Life Sentence
“The Essex House Hotel in New York City, Overlooking beautiful Central Park South,” the man would say in the TV commercial from the1970’s, as a sweeping shot of Central Park from atop of the hotel would glide across the TV screen. I had never seen anything like it; A lush green postage stamp in the middle of a forest of buildings, the spectacular park preventing the buildings on either side from growing together. I was nine years old and I was mesmerized.
As the man continued bragging about the luxuries of The Essex House there were more shots the park; horse drawn carriages, a beautiful lake, dozens of people sitting on benches under the most beautiful trees while others ran or biked by.
The Essex House and Central Park were a far cry from the Colonial hamlet I grew up in, in Bucks County Pennsylvania. Fallsington Pennsylvania, was a quaint, quiet, safe place to grow up and after realizing that I was gay and then being tormented by my classmates about it from seventh to twelfth grade, I knew I didn’t belong there. I needed to live in Manhattan and be a New Yorker. I couldn’t wait to see Central Park in person.
It was July of 1985 when I arrived in the big city. Well, Jersey City, actually. I had no college degree and no real work experience, which made finding a job difficult. After weeks of scouring The Village Voice I found a job at the Fur Salon at Alexander’s Department Store on 58th and Lexington. I didn’t know anything about fur coats or the fur business, but they needed a stock boy and I was happy to take the job. I relished the feeling of being a New Yorker and taking the subway to my New York City job.
The first person I met in the salon was Jamie Iris Shapiro. She was a textbook JAP with her thick New York accent, gold Rolex, Louis Vuitton bag and the longest fingernails I’d ever seen.
She had earned the moniker of JAP and wore it proudly. Jamie embodied the glamour and style of the New York I had dreamed of; everything she wore had a designer label, she had almost as many fur coats as the salon we worked in, and her best friend was a gay guy named Jason who was just as affluent as she was. She had done nothing but talk about this guy Jason since I got there.
“He only wears Armani suites and Gucci loaf-iz.”
They had worked together at a fur salon downtown and it seemed she was obsessed with him.
“His name is Jason Cohen which means he’s a descendent of King David because King David was a Cohen.”
And although I had no idea what any of that meant, I knew I wanted to meet Jason.
I had been in New York for months. I had made the rounds to the bars, but I was horribly insecure, and walking up to someone in a bar to say hello was as impossible for me as walking across the Hudson River to get back home to Jersey City. Nobody spoke to me either. I’d go into a bar with my feathered, blonde-highlighted hair spayed and moosed to perfection but I felt like I was invisible. I was desperate for some gay interaction – in every sense of the word.
About four months after I started working at the fur salon, Jamie decided to have a dinner party and Jason was of course going to be there.
“Jamie, I want to come to your dinner party.”
“Tim, I love you desperately, but you’re an odd num-bah.”
No idea what that meant.
“Your noyen (nine) I only have seating for eight. Where am I gonna put you?”
Hopes dashed, I said, “Oh, really? OK.” I lowered my head. Looked back, stared a bit too long.
“All right, you can come, but I don’t wanna fuckin’ hear you complain that you gotta sit on a fuckin’ ottoman.”
This was a dream come true. I was going. My first Manhattan dinner party!
What is more fabulous than a New York City dinner party? I thought. Nothing! And who are more fabulous than the people there? Nobody! And I was going to be one of those fabulous people! And I was going to meet Jason! I immediately ran down to the Men’s department and bought a new pair of underwear. I needed something sexier than the white Fruit of the Loom briefs my mother had just given me for Christmas.
I left work with Jamie, in my $8.00 pair of Calvin’s and went to her apartment to help set up. It was the least I could do since I invited myself to the social event of the season. I didn’t want to let on that I was excited to meet Jason, because Jamie would have made a big deal about it and it would have been awkward. After all, I had every reason to believe that he was not going to be interested in me, so I said nothing.
We were drinking and having a blast getting her apartment ready and soon the guests started showing up. They were as fabulous as I thought they’d be. All dressed up to have dinner in someone’s apartment. This is New York baby! Jamie and I were smoking a joint in the corner and suddenly the door opened and there he was.
