Right before Jim was discharged, his doctor came into the room. ”I can still see him sitting on the window ledge. `Give it to me straight,` I said. He told me that the average survival time after PCP was 18 months. I might live longer or I might die sooner. I asked, `Is there any hope?` He replied,
`Well, if you`d asked me that a year ago, I would have had to say no. But I think that yours is the first generation of AIDS patients for whom we might have effective experimental drugs.` He also gave me some good advice. He said, `Jim, don`t worry yourself about how you might have picked this up. It`s not important.`
”Afterwards, I had my blood from spring, 1984, defrosted and tested for antibody. It was positive.” He frowns. ”You know, I might have infected my young partner, rather than the other way around.
”The level of insanity out there can be frightening. After my diagnosis, I lost interest in sex. Whether it`s apathy or self-preservation, I haven`t had or thought about sex at all. Occasionally, though, I`ll get a call from an old friend. One wanted to come over for sex and I told him upfront. `No, I have AIDS.` He didn`t care, he said. I thought, `Is Tom insane?` I just couldn`t do it; I would feel as if I were a murderer.
”Last summer I made an inventory of my personal possessions. I`ve always saved archival things, like the newspaper headlines that read, `Man Lands on Moon` or `President Kennedy Assassinated` or `Big Snow Hits Chicago.` I told myself: `Jim, give it up. You no longer have any use for these things.` I began to plan to turn all my papers and gay-history memorabilia over to various libraries. I was very down. One night I saw a MacNeil-Lehrer report on AZT, but I didn`t think that I was eligible.
”That fall I began to experience oral thrush (a fungal infection that causes white patches in the mouth) and constant diarrhea. The diarrhea was not only dehydrating–my weight dropped to 123–but the mental terror was overwhelming. I`d have to go to the bank or the grocery, and I`d wonder, `Can I make it?` Often, I didn`t, and I`d have to grit my teeth, go home and take a shower and change my clothes. My cleaning lady was aghast. I can remember once having to fly on Air Canada and nervously chug-a-lugging Pepto Bismol before I boarded. `Please, God,` I prayed, `let me make it without embarrassing myself.` I had called ahead to check with the airline about medical equipment aloft, but they began to ask about my condition, and I thought, `Oh, no, I`d better back off.` That time, I made it during the flight, but not during the drive from the airport.
”When I started on AZT this January, I was a wreck, but within days my thrush had cleared up, the diarrhea had stopped and my weight began to go up. So far, my blood counts are okay. What worries me is the possible spread to the brain. I`ve always been somewhat of a klutz, but now, every time I bump into a door or have trouble getting out of a chair I wonder if this is the first sign that my mind is going. I`m scheduled for psychological tests, putting square pegs into square holes and so on, and I`m hoping for the best. ”Two of my closest friends have died in the last few weeks. Both had been diagnosed with PCP, and both were hoping to get on AZT. But their luck ran out. Now I`m wondering if the ax will fall a third time. I still haven`t
made out a will. But I have no complaints. I feel that I have been lucky and that my doctors have given me tremendous care.
”And, you know, although 50 is not so old, I am a bit of an old geezer. I`ve lived a full live. I really feel sorry for the young ones, the men in their 20s who are just setting forth in life and who have been told that they have AIDS.”
Frank, 46, is a former body builder, and this day he still looks powerful, with a bullet-shaped head and chest bulging through a shirt that is open almost to the navel. He used to enter contests at 145 pounds and now weighs in at 182, ”fat for the first time in my life.”
His appearance is a mirage. His blood counts are bad, and he may soon need a transfusion. He speaks in a soft voice, almost a whisper. He appears breathless. He was diagnosed as an AIDS patient in May, 1985, after coming down with PCP and cryptococcus meningitis, an inflammation of the lining of the brain. The meningitis was so severe that for one solid year he did nothing but stay at home and endure eight hours every day of intravenous drip to fight the meningitis.
”Man, that was the worst. Eight hours every day with an IV stuck in your arm and vomiting and shaking with the chills when it`s 90 degrees outside. I`ve got to tell you the truth: I almost cashed in my chips. One day, though, they finally got the meningitis.”
He is an unrepentant ”fast-track” gay and is totally at ease with a sexual lifestyle that may shock the general public. ”Man, I never had any choice,” he says. ”This is just the way I am. Nobody ever said it`s easy being gay.”
