Breaking the Surface (26 page)

John had warned me I might have side effects from the AZT, including fatigue, but I couldn’t tell if I was tired because of the AZT or because I had to get up every four hours during the night to take the pills. My training regimen might also have had something to do with it. I was training extra hard to prove to myself that I could do it, to prove that there was nothing wrong with me. One week I took six aerobics classes in addition to my regular training. By the end of the week, I was so sore that in the morning I had to sink into the hottest tub I could stand just to get my joints moving.

It wasn’t only the exhaustion that was getting in the way of my regular training. It also turned out to be impossible to look at my HIV treatment as just another part of my training regimen. AZT is no vitamin pill—it is strong stuff, designed to keep the HIV from completely destroying what is left of the immune system. I tried to put that frightening thought in the back of my mind, but I carried around a little alarm clock to remind me to take the AZT every four hours, a six-times-a-day reminder that I had a deadly disease.

I also had to carry around a pillbox with lots of different compartments, for the AZT, the Bactrim, and all the vitamin supplements I was taking. Fortunately, because it’s common for divers to be taking lots of aspirin for injuries, no one ever questioned me about the pills.

With all of this going on, you can imagine my emotional state. It was a constant roller coaster. Sometimes I was okay. At other times I would cry for no apparent reason. I’m sure a lot of people thought I was in a perpetually bad mood.

After I told Ron about Tom, I lasted through a month of ups and downs before I finally told him that I was HIV-positive. He had noticed that my moods were pretty bad and that I was having a difficult time staying motivated in my workouts. But it was typical for me to be anxious and unfocused several months in advance of any major competition. If I was any worse than normal, Ron figured it was because Tom was sick, although by now, Tom had come home from the hospital and was doing pretty well.

I decided to tell Ron when we were in Washington, D.C., for a U.S. Olympic Committee event. It was just the two of us on the trip, and it seemed like a good time to tell him. We got to Washington at midday, and that afternoon, around three o’clock, I called Ron and told him that I wanted to come by his room. I was sure that he would be supportive and that he’d love me no matter what.

Ron opened the door and we went over to sit at a small round table by the corner window. Ron knew something was up, because normally if I wanted to talk to him, I’d do it informally during practice or I’d drop by his office. I told Ron that I needed to talk about something and then I told him I was HIV-positive. I explained that the reason I didn’t tell him initially was because I was afraid he would go easy on me with my training. I told him that I knew there was no way to make it through the Olympics unless he treated me the way he always did. I had to go through the program as if nothing were going on, because I needed the confidence I got from my training to compete at the Olympics. I also told Ron my fear of qualifying for the team and then not being able to compete if I got sick.

This conversation wasn’t nearly as emotional as the one in which I had told Ron about Tom. The whole time I talked, Ron sat and listened calmly. Ron and I are similar in that we can be terrified, but we don’t necessarily show it.

The first thing Ron said was, “We’ll get through this together,” amazing words to hear from anyone. Then he asked me what I wanted to do. I told him that I wanted to continue. I explained my T-cell count and that I was on AZT. I told him what my medical care was at that point and said that he was free to discuss any of this with my doctor, John.

Ron said I shouldn’t worry about him holding back in my training because he wasn’t going to let me off that easy. We both chuckled. He also told me not to worry about being unable to compete after qualifying in the Olympic trials, that we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. He said, “We can’t think about that now. We’ve got to get ready for nationals first.”

Before I left Ron’s room, we agreed that we each had a job to do. Ron said he wasn’t going to neglect his part and that we all had to work together. Then he added, “It just makes this year that much more important.” Ron gave me a big hug and we parted.

Ron and I didn’t discuss it much after that first day. On occasion he’d ask me how I was doing, but he didn’t push. As long as I was getting to my workouts and training, I was okay. He kept in regular contact with my doctor to keep current on my course of treatment.

Ron talked with John as soon as we got back to Florida, and their biggest concern was fatigue. Ron had promised not to let up on my training, but he worried about working me into the ground. Both he and John had a lot of concern about maintaining my training at its normal level and what the stress might do to my immune system. John’s feeling was that as long as I did what I was supposed to do and took good care of myself, I’d probably be okay, but there was no guarantee I’d perform as well as I had in the past.

After he met with John, Ron told me that he would train me the way he thought I needed to be trained, but that I needed to tell him if it was too much. One thing Ron didn’t tell me was that he worried about my having some kind of accident, one where I cut myself. The danger, of course, would be the potential for infecting others if they were exposed to my blood. Ironically, Ron worried about this during my training, but it never occurred to him that I might hurt myself at the Olympics.

One of the things that I know was hard on Ron was the fact that he couldn’t talk to anybody about my being HIV-positive, not even Mary Jane. I told him that I didn’t want anyone else to know at that point. He and Mary Jane always talked about everything, but I was terrified that this news would get out, and I didn’t want anyone, not even Mary Jane, to know. Looking back, I realize this wasn’t fair to Ron or to Mary Jane. Ron really needed someone he could talk to, and I know Mary Jane would have kept the secret.

I also needed someone to talk to, because even after I told Ron, I continued to struggle with my emotions. From week to week, my moods got progressively worse. On top of all my fears about what would happen to Tom and whether or not I’d stay healthy enough to get through the Olympics, I started being haunted by the feeling that somehow I deserved AIDS. I was a faggot and this was the faggot’s punishment. Intellectually, I knew it was ridiculous, but emotionally, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I deserved to be HIV-positive.

