World AIDS Day: Remembering Tony
The romantics talk about how brave we were...the truth is, we just didn’t have a choice.
These days, I let World AIDS Day be a meditation on gratitude.
In today’s special post, I am including a chapter from my unpublished memoir about my boyfriend Tony’s death in 1991 and my unheroic response to his condition.
What’s not said in this piece is that Tony actually died of shame. Please don’t let that happen to you or someone you love who’s living on the DL. It’s deadly.
Tony and I talked about my HIV+ status. But, as I judge it, his Italian shame about being gay led to him ignoring opportunities to be tested for HIV. Had he known he was HIV+ and been treated earlier with treatments that were available at that time, he most likely would not have died.
As a sensitive slut, I’m grateful for the freedom I now have to commune with my gay brothers in ways that were deadly less than a generation ago.
As an HIV-positive man since 1986, I know what it’s like to have death present during each sexual encounter. I know what it’s like to have death’s catalyst alive in my blood and semen. I know what it’s like to have a conversation before each sexual encounter that, quite often, for good reason, ended the chance of going deeper with another fellow traveler of the yellow brick road.
Today’s medications change that reality for men like me who live in treatment Meccas like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. I remain grateful for that every day.
The horrors of AIDS can only be understood by those that experienced them. I assume the same may be said for war veterans. As much as I wish to honor and empathize with combat veterans, there is no way I will ever really know what it was like actually to be in Vietnam or any other perilous, life-threatening situation.
So, if you did not witness the horrors of the plague of AIDS, please know that your respect and love are enough.
If you want to get a glimpse of what it looked like for 26-year-old Mike Gerle, please read on.
Tony,
1990, West Hollywood, California
In 1990 Revolver was still riding the novelty of being a Video Bar. Its big TV screens, black lacquered cabinetry, and brass rails accenting everything made it a technological and architectural feast not to be missed on your tour of West Hollywood’s gay bars. Entertainment Tonight had even done a story on the new-fangled look. The bar got its name from the revolving doors patrons had to pass through to get in. Each night had a theme, and Sunday was comedy night.
That’s the night I met Tony Peruzzi.
I had been watching him and his two friends from behind my workstation under the huge TV monitor at the end of the room. We were taking turns stealing glances. He’d pretend to watch Saturday Night Live skits on the giant screen above me, and I’d pretend to be interested in the items in my garnish tray sitting on the bar between me and his table.
He sat at a table nearly halfway across the room. It provided a safe distance for us to study each other. I had the added protection of the bar itself if I finally decided he wasn’t worth my time. He, of course, could simply get up and walk out if he came to a similar conclusion. Tony was not a big guy, but he was intensely masculine and seemed to have a tight athletic body. Maybe 30? Definitely two or three inches shorter than my 6’2” height. His boyish brown eyes and pouty full lips betrayed an Italian-American ego inside him that I immediately fell for.
Our eyes met, looked away, darted back, shy smiles were exchanged, and then we would try to act cool. I opened beers and poured drinks for a steady stream of customers while keeping one eye on the mystery man in the leather jacket. He whispered in the ear of his friend, who immediately blew his cover by turning around to give me a solid once over.
An hour into this dance, Tony got off the stool he was sitting on, walked across the room, and planted himself on one right in front of me.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said.
Then he announced, “I was Alf’s left hand!”
OK. Those are words you don’t hear every day. But I didn’t take the bait. L.A. is full of out-of-work actors and soon-to-be success stories. Me included. Being the left hand of one of TV’s most famous sitcom puppets apparently gave this guy some street cred, but I wasn’t interested in just his hand, and I didn’t want to hear another nearly-great-in-Hollywood story. Not from this guy. Not yet.
“Why aren’t you wearing any pants?” I said, giving him a smirk and a stare before turning around to grab two Amstel Lights out of the lower fridge. I opened them for my customer standing in the protection of my serving station, a handsome regular in a white button-down Ralph Lauren shirt. I took a ten-dollar bill from his hand and ran it through the register.
“Don’t you like the Simpsons?” Tony said as I was giving Amstel Light man his change.
“I just don’t get the whole Bart Simpson boxers and leather jacket combo.”