Everyday when Jamie spoke about him, in my head I’d try to figure out what he looked like and none of those images looked like this guy. He was so handsome. Tall, with wavy black hair, a thick black moustache, and a thick layer of black chest hair poking out of his brown silk button-down shirt. He was 70’s porn star hot, which saddened me because I was not hot. I was sure he’d never go for me.
He caught me starting at him and stared back. Slowly he made his way over to us, he gave Jamie a big hug and kiss and as he pulled me in for a hug he said,
“You must be Tim. Jamie’s told me a lot about you.” I giggled like an idiot.
He hugged me for a nice long time, rubbed my back and told me I smelled good.
“Thank you.” I managed to eek out of my dry mouth.
“You and Jamie together at work, you must have a blast!” I had not expected him to be so warm and friendly but I was still terrified.
As he and Jamie gossiped about someone they used to work with I couldn’t stop gawking at him. Every now and then he’d look at me and wink.
- Was. Dying. This beautiful man was obviously flirting with me, but I didn’t know what to do. I had slept with exactly one person in New York, which brought my lifelong tally up to three. I could also count on one hand the number of men I had kissed. So, while this was all very exciting, I didn’t know how to act.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“In the Village, you?”
“I live in Jersey City.” Audible groans from both he and Jamie, so I quickly added,
“But I have an amazing skyline view!”
Jamie rolled her eyes, “Oh, yes, I’d much rather look at a skyline than live in one.”
It was the bitchiest, most brilliant comment I’d ever heard. We all cracked up then Jamie left to finish getting the food ready. Jason grabbed my hand and said,
“Where did you move here from?”
“I grew up outside of Philly, which is why I moved here as soon as I could.”
He laughed and moved just a bit closer. I think he was going to kiss me, or whisper something in my ear, when suddenly –
“Okay fuck-iz din din is just about ready so everyone go sit at the table. The folding chair is for Tim, who invited himself and fucked up the seating.”
It was a round table with 6 chairs, a loveseat and my folding chair,
“Which I had to barrow from my nabe-ah because I didn’t want you sittin’ on a foot stool like a schmuck”
Everyone headed to the table and as I went to sit on the folding chair, Jason pulled me down on the loveseat to sit next to him. Another guest gave me a nod and took the bullet for me and sat on the mismatched folding chair from apartment 7M. It was pretty obvious at that moment that I had made the right choice about buying new underwear.
The evening was perfect, Jason never left my side, unless I needed to have my drink refreshed. He was a perfect gentleman and made me feel very special. I had no idea how this was happening.
When the party was over Jason and I left together. The cold January air felt amazing as it bit my flushed cheeks, and on the north-west corner of 34th and 3rd, he kissed me; A big, full on, movie kiss. Me, finally playing the role I was born to play, the ingénue, up on my tiptoes kissing my handsome leading man, who then wrapped his hand around my waist and hailed a cab.
“We’re going to the West Village,” he said to the driver as he pulled me in and kissed me from Murray Hill to Morton Street.
I had never been kissed like that and we did it from the hallway while he unlocked the door, into the apartment where he dropped the keys on the floor, into the bedroom, and kept going as we undressed only stopping so he could throw me onto the bed. I fumbled around a bit since this was only my third time having sex with a man, but instincts kicked in and I figured out exactly what to do. And before he fucked me – without a condom in January of 1986 – I stopped him and said,
“What about this AIDS thing?”
“Oh, I’ve been tested 100 times, I’m fine.”
The sex was mind-blowing, all three times and then again in at dawn.
Lying in his bed that morning I buried my face in his arm and smiled, finally understanding what the term, “spooning,” meant. As I pushed my body backwards into his, my brain swirling itself awake, I couldn’t believe my luck. I had thought that this kind of connection would have taken longer to achieve. I kissed his hand, which was holding mine.
Jason unglued himself from me whispering that he had to get ready for work and he stumbled into the bathroom. I heard the water running then he popped his head into the bedroom doorway,
“Come on, take a shower with me,” he said and grabbed my hand. As the sheets untangled me, my heart began to pound. I had never showered with anyone. I suddenly felt like I had never even taken a shower before.
