by Brad Fraser
* * *
—
We had recently learned that the mysterious killer of gay men was a virus that spread through sexual contact. It was now called AIDS, for acquired immune deficiency syndrome, and authorities were unsure how many of those who contracted the virus would survive. What was being discussed, this sexually transmitted death sentence, was too immense to be truly comprehended. The entire gay community went into an intense period of shock and fear.
To the straight world it was a novelty news story. To the budding gay community, just coming into their civic and social power, it was a bombshell that would lead to even greater disagreement and discord within the community than had existed among the various factions before. All of the recommendations to stop the spread of the virus seemed to tie directly into the sex-shaming we’d always gotten from the het majority. There was something mean and manipulative in the way the disease was reported. There was no test, no way to find out who might get it until someone was afflicted.
The signs and symptoms were maddeningly common: fevers, night sweats, swollen lymph glands—I recalled with panic my mysterious illness during rehearsal over a year ago. All of us were vigilant in checking our bodies for telltale lesions.
People from New York, the epicentre of the disease, were shunned in Toronto. Everyone seemed to be drinking more and everyone going to the tubs seemed to be drunk or high. A lot of guys, myself included, stopped fucking entirely. Even oral was suspect. There was a lot of frottage and jerking off together. Daniel and I fucked each other but swore to be true. I was, but with his late-night bar job I suspected he was not living up to his end of the bargain.
That spring, one of the major TV networks ran an hour-long prime-time documentary on AIDS, and every gay person in North America was talking about it the next day. The information and images were beyond horrific. The profiles of once beautiful men now stricken, skeletal like the survivors of concentration camps, their skin riddled with lesions and sores, were chilling. Many different treatments were being tried, some of them as horrifying as the disease, but with little effect.
Suddenly we were all Schrödinger’s fags, both alive and dead at the same time—until some doctor diagnosed us.
* * *
—
I’d finally gone to a Wolfboy rehearsal and found things were very strange. Privately a couple of the actors admitted they were adrift and the director, John Palmer, wasn’t helping them focus. At their urging I spoke to John, asking if he was all right or needed anything. He assured me he was fine and seemed to resent my concern, so I backed off.
A few days later I got a letter at the theatre. It was from Daniel’s “roommate,” who, just as I’d suspected, turned out to be his ex-lover. It was clearly a revenge letter, pointing out that Daniel was a grifter and not to be trusted. I learned that basically everything Daniel had told me about his background was false. He wasn’t estranged from a wealthy Jewish family but had been turned out by his middle-class Christian parents after a number of shocking events. He’d had affairs with closeted men whom he’d later tried to blackmail. The ex ended his letter by saying he’d been reading about my career and was sure Daniel had attached himself to me in hopes of making it rich.
That night I gave Daniel the letter. He read it, then set the letter down, not looking at me. After a long moment tears began to roll down his cheeks. He admitted everything was true. He’d been living this way for a couple of years, wanted a way out, and was hoping being with me would help him to change. He was so sincere my heart melted and five minutes later we were in bed.
As the show was about to move from the rehearsal hall to the theatre, John Palmer called me and asked if I’d drop in for their first few days on the stage. I promised I would, happily.
But after witnessing a run-through of the play, I was far from happy. The actors knew where to move and what to say, but there was no indication they had any idea what it all meant. Everything they were doing was surface; there was no underlying tension to the performances. It was as if they’d rehearsed without ever having really discussed what the play was about.
As they ran through again, I began to stop them after particular sections and ask simple questions about objectives, for which they had no answers. This was particularly true of Keanu, who had a lot of charisma even then but no technique. Even worse, the relationship between David and Bernie, which was written to be so hot and consuming, came across as tepid and unconvincing. I began making suggestions, asking more questions—in short, doing the director’s job—and everyone appeared relieved by it, including the director. At one point Keanu said, “Wow, now we’re doing the work we’ve been avoiding for the last three weeks”—which pretty much summed it all up. When I left that rehearsal I hoped I’d helped the cast, but I had my reservations. With good reason, as opening night would prove.
The only word I can use to describe that production is “listless.” The actors had come a long way in the last few days of rehearsal, but their work couldn’t hide the director’s deficiencies, or mine. Perhaps under a stronger directorial hand some of the script’s failings might have been downplayed or glossed over; perhaps if the script had been stronger, John’s flaws wouldn’t have stood out. But those things hadn’t happened.
After the opening, people congratulated me in the hearty way they do when they’ve disliked something. I felt like shit and did some mushrooms one of the technicians shared with me. After leaving the theatre with Daniel, I angrily hurled my beer bottle at the window of a warehouse across the street, thankfully missing so it smashed against the brick wall.
“What’s wrong with you?” Daniel asked.
“I’m high and it’s not going very well.”
“You’re high?”
“Yeah. I did some mushrooms.”
He hit me in the face.
