Michael Thomas Ford - Full Circle

by Michael Thomas Ford

  "I've got lunch," I said, holding up the bag I'd picked up at the Gay Men's Health Crisis office on West 22nd Street and brought to John's apartment four blocks away.

  "I'm sure it's delicious," John said as he accepted the bag from me and walked into the apartment's tiny kitchen. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do next. My training to be an AIDS buddy had been minimal, consisting mainly of an introduction to how they believed it could and could not be transmitted and some suggestions for handling the sometimes shocking appearance of people suffering from what until recently the medical community had called "gay cancer." In 1982, a year after the first cases had been diagnosed, there were still few definite answers about how or why so many gay men were becoming infected with this new ailment. But they were, and we were growing increasingly worried. A recent New York Times article—which still referred to the disease by the homo-specific acronym GRID, for gay-related immunodeficiency disease—had reported that since the first appearance of the disorder in San Francisco, at least 335 people had been diagnosed, out of which a terrifying 136 had died. Those of us in the gay community believed that the numbers were actually much higher. In New York, we had already seen a steep rise in the number of men developing debilitating pneumonia and the telltale purple lesions of Kaposi's sarcoma. Foreseeing a health issue of epic proportions, a small group of friends had founded Gay Men's Health Crisis to gather and disseminate information as it became available. Housed in a building owned by Mel Cheren, known to most of us as the "Godfather of Disco"

  and partner in the famous Paradise Garage nightclub, GMHC was spearheading the movement to make gay men aware of what was happening. In April, Alan and I had braved a freak spring snowstorm to attend the first benefit for the fledgling organization, a night of entertainment by the likes of Evelyn "Champagne" King and the New York City Gay Men's Chorus, as well as impassioned speeches asking for donations and volunteers. Moved by the occasion, and by the fact that already Alan and I knew half a dozen people from the theater community who were ill, I'd signed up to be a buddy to a person with AIDS. Now, a month later, I was making my first visit.

  "Would you like me to leave you to your lunch?" I asked John as he took a plate from a cupboard and opened the containers of food I'd brought.

  "I'd rather you stayed," he answered. "If you don't mind. I don't get a lot of visitors."

  He sat down at the table tucked into one corner of the room. I sat across from him as he picked up a fork and began to pick at the macaroni and cheese that had been made that morning by other volunteers. I noticed that he swallowed gingerly, as if it hurt him to eat. He coughed, and the front of his kimono opened. I saw that his chest was covered with dark purple spots the size of quarters.

  "The music is pretty," I said, trying not to stare.

  John pulled his robe closed. "Madame Butterfly," he said. "Do you like opera?"

  "I've never really listened to it," I told him. "I'm afraid I wouldn't really understand it if it's not in English."

  "You don't need to understand the words," John said as he poked at a carrot. "The music tells you everything you need to know. Just listen."

  He was quiet, closing his eyes as the music played. "Cio-Cio-San is a beautiful fifteen-year-old geisha," he said. "They call her ‘Butterfly.' She falls in love with Pinkerton, a handsome navy lieutenant. He marries her, but he knows he can never make a life with her. They have a child. Then he leaves, promising to come back for her. She waits three years for him to return, turning down an offer of marriage from a prince who finds her beauty irresistible. When Pinkerton does come back, he brings a new wife with him. They go to Butterfly to request that she let them take her child."

  John stopped speaking, sitting silently and listening to the voice coming from the speakers. I couldn't understand the words, but I could feel in the singing an intense sadness. "Butterfly agrees to let them have the boy," said John, his voice soft beneath the singing, as if he was translating for me. "She tells them to come back later for him. When they're gone, she blindfolds her son. Then she goes behind a screen and stabs herself. When Pinkerton comes for their child, he finds her and she dies in his arms."

  He was quiet again, this time for a long period during which the music swelled and filled the room. When he opened his eyes, they were wet with tears. "She loved him even when he betrayed her," he said. "And he didn't see how much he loved her until she was dying."

  "Are all operas that cheerful?" I asked him.