It was a long and narrow old New York City bathroom, with yellow and black tiles halfway up the wall, the top of which was blistered plaster being held in place by at least 1000 coats of paint. There was a small window with frosted glass over the toilet against the wall, an enormous pedestal sink and the biggest tub I’d ever seen. The shower curtain rod was a big “U” shaped piece of pipe bolted to the back wall and the white curtain hung from it.
The room was steamy. Jason got in first and held my hand as I climbed over the edge of the beautiful old tub. His back was to the curtain and mine toward the wall and the showerhead sprayed water between us. He put his hands on my shoulder, stared into my eyes, then pulled me into him and we kissed under the running water.
This is what I had been waiting for my entire life; all 21 years or it. This romance, this intimacy, it was pure and natural and it’s what I needed. I buried my face in his chest and grabbed him and hugged him so tightly. I wanted to cry for dramatic effect but there was nothing to cry about in this flawless moment.
He grabbed the soap and lathered up my back and my chest then he handed the soap to me and I did the same to him. Was life ever going to be as perfect as us passing the soap back and forth in this yellow and black bathroom? I was experiencing gay life and it fit me perfectly.
He called me twice that day and on the following day at work, the tables had turned; I was in the break room on the phone talking to him and Jamie walked in. I put him on speaker and Jamie made some silly comment about me being Pennsylvania Dutch and he said,
“Hey, be nice to my boyfriend.” What did he just say? Jamie and I looked at each other and screamed!!!
“Oh you’re boyfriends now?” She said. The whole time her acrylic nails were digging into my wrist.
“Yes,” Jason said, “Yes, we are boyfriends.” I lowered myself into a chair. “Unless Tim objects.” I was done playing it cool,
“Yes, Yes, I want to be boyfriends!!!” I got a man, annd only after six months in New York. Life was great.
Suddenly I had a boyfriend! A handsome boyfriend who fucked me often and hard; A little too hard for my liking but I knew someone who looked like me was lucky to be dating such a hot guy so I just kept my mouth shut.
I didn’t protest when he slapped me so hard in my face every time he fucked me that my ears would ring for hours after. I never complained when he pinched my nipples so ferociously that they bled for days. How could I? I knew he was a once in a lifetime opportunity so I said nothing. He was my boyfriend.
I loved telling people I had a boyfriend. I loved spending the night at my boyfriend’s apartment and when I would shit blood the next day from his violent rape sex, I loved telling myself, that’s what happens when your in love with your boyfriend.
Living the gay dream at any cost was better than being alone so I took it all. Well actually, he made me beg for it,
“Please slap me in the face, Sir.” Eyes averted of course. (I only made that mistake once.) I mean, what the fuck did I know? This was my first boyfriend and he was hot. A hot boyfriend trumps a lot of things when you’re young and stupid. Also, I didn’t have a voice yet, I honestly didn’t know that I could say “No” to this kind of behavior so on and on it went. Waking up in his arms or with my head on his chest was the payoff or… tradeoff.
As quickly as it had ignited was as quickly as it was extinguished. By the end of February he started acting weird. The calls were less and less everyday, weekends he had this to do, or that to do and couldn’t bring me, and sometimes I didn’t hear from him at all.
My first heartbreak – I was devastated. The pain felt worse than raw, scabbing nipples or bloody bowl movements. It was a hallow ache that reverberated through my body on an endless loop, and I constantly wondered, What have I done to upset him so much that he could just ignore me? I would incessantly go over every single word I said or didn’t say. I was the worst fucking boyfriend to have ruined such intense love. What an idiot and a fuckup I am. I am a loser.
The second weekend in March I went home to Philly. It was my best friend’s 21st birthday and I needed to get away and clear my head, which of course was impossible. The party was fun, but when I woke up on Sunday, I felt awful. By noon I had a fever of 102. My mother suggested that I not go back to New York and go see our family doctor the next day, which made sense since I hadn’t gotten a doctor in New York yet.