Growing up, I learned that being gay was a bad thing. I’d rejected those lessons long ago, but the negative feelings about being gay stayed with me. Now I was infected with what many people misguidedly called a “gay disease.” So it just followed that God was punishing me for acting on my feelings. Rationally, I knew those thoughts made no sense. If AIDS was God’s way of punishing gay people, how can you explain that babies and children get AIDS and that lesbians have the lowest incidence of the disease?

Now that I’ve talked with other gay men who are infected with HIV, I’ve discovered that I’m not the only one to have those feelings. But at the time, I was alone with my thoughts. The way I handled the emotional turmoil, as always, was to withdraw. If I had a workout, I’d get there just before it started, do my stretching exercises, dive for an hour and a half or two hours, and then break for lunch. I kept to myself during lunch, and then it was back to the pool for another couple of hours of diving. After that I would do weights or have an aerobics class. Then I’d go home.

If I didn’t have a workout, I stayed in my apartment all day. Usually, I didn’t get out of bed, but sometimes I moved to the couch and turned on MTV or watched cartoons. Occasionally, I played tennis with John or went out with a couple of the divers after weight training for a bite to eat, but only if I was invited. I didn’t go out of my way to spend time with other divers, mostly because I was afraid that I’d slip and say something. I was afraid they’d hear my AZT timer go off and ask about what vitamins I was taking and why I needed an alarm clock to remind me. It was easier just to be on my own and pretend that nothing was going on.

At one point, shortly before the Olympic trials, when the depression was really bad, I talked to John about it. He asked me if I’d thought about harming myself. I told him that I’d thought about it plenty. He asked me how I would do it. I didn’t have access to any kind of sleeping pills or painkillers at that time, but I did have syringes that John had given to me so I could give myself injections of vitamin B. I told him that injecting myself with air was a realistic option.

John immediately asked me to hand over the syringes, which I did. He knew that this was something out of his realm, so he suggested that I go to church and talk to a priest. John belonged to a strict Greek Orthodox church, and I was brought up Greek Orthodox. He thought that talking to a priest would help me deal with what was going on in my life.

For me, talking to a priest was totally out of the question. I don’t agree with a lot of what the Greek Orthodox Church teaches, particularly when it comes to homosexuality. I had every reason to think that if I went to talk to a priest, he’d want to talk to me about “my sin” and tell me that it was never too late to “repent.” I had nothing to repent for.

I told John I’d think about the priest—knowing full well that I had no intention of going. He also recommended that I go on an antidepressant, and gave me a prescription. I only took the pills for a few days, because they seemed to throw my equilibrium off. I wasn’t stumbling into walls, but the side effects were more than enough to mean the difference between winning and losing. Again, I definitely should have been talking to a psychologist, but no one was pushing it, and besides, I wasn’t ready.

What really saved me from my depression and thoughts of suicide was the approaching competition. I was training more and more and had less free time to be preoccupied with the HIV. I had something to look forward to. That gave me purpose. As long as I had a workout, I was there on time or even early. I had a goal, and there were people counting on me to reach it.

Deep down, there was something else going on. I had something to prove to myself. Besides proving that I was good enough to win two more gold medals, I wanted to prove that even though I was HIV-positive, I could still win. Like always, I wouldn’t have to say anything. I’d let my diving speak for itself. Unfortunately, if I won, no one but me, Ron, John, Debbie, Tom, and a handful of other people would know the true meaning of my victory.

A
FTER HE GOT OUT
of the hospital, Tom bounced back pretty quickly, and when he was well enough to travel, he came to visit me in Florida. I hoped we’d get to spend time together. I needed his support. Unfortunately, Tom was back to his routine of taking care of business, which meant that most nights he was out until long after I’d gone to sleep. I tried to accept that he had things to do, but when I complained, he just got angry.

Once he got better, Tom was even more hurtful and controlling than before. He would tease me about my T cells, which were lower than his, making childish comparisons like “My T cells are better than yours.” He was desperate to prove that he was healthier than I was. He did it in a sort of sick, joking way, which I didn’t think was very funny. The fact was that even though I had fewer T cells than he did, I had a stronger constitution and was in much better health. I had no problem throwing off a cold or the flu.

Tom started pointing the finger at me again, saying that I’d infected him. When he first got sick, he was briefly concerned that he had infected me. As soon as he was feeling better, he quoted an article to me from
Newsweek
that explained the disease could lay dormant for years and that you could still infect other people and not be sick.

I’d made the assumption that since he got sick first, he was the one who infected me, but now it turned out that I could have infected him even though I was still healthy. To me it didn’t matter who infected whom—maybe we were both infected when we met. My attitude was, however it had happened, we both had it and pointing fingers wasn’t going to make either of us better. I just wanted us to be there for each other.

When it came to exercising more control, there wasn’t a lot Tom could do, since I was in Florida training full-time. So what he started doing was taking more control of my financial assets. Tom also tried even harder to control the media’s access to me, but I didn’t pay much attention to that. The only way Tom’s tightened reins really affected me was in a battle over whether my parents were coming to the Olympics. That was an ideal opportunity for him to show who was in charge.

One of the major Olympic sponsors had a program that helped get the families of competing athletes to the Olympics. I don’t know exactly what the program was, but Tom decided that he was going to be the one to benefit from the program and not my parents. He tried to pass himself off as my brother, which didn’t work. It was pretty easy to figure out that he wasn’t my brother. So in the end he had to pay his way, which meant, of course, that I paid his way. My parents still could have come to the Olympics on that program, but Tom said that if my parents came, he was staying home.