“I’m Italian!!! You wouldn’t understand.”
“Maybe I can learn.”
We went home together that night. My tiny little bachelor studio was closer than his guest house rental in Burbank, so that’s where we went.
“Look. I’m positive.” I let it roll out after I recovered from our first mind-blowing kiss. We were sitting on the couch and things were moving along nicely. It turns out he was negative. Nothing like a little ADIS talk to brighten the mood. But I liked this guy and definitely didn’t want to hurt him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I’m just not as scared about things like that since I almost died two years ago.” He leaned his head back but left his body pressed up against my mine. “I was in a huge car crash on Barham Blvd. It totaled my car. I was unconscious for almost three days. They even told my parents I wasn’t going to make it. I had a serious brain injury. Here, feel my head.” He took my hand from the couch and put it on an uneven part of his head. “See?” He smiled. “I’ve got brain damage.” I looked at his playful grin. We laughed and fell into each other. I fought back happy tears as we kissed.
Less than two months later we were living together in a one-bedroom corner unit apartment on the top floor of a six-story brick building in Korea Town. Half of the $750 was better than the $450 I was paying for the shithole studio on Hauser. And Tony had potential. He was cute, made me laugh, and had other cliché Italian attributes we all hope for when getting naked with one. He also loved to boss me around. Something I still responded to. The honeymoon was on. It was Christmas when we moved in together and before I knew it, it was June and Gay Pride was upon us.
LA’s Pride weekend brings in nearly half a million people, and that translates into big money for bartenders in gay bars. The people started coming into town more than a week before the actual parade down Santa Monica Blvd stepped off. All of them were thirsty. Suddenly Revolver was busy from two o’clock in the afternoon until it closed twelve hours later at two AM. I was finally making some cash.
I was also pounding down so much Absolute vodka and Amstel Light beer that I needed my coke dealer’s attention just to stay upright. The packed tip bucket at the base of the liquor bottles made paying my dealer’s bill a snap. I just dug into the packed bucket of single dollar bills, counted out fifty, stuffed them into my till for change, and pulled out a fifty dollar bill from under the drawer. I slid it across the bar to Mark who slid me another tiny white rectangular envelope. The clamor of the packed bar raged around us. Gay celebratory chaos. My transaction was ignored by the patrons crushed up against the bar waiting to be served, a professional courtesy I suppose, and then I went back to pouring drinks and stuffing dollar bills into my bucket.
It was probably close to 4:00 AM when I came home drunk to find Tony in bed coughing. The cough had started more than two weeks before, so I was not completely surprised to hear it. I just wished he’d done something to take care of it because now it was sounding pretty bad. I let myself fall onto my back on the bed next to him and tried to drift off to sleep.
Coughing and more coughing. I wasn’t going to be able to ignore it. “That sounds bad,” I said with my eyes closed.
“I think I need to go to the hospital.”
“Really?” I opened my eyes and tried to focus on the ceiling. “Why didn’t you call me last night? I’m drunk now. I shouldn’t have even driven home.”
“OK.”
Silence.
“Look, if you’re really that sick I’ll take you. Just let me rest for a few seconds.”
“OK.”
The sky brightened at 5:30 AM, and by 6:00 AM, it had broken over the horizon. I still felt buzzed but the intoxication was in its last stages and it was now morphing into dehydration and nausea. The sunlight from the window filled my eyes with pain that traveled to my gut. My boyfriend lay next to me motionless except when he broke into a short series of labored coughs.
I was still dressed in jeans and a Revolver t-shirt that reeked of cigarette smoke. If I was leaving the apartment, I’d need to change into something that didn’t broadcast my previous night’s behavior. I shuffled over to our walk-in closet, changed into a clean t-shirt and shuffled back into the bedroom.
I walked around to his side of the bed and looked down at him. He lay on his back, clutching the blanket in his right hand and looking away from me to the left side of the room, the side of the bed I had just vacated. He was pouting, He hated being vulnerable. He was probably scared but played it off by getting mad at me instead, refusing to look at me. Our relationship was still new, but I had learned that this was Tony’s silent treatment.
