Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle (50 page)

It was an unfair question, and I knew it. Crosley had just as much right to buy Andy's affection as someone else had to buy drugs, or chocolate, or a pet to sit on his lap and provide comfort. That Crosley's need required an obscene amount of money to meet was simply a measure of its enormity. If anything, it was Andy who should be considering using some of the wealth he would acquire to help those who had less. Would he? I was afraid that I knew the answer to that question all too well. Behind me I felt and heard Alan breathing. Would he, I wondered, really stay if I discovered spots on my skin or found it difficult to draw air into my lungs? He became a baby when he had so much as a stubbed toe or a sore throat. Could he handle a wasting body and everything that came with it? I hoped he was right, and that we would never have to find out. For now, I could only trust in his promise.

CHAPTER 49

"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." So wrote George Orwell in 1949, when his novel1984 looked ahead to a time when life was dictated by the will of the authoritarian Party and individuality was a crime. And certainly history, both prior to and following the publication of Orwell's most famous work, has proven him correct. What we know as history has been written and rewritten so many times that what is really true has been lost in a thicket of conjecture, mistake, and deliberate lie. Following his rise to power, for example, Josef Stalin employed what Trotsky referred to as his "School of Falsification" to cover up his bloody crimes and erase all mention of his enemies' contributions to the rise of the Bolsheviks and the success of the October Revolution. More recently, after assuming power from the secularist government in 1998, India's Hindu Nationalist Party rewrote the country's history books, removing, among other things, all references to the assassination of Gandhi by a Hindu fanatic.

This is what we do. We revise history, whether personal, familial, or global, to our advantage. Is it surprising that Henry VII would want to wipe the name Plantagenet from the record books? Is it shocking that the people of Japan don't want to acknowledge the massacre of an estimated 300,000 Chinese by Japanese soldiers during the Rape of Nanking? Does anyone really question why, time and again, criminals declare themselves innocent in the face of overwhelming proof, or why juries often do likewise?

Vladimir Lenin famously asserted that "a lie, told often enough, becomes truth." It's not that easy, of course. The transition from falsehood to fact requires active participation on the part of those being deceived, either a failure to question the "truth" in question, or a willful disregard of any evidence that contradicts the so-called facts as they are presented. Fortunately for those who would seek to rewrite history, the human mind seems to have a limitless capacity for rearranging events to render them more satisfying or less wounding, as befits the situation.

In 1984—the year, not the novel—things were not quite as bad off as Orwell supposed they might be. They were, however, not good, especially for gay men in America. We'd hoped that AIDS would be a temporary inconvenience, a frightening but curable one that scientists would quickly corner and subdue. But things hadn't worked out that way. The plague continued to spread, and like the residents of 14th century Europe, we examined ourselves and one another for the telltale signs of infection. (In a grotesque homage to the red-ringed "roseys" that indicated the bite of the Black Death, the first signs that AIDS

had taken hold were the purplish-red spots of Kaposi's sarcoma.) On Sunday, April 22, I walked to the corner bodega for coffee and the New York Times , bringing both back to Alan, who was still asleep but woke up as soon as he smelled the cup of French roast I set on his bedside table. Never a morning person, he struggled to accept the arrival of a new day while I settled in next to him to see what was going on in the world. Removing the circulars, magazines, and TV guide that were the paper's innards, I opened the first section to see, on the front page, an article announcing that the head of the Centers for Disease Control was confident that the cause of AIDS had been found by a team of French researchers.

"Listen to this," I said to Alan, reading him the first part of the article.

 

"It's about time," he said. "What's it been, three years? Maybe we'll finally get a vaccine and life can get back to normal."

 

"Not for a while," I told him, reading further. "They say it will take at least a year to manufacture one. But they should have a test for it soon."

 

Alan yawned and stretched. "Fantastic," he said. "So you can know sooner that you're going to die. No thanks. I'd rather not know."

