kate greeted my notice on the apartment with a nod that made it clear we both knew this was coming. That our friendship would ultimately survive our cohabitation says a great deal about our genuine love for one another.
A few days before moving I had everything packed up; twelve boxes, mostly filled with comic books and early versions of my plays, and a few sticks of furniture were my worldly possessions. The phone rang. It was Cam; he was at his drug dealer’s place across the street and wanted me to meet him at the front door. He apologized for being a horrible friend.
Which he had been: almost entirely absent from my life, despite my occasional messages suggesting we meet up, since kicking me out of his apartment. I went out and asked him what was going on. He gestured to his car, which had a U-Haul trailer on the back, and said, “I’m moving back to Vancouver.” I told him I was about to move to Calgary and we both laughed, then he kissed me on the lips and said, “I love you.” We hugged. We both got a bit weepy. I let him go.
PART TEN
REMAINS: CALGARY
A FEW DAYS LATER MY FRIEND Kerrie and I made our move. Kerrie, who I’d worked with at Walden’s, was escaping a bad marriage. She was at the wheel of a big-ass moving van and I was riding shotgun for the three-and-a-half hour drive to downtown Calgary. This is where an ex-boyfriend, Stephen (there had been a string of boyfriends in Edmonton, three of them named Stephen), had a one-bedroom apartment he was willing to share with us until we found a place of our own. But first we had to get jobs, as we had only a few hundred dollars each—enough to live on for a month as long as we were frugal, which we never were.
After the great oil crash, central Calgary was worse than downtown Edmonton—street after dusty street filled with For Sale and For Rent signs and half-completed skyscrapers standing out like post-apocalyptic ruins on the skyline. And yet the heart of the city, the financial district and the surrounding area that serviced it, still buzzed during the day in a way Edmonton didn’t. Calgary was aggressive and merciless. It reminded me of Toronto.
Kerrie and I both found waiter jobs in short order and, within a few weeks, a large two-bedroom in a thirties walkup near the Stampede grounds. We were working at competing pasta restaurants. Chianti, the one that employed me, was the more successful.
I haunted the three gay clubs after work and on my nights off. I found it hard to meet guys. Most of the sex I had was with Stephen, who, like me, was quite happy to revert to ex-boyfriend sex after a few drinks and a night of no luck.
Allen MacInnis, who’d been so amazing in a Waterdale production of Boys in the Band nearly ten years earlier, was working at Alberta Theatre Projects, or ATP. I called him up and he invited me to meet him for a tour of the new theatre complex and confab. He’d read Remains and felt it was excessively bleak and that the ending didn’t work. I assured him I was working on both, and I was.
Allen said, “I think it’s right for the new play festival, but we’ll have to convince Dobbin.” He meant Michael Dobbin, who was the artistic director at ATP.
That summer I received a Canada Council short-term grant for a rewrite of Remains, which was a bit of encouragement in a sea of ongoing rejection. I used some of the money to take the train to Vancouver and hang out with Cam.
Cam, who could be a selfish asshole with an amazing lack of self-awareness, was at his best. He was one of the city’s top stylists and was winning awards. He could get us into any bar or club with a smile. He also knew the best drug dealers. We did a lot of blow and cruised the seawall. We also spent a magical day sunbathing nude on Wreck Beach while high on mushrooms. My final night we cuddled in bed and I playfully rubbed my dick against his ass. He pushed me away, muttered something about not feeling like it, and we fell asleep. It was the first time he’d ever rejected me.
Shortly after I returned home, I had my first meeting with Michael Dobbin. When he asked me why I’d moved to Calgary, I said, “So you’d do my fucking play.”
He’d read the play and found it dark and disturbing, perhaps too dark and disturbing. Nonetheless, he was considering it for a staged reading during the next playRites Festival, which would be part of the Olympic Arts Festival scheduled to run concurrently with the Games. He also mentioned the possibility of a residency.
Four months earlier I had learned of a new film training program being launched in Edmonton called DramaLab, sponsored by the National Screen Institute. The six-week program was designed to bring emerging writers, directors and producers together in hopes of promoting and advancing Canadian filmmaking. I’d sent off my application, enclosing my resumé, the latest draft of Remains and a copy of Wolfboy. Somehow they’d tracked me down in Calgary—I was terrible at leaving forwarding address
es—and told me that I had been accepted to the program, which happened to cost a lot of money I didn’t have.
As luck would have it, the guy who’d gotten me the job at Chianti was opening a second restaurant in Edmonton just before the Fringe. Since the DramaLab program offered housing, and part-time shifts at the new restaurant would cover most of the tuition and living expenses, I sublet my room in the apartment with Kerrie’s blessing and found myself back in Edmonton.
On the first day, in the improvised offices in the old bus barns building behind the Walterdale Theatre, all participants were asked to briefly introduce themselves. I was succinct to a fault, as I tended to be in those days, stating, “I’m here because most Canadian TV and movies are shit and I want to change that”—as usual, endearing myself to my peers. We continued around the room.
Finally came the turn of a short, wizened woman of advanced age. Her name was Ulla Ryghe. She had a thick northern European accent and spoke for nearly an hour about her life and her career as the film editor for a number of Ingmar Bergman films. It was absolute torture. Not only was she hard to understand, she was also boring. By the time she was finished, all existing energy had been sucked out of the room.
Naturally she was the person hired to lead the writers’ unit of the program.
The writers were a brainy, combative lot and not at all afraid to voice their opinions. Ulla seemed to think her Bergman connection gave her some sort of screenwriting genius by proxy, allowing her to be prescriptive and absolute in her opinions. Many of us bridled at this, but instead of listening to our concerns and addressing them, she got defensive and often made the sessions feel like a power struggle, rather than a venue where everyone could learn something.