“Whatever is wrong, they’ll be able to knock it out of you in no time.” I saw how thin he was, and quickly calculated the days it had been since I saw him eat anything, at least two or three, and now there was an oily sheen to his sullen skin. I silently willed him to sit up and regain his complete faculties. God Damn It! Get the fuck up and be OK!
This reminded me too much of driving Alvin to the hospital, of going to the emergency room because he didn’t have insurance, of waiting to hear what’s wrong because we haven’t been to a doctor in months, and knowing that death may lurk in our bodies just waiting to be discovered.
“Here, let me find you something to wear,” I started to open and close his drawers in the chest next to the bed. He ignored me, sat up on the edge of the bed, and then reached for the jeans he had worn the night before. While keeping his ass on edge of the bed, he managed to get all of his clothes on without any help from me. His breath was labored as he sat there in his jeans, t-shirt, and tennis shoes. I sat down next to him allowing the entire right side of my body to come into contact with his. I looked at him, but he just stared straight ahead.
“Come on,” I put my right arm around his warm back. He was hot. He definitely had a fever. We stood up together.
With a resigned sense of mission, we made our way out the door, down the common hall, and into the tiny old elevator. Neither of us said a word. I closed the steal grated elevator gate with my left hand while he leaned into my right side. My hand gripped him tighter under the hot armpit as the thud of the exterior door made its closing sound. He had seen the apartment for the last time, but neither of us knew it yet.
Before the elevator had descended two floors I was helping to support most of his weight. Gravity seemed to pull on him harder and harder as the elevator passed each of the seven floors of the building.
The romantics have talked about how brave we were in times like these. How we were able to face such frightening situations without falling apart. The truth is we just didn’t have a choice. What was I going to do? Tell my boyfriend that this was just too much drama? That the relationship wasn’t working out? That he was too needy? That it was me, not him, and we just needed some space? Fuck no! The stark reality of a man in mortal danger clinging to me for literal support ignited my basic humanity. I could hold him up or let him collapse on the elevator floor. Those were my choices at that moment. Maybe it was vanity or basic common decency, but it wasn’t some unusual capacity for compassion.
He was also my boyfriend, my same-sex companion, a fellow faggot in danger. There wasn’t anybody else likely to take over for me. “Spread fear, not AIDS!” the signs I’d read in San Diego were seared in my memory, reminding me of the fact that there were plenty of people applauding each and every one of our deaths. His family was sure as hell not going to step in. Hell, they wouldn’t even talk about homosexuality or any other “bad” news from their Italian son. No, it wasn’t bravery that pushed me forward. It was solidarity. That and a big fat fact dose of no other options.
The elevator stopped. I got us out of the building and into the parking lot. I was nearly carrying him, as we made our way down the short row of cars to his old BMW. God damn it! Why didn’t you let me know you’d gotten this bad? I put him in the passenger seat. He was usually full of bossy commands, but now we just sat in silence.
* * * * *
“Here, I brought you an earring.” I said, handing Tony a tiny red lady’s pump dangling from a short gold chain. I’d acquired it while bartending that day. I still hadn’t changed out of my red denim shorts, tennis shoes, and sleeveless t-shit. In West Hollywood, the celebration of Gay Pride raged on. Rainbow flags, drag queens, shirtless men with perfect bodies, laughter, and music were everywhere. Now I sat on the edge of my boyfriend’s hospital bed. It seemed inconceivable that sickness and death were battling inside people’s bodies only five miles away from the Pride celebration. The urge to give him the earring was inescapable. Tony looked at it but didn’t reach for it. He just looked forward. There was an innocence and fear in his eyes I’d never seen before.
The room Tony occupied with five other patients at Los Angeles General Hospital smelled of disinfectant, sweat, and diarrhea. The walls, curtains, and thin blankets covering the beds were all beige. It looked like the white linoleum floor was speckled when it was installed, but its most dominating features now were the dark well wore footpaths leading from the door to the center of the room and then spidering out between the beds. Each bed was filled with a male patient. I was the only visitor. The single tiny bathroom the patients shared was being used every five or ten minutes by a tall skinny white man with long greasy hair who made no attempt to cover his deflated hairless ass that showed through his untied hospital gown. He moved quickly across the crowded room, flinging the “lavatory” door open, causing it to bang into the wall. He would then use the toilet without closing the door, sometimes sitting on the toilet yelling, “God DAMNIT!” He then found it necessary to slam the door shut before he made his way back to his bed.
