Breaking the Surface (42 page)

It really upset me that there was all this misinformation. Fortunately, over the next few days, as doctors and AIDS experts were interviewed by the media, they explained that I had posed no danger to the other divers and that only the doctor who had sewed up my head was even remotely at risk of being infected, and then only if he had punctured himself with the needle. I was grateful that it was the experts who got to explain things, and not me, because I’m not a doctor or a scientist. They were far better at explaining everything than I was. By the time I talked to the press on Monday, most people were pretty clear about the fact that you can’t catch HIV from pool water, even if someone has gotten a cut and bled into the pool.

As the number of reporters on my doorstep grew, I finally decided to call the local security force. They removed everyone from my property, so now the news crews were all camped out on the road above my driveway and were shining bright lights on the house. The whole thing was kind of funny. Here I was on the phone trying to explain to friends that I wasn’t dead yet, fielding calls from the publicist at Random House, who was trying to make arrangements for me to fly out that night to Chicago to be interviewed on
Oprah
the next day, and in the background I had the television on and I could see they were doing live reports from outside my house and showing video clips of me hitting my head on the diving board.

When the driver arrived to take me to the airport, the reporters were still up on the road. I wanted to avoid them, so he put my bags in the car, and I told the driver to go down the hill to my neighbor’s house and I’d meet him there. I turned out all the lights and went out the back entrance of the house and started making my way down the hill behind my house to my neighbor’s. I hadn’t gone very far when this guy with a television camera started chasing me. It was a very dark night, and I could hear him stumbling along the path. I felt sorry for him, trying to run with that heavy camera on his shoulder, but I wasn’t about to stop to show him the way. I got down the hill, but he was right on my heels. I jumped in the car, and there he was shining the light of his camera in the car window. As we drove off, I couldn’t help but laugh, thinking that I should have been careful what I wished for when I said I didn’t want to hide out at my house anymore.

At the airport a woman who worked for American Airlines, whom I’d seen a number of times before, came up to me and said in the most concerned way, “Are you okay? Are you feeling all right? Do you need help?” It was such an overt show of concern. I tried to reassure her that I was fine. And not only was I fine, I was really, really fine. In fact, I couldn’t have been better. I was free. My secret was out there, and now I was free.

The interview with Oprah, which had been very hastily arranged the night before, following a call from her producers, was so much easier for me than the interview with Barbara Walters. When I had talked with Barbara, I wasn’t fully prepared for the questions about HIV-positive versus AIDS, and my responsibility in 1988. Now I’d had three more weeks to think and talk about these things, so I felt confident saying I had AIDS and didn’t hesitate to take responsibility for my decisions back in 1988. It also helped having such an overwhelmingly supportive audience. They were incredible. I’m a gay man who didn’t get AIDS from a transfusion, and they were still on their feet applauding and cheering. I was really touched by their response. And Oprah was right there with me. She’d read every word of the book, and I could tell that she really understood some of what I’d been through.

The one thing that I was upset about before going on Oprah was that I still hadn’t had a chance to talk to a number of people about my HIV status. One of those people was Jeanne White, so the first thing I did after getting to Chicago was to call her. I got her answering machine. It never occurred to me that she was in Chicago. Oprah had flown her in that night to surprise me on the show. During the interview, when Oprah started asking me about Ryan White and what he and Jeanne had meant to me, I said how upset I was that I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her. Oprah said, “You can tell her right now,” and out walked Jeanne. I’m emotional to start with, and that was an emotional time. Of course I burst into tears as Jeanne and I hugged each other. It was wonderful. I told Jeanne, “I wanted Ryan to know.” She said to me, “He knows, Greg, and he loves you just like I love you.” Ryan is my guardian angel.

The audience response in Chicago was the first hint I got that people were going to respond to me more positively than I had thought. But it was in New York the next day, on the subway of all places, that I started to fully realize what kind of impact my story was having on people.

On Friday afternoon, my agent, Jed Mattes, who has since passed away, took me to meet with a group of gay, lesbian, and bisexual teenagers at the Hetrick-Martin Institute, an organization that, among other things, runs a high school for sexual minority youth. The kids were incredibly insightful and asked me all sorts of questions about whether I had experienced homophobia in my sports career, and they wanted to know if I’d had the support of my parents once I told them I was gay. The kids were amazing.