 

"Really?" I said. "You wouldn't want to know if you were sick?"

"Why would I?" he replied. "There's not much I could do about it. It's not like they've found anything to fight it with or really know how to prevent spreading it, so, personally, I'd rather not be all freaked out about it." He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. "Besides, we're both fine."

"How do we know that?" I said. "We could be infected and not know it."

 

"We've been through this a hundred times," he said, drinking his coffee. "We're not sick . Now, give me the arts and entertainment section. I want to read about something I actually care about."

As Alan turned his attention to less depressing topics, I read the rest of the article. Looking back on it more than twenty years later, when AIDS has claimed a reported 25 million lives (the same, incidentally, as the Black Plague took between 1347 and 1352), I'm struck by how hopeful we were then. We really did believe that once the culprit was discovered, a cure would be close behind. Although AIDS had first been called "gay cancer," none of us, I think, thought that it would turn out to be a disease whose eradication would, like its nominal sibling breast cancer, be a battle seemingly without end. But we needed that hope. If we'd known then that decades would pass without either a vaccine or a cure, I think maybe we would have given up. We were already scared; the idea that our entire way of life might need to change was something we were not ready to face.

If, like Stalin, I were to rewrite the history of that time, specifically my own history, I would make myself less certain that "the government" or any other faceless entity actually cared about my personal well-being. Again, though, to even begin to believe that we might survive the virus, I had to believe that someone was looking out for me other than myself. Like the responsibility for ensuring the safety of air travel, the purity of my drinking water, and the worth of the currency in my wallet, I placed in the hands of the United States government the duty of making sure that I and all of my friends made it through alive. The first sign that this might not be the case came the day after I read Alan the Times article. Apparently annoyed that the U.S. had been beaten to the punch by rival France, Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler called a news conference to announce that an American team at the National Cancer Institute had discovered their own virus, which they believed would be proven to be the cause of AIDS. A beaming Heckler told reporters, "Today we add another miracle to the long honor roll of American medicine and science."

Ultimately the two viruses would turn out to be the same one, but the scuffle over who deserved credit for the "miracle" of its discovery, and even which name would be used to describe it, would rage for some time. In the meantime, we continued to sicken and die. Ronald Reagan, the man who had helped us defeat the Briggs Initiative six years before, had not even uttered the word AIDS in public, and public health officials were treating the disease as something affecting primarily homosexuals. Still, we continued to believe that they would help us.

Alan was right about one thing, though. We were both fine. Neither of us had experienced so much as a cold in months, which was something of a miracle considering how busy we were. La Cage was a smash hit, and despite having a small role, Alan was getting all kinds of offers for new productions. I was finishing my junior year at NYU and spending all of my time studying and writing. We were constantly on the go, sometimes seeing each other only for an hour or two between Alan's return from the theater and my departure for my first class. It was a crazy life, but we were both doing what we loved, and so we were happy.

Since learning of Andy's relationship with Crosley, I'd seen him only a handful of times, mostly at theater community events. I'd tried to make peace with what he was doing, and had largely succeeded, mainly by reminding myself repeatedly that Peter Crosley had as much right to be happy as anyone else did, and that my judging him for how he chose to live his life was just as bad as someone judging me for how I chose to live mine. Which a lot of people were, by the way. Not me personally, but gay men in general. Since AIDS was still largely thought of as a gay disease, our popularity among other segments of society had plummeted. Like the mice and rats who were discovered to be the primary carriers of the plague and were summarily dispatched, we were viewed with suspicion, as if every last one of us housed within us the seeds of death. A poll taken at the time showed that 15% of the American public believed that people with AIDS should be visibly tattooed for the protection of everyone else. And so I tried not to judge Crosley too harshly, particularly as his health declined precipitously during the spring. Each time I saw him, it was as if he had faded a little more. He lost weight, and his eyes took on the haunted look of someone who saw his own ghost when he peered in the mirror. Word quickly spread that he was the latest to be stricken, and a deathwatch commenced as people gossiped about what would become of his fortune and worried producers wondered if they should look elsewhere for funding.

