Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle

by Michael Thomas Ford

  "Good question," Jack said. "I'll ask him when I see him next week."

  "So," I said, "was it worth moving to New York?"

  Jack nodded. "I like working for the hospice," he said. "It feels like I'm really helping instead of just watching or reading about what's going on." Much to my delight, Jack had decided to come to New York in March, when he was offered a job as a counselor at Hope House, a hospice for people with AIDS. The move allowed him to escape what he said felt like a ghost town back in San Francisco, as well as put him nearer to his parents, whom he missed. Now that he was in the city, our strange little family was back together, which made me happy. Despite my feelings about Andy's recent behavior, I still cared about him, and it was nice to have Jack around as a buffer on the occasions when we butted heads.

  Our dinners came, and as we ate we fell into more relaxed conversation. "Did you hear about Rock Hudson?" I asked in between bites of my bacon, wine sauce, and blue-cheese burger. "The AIDS thing?" said Jack. "Someone at work mentioned it. Do you think it's true?" "I don't know if he has AIDS," Andy said. "But he's definitely a fag."

  "How do you know that?" I asked him.

  Andy grinned, dipping his French fries in ketchup and popping them into his mouth. "You did not," I said.

  "Did, too," he said. "Twice. At the house in Palm Springs."

  I looked across the table at Jack, who in turn looked at Andy. "Well," he said, "how was he?" Andy shrugged. "Not bad," he answered. "Nice ass. Liked to talk dirty."

  "He didn't ask you to pretend you were Tab Hunter, did he?" I asked hopefully. We tried to get Andy to give us more dirt on what Rock was like in bed, but he claimed not to remember much. Giving up on that, we began teasing Jack about not having found a boyfriend yet. That conversation continued as we finished up and walked out into the beautiful summer evening.

  "Where to now?" I said. "Ty's? Boots & Saddles?" I listed two of the street's more popular bars. "Bras & Girdles?" Andy said. "No thanks."

  "Ty's it is, then," I said, steering them toward the small, dark bar favored by locals. We spent the next two hours drinking and trying to find a guy for Jack, to no avail. By the time we left, we were laughing the way we used to, and all our disagreements—both old and new—were forgotten. Jack decided to walk up 7th Avenue to his apartment in Chelsea, and I said good night to Andy at the subway. Then I went home. Alan wasn't back yet, so I turned on the television in the bedroom and watched Remington Steele , fantasizing about Pierce Brosnan's hairy chest, then Charlie Chan at the Olympics . I fell asleep halfway through, waking with a start when I heard the front door open.

  "Hey," Alan said as he came into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. "How was dinner?" "Fun," I said as sleep claimed me again. "Remind me to tell you a funny Rock Hudson story tomorrow." Rock's story turned out to be not so funny. I won my bet with Alan when Hudson's camp vocally denied that he had AIDS, saying that he was in Paris for treatment of liver cancer. But the jig was up not long after, and finally almost all of America knew someone with AIDS. And as Hudson's Hollywood friends, including Elizabeth Taylor, began speaking publicly about the need to find a cure for the disease, it seemed his illness might provide the push needed to end the epidemic. Alan won his twenty dollars back the following week when I received a call from Stuyvesant High School asking me if I'd like to teach ninth-grade history. With my immediate future set, I spent the last few weeks of summer preparing for class and looking forward to my first day as a teacher.

  CHAPTER 51

  1986 was a year of anger. It shouldn't have been. In the beginning, things seemed to be just about perfect. My second semester at Stuyvesant was proceeding nicely as I tried to get four classes a day of teenagers to care about the Civil War. Alan's show, despite receiving a withering review from Times critic Frank Rich, was doing well, and looked to be another contender come Tony time. Jack had even managed to find himself a boyfriend, a crackling firebrand of a lawyer named Todd who handled discrimination cases against people with AIDS. They'd met at a holiday party hosted by Hope House, and had been going out ever since. The first indication that the initial happy forecast for the year might have been premature was the death of Luke in the second week of January. Although the AZT had at first seemed to be reversing the progress of the AIDS virus, the effects had been temporary, and finally his immune system had been unable to fight the infections that ravaged his body. Death was attributed to pneumonia, and his insurance company sent Andy a check not long after the sparsely-attended funeral. His paycheck for the seventeen months he spent as Luke's lover was $750,000.