“If this doesn’t cure me I could die,” Tony said. He looked up at the clear bag hanging on the pole next to his bed. “It’s called ‘Bactrim.’ It’s supposed to fix this kind of pneumonia.”
“Well, then, it’ll fix you,” I said.
“It’s AIDS, this pneumonia is caused by AIDS.” He said.
“But you’re negative,” I said. “I don’t get it.”
Tony didn’t say anything.
* * * * *
I was screaming over the sound system that night at Revolver.
“He could die! He could really die.”
Murray’s eyes widened, and he took a long pull on his longneck Budweiser.
“I’m sorry, but I thought you’d be pissed off if I never said anything,” I said.
Murray leaned in closer to me at my serving station at Revolver. It was Sunday, and I was under the main video screen. The whole crowd looked in my direction and laughed at Saturday night live clips, show-tune mash-ups, and stand-up comics. It seemed cruel to be delivering this kind of news to Tony’s best friend when he was just out trying to have a good time.
“He could be OK, but the doctors are all making it clear that it is really serious,” I said. I couldn’t risk not giving Murray the chance to do whatever he needed to do with Tony while Tony was still here.
* * * * *
Three days passed, and all the tests were irrefutable. Tony had full-blown AIDS, his immune system was almost nonexistent, he had AIDS-related pneumonia called Pneumocystis, and his life was seriously in danger.
On the bright side, the AIDS ward was the newest, most modern, part of LA County General Hospital. Two automatic doors swung open as I approached them, like gates to a fancy estate revealing a totally new hospital. I felt like I was leaving a Korean M.A.S.H unit and entering Dr. Crusher’s sick bay on the Star Ship Enterprise. Everything from the nurse’s scrubs, to the countertops, to the metal frames of the commercial art hanging on the walls was in various shades of blue that had a calming effect absent in the rest of the hospital. The I.V.s no longer ran straight from a bag on a metal pole into Tony’s arm. Now the clear liquid first passed through a rectangular machine offering digital readouts before moving on to his body. He shared his room with only one other man. A pristine baby blue curtain with blue symmetrical prints separated the two beds. Tony’s bed was farthest from the door, giving us a modicum of privacy during my visits.
I could lay in his hospital bed with him and watch TV until the nurse kicked me out. “You can’t sleep with the patient!” Other than that, they gave me no grief.
* * * * *
Several days later, it’s hard to know how many, they all blurred together, Tony was spending more time unconscious than conscience. More clear tubes were added to his body. An Oxygen mask was added to his face. When he was awake, he teased me less and didn’t respond to my jokes or my comments on reports of the outside world. He became uncomfortable with me in the same bed, so I sat on the chair next to him and leaned my face against the mattress. Tony’s scent, which I had always found intoxicating, had shifted. My instincts told me that it was decay. It was transformation. Tony’s body was changing rapidly, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I brought in a cassette player and put in a tape I’d received at the Hay Ride. Louise L. Hay was an old hippie who took it upon herself to minister to those afflicted with AIDS. She was the saint we needed while AIDS raged through our village. I’d seen her at the West Hollywood Park Auditorium for months before meeting Tony. The love, meditations, and group experience of hundreds of souls affected and infected by AIDS was something Tony had never experienced. She had given us a tape of one of her guided meditations. A meditation that led the listener through a brilliantly beautiful mountain meadow, up a stream on a self-propelled boat, into a healing temple filled with practitioners using their powers of love and focused metaphysical energy to free our bodies of that which is not of the real self, that thing the world calls disease.
I played the tape quietly on Tony’s pillow even though his eyes were closed, and I was unsure if any of the messages were getting through. Soothing music was also part of the tape, and I played that as well. At the end of one of the instrumental movements, I heard the voice of Tony’s roommate.
“Mike?” I looked at the baby blue curtain. “Mike, can you come here for a second?”