When we left Hetrick-Martin to go back to the hotel, it was around five o’clock, rush hour. There weren’t any cabs, so we got on the subway at Broadway and Eighth Street. As we were waiting for the N train, a guy in his twenties came up to me, excused himself for interrupting, and said, “I wanted you to know that I started diving when I was twelve years old because of you. You’ve always been a hero of mine. And now I’m fighting the same battle you are. It means so much to me that you’re talking about it publicly.” I was really choked up. I thanked him, and he walked away. On the train, which was fairly crowded, I noticed a conservative-looking middleaged man, dressed in a business suit, several feet from us. I had a sense he was trying to come up to talk to me. After a few attempts he finally came over, and from his first word I could tell he was about to cry. All he managed to say was, “I admire you so much.” He was really emotional. I knew there was a story there, and I wanted to throw my arms around him and give him a hug, but before I could even say anything, he walked away.

That night I watched the Barbara Walters interview in my hotel room with a handful of other people. What struck me more than anything while watching the story was my diving. I was watching beautiful dives, and I was the one doing them. That was the first time I realized I was a beautiful diver. I know that must seem ridiculous, but I’d never allowed myself to think of myself as a beautiful diver.

By the time I got to bed that night I was emotionally and physically wiped out. I just wanted to be home with my dogs in my own bed, but there was no going home now. This was just the beginning of a nationwide adventure.

When I was an Olympic athlete, I got a lot of attention from the public and the press, but it was never as emotionally intense and rewarding as it was traveling across the country promoting
Breaking the Surface
. Everywhere I went, people offered their support, shared their stories, and wanted to take pictures with me. Before the book came out, I had been afraid that parents wouldn’t want their kids to come near me once they knew the truth about my life, but over and over again parents wanted to take pictures of me with their kids at my side. I guess I overestimated people’s prejudices and underestimated their compassion and love.

The first stop on the media tour following New York City was Fort Lauderdale, where I was scheduled to do a press conference and a book signing at the Swimming Hall of Fame. The signing was run by Outbooks, a local gay and lesbian bookstore.

Going to the Swimming Hall of Fame was like going home for me. It was where I’d spent a lot of time training and where Ron O’Brien and his son Tim still coached, and I knew the people who worked there. Before I got there, I’d heard there was a problem with the executive director, who was apparently less than enthusiastic about having the press conference and book signing there. In the end, he simply didn’t come to either event. I was grateful that he stepped aside and let his staff handle the whole thing because they were great, especially Holly, who did everything she possibly could do to make the event a success. I’m just sorry the executive director didn’t get to be there to see the outpouring of support.

I don’t know what I expected, but I never thought that so many people and so many different kinds of people would come to meet me. The line snaked back and forth through the museum, past the big exhibit about my diving career, down the steps and out on to the street. I’m told there were between twelve to fifteen hundred people there to get books signed. And people didn’t just want their books signed. They brought gifts for me. They wanted to give hugs and get hugs. They wanted their pictures taken with me. It was unbelievable. We had a whole team of people keeping everything running smoothly, and even then it was more than three hours before everyone got through the line.

Two people really stood out for me that evening. One was a man who was clearly very ill with AIDS. I could tell he was suffering from dementia and wasn’t completely aware of what was going on. I was sitting up on a platform, and I could see that there was no way he could climb the steps to reach me. So I came down off the platform. He had a friend with him, and I signed the book that his friend had brought. I asked if he thought it would be okay if I gave the man a hug. He said, “He’d love that. Before we got here, we talked all about how much he wanted to meet you, but he fades in and out.” I put my arms around him and gently hugged him. He hugged me back. I couldn’t help but cry, because that could have been me. I could have been looking in the mirror, and if that had been me, I would have hoped that someone would have done that for me. I pulled myself back together and went back to meeting people and signing books.

At the very end of the line was a six-year-old boy with his sister and mother and father. I learned later that they came to the signing because the little boy had seen me on television and he wanted to tell me something. He kept asking his father all day to take him to meet me, and finally he gave in. They all got in their car and drove over. They were the last people to get in line before the line was cut off.

This little boy climbed up the stairs to the platform, got on his tiptoes, and reached across the table. He leaned on his elbows, and said, “I hope you feel better.” I melted. By this time I was completely exhausted, but that little boy left me feeling incredible.

From Florida I traveled all over the country, and everywhere I went, people offered me encouragement and told me their stories. It was overwhelming. Hundreds and thousands of people came to meet me, from young divers and deaf kids to grandparents and HIV-positive gay men. They said things like, “I’ve been HIV-positive for ten years. You can make it.” “I haven’t had Tcells for three years. I still feel great. Hang in there.” The hardest were the people who had been newly diagnosed with HIV. A number of them said, “You’ve given me the courage to continue on.” “Whenever I need encouragement, I reread your book.”