Breaking the Surface (33 page)

Even if I’d had support, I doubt I would have followed through with my thought to go public. The truth is, I didn’t want to close the door on my acting career, and I really wasn’t ready to deal with going public about being gay and HIV-positive. Part of me wanted to, but I was afraid of the consequences and I just didn’t have enough confidence. So for the time being, going public wasn’t an option. Looking back, it was the right thing to do. I needed a lot more time to get comfortable with being gay and having HIV. Everyone moves at his or her own pace, and I wasn’t rushing anywhere.

The day after I talked to Tom by phone, I went back to my house with Debbie, her sister, and a colleague of Debbie’s to get some clothes and some of my other things. We’d talked about bringing the police with us for protection, but we were concerned that the neighbors would notice and that people would start asking questions. We figured the best thing to do was surprise Tom, and with other people along with us, he wasn’t likely to do anything.

I was terrified as we pulled up to the house. It wasn’t as if I was afraid of what he might say. I knew he wasn’t rational. And I was with a group of people, so it was safe. But I was afraid. I knew he was going to be angry, so I guess that’s what I was afraid of, his anger. I guess that’s what I’ve been afraid of all my life: anger.

Before we got to the door, Sherrie, a major fan of mine from Kentucky, came out of the house. I knew he wouldn’t dare do anything with her there, but I had no idea what she was doing there. I found out later that she had been doing secretarial work for Tom. She was upset with me and said that she was disappointed in me, that all she wanted was a thank you for all the work she’d done. I had no idea that she’d been doing work for me.

Tom always told me that he handled all the mail. I thought he did everything, so how could I have known to thank her? I think Tom didn’t even pay Sherrie. He just used her. He must have told her, “We need some help here, and Greg would really appreciate it if you did this.”

When Tom came out of the house, he said he was going to call the police. I told him that this was my house too and that these people were my guests. In fact, it was my house, period, but that didn’t even occur to me. My voice was shaking as I talked. I was terrified, and I was trembling. Tom let us go in. As we started packing some of my things, Tom hovered over us and took Polaroid pictures to make sure that we didn’t take any of his stuff. It reminded me of how Kevin had made sure I didn’t take his painting.

I took mostly clothes, and since Tom couldn’t fit into my clothes, there was nothing to fight over. I also took my Olympic medals and a number of my awards. I was afraid he’d destroy them if I didn’t take them. It’s not as if he could object to my taking the awards. He could try to claim that without him I would never have earned the money I did, but he could never claim he won my Olympic medals for me. They were mine. I didn’t care about anything else. I just wanted to get out of there.

As we drove down the hill to the Pacific Coast Highway, I kept thinking to myself, I did it. I really did it. I don’t think anyone was more surprised than I was.

L
OOKING BACK
, I
REALIZE
that this wasn’t the first time I had fled the home I shared with a man I loved. It was the third time. But I had no interest in looking back and even less interest in trying to figure out how I got myself into those situations.

The day I went to the house to get some of my things, I figured it wouldn’t be long before Tom and I came to some sort of settlement and I got the house back. I figured wrong. Tom wasn’t going anywhere fast, and he wasn’t in a negotiating mood. The one time I tried talking to him, he told me that he had a gun and that if I ever showed up at the house again he’d “blow my fucking head off.” That’s when Debbie decided it was time to file for a restraining order, which we did on March 28, 1989. In my statement to the Los Angeles court, I wrote that I feared for my life, and I asked the judge to bar my fired “business manager” from having any contact with me. I went on to state, “After being held hostage for over four months since my retirement from diving and my return home from the 1988 Seoul Olympics, I felt that I could no longer tolerate the abuse and threats…I believe that [Tom] is unstable and capable of violent acts of aggression. I sincerely believe that he intends to harm me.”

By then, Tom had his own attorney and, in a sworn statement, said that he was willing not to threaten or harass me because he had never done so. He stated, “I have never threatened his personal safety in any way.” The judge ordered Tom to stay away from me.

Despite the restraining order, Debbie was very concerned about my safety, and she advised me to take a different route every time I drove back to her place, which was where I’d been staying. She also told me not to keep a regular schedule. It was very frightening.

Once it looked like I wasn’t going home anytime soon, I decided I couldn’t sit around waiting for the lawyers to work out a settlement. I had to get on with my life. That meant finding a new place to live, getting started with acting classes again, and getting a dog. The first thing I did was get a dog.

As soon as I broke up with Tom, I started looking for ads in the newspaper for Great Dane puppies. By this point, Maile, the Great Dane Kevin had given me for my birthday, was long gone. Tom had convinced me several years earlier to give her away. I was out of town so much that he thought she’d be better off living with a family that could give her the attention she needed. I was heartbroken, but I gave in, and a family in Las Vegas adopted her.

Now that I was on my own, I could do whatever I wanted. Well, not quite, because I was staying with Debbie. There was no way she was going to let me keep a puppy in her house, and I didn’t even ask. But while I was looking for a new place to live, I could at least look at puppies.

I found an ad in the paper for Boston and Harlequin Great Danes, so I went and met the woman who had placed the ad. I fell in love with the mother of the puppies, Dolly. She reminded me so much of Maile, the way she pressed her head into my stomach. She had a great personality, and I thought that if her puppies had half the personality she did, I’d be very happy.

There were two puppies left. The smaller of the two was getting beat up a lot by his bigger brother. I felt bad for him and I identified with him. I knew he was the one I wanted, and I later named him Freeway. Freeway had the kind of markings that meant I could show him in conformation, which is basically a beauty contest for dogs where they’re judged for how closely they match the standards for the breed set by the American Kennel Club. I thought that might be something fun we could do together down the line.