That night I was sitting at the kitchen table, my fever had hit 103 and as I was eating a bowl of soup I passed out at the table and hit the floor. My mom came running in, got a cold compress and sat me against the wall with the rag on my neck. The next day I went to the doctor who told me I had the flu. He gave me some meds to bring the fever down and sent me home. I called work to tell them I wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week. Around 6:30 pm the phone rang. My mother handed it to me.
“Hello?”
“I heard you weren’t feeling well.” That voice. He was back!
“Yeah, I think I have the flu.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks Jason. I miss you”
“I miss you too. I don’t want to keep you, but when you get back, call me and we’ll have dinner.” There it was, my in, my way back to him. Or so I thought.
My return to the city was not the reunion I had wanted. I did call and he did pick up, but only to tell me that he had met someone else.
“There’s this other guy, and…”
I stayed silent.
“But we can still be friends.” Which never happened.
*******
July 7, 1988 – Two years later.
The phone woke me at 7:30 on a Tuesday morning.
“Oh my God, did you hear about Jason?” It was Jamie. “He’s in the AIDS ward at St Luke’s.” She was obviously upset and I could tell she was crying.
“Are you okay?” She asked. “Do you feel sick?”
“I feel fine. Can I call you later?”
“You need to go get tested, Tim.” she said. “And you should probably go see him before he dies.”
I dragged myself out of bed with the news pinging around my head that Jason was in an AIDS ward somewhere. I hadn’t seen or talked to him in over two years, but I was certain of one thing: if he had it, then my bloody ass had it.
You’re fine! I kept telling myself. A cup of coffee and a shower helped push the news out of my mind, but walking past two dozen newsstands on the way to work and seeing the word “AIDS” on every paper made my legs weak.
I was now employed at a small fur boutique on West Broadway in SoHo. Working in the fur business in the summer is terribly boring because people don’t buy furs in the summer, so basically you go in and just bullshit all day. With nothing to do and no new topics to discuss between us, I decided to tell the two people I worked with the news about Jason. The fur industry in New York is very small, so my co-workers not only knew who Jason was, they had both worked with him.
Gina and Lenny were shocked to hear the news that one of their work friends was dying of AIDS. But, I could see their wheels turning – who were they going to tell this amazing piece of dirt to first?
Lenny did seem genuinely concerned. But he needed to make sure it was true before he picked up the phone and started the avalanche of gossip, so he decided to give St Luke’s a call to see if Jason was in fact in the hospital or if it was just some ugly rumor.
“I’m looking for a patient, Jason Cohen.” Lenny said, and then quickly hung up the phone.
“They said he’s in room 1014.” Lenny looked shaky. “He’s on the 10th floor.” Lenny grabbed me and hugged me hard. “The 10th floor at St Luke’s is the AIDS Ward.” Then, he whispered in my ear. “I’m so sorry.”
My body began to shake. All day I had tried to keep the truth from really seeping in. I wrestled with my brain every minute to go in a different direction – to think of anything other than the countdown clock that started ticking in my head when I hung up the phone that morning. But hearing, “The 10th floor at St Luke’s is the AIDS Ward,” made it impossible to hide from the reality of the situation. And there, in a fur salon in SoHo, at 24-years-old, I knew I was going to die.
When Lenny let me go I stood motionless, frozen with my empty arms still in an embrace. They were silent. What do I do? I thought to myself. I truly had no idea.
Gina and Lenny each grabbed one of my hands. They were very supportive, of course, but I could tell they couldn’t wait to tell everyone we knew.
Lenny thought I should call the hospital and talk to Jason.
“You need to hear it from him baby.”
I stood there enveloped in fear, trying to unknot my brain and my gut. Lenny handed me the phone. I asked for room 1014. I kept hearing this tapping, I thought it was just switchboard noise as they were transferring me, but the violent shaking of my hands was causing the phone cord to tap incessantly against the table.
Jason answered. He sounded the same.
“Jason, it’s Tim.”
“Oh, hello.”
“Why are you in the hospital?”
“I can’t really talk about that now.”