By day he was an investment banker at a major Chicago bank, a banker so successful that in 1978 he could retire to an apple orchard in the Illinois countryside. ”I did the whole bit,” he recalls. ”By day I wore the three-piece suit and did business; at night I put on the other costume and went into the leather bars.
”I was a child of the 1960s, and I was into some very heavy things, sexually and with drugs. Part of it was a head trip, and all the sex was associated with drugs. I`m from the Timothy Leary school of drugs–the more the better–and I tried acid, coke, poppers, you name it, but nothing intravenously. Sexually, I was a pig.
”I was very selective in my sexual tastes. I went out only with extremely good-looking, well-built men. Wednesday and Sundays were my days off, and I would party on Tuesday and Saturday nights. I needed the rest of the week to recoup, because the body literally cannot take what was going on more than two or three times a week.”
Frank was into fisting. He says, ”The whole point was, How much can you take?” What`s the appeal? ”How do I know? What`s the appeal of anything? All I know is that it was a very macho world.
”It was wild out there. There was a handkerchief code, and cards were handed out in the bars to make sure that you understood the game. A red handkerchief meant fisting, and if you wore it on the right side, it meant you preferred being receptive. Black was S&M (sadomasochism), gray, bondage; and green, a hustler. With me it was an experimental thing, and one thing led to another in a sort of natural progression. I did this kind of thing two or three times a week for maybe 20, 25 years. Of course, I was at high risk of something like AIDS. And if it weren`t for AIDS, I`d still be chugging along. ”You know, Chicago`s always been something of a finishing school for gays. The young kids come in from Des Moines and Indianapolis, learn a few tricks and move on to Manhattan or California. Among Chicago gays, you usually find only the very young or the very old, but you don`t have the cross-section you have in San Francisco or New York. After I retired from the bank and bought my orchard, I used to winter in California. Chicago has everything that California does, but it`s just that there`s so much more on the Coast. By 1984 I began to worry about AIDS, and I had the antibody test taken in Chicago. Then I left for California. A few weeks later I found out I was positive. I felt terrible, but with time it passed. I continued to have sex, but safe sex, no exchange of fluids. I believe that I was exposed to the virus in Chicago.
”I`ve been gay ever since I can remember. I got syphilis from an older guy when I was in the sixth grade. It took eight shots of penicillin. For days, I couldn`t walk. Oh, over the years, I had everything–gonorrhea and herpes and hepatitis and syphilis and rectal bleeding and intestinal tears. But everything healed. It went with the territory.
”I`d say that most people would never recognize three-fourths of gay men as being gay. And about one of every three gay males is into the kind of thing I`ve been into. That`s the way it was. I`ve been all over the place–Amsterdam and Paris and London and Berlin and Munich and New York and Los Angeles and San Francisco, and it`s all pretty much the same. By comparison, Chicago is pretty tame, probably 10 years behind the other cities in the extent of the action. But you can find it here, if you`re looking.
”Right now, I`m feeling pretty lousy. I`m very tired, and I`m having trouble breathing. I think I`m anemic. My parents? Of course, they know I`m gay; I can`t convince them I`m Haitian. What it boils down to is when they find out you`re gay they`re p – – – – -, and when they find out you`re sick, they`re there for you. That`s the way it works. Out in the country where I live, they still burn crosses into the ground, but nobody knows I`m gay. The home-care nurses are absolutely wonderful, and I enjoy being alone, watching TV and pruning my apple trees and working on my pumpkins and raspberries. Today I`m through with sex. If somebody hits on me, I simply say, `No, thanks. I have AIDS.` If they still want `safe sex,` I say, `No way, not with me.` I`d feel like I`m taking somebody`s life into my hands.
”To readers, I`d say, `Don`t judge me.` We only go around once in life, and it`s up to everybody to make their own decisions. You either want to do something and you do it, or you don`t. Everything that`s found in the gay community can be found in the straight community, too, with a few
modifications. And I`d hate to tell you how many bisexuals, married men, I`ve had sex with. There used to be bisexual baths in San Francisco.
”Me, I`m hanging on, but if the pain gets too bad, I`ll tell you the truth: I`ll end it. I don`t have time for the pain.”
He smiles. ”See, you learned something.”