I arranged with the breeder to keep Freeway until I moved into a new house. She said that was fine, but I had to come visit, which I did. That’s how I came up with his name. I knew I’d be spending a lot of time driving back and forth on the 405 freeway to see him. I would go by and pick Freeway up, and we’d go for a drive and I took him for walks. A couple of times I took him to Debbie’s house, but I never told her. We had a great time together and really bonded.

Freeway gave me added incentive to find a new place, and I quickly settled on a small house in Venice, not far from where Debbie lived. Being nearby made me feel safe and secure. The house needed some work, but not a lot. Steven came up from San Diego to Venice to do some of the work. Not surprisingly, we became boyfriends.

I probably should have stopped at one dog, but not long after I moved into the house in Venice, I got a second Great Dane, Leilani. I’d been feeling really down, and I was just looking through the newspaper at ads for dog litters. I came across an ad for a litter of Harlequins and Bostons in Riverside. So three and a half hours later, I brought home Leilani. She’s a lovable and very strong dog. Before I was done collecting dogs, I had five Great Danes and a corgi.

Even though I wanted to get on with my life, I didn’t really know where I was going. When I was diving, there was always a rhythm to my life. My training and competition schedule gave me structure, and diving gave me goals. I also had the satisfaction of winning year after year and performing in front of the crowds.

Now I had acting, but it wasn’t nearly the same thing. There wasn’t the same sort of intensive training, although I did go to classes. No one was exactly knocking down my door offering me roles. I could count on one hand the number of acting jobs I had in the years immediately following the Olympics. I wouldn’t say I was lost, but I probably had too much time on my hands and not enough to distract me from my moods, which were getting pretty bad again.

The good thing about having free time was that I got to spend some of it with my father. That may sound strange given our bad relationship, but following his cancer diagnosis in early 1989, things began to change, and we grew a lot closer. My father had been pretty much on his own since the divorce. Now that he was sick, he needed me.

During one of my father’s hospital stays, when he was undergoing a series of radiation and chemotherapy treatments, I told him that I was HIV-positive. Part of the reason I told him was practical. He was going to start doing my taxes again, and he would have been able to tell from my medical expenses that I was sick. But it was also something I wanted to share with him—in some ways we were in the same boat. It wasn’t clear how much time either of us had, so I thought it was better to tell him sooner rather than later.

My dad and I had never even talked about the fact that I was gay, let alone HIV-positive, but I assumed my mom had talked to him about it when I broke up with Kevin, as I’d asked her to do. So I started by saying, “Well, Mom had that conversation with you about my sexuality when I broke up with Kevin.” And he said, “No, she didn’t.” I was stunned, but Dad said he’d figured it out for himself a long time ago, after I first started living with Tom. He was upset about it back then, but by this time in his life, my father didn’t get really upset about much. He seemed calm about the whole gay issue. Given that he was fighting for his life, the fact that I was gay must have seemed minor by comparison.

We talked a little about the gay issue, and then I broke the news that I was HIV-positive. His first reaction was to get angry with Tom, because he blamed Tom for giving it to me. He didn’t know much about HIV and didn’t realize that I could have been infected even before Tom. But even if he knew, it was just easier for him to be angry at Tom than to think about what the future held for me.

At this point, I brought my dad up to speed on what was going on with Tom. He knew we’d broken up, and now I told him the details and explained that Tom was going to sue me. He said, “Let me contact some of my fishermen friends and they’ll take care of him.” It was a nice thought, but I told him not to. For the first time in my memory my father was trying to be protective of me, and I appreciated that.

The negotiations with Tom’s attorneys went on for months. Neither side really wanted to have this wind up in court, so the goal was to reach some kind of settlement. I’m sure my lawyers thought I was a terrible client, because I wasn’t great at returning phone calls or reviewing the papers they sent me. The relationship was over, and I didn’t want to think about it. By the summer of 1989, I didn’t have a choice, because the lawyers were working out the final details of the settlement, and this time I was determined to know what kind of deal I was getting myself into.

Basically, what I agreed to do was take care of Tom for the rest of his life, whether that was a year, five years, or longer. That included my buying a place of his choosing for him to live in, with a limit on how much the property would cost, and the house would remain in my name. Tom was given a specific amount of time to find a place, because we were concerned that if no limit was given, he’d try to stay in the Malibu house forever. I also had to give Tom a lump-sum cash settlement and a generous monthly stipend.

As part of the agreement, I would continue paying for Tom’s life insurance. Upon his death, I was to be the beneficiary of one of his two policies. Half of the other was to go to his niece and nephew, which I was happy to agree to, because I knew how much it meant to Tom to leave them something.

I felt awkward about being the beneficiary of Tom’s life insurance, because it was upsetting to think that I would benefit from Tom’s passing. But it was the right thing to do financially; the insurance money was meant to reimburse me for the cost of supporting Tom after our breakup and to make up for some of the personal and financial hell he’d put me through. The money would also provide extra financial padding for me when I got sick and couldn’t work again. That was a major concern of my attorneys. In coming up with a settlement, they wanted to make sure that I could manage financially when my own health failed.

The final meeting was very businesslike and cordial. We were all resigned to it by this point, so there was nothing to be gained from being difficult. I’m also sure that Tom’s attorneys had advised him to be polite, at least until we got all the papers signed.