“I know you’re on the 10th floor Jason.”
Silence
“I know what the 10th floor is Jason.”
Silence.
My hands trembled. The phone cord tapped. My heart pounded and Jason was mute. I erupted,
“Do you have AIDS?”
Lenny was right; I needed him to tell me. I needed him to know that I would always know who I got it from. The tapping phone cord sounded like rain hitting a window and it was driving me crazy.
“Jason, do you have AIDS?”
“YES!”
There it was, the confirmation that I knew I didn’t need.
“But I’m sure you don’t have anything to worry about,” he said casually, drawling on his cigarette.
“How can you be sure? You don’t know!” I slammed down the phone.
Suddenly I was locked in a group hug. Lenny and Gina were very quick with their, “Oh YOU are fines” and “I wouldn’t worry about its,” and suddenly I was reassuring them that I knew I’d be fine. I knew that was a lie.
When a coin gets stuck in a dryer, it just clinks and clanks around and around. It never seems to get stuck back into the pocket it fell out of or get wrapped up in a towel or shirt that’s tumbling around in there. It defiantly clink clank, clink clank, clink clank’s until you get up, open the dryer door and take it out. The next forty-eight hours were madding. He has it you have it, he has it you have it, he’s going to die, you’re going to die, he’s going to die, you’re going to die.
It felt like a twilight zone episode where I was being driven crazy by this AIDS coin in the dryer. I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t stop it, clink clank, you’re going to die, clink clank you have AIDS.
Sleep became impossible. Closing my eyes I’d see myself as a literal bag of bones connected to a machine, alone in a room. I’d seen the news I knew how they looked. How was I going to tell my mother?
*******
Two days later I went to get tested,
“The results will be back in a week to ten days.” The doctor told me.
“What?!”
How the fuck was I supposed to live a normal life for the next seven to ten days with the AIDS coin in my dryer. How was I going to work or sleep or eat without wondering, Am I going to die? I am going to die. How much time is left? When will it start?
AIDS coin…
I opened the door of the doctor’s office, numb, cotton balled and band-aided, and I headed south on Park Avenue. I knew where I had to go. I had made a deal with myself that morning as I was drinking my coffee, and when I got to 57th St. I got on the cross-town bus. I got off at 9th Avenue and walked into St. Luke’s Hospital.
Prior to last week, my thoughts about AIDS were not too complex, just basically, I don’t know what I’d do if it happened to me. This week things were different, my youth had been threatened in a horrific way. My life pretty much sucked until now and it was going to end soon. People were not living with AIDS in 1988. Everyone who was infected died. I was terrified and I was alone. This was not something you told people. This shame was a secret you kept to yourself.
The elevator doors opened to the tenth floor. My head quickly jerked back from the brutal stink as it punched into each nostril – an alarming stench of urine; thick, aging, uncollected urine, which barely overpowered the smell of shit and rubbing alcohol. Nurses moved frantically from room to room, wearing facemasks and rubber gloves. I heard TV static noise being overpowered by people crying mixed with the sound of the souls of a hundred slippers skimming the linoleum tiled floor; shhhh shhhh shhhh shhhh.
There were no visitors, just sickly looking men with sunken cheeks and sores on their bodies, wandering around an empty waiting area and an abandoned reception desk. All of them pushing an IV pole, aimlessly going nowhere, dazed or drugged. Both probably. Shuffling their feet, which were too heavy to lift off the ground. Passing each other without a word. Shuffling as their hospital gowns billowed around them.
I was invisible standing in front of the now-closed elevator doors, trying to process this horror that was the last days of some of these men’s life. Looking around in shock and wonder I saw movement at the end of the hall, a man pushing his drip bag and pole as he shuffled out of his room. He had a mustache. The sun was coming in from a window behind him so I couldn’t see his face, but I could see the mustache. As he got closer, he smiled at me. I looked over my shoulder to see if he was smiling at someone behind me, but I was the only one there. When I turned around he was closer.
No way.
I was unable to speak. What the fuck happened to Jason? Dinner Party Jason. The tall, hairy, beefy, 70’s porn star Jason. The most beautiful man I had ever seen who had fucked me until I bled Jason. – Where did he go?