  "No," he answered. "Some are actually sad."

  I laughed at his joke. He reached up and pulled the wig from his head, revealing a scalp covered in thin tufts of hair. He set the wig on the table, where it rested like a shiny cat beside his plate. John scratched his head lightly, avoiding the purple blotches that stained the skin.

  "Excuse my poor manners," he said. "I realize that subjecting you to my affliction is a poor way of repaying your kindness." "It's okay," I told him.

  "May I ask why you do it?" he said.

  "Do what?" I asked.

  "Come here," he answered. "Visiting the dying is hardly something most people would undertake voluntarily. Usually it's done out of a sense of guilt, and I don't see that you have anything to be guilty for, at least as far as I'm concerned. We never tricked, did we? You don't look familiar, but then the lighting at the baths is not particularly illuminating."

  I chuckled. "I don't think so," I said. "I guess I do it because it makes me less afraid." "How so?" John said. "Doesn't seeing this"—he indicated his lesions—"make you fear what might happen?"

  "Maybe it helps me get used to it," I suggested. "In case it does happen."

  "Very practical," said John. "I commend you. And please, don't think I'm trying to scare you off. So far you are most welcome company." "You haven't," I assured him as he resumed eating his lunch. He spilled some food on his chin, and when he wiped it away, the napkin took some of his makeup with it, revealing more lesions beneath the smooth white surface. His entire costume, I realized, was hiding the ravaged body beneath.

  "What did you do?" I asked him. "Before you got…before." I didn't know how to phrase the question in a way that wouldn't be offensive. "Before I became one of the damned?" he said for me. "I was a dresser. At the Metropolitan Opera. I helped people with beautiful voices get into beautiful clothes." He lifted his arm and wagged the sleeve of his kimono. "This, for instance, was worn by none other than Renata Scotto for a New Year's Eve performance in 1974. Barry Morell was Pinkerton to her Cio-Cio-San. It was divine."

  "You must have seen some amazing things," I remarked.

  "I have," he said. "I worked there for twenty years. It was a wonderful life. And now," he added, shrugging, "now I have the memories and the recordings." "And the costumes," I said.

  "Just a few," John said, smiling. "I don't think they'll be missed."

  He finished his lunch and I cleared away the dishes for him. After that he was tired, and announced that he was going to take a nap. "But you will come back, won't you?" he asked. "Every Tuesday and Thursday," I said. "I look forward to it," he told me as he stretched out on the sofa in the living room. I covered him with a blanket and left him alone with his music, returning to the sunny afternoon. As I walked home, I found myself wondering if Brian had ended up looking like John at the end. I hated the idea of his handsome face being stolen from him by the cancer. I hated this disease that was feeding on the beauty of men, consuming them for some unknown reason, as if a plague had been loosed upon us. I hoped it would run its course, and soon, before too many more were taken.

  That night, Alan, Taffy, and I went to Michael's Pub to hear Margaret Whiting perform. She was a favorite of Alan's, and he was particularly excited because she was singing songs made famous by Ethel Merman, whose ill-fated disco album he and Taffy sometimes performed to. As we sat at our table, waiting for the show to start, I was looking around the room when a man sitting a few tables over caught my attention. Something about him was familiar, although I couldn't
place his face. Before I could ask Alan and Taffy if they knew him, Margaret Whiting came out and began singing. Throughout the show I kept stealing glances at the man, trying to figure out where I'd seen him. It was making me crazy, because I was sure I knew him. Then, during a break between numbers, Margaret Whiting walked to his table and said, "I want to thank my husband, Jack, for encouraging me to do this show."

  Instantly, I knew who he was. Jack Wrangler. I leaned over to Alan. "Did she just say her ‘husband'?" I asked him.

  He nodded. "I'm not sure if they're really married, but they might as well be," he answered. "They've been together a long time now." "Does she know he's a gay porn star?" I asked.

  "He doesn't do that anymore," said Alan, as if this was old news. "He makes straight ones now."