  On Valentine's Day, Alan and I celebrated with Jack and Todd at Café Loup, our favorite Village restaurant. Jack, nervous about his first romantic holiday with his new boyfriend, had begged us to double date. Having had few opportunities to get to know Todd, we were only too happy to oblige, if only because it gave us an opportunity to subject him to the Best Friends' Inquisition. He, however, was the one to begin the questioning.

  "How long have you two been together?" he asked Alan and me not long after we'd been seated. I looked at Alan. "Five years?" I said, trying to count backward.

  "We've been together a little over five, but this is our sixth Valentine's Day," he said. "Remember, we met in December of eighty." "Five years," Todd said. "That's a lifetime in gay years, especially now."

  "I guess it is a pretty long time," I agreed.

  "Sometimes it seems a lot longer," said Alan.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" I said, feigning indignance.

  "See, I told you," Jack said to Todd. "They even act like old married people."

  "I think it's great," Todd replied. "I don't know a lot of couples who have been together for a long time." "Hopefully you'll find out what it's like," said Alan, winking at Jack, who blushed. "Jack tells us you work with some of the Hope House clients," I said.

  "I work with a lot of the AIDS agencies," Todd said. "GMHC, the People with AIDS Coalition, places like that. AIDS legislation is all brand new, so this is a total gray area as far as the law is concerned. We've got people losing their jobs, their apartments, everything. I'm representing a waiter who was fired because some customers complained they could get AIDS from eating off of plates he carried. It's terrible what's happening."

  "It doesn't help any when Reagan tells people that AIDS only affects fags and drug users," Jack added.

  "Middle America thinks this is a good thing because it will wipe out the undesirables." Todd drank some of his wine. "I'm sorry," he said. "We're supposed to be having fun. I promised myself I'd start leaving work at the office."

  "It's all right," I told him. "This is important stuff. It's changing everything."

  "Did you know this place used to be a gay bar?" Todd asked. "In the seventies. It was called the Turnover." "It's funny how quickly things change or disappear," I said. "I bet the Village won't look anything like this in twenty years. It will probably be all straights with kids."

  "If AIDS keeps spreading like it is, it won't matter," Todd remarked. "There won't be any gay people around to notice."

  "We have to think positively," Alan reprimanded him. "They'll find a cure. It just takes time." "Speaking of that," said Jack. "Did you hear they're doing an AIDS Walk in New York this year?" "I went to the first one in LA last year," Todd said. "It was amazing. They raised something like $650,000."

  "I saw a brochure about it at GMHC the other day," I said. "It looks fun. I'm in." "Me, too," added Andy. "I'll hit the cast up for donations."

  Three months later, on a sunny May Sunday afternoon that also saw New York hosting the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Parade, two conventions, a bicycle tour, two circuses, a game between the Yankees and the Seattle Mariners, and the final performance of Singin' in the Rain at the Gershwin Theatre, we fulfilled our promises. Gathering with 4,500 others at Lincoln Center, we listened as Mayor Ed Koch welcomed us before we started our walk. Then, en masse, we took to the streets. I hadn't marched for anything since the
ill-fated White Night rally eight years before. For the first mile of the walk, I kept waiting for police to come at us with their batons, or for someone to throw a homemade bomb. But when nothing happened, I relaxed and began to enjoy myself.

  "This is almost better than Pride," Alan remarked. "Except we don't get to hear Alicia Bridges sing ‘I Love the Nightlife.'"

  "But we do have Peter Allen," Todd reminded him. He and Jack were holding hands as they walked.

  "I'd rather have Liza," I said.

  "I've had Peter Allen," said Andy, who was walking with us reluctantly after being tricked into it by an invitation to brunch. "You've had everybody," Jack teased.

  "Twice," I added.

  Andy, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, scanned the crowd. I couldn't help but wonder if he was looking for his next boyfriend. Where better to find someone with AIDS than at a fund-raiser for its eradication? But he'd donated one-thousand dollars to each of us, so I couldn't be too angry at him. We were halfway through the walk when Alan shook his head.