This shriveled, gaunt-looking man with thick purple veins pulsing though the translucent skin on the hand that was clinging to an IV pole for balance was not him! This rotting mess had sunken cheeks and shiny skin, with sores on his neck; he was losing his hair and had yellow stained teeth and fingers and he smelled of death.
As I was walking down Park Avenue to 57th Street I kept reminding myself what I was walking into. I knew what the men on the 10th floor looked like, but I cannot stress enough that I never expected my ex-boyfriend to look like one of them and it shook me. I was thunderstruck. My face was, I’m sure, twisted in horror.
“How are you?” he said.
If it weren’t for his voice, I would not have believed it was him.
“How are you?” I said with some urgency.
“Oh, you know, I’ll be fine. Just here for a few more days and I’ll be home.”
Will you? Will you really go home? I thought.
Locked in the terror and silence that fell between us, I was suddenly slapped with the reality of what was in front of me. The reality of what might happen to me. The enormity of this thought was overwhelming and I wanted to crumble but I was too stiff to move or cry or run or scream.
“What’s that on your arm?” He asked, pointing to my band-aid and cotton ball.
“I, uh, just came from the doctor.”
“Oh.”
Awkward pause.
“Well, I suppose if you have it, you’ll blame me.”
I just shook my head.
“If I do have it, you’re the reason, Jason.”
“So you say.”
“I know you told me on that first night we were together that you had been tested and you were fine, but I honestly have not had unprotected sex with anyone but you.”
“I didn’t say that. I never got tested until six months ago when I started getting sick.”
“What?” I shouted.
“You told me you were fine, that’s why I let you fuck me without a condom.”
“I don’t remember any of this. Besides that was, what, three years ago? How many other men have you been with since me?”
I was trembling. Now I was certain what the test results were going to be.
“It was two years ago Jason, and you are the first and only person who has fucked me without a condom.” I snarled through gritted teeth.
That was the truth. Everyone, including me, was so afraid of getting infected that having sex without a condom was off the table. I had to get out of there. I wanted to strangle him. I wanted to make a scene but a school of dying men was circling us and my screaming at Jason was not going to do me any good. I didn’t know how to process this news. The shuffling seemed to be growing louder and was adding to my anxiety.
“I have to go.” I said as I hurried for the elevator, his slippers scuffing the floor behind me. I turned and he moved in for a hug, just like he had done at the dinner party, but this time we had an IV pole to deal with.
Reflexively I hugged his withering frame and was shocked at how much bulk the hospital gown had given him. I boarded the empty car and as the doors closed he winked at me. I fell into the wall behind me, with that first night on a loop in my head, “What about this AIDS thing?”
“I’ve been tested a hundred times,” he lied, then literally thrust me into the arms of death.
********
July 19, 1988 / Ten days later
The phone rang in the fur salon. Everybody jumped. It was the doctor, the test results were in and could I come in this evening, after seven? I said I could run up there now, but the doctor told me he wasn’t free until that evening.
The rest of the day was filled with unsure reassurances by Gina and Lenny that I was going to be fine, I wanted to believe it, I also kept trying to steer my thoughts to a long life of health and happiness, but every time I’d almost relax into a calm, there it was, my bloodstained underwear around my ankles and a wad of bloody toilet paper in my hand after a sleepover at Jason’s house.
I got to the doctor’s at 6:55 and when I opened the door to an empty waiting room, I was greeted with a short, “We’re closed,” from the woman behind the desk.
“I have an appointment.”
“Ooh, Mr. Hedden. Yes, come right in.”
The look of sympathy in her eyes told me what the results were and I began to cry. She took me to the waiting area. I plopped down into a chair, which made the tears fall to my cheeks. As I wiped them away, I looked around trying to figure out what was going on here.
At shoulder level were wall-to-wall mirrors. Relentless infinity of my red swollen, tearstained face. But there was something else. Placed throughout this waiting area, seated on the benches, were life-sized stocking people. People made out of stockings.