  The music began again, making further discussion impossible. But I couldn't stop looking from Wrangler to Whiting. She had to be at least twenty years older than he was. And although she sang beautifully, I had a hard time understanding what the horse-hung star of Raunch Ranch saw in the plump, matronly songbird. When the show ended, I watched as he stood to kiss her, trying to reconcile the image of the doting lover with that of the man I'd last seen sticking it to a beefy, hairy-chested stud wearing nothing but construction boots on the set of one of Brian's films.

  As I was watching them, Jack turned and looked right at me. For a moment he seemed to be thinking, then his face lit up with recognition. I was surprised to see him walk toward me, and even more surprised when he reached out to shake my hand and said, "Ned, it's been a long time. How are you?"

  "I'm doing well," I answered as Taffy and Alan looked on, their mouths hanging open. "How's Brian?" Jack asked. "I haven't talked to him in a while."

  "He passed away," I told him, not sure how else to say it. "Last summer."

  "Oh, God," said Jack. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know."

  "It was unexpected," I said. "He had AIDS."

  Jack flinched visibly. I'd heard that men from the adult film industry were running scared since the discovery that sex was a primary means of transmission of the disease, and I wondered if that had played any part in his move from gay films to heterosexual life. "What are you doing in New York?" he asked, not pressing me for details of Brian's death.

  "I live here now," I answered. "I'm actually in school."

  "That's great," Jack said. He took a business card out of his pocket and handed it to me. "Here's my number. You'll have to have dinner with me and Margaret one of these nights." "I'd like that," I lied. "It's good to see you."

  "You, too," said Jack. "Now don't forget to call me."

  When he was out of earshot, Taffy grabbed the card from me. "I can't believe you know him," she said. "I don't really know him," I said. "I met him a few times."

  "Did you ever…" Taffy began to ask, looking at me and raising her overly-manicured eyebrows. "No," I said. "I didn't."

  "Too bad," said Taffy.

  "You don't seem very excited about seeing him again," Alan said.

  "It just reminds me of another time," I told him.

  "Well, can we still go to dinner with them?" Taffy asked.

  I ignored her, taking out money to pay for our drinks as Alan got up. "Come on," he said. "Let's get out of here before she asks to be in his next film."

  "Oh," Taffy said, excited. "Do you think he likes Asian girls?" We took a cab home. As Taffy talked excitedly about having seen a real live porn star, I looked out the window at the passing city. Seeing Jack Wrangler again had unnerved me, reminding me not only of Brian's death, but making me think about the unfairness of it all. Why, I wondered, were some of us dying terrible deaths while others were unscathed? Not that anyone deserved it more or less than others. Nobody deserved what was happening to us. But still, I couldn't help but question why certain men were chosen. Were we just unlucky? Had Brian's death simply been a random event? Was John's sickness merely the result of an accident? It bothered me to think so, but it bothered me even more to think that we had somehow brought this on ourselves through some action we'd believed to be harmless. All we'd ever wanted was to love one another. Now we were dying, possibly as a result. I didn't know if I would ever have the answers to my questions or, if I did, if I would be able to live with them. I needed to believe that some things could last forever, that there was hope. I reached for Alan's hand. In the darkness, it was a lifeline to hope, and I held it, afraid to let go.

  CHAPTER 44

  The granite was cool beneath my fingers, the polished surface broken by the thin curves and lines of the letters carved into it. As I ran my hand down the panel, I imagined cutting each of the 57,939 names recorded on the monument's skin. The names of the dead, written in stone as a testament to the toll of the war in Vietnam. They were arranged in the order in which they had died, beginning with Dale R. Buis, age 37, killed on July 8, 1959, and ending with 27-year-old Richard Vande Geer, killed on May 15, 1975.

  Washington is a city of monuments, famous for its obelisks and tombs, its statues and temples built to honor the heroes of years past. It is probably the only city in America where history is immortalized in bronze and marble even as it is being made. To walk its streets is to tour the land of the dead. On November 13, 1982, a blustery Saturday marked by wind and rain, it was the veterans of Vietnam who were being remembered. We were given a parade, something none of us had received upon our original homecomings. Even now, though, feelings of ambivalence and occasional outright condemnation remained concerning the actions of those of us who had fought. The crowd along Constitution Avenue had been sparse, with some blocks of the parade route nearly empty of observers. While those who did attend were mostly supportive, a handful of protesters greeted veterans with cries of "Shame!"