Tony’s roommate was alone. His two friends had left more than an hour ago, so I laid the tape recorder down on the stand next to Tony’s bed, next to the blue banana-shaped spit pan and his uneaten jello. I walked around the curtain and looked at him. It occurred to me that I didn’t even know his name. He was bloated, or maybe he was fat, but the parts of his body that were visible were covered with Kaposi Sarcoma sores, and he was connected to the hospital with almost as many tubes as Tony. How could I help this guy? Why didn’t he call a nurse?
He reached to me with his left hand, and instinctively I took it with my right. I placed my left hand on top of his hand, noticing the raised KS sores but not caring if I touched them. “Mike, that is the most beautiful vigil I have ever witnessed.” He squeezed my hand, and I started to cry silent tears. How could this man be comforting me?
I was also startled to learn that I was engaged in a vigil.
* * * * *
After ten days, Tony was moved into a private room, and I was told that he would “go” at any time. I was allowed to stay in the room overnight on the reclining chair beside his bed. Tony’s breath was labored, he wasn’t eating, he was unconscious most of the time and unresponsive when he opened his eyes.
A day passed, and then another, and then another, and Tony remained the same. I had not left the hospital except to cross the street and eat at McDonald's. The ordeal seemed to have no end in sight, and the only way out was incomprehensible.
Back in Tony’s room, I looked in the mirror above the sink and wondered how long it would be until I was in the same situation, lying on my own deathbed. I looked gaunt and skinny. The hallows of my cheeks were growing, and my arms were deflating. I felt guilty for thinking of myself, of caring about my vanity, but my instinct for survival and my desperation for some relief from this endless trail of despair screamed for a break. I was also financially broke and had no idea how I would pay our rent. Slinging some drinks to make some cash and being out of the hospital for a night sounded like a great idea when the bar manager at Revolver called to ask if I could work a shift.
* * * * *
Two weeks had passed since Gay Pride, and the Revolver crowd was back to regulars. I drank in their familiarity. I found further relief in my Absolute vodka on the rocks with a lemon twist, an Amstel Light beer to chase it down with, and a few bumps of cocaine offered by acquaintances wishing me well. I found it so comforting that I soon lost track of the number of drinks I had poured for myself.
Without knowing how I got there, I found myself swimming naked in a private pool in a house in Hollywood. I remembered bartending at a private party there a month or two before. That must be how I got invited to the after-hours party. My friend Dave was present, so I knew I wasn’t completely alone. I relaxed and enjoyed the water and the warmth of the naked man whose body I was straddling. He was standing in the water, gently bobbing me up and down. We kissed. The strength of his broad shoulders and the anonymity of his background made it easy to abandon myself into the pleasure of that moment. I faded blissfully into unconsciousness.
Bright sunlight reflected off white sheets on the rumpled pull-out sofa I woke up on. Another nice house, another hangover, and another morning waking up covered in lube and cum. At least the guy next to me was sexy. Then, through the dehydration, the headache, and the disorientation of what part of LA I was in, I remembered. Tony’s in the hospital. I should call.
I padded around the living room’s hardwood floor in my bare feet, still naked, not knowing where my clothes were. I located a phone on a credenza just below a window that looked out onto the neighbor’s manicured property. I dialed the number of the nurse's station that I now knew by heart.
“Joanne?” I said when I heard the voice on the other end of the line. She was a young black nurse who had been exceptionally kind to Tony and me. She had never questioned my right to be there at Tony’s side, and she answered any questions I had about his medical condition.
“Mike. Is that you, honey?” she said.
“Yeah, it’s me. How is Tony?”
“Oh honey, we have been trying to call you for hours. Honey, Tony died three hours ago.”
What a wonderful memory. Thank you, Mike for bringing Tony back today on World AIDS Day. I had forgotten what a beautiful man Tony was. 31 years ago the world (and West Hollywood) was a very different place and I can't imagine how Tony would react to the wonderful, powerful man you've become. This is a day when I am able to reflect on all the beautiful men that never got the opportunity we have been afforded because of this continuing plague. I know how lucky I am. I know how grateful I am. But most of all I am thrilled to not be pushing little white triangles over to anyone any longer. Than you for the beautiful memory of Tony.
Thank you Mike for sharing this personal story. I believe these stories need to be told again and again so the people and the era are not forgotten. Especially, the people are not forgotten.