  "What's wrong?" I asked him.

  "My vision just got blurry for a second," he said. "It's this sun. It's so bright."

  "Are you all right now?"

  He nodded. "Yeah, it's gone. I've got a little bit of a headache, though."

  I handed him the bottle of water I was carrying. "Drink this," I told him.

  "You probably need to get out of the sun," Todd suggested. "Why don't you guys go sit down for a while and meet us back at Damrosch Park?" That seemed like a good idea, so Alan and I made our way against the stream of walkers until we found an empty bench. We sat down and Alan drank some water.

  "Feeling better?" I asked him.

  "Feeling stupid," he said. "I didn't need to stop walking."

  "It's better than getting heatstroke," I told him.

  He rubbed his eyes. "I've been having trouble with my vision for a while," he said. "I need to go get some new glasses."

  "Getting old sucks, doesn't it?" I teased. His thirtieth birthday was coming up in October, and for months I'd been reminding him of it. "You're the one who's almost forty," he said.

  "In four years!" I said.

  "I'm rounding up," he said, laughing.

  We sat for another ten minutes, then walked back to Lincoln Center, where we waited for Alan, Todd, and Andy to return. I thought we would never see them in the sea of people gathered to celebrate the walk's success (it raised over $700,000), but Alan spotted Todd's New York Rangers hat and we flagged them down.

  "Are you going to live?" Jack asked Alan when we'd regrouped.

  "For now," said Alan. "How was the rest of the walk?"

  "Hot," Andy said, pulling his sweaty T-shirt away from his chest. "But a lot of the boys took their shirts off, so it was worth it." "That's why we're here," I said as Jack shook his head.

  "Is he always like this?" Todd asked me.

  "Yes," Jack and I answered in unison while Andy gave us the finger. Two weeks later, during a matinee performance of Song & Dance , Alan collapsed and couldn't get back up. Called by the stage manager, I rushed to St. Vincent's Hospital, where I found Alan sitting up in bed. When I entered, he turned his head toward me, but looked over my shoulder, not at my face.

  "What happened?" I asked him.

  Again he looked in the direction of my voice, but not quite at me. "I can't see," he said. "What?"

  "I'm blind," he said, choking on the last word as he started to cry. I held him, not understanding. I assumed that if his eyes could produce tears, then they must be working. I was sure I'd misunderstood.

  "I was standing on stage," Alan said between hiccupy breaths. "Then the audience started to get fuzzy. Then everything went black."

  "Have you seen a doctor?" I asked him.

  "They ran some tests," he answered. "They haven't told me anything."

  "You'll be okay," I said, patting his back. "You'll be okay."

  "Mr. Corduner," a voice behind me said. I turned to see a doctor standing in the doorway. She was looking at some papers in her hand.

  "Dr. Veasey," Alan said. "Did you find anything?"

  The doctor walked over to the bed. A small, thin woman, she had a kind face and long, red hair that she wore in a thick braid down her back. She looked at me. "You're his partner?" she asked. "Yes," I said. "Ned Brummel. What happened to him?" "Right now my best guess is CMV," she said. "Cytomegalovirus," she elaborated when neither Alan nor I reacted. "It's a common virus. Most of us have it in our systems at one point or another and our immune systems fight it off with no problems. But in people with compromised immune systems it can cause serious damage, including retinitis."

  "He's been having blurry vision for a few weeks," I said.

  "That's how it starts," Dr. Veasey said. "As the retina deteriorates, the vision worsens, eventually causing blindness. We see it a lot in people infected with HIV."

  "But Alan isn't infected," I said. "He's fine."

  Dr. Veasey looked at her charts again. "I'm sorry," she said slowly. "I assumed you already knew."

  "Knew what?" asked Alan.

  Dr. Veasey looked at me, her eyes suddenly very sad. "According to the blood tests they ran, you're positive for HIV," she said. I heard Alan gasp. When I turned, he was shaking. Tears had begun to run down his cheeks again, and his mouth was open in a silent cry. I took his hand and he gripped my fingers so tightly I almost yelped. I looked at the doctor. "You're sure?" I asked.