Not the best thing to do. I flashed back to my father hitting me as a child and my fist shot out, hitting him in the nose hard enough to release a spurt of blood. Within seconds we were at one another’s throats, all of the frustrations of our relationship finding physical expression as we pummelled one another, roaring in rage until the owner of the restaurant whose parking lot we were fighting in came out screaming, sending us on our way.
After that Daniel and I avoided one another as much as two people sharing a bed could. Our times together were sullen and silent. The relationship was over; all that was left was the extricating. It had only been five months since we’d met.
The play bombed. The reviews were mixed, with the more right-wing writers uncomfortable with the homoeroticism and the more left-wing commentators leery of the misogyny of the characters, which they also attributed to the author. I’d assumed most people would realize that two young male characters on the cusp of manhood who were both brought up by fucked-up moms and weird dads would have issues with gender hatred but, as would be so often the case throughout my career, the points reviewers hated most were the ones I was most intent on making. All the press I’d been doing dried up and box office reports were miserable.
If anyone ever tells you they saw the production of Wolfboy in Toronto in 1984 starring Keanu Reeves, there’s a strong possibility they’re lying. I made no money.
And then I lost my waiting job when a dispute over the hated tip pool resulted in everyone being fired.
That was enough. With borrowed money I bought a Greyhound ticket back to Edmonton, packed up what I needed, stored the rest, apologized to Leslie, told Daniel he had to be out at the end of the month and went home in defeat and shame.
And, although I would never verbalize it to anyone, I was also running away from the rabid three-headed dog called AIDS. I prayed I wasn’t infected but I suspected I was.
PART SEVEN
CHAINSAW LOVE
AFTER SEVENTY-TWO HOURS of traversing endless prairie I arrived in Edmonton, tired, sore and missing one contact lens, which had d
isappeared from my eye while I was sleeping. It would take me a month to make enough money to replace it.
Randy picked me up at the bus station and drove me to my mom’s place, where I’d arranged to stay until I figured things out.
I felt like an absolute loser.
Alberta was in the throes of the first big oil bust. Prices were dropping and speculators were running scared. People’s houses were suddenly worth less than their mortgages. Edmonton was in rough shape, and the downtown core in particular was suffering.
I found a job in an art supplies shop, supplemented by a waiting job at a new gay bar, gradually got in touch with old friends and ended up taking the second bedroom at Cam’s new apartment. I was sick of the theatre and felt I would never be allowed to fit in.
Given the gay press I was getting, I thought it might be best to finally speak to my mother about my sexuality. In the interviews I’d done no one had ever asked me if I was gay, although I often sensed some of them wanted to. Most just assumed I was straight. I never did anything that publicly said “Hey, I’m gay” except make these appearances and speak candidly in Canada’s few gay periodicals, which most straight people were completely unaware of anyway.
Sharon and I met at the Kresge’s lunch counter, taking a chrome booth with a colourful Formica table, and ordered dishes composed of grease, starch and meat. After a bit of small talk I said, “Because of these interviews and things that’ve come out I thought I should probably tell you I’m gay.”
She stared at me for a moment, then said, “I have breast cancer.”
I recognized this as one of her “whatever you just said I have to outdo” moments and was not fooled. “Breast cancer?”
From her expression I could tell she knew this wasn’t working, so she quickly added, “Benign cysts. Don’t ever tell your father what you are.”
I said, “Why?”
She said, “He’ll kill you.”
I shrugged and ate my clubhouse. That she claimed to care about the opinion of a man she hated was another feint. She sipped her Coke, then checked her lipstick with the makeup mirror in her purse. She was confused. For the first time in either of our lives she didn’t know how to make this about her.
Months later my mother would tell me that her prayer group had spent weeks beseeching god to turn me straight. To this day their prayers have gone unanswered.
As for the press, one day an arts writer referred to me in an article with the descriptor “Fraser, who has never made a secret about the fact he is gay,” and I was publicly out without ever having announced it.
One day, after we’d been roommates for a few months, Cam told me he’d like me to move out at the end of the month. I looked at him, shocked.
“Seriously?”
He nodded casually as he got something from the fridge. “Yeah. My friend Dwayne broke up with his boyfriend and needs a place. He’s got a lot of nice stuff.”
“I thought we were going to be roommates.”
“No. You were just staying here until you found another place.”
I was weirded out. “That’s not what we said.”
“Brad, that’s what I understood.”
“Have I done something wrong?”
“Oh no, not at all. We’ve always gotten along. But you—I want Dwayne to move in.”
I was speechless for a moment before saying, “Okay, if that’s what you want.”
He smiled and nodded and went into his room. That was that.
I moved into a house in the downtown Oliver area shared by an older gay couple in their late thirties. They had the downstairs of the house, we shared a kitchen and a large bathroom, and I had an immense loft-style room to myself on the second floor. The arrangement was temporary from the start, but it would get me through the winter.