Some men, some women, all made of tan stockings stuffed with cotton. They were dressed in dresses and suits, one woman was holding a small bouquet of flowers, one man had little gold rimed glasses glued to his nose, one of them was holding a stocking baby. They were horrifying.
Their faces were sewn in different shapes, and the cotton gave them all a warped freakish look. I turned to the right, more stocking people at the end of the bench. To the left more stocking people at the other end. I looked in the mirror and they multiplied.
Suddenly I was in some macabre fun house. I didn’t want to be there! I wanted my last few minutes of life-as-I-knew-it to myself! I did not want it shared with a colony of creepy stocking people. But all of the mirrors made it impossible to escape. My heart began to pound and I felt at that moment that I was going insane. I was trying to figure out where it was safe to look when the doctor called my name. I was happy to escape this sideshow and follow him to his office.
He slowly closed the door and I sat in front of his desk. He took his seat and said nothing. Then he folded his hands and locked eyes with me for what seemed an eternity,
“You have it,” he said, “You’re positive.”
I began gasping for air. I grabbed the edge of his desk and looked from side to side. For what I don’t know, an escape hatch perhaps, another door that I could run out of and not be positive. I began to sob uncontrollably.
I had had ten days to prepare for this moment. I rehearsed this scene and heard this man tell me that I’m positive hundreds of times in my head. But the enormity of actually hearing it was immeasurable.
My whales were guttural. As I clung to the desk everything came rushing at me; hundreds of people a day dropping dead, no hope in sight, the vision of my withered ex-boyfriend shuffling around an AIDS ward across town and then a jolt – my face on Jason’s body. It was a violent blow and I continued to gasp for air. I don’t know how long I cried, but the doctor did not stop me, he kept unrolling paper towels and handing them to me as I sobbed uncontrollably.
Finally he said something about AZT, and something about following up with my doctor. Then he said, “If you need anything, please call me. For anything, I mean it.”
I was surprised to see that by that point he was crying too and our bodies shook in tandem as he hugged me. Clearly this was an extremely difficult thing to relay to a young man of 24. Or maybe he had delivered this news to a dozen young men already today.
Stumbling out of his office at dusk I was a numb. I didn’t know what to do. A cab? Go home? Get drunk?
All of a sudden I remembered The Essex House, overlooking Central Park! I knew I had to go there, I knew that beautiful Central Park would help calm me. Yes, that is where I need to be. I thought that it might be poetic if I wandered through Central Park crying about my demise, thinking that this would be the memory I would want to take with me, “When I found out I cried my way through the Central Park and it was magical.” I couldn’t wait to get there and sit on a bench under a lush tree and feel good and sorry for myself.
The problem was I wasn’t familiar with the park that far north and as I hurried West from Park Avenue and 90thStreet, people in running gear bombarded me. I had no idea where I was, but I knew I was in the way; people running by me, a fence around a lake in front of me. I looked around desperately crying and confused. Where was my tortured romantic bench, my green leafy tree? I walked some more and almost got stomped by a cop on a horse, NO! I thought. I need this!
I continued; a foot bridge, no bench, more runners, no bench.
“Why?” I screamed. Defeated and sobbing I decided that I was too shaken to wander aimlessly through the park looking for my storybook ending. I jumped in a cab and headed to my apartment, where I got in the shower and cried and screamed and pounded the wall.
I wrote in my diary, “I HAVE IT!” underlined four times so hard that I ripped the page and indented the next few. What am I going to do? I must have said it out loud a thousand times. I thought about my mother; She can never find out.
Pacing around my apartment I kept screaming out loud, “You had to invite yourself to that dinner party. You just fucking had to invite yourself you fucking idiot!”
Thoughts rapid fire in my head; my friends, my whole fucking life! When am I going to die? Oh my God, I’m going to die, FOR REAL. How much time do I have? And again his face bombarded my brain. His body, those sores, that IV pole and the incessant shuffling!
I covered my ears so I wouldn’t hear the shuffling. I started pulling at my hair as I frantically paced from the living room to the kitchen trying to find a way out of this. I was doomed.