  I myself did not march, electing to go directly to the site of the memorial. I felt no need to be either celebrated or forgiven by people I didn't even know. I had come to Washington because I wanted to remember the friends I'd lost, and perhaps to see some concrete evidence that the war was really, finally over. Also, I wanted to see the monument that had given rise to such debate over the past year and a half. Since the winning design had been announced in May of 1981, public opinion had been strongly divided regarding the design proposed by 21-year-old Yale architecture student Maya Lin. Some found the stark black vee cut into a low hillside as ugly and violent as a scar, while others saw it as a simple, powerful statement that encouraged reflection.

  I saw it as a role call of the dead. I found the design neither offensive nor uplifting. It was simply a scroll of black rock on which the names of men who should still be alive had been cut with mechanical precision, as if they had been species of lilies or items put into storage. I was glad that they would be remembered, and that the people who had loved them would have a place to come and think about them, but to me it was still a list of victims.

  Alan had offered to come with me, but I had said no. I loved him dearly, but Vietnam had been my experience, not his. Besides, I wasn't going there to indulge in memories. I didn't want to play tour guide to my time in Southeast Asia, telling him stories about this person and that occasion, reliving the battles and recounting the long stretches of boredom. I just wanted to see for myself what the lives of nearly 60,000 soldiers amounted to, how America had chosen to symbolize our sweat and blood, our broken bodies and shattered hearts.

  It's interesting how we choose to remember. In 1965, North Vietnam had issued a postage stamp featuring the image of Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker father of three who had set himself on fire in front of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's office at the Pentagon to protest U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The government of the United States had subsequently made it illegal to own stamps (as well as coins) from North Vietnam, but I had acquired one, and I carried it in my wallet (I still do), not because I necessarily agreed with Morrison's position, but because I respected his conviction. The stamp, which depicts the hovering, smiling face of Morrison surrounded by flames as beneath him pr
otesters carry signs decrying the American presence in Vietnam, is a fascinating piece of political propaganda, but it is also a moving memorial to the sacrifice made by one man doing what he thought was right.

  In contrast, nearly a quarter of a century would pass before the United States postal service finally issued, in 1999, a stamp commemorating the Vietnam War. And on that day in 1982 when the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated, the man whose attention Morrison had been trying to get in 1965 did not even make an appearance. Now the chairman of the Overseas Development Council, and one of the few Vietnam–era figures still active in Washington, McNamara spent the day in his office catching up on paperwork instead of honoring the men he'd been instrumental in sending to their deaths. For all the speeches that went on that day, Americans were still mostly ashamed of the only war we ever lost, and those of us who fought it were still paying the price.

  On the train ride from Penn Station to Union Station the night before, I'd compiled a list of the men whose names I wanted to search for the next day. Now that I was at the wall, I found that I didn't want to look for any of them. The list was in my pocket, but I left it there untouched. While all around me others scanned the rows of names until they found the brother, son, uncle, father, husband, lover, friend, or cousin they had come to honor, I stared at the names until they became a blur, running together in one long, continuous ribbon:ORVAL A BALDWIN JACKSON BARNES SAMUEL BOSENBARK

  WILLARD CLEMMONS JAMES H DUNN III BENJAMIN W HAIRE DUANE K HIESER JOHN C REILLY RUSSELL E HUPE VAN J JOYCE STEVEN L MARTIN DOUGLAS F MOORE . They became to me one man, one sacrifice, one offering made to the gods of war in a deal gone bad. I mourned them all, not just the men whose names I held in my pocket, but every one of them. In the way that Harvey Milk had died for all of gay San Francisco, the names on the wall stood for those who had died for the promise of freedom. But where Harvey had helped us fulfill our dreams, the people of Vietnam were still suffering.