It became clear that my friendship with Randy had changed. We still shared our best-friend intimacy and trust, but our social interests had taken divergent paths. After I’d gone to Toronto he spent less time at Flashback and more time with his straight friends. We saw one another a couple times a week, and frequently spoke on the phone, but our earlier, intense codependency was gone.
In fact, since AIDS had been discovered, the entire free-love/hedonism/experimentation of the late seventies had collapsed. A great many of the openly bi or sexually fluid people I’d known on the scene had fled back to their former hetero lives. The move toward a sexually democratic society had been halted.
* * *
—
While working at the new gay bar, I clicked with two other waiters: a muscular, lean graphic artist named Richard, who was too observant and funny to ever be truly butch, and a hot Italian-looking guy named Tad, who was strangely deferential around me. Later he would tell me it was because the mohawk Cam had given me had intimidated him.
Tad was a flight attendant experiencing one of the lengthy layoffs that were common in that business at the time. The three of us hung around together in different iterations depending on who was working. By the end of the summer the bar was waning and we were all let go for lack of business.
By that time I had dumped the art shop for a job serving lunches at Walden’s, one of Edmonton’s best restaurants. Money was good and so was morale. I made friends at this job who are still friends today.
One night after Tad and I had been out, struck out, and had too much to drink, he staggered home with me and I fucked him. We had a great time, but the partner thing wasn’t flying. Instead we became great friends who would still fuck from time to time.
Kate Newby, who’d just completed her MFA in acting, and I decided to rent a two-bedroom together. The hunt for a place proved pretty frustrating, not because there weren’t vacancies—apartments were plentiful—but because of our busy schedules. She was working at the Crêperie, a restaurant owned by the same people who ran Walden’s, to pay off her student debt. Fed up with our prevaricating, one day she looked at an apartment by herself and called me at work. After a quick description, I told her to take it.
The apartment was in an Edwardian building called the Westminster. It was a charming, low-slung, three-storey building faced with brown brick and sandstone. Our suite was in the basement and the rent was cheap. It had large rooms, except for the kitchen, which was so small the fridge was in the dining room, and an old claw-foot bathtub with no shower. Large pipes running across the ceiling of each room carried steam and water to the rest of the building. They were wrapped in something that looked like asbestos tape. We cleaned the place like crazy, spiffed it up with bright, cheap furniture, and lived there in relative security for the next few years.
One night I ran into Benny at the Roost. He was as beefy and handsome as ever. We hugged and he filled me in on what was going on in his life. His younger brother had gotten into some trouble doing recreational cocaine in South America, and Benny was working to bail him out. The night as usual ended with us back at wherever he was staying and I would thank my lucky stars for this amazing guy who bottomed like a porn star. We would run into one another frequently over the next couple of years and end up in sexual situations, occasionally with another party or two.
In Toronto I’d grown used to going out on my own. If one was hunting, a pack could be a detriment, and anyway I didn’t have a lot of gay friends there. With Richard and Tad, I had a couple of buddies in arms. We all worked out, wore identical white wifebeaters and 501s, and had moustaches and similar haircuts. We even got our nipples pierced together, by Richard’s friend, a bisexual female nurse with a taste for S&M and a wicked sense of humour. Pierced nipples were a novelty then, and mine would freak people out for the next ten years. In the mid-nineties, when everyone was getting everything pierced, I took my ring out and let the hole close up. You know a trend’s been ruined when white straight people take it up.
That autumn Kate left town to do a show, and Tad sublet his place and moved
in with me. One autumn night after leaving the club with Richard, the three of us went for a bite at a nearby restaurant. Afterwards we took a shortcut through the alley that ran next to the Odeon Theatre. By the time we were partway up the alley we realized we were being followed by four men about our age. We shared a quick look and quickened our step. Our pursuers did the same, saying they were going to take Tad’s fleece-lined leather coat off him.
Tad said to them, “Come on, guys. We don’t need any trouble.”
They laughed. We could hear them whispering, “…faggots…cocksuckers…why you walking so fast…scared?”
We were terrified. We were also three guys who worked out and they didn’t look all that big. Just as we emerged from the alley across the street from the Hudson’s Bay store they rushed us. I could feel adrenaline flushing through my system. My father didn’t teach me much in my childhood but he did teach me how to put up a guard and throw a punch, and I started roaring insults at them in my most demonic voice. I blocked a couple of punches and slapped my attacker away just as I heard Tad call my name. Two of them were moving in on him. Richard was holding his own with his attacker, landing a few decent blows, so I punched one of Tad’s assailants in the side of the head. He made a pained noise and amazingly they all took off.
As we walked up Jasper Avenue we were sky-high with our victory, giddy and shaky. We dropped Richard off at his place and continued on to mine. As we passed under the dark shadow of the old train overpass that used to cross Jasper just west of 109th Street, we became aware of footsteps behind us. Our hearts sank. The whispering started again. The quartet was back, and now we were just two.