Through it all, Andy remained at Crosley's side. He was recognized openly as Peter's boyfriend, and more than once someone unaware of our friendship commented upon his loyalty. I never revealed his secret, seeing no point, and I never discussed it again with Andy. He pretended as if we had never quarreled, and in this way we maintained a cordial social relationship, even if, in private, I still found what he was doing disturbing.

In May, the Tony Award nominations were announced, and La Cage received nine of them, including ones in all the important categories. I completed the school year on the first day of June, and two days later attended the Tonys at the Gershwin Theatre, where I watched Alan and the rest of the company perform "We Are What We Are" as the show went on to win six awards, including Best Musical. At the party afterward I saw Andy standing alone and went up to him. "Where's Crosley?" I asked.

"Getting another drink," said Andy. "He's not taking his loss to the drag queens well." "He'll have other shows," I said. "How's he feeling otherwise?"
"Not great," said Andy.

"Your investment might pay off sooner than expected, you mean?" I said, surprised at the harshness in my voice. I held my hand up. "I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean that."

"Sure you did," said Andy. "And you're right, it is an investment, of time and energy and lots of other things."

 

I was angry again. "Did it ever occur to you that he might not die?" I asked Andy. "If they find a cure, or even a treatment, you could be looking at years with him."

 

Andy took a drink. "I hadn't thought about that," he said. "I suppose it could happen." "How many years is he worth?" I said. "Two? Five? Ten? Have you already worked out the per-hour rate? At what point would you have to just cut your losses and leave?" "I don't think I have to worry about that," Andy said evenly. "Have you seen him lately?"

Before I could answer that I hadn't, Crosley appeared. In just the few weeks since I'd last had a glimpse of him, he'd aged noticeably. His face, heavily made up, was thinner, although his blue eyes still sparkled when he smiled at me. His voice, when he spoke, was raspy.

"Trying to steal my boyfriend, Ned?" he asked. "Isn't one enough for you?"

Even sick, he was officious. For a moment, my sympathy for him drained from me, and I readied a comeback. Then I noticed his hands, and the spots on them, faintly visible beneath the stage makeup he'd applied, but which was failing him after a long night of wear. Seeing the sigil of AIDS stamped upon him, I relented. I raised my glass to him instead.

"If you'd been one minute later, I would have had him," I said. Crosley touched his withered lips to Andy's cheek. "I can stand losing a Tony," he said. "But not this prize."

 

"I should be getting back to Alan anyway," I said. "It's nice seeing you two."

I left them standing together and returned to the table occupied by the La Cage group. Already in good spirits because of their win, they were now completely out of control, laughing and passing their Tonys around so that everyone could have a turn giving an acceptance speech. When I arrived, Alan was in the middle of his.

"And, of course, I'd like to thank all the little people," he said. "Especially my not-so-little boyfriend, Ned Brummel," he added, holding his hands a considerable distance apart. "Ned, thanks for teaching me how to take it like a man."

The rest of the table let out a roar at his joke. I bowed, earning more applause, and took my seat. As the partying continued, I looked over at Andy and Crosley. They'd sat down, but they were alone at their table, everyone else in their contingent having gravitated elsewhere. Crosley was watching us, his face a mask of resentment. Beside him, Andy sat oblivious, his eyes fixed on the ass of a waiter passing by with a tray of glasses brimming with champagne.

CHAPTER 50

"Rock Hudson has AIDS," Alan announced.
"What?" I said, pouring myself another cup of coffee.

"AIDS," Alan repeated. "Rock Hudson has AIDS." He waved the issue of Variety he was reading at me. "It's in Army Archerd's column."
"Please," I said as I added some milk to my mug and swirled it around. "You're going to believe a gossip column?"

"It's not a gossip column," said Alan. "It's industry news."