  "I'll run the tests again," she said. "But we usually don't get a different response on multiple tests." Alan had turned his head away from us and was sobbing. I took him in my arms, but he was a rag doll, flopping against me as if the ability to hold himself up had evaporated with the news of his infection. All I could do was hold him as he repeated one word—why—over and over again. I want to say that my thoughts were entirely with Alan at that moment, but they weren't. As he cried and asked why , I couldn't help but wonder how . How had he become infected? We'd been together for more than five years. The chances of his being positive before we met were almost impossible, which meant that he had acquired the virus during our relationship. That meant one of two things: Either I was infected as well, or he had been involved with someone else. Neither option would make the situation better, but at that moment I would have preferred that it be the first one.

  "Mr. Brummel, have you been tested?" Dr. Veasey's voice interrupted the storm of my thoughts. "No," I answered, helping Alan settle back into the pillows. "I never have."

  "You might want to," she suggested. "We can do that for you if you like."

  I nodded. "It's probably a good idea," I said.

  "I'm going to leave you two alone for a few minutes," she said. "But I'll be back. I'm sure you'll have questions for me."

  She walked from the room. I hesitated a moment, then got up. "I'll be right back," I told Alan. Dr. Veasey was halfway down the hall. Hearing my footsteps, she stopped and waited. "What can you do for Alan?" I asked her when I reached her.

  "We can probably start him on AZT," she said. "There are some others that have been helpful in fighting CMV." I then asked her the question I'd been dreading. "Will he get his sight back?"

  She waited a moment before answering. "The effects are irreversible," she said. "So he's blind," I said, more to myself than to her. "Is he going to die?"

  "Advanced CMV damage is usually an indication of late-stage AIDS," she said. "Based on his white blood cell count, I think Alan is very sick."

  "But he looks fine," I said. "Could you be wrong?" "I wish I was," she answered. "But I don't think so. Not everyone with AIDS gets KS. He could look like he always has and still have the virus. That's why it's important for you to find out if you're infected as well."

  "I'll take care of that tomorrow," I said.

  "I have to go see another patient," she said, touching my arm. "I'll see you shortly, though."

  "Thank you," I said as she walked away. I returned to Alan's room. He had stopped crying and was simply s
taring at the wall, his eyes open and unseeing.

  "I'm never going to see again, am I?" he asked.

  I sat on the bed, stretching out alongside him and leaning my head against his. I took his hand and held it in mine. I didn't answer his question. "If you're sick, I won't be able to live with myself," he said.

  "If I am, it's not your fault," I said. "For all we know, I infected you."

  Alan said nothing. We sat in silence for several minutes before he spoke again. "I have to tell you something," he said.

  CHAPTER 52

  When Alan died, I was reading him page 367 of Stephen King's It . We'd been working our way through it for nearly a week, and had reached the part where two of the boys, Bill and Richie, were escaping from a werewolf (actually the Werewolf of horror movie fame) by riding as fast as they could on Bill's bike, named Silver after the Lone Ranger's horse. After a close call, they had finally outrun him, and were now collapsed on the ground in relief.

  "‘D-Don't, R-Richie' Bill said, ‘duh-duh-duh-h-h-'" I read, trying to duplicate the boy's stutter. "‘Then he burst into tears himself and they only hugged each other on their knees in the street beside Bill's spilled bike, and their tears made clean streaks down their cheeks, which were sooted with coal dust.'"

  I looked over at Alan, lying in his hospital bed, and was about to ask him if he wanted me to go on to the next chapter. Then I saw that his chest had ceased rising and falling. Dropping the book, I went to him and placed my hand on his chest. Feeling nothing, I lifted his wrist, which felt heavy and lifeless in my hand, and searched for a pulse. When I found none, I gently placed his hand on his stomach, kissed him once on the mouth, and rang for the nurse.

  They let me sit with him for an hour alone before taking his body away. I sat in the chair I'd sat in every night during his stay at the hospital and watched him. At first, I tried to pretend that he was asleep, but already the coldness of death was filling the room, as if his soul, when it left his body and flew skyward, had drawn all the warmth with it in its wake. I was left with the shell, empty and decaying even as I gazed upon it. But I couldn't bring myself to leave him.