More terror when I thought about my three year old nephew, my one year old niece; they were going to watch me die on the 10th floor or worse yet, never get to know me at all. It was all too much. “Please stop.” I said to my brain out loud though my sobs.
I crawled over to the wall and propped myself up. I tried to calm my breathing as the faucet of tears refused to turn off. Finally I got off the floor and went to my bedroom to get my baggie of pot and I rolled a joint.
Twenty minutes later I passed out.
I woke up the next day on the sofa. This was my first day of my new life; of how many, I didn’t know. As the sun poured in my window over the East River I let it fill my eyes. I sat up and ran my fingers through my hair. What was I going to do? There it was again.
I had to go to work, but that would be the easy part. Leaving the apartment and getting hit by that proverbial bus would be a welcome addition to my morning, but I knew that bus wouldn’t come for me. My demise was to be slow, agonizing, disfiguring and stigmatized.
When I was five-years-old my father was killed by a drunk driver; my three siblings and I were all under the age of ten. I watched my mother go out and get a job and get up every morning and go to work. As a child, you don’t realize what’s going on, you just see that mommy is going to work. I wasn’t aware of her pain or her struggle, nor did I ever imagine I’d be dealing with something this monumental 19 years later, but being witness to her strength and grit was about to come in handy as I sat on the edge of my sofa on Day One.
I knew coffee would taste great so I finally moved myself to the kitchen and started my day, slowly, like moving through tar.
By the time I hit work the daze I was in was a comfort and since my eyes were swollen from crying all night, it was obvious to my co-workers what the test results were. They swore they wouldn’t tell anyone and I am still shocked that they never said a word.
Aside from the life-eating bug in my blood, things were pretty much the same, and I took comfort in a passing thought: if I am positive now, I must have been positive a month ago, a year ago even, and I felt no different now. Over the next few days, I thought, perhaps I should just wait until the reaper is tapping at my door to start freaking out. It was hard, but I didn’t have a choice. Ignore it until you can’t ignore it anymore.
*******
A few weeks later Jamie and her boyfriend had gone on vacation and she had asked me to watch her dogs, two apricot poodles named Lenny and Squiggy. As I sat in her bed watching LA Law and eating a pint of Hagen däz Chocolate Chocolate Chip, the phone rang.
“Well?” said the quiet, raspy, bitter voice on the other end.
“Jason? How are you feeling?”
It was no surprise to me that he knew I was there, he and Jamie were still besties and I’m sure she told him I’d be watching the dogs while she was away.
“I’m fine. Finally home.”
I could hear that his breathing was a bit labored. Then in a very soft, almost caring tone, “Did you get your results back?”
From the moment I found out that he lied to me in St Luke’s, I wanted to kill this man. The man who I met in this apartment! The man who lied to me about being tested, the man who had sentenced me to a death that he himself was living.
I wanted to punch him in the face. I wanted to grab onto those shiny, protruding cheekbones and throw him across the room for what he did to me. For a moment I thought about screaming into the phone, “You killed me you fucking asshole!” I wanted to tell him what a piece of shit he was for lying to me. I wanted him to die knowing how much I hated him. But I couldn’t. I’m a pussy, a pushover; willing to put my feelings of anger and hatred aside so I didn’t hurt him. I had loved this man once and it was obvious by his weak voice and labored breathing that he was dying. My angry heart melted.
“It came back negative. I’m fine.”
Channeling Bette Davis, he drawled,
“Well, aren’t you lucky?”
Was he surprised? Did he think I was lying? Was he relieved? I couldn’t tell.
Knowing who infected me does not make having it any better or worse. But imagine that you are dying, being eaten alive from the inside out from a hideous disease, and it is confirmed that you have sentenced the person you’re speaking to, to the same unthinkable death that you are experiencing right now! I think that would be horrifying and I like to think he would have felt terrible. As much as I hated him I was not willing to send him back to his deathbed knowing that he had sentenced me to one of my own.
I have never regretted not telling him.
Five weeks later the phone rang again at 7:30 in the morning. It was Jamie.
“Did you hear? Jason is dead.”