The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler? (19 page)

Ian was initially skeptical about my “first openly gay actor” label. “Isn’t Tim Miller openly gay?” he asked, referring to the acclaimed performance artist and our mutual friend.

“I think the distinction is that I am the first openly gay actor who has appeared on mainstream television and in film,” I said.

He seemed to accept that defense, and in the ensuing years, Ian would sing my praises with great affection. That night, however, he made me work to win his respect. Since he was a true hero of mine and a stellar role model, I’m grateful for what has evolved into a warm friendship.

Only a few weeks after I returned from Europe, Pickett and I went to a gay resort in Palm Springs for a bit of rest and play time. The latter took place under the light of the silvery moon in a wooded area behind the motel that attracted a hungry pack of men.

“Aren’t you that actor?” my humpy trick asked as we trudged toward the motel’s bright lights. “Michael? Michael Kearns?”

There have been several instances when I said, “Oh no, not me, but people say that I look like that guy.”

Instead, I told the truth since he didn’t seem overly impressed. And he was very cute, with his black mustache and somewhat impish demeanor.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Philip,” he said as we hit the sheets.

After a very hot romp, we exchanged numbers. When I saw his business card from the Norton Simon Museum, I realized that we had met (and fucked) at the baths years prior.

“I will definitely give you a call,” I said.

In the fall of 1988,
TV Guide
ran a cover story: “The AIDS Scare—What It’s Done to Hollywood and the TV You See.” The article, featuring the sharp observations of former Columbia exec Stephen Kolzak, who had cast me in
Cheers
, revealed the heightened incidence of homophobia in Hollywood since HIV/AIDS.

About my early refusal to play the Hollywood game, I told
TV Guide,
“I didn’t wear a fake wedding ring and I never told fag jokes with the crew.”

Kolzak said, “If they [actors] don’t challenge fag jokes, if they participate in the kind of locker-room macho sensibility with the boys, if they edit out the truth of their lives, then they can get by sometimes.”

Steve, who was now Paul Monette’s lover, and I did some local and national publicity in conjunction with the article, including talk shows in Boston and Philadelphia. One of the talk show personalities was as gay as a rainbow flag. “He’s made several trips to the local ER to have rather large items removed from his rectum,” the makeup man told us. But in the true spirit of homophobia, he didn’t reveal himself on the air. For the record, he is now the hyperglamorous host of a nightly show that covers Hollywood bullshit.

My fondest memory of the trip was eating dinner from room service in Steve’s room while he intimately talked with Paul on the phone. Hearing only half of their conversation, I was able to distill the purpose of our mini-tour, confirming the fact that two men should be able to love each other openly (even if they are Hollywood players).

Back home in Los Angeles, Pickett and I decided to do a one-nighter to celebrate the play’s overseas success. It was a friendly packed house that included Ian’s pal Tim Miller, who had never seen my work.

After the performance, Tim gave me a bit of artistic advice that would influence the rest of my life. “You really should write yourself a piece to perform,” he said. He’d read my journalistic offerings, so he knew I had something to say. “God knows you have the skills to do solo,” he assured me. I was officially invited into a world that would prove to be my most successful and cherished form of expression.

On the personal front, Philip and I had thrown ourselves into a love affair. The sex was great, off the Richter scale, but there was a chasm with Philip that separated the sexual and the emotional. This dynamic was not unfamiliar terrain for me: expressive in the sack but emotionally withholding. In many ways, Philip and I could not have been more dissimilar.

It worked. As the months unfolded, we were able to merge. In the same way that my openness was something he wanted, I knew that the more subtle shadings of his personality were something I could learn from.

Shortly after Tim offered his invaluable advice, I began writing. While many photo essays on AIDS began appearing in magazines, mostly featuring gay white men, one photo captured my attention like no other: a shockingly thin black woman in a bathtub, head tilted back, laughing joyously. There was something beatific about the photo that transfixed me, almost like a religious card from my childhood. That one photo would prove to be the inspiration for an artistic journey that has not abated since.

CHAPTER 35
               

I remembered Marian Epstein’s insistence that her child actors empathize with the characters we played. It is a spiritual process of melding, “alchemy of the soul,” actress Linda Hunt calls it.

I discovered that writing is no different. When I studied the photo of the black woman with AIDS, I could see myself in her; I knew her sensuality, her pain, her jubilance. How would I have the audacity to write and perform this character? Because I had to—I had to understand the emotionality of AIDS, beyond the statistics.

I had also told the gay white male story repeatedly, even though there was documentation to support the incidence among drug addicts, prostitutes, the homeless, people of color, poor people—all considered disposable populations. I wanted to give those misfits a voice. And in the process, I would discover my own.

I was also discovering the world of Philip. While Philip and I were consistently safe when we made love, it took a while before we had The Discussion. He was positive, he said, and had never manifested any of AIDS’ vicious ailments. He was surprised that I had not been tested yet and I was equally surprised that his parents didn’t know that he was gay, let alone that he was HIV-positive. Certainly they “knew” without knowing, buried headfirst in the denial that so often partners a dance with religiosity.

I agreed to get tested and he agreed to tell his parents. This was proving to be a serious relationship based on mutual respect. My first.

Speaking of mutual respect, Tim’s invitation proved to be more than Hollywood chitchat. He asked me to perform during the first month of work being done at Highways, his very own space in Santa Monica.

I would premiere
intimacies
, giving birth to Denny, Big Red, Patrick, Rusty, Mary and Phoenix, a new cast of characters who began to take up residence in my body and soul, along with Philip, my real-life leading man.

Every aspect of my life coalesced with
intimacies
: the personal and political; the past and the present; the sacred and profane. Never had I experienced such purpose and drive on the stage. It was as if I’d been coasting—playing some version of myself that was entertaining but earthbound, not soaring into another stratosphere. For the first time, I was brazen enough to identify myself as an artist.

Why now? The answers seem obvious in retrospect. The depth of feeling I was able to conjure in playing those wild characters was directly related to my relationship to AIDS’ emotionalism. It was as if AIDS was my college thesis project and this was the dawning of a new level of spirituality that accompanied a heretofore unknown trust and belief in my powers as an actor and a writer.

It was further validated by the response—from audiences, the press, my peers, my closest friends. In the crass lingo of showbiz, I was hot, honey. I had arrived. And this time it was a truly life-altering experience. I began touring all over the country, which would lead to gigs in Europe. I also managed to maintain my relationship with Philip, who was truly proud of my accomplishments.

Even though I was often in some blissful state, the plague continued to challenge my sanity. I honestly believe that the cathartic joy I experienced on the stage provided an antidote for the unbearable losses that piled up as each month went by.

Joe’s career as a substitute teacher was short-lived, as he became very ill very suddenly. David was the devoted husband to the bittersweet end. One of Joe’s last public appearances was the night he was introduced to Philip. Joe was so skinny that he could barely walk into the restaurant. He studied Philip throughout the dinner and whispered to me, “He’s a keeper.”

I visited him one day at their apartment, before his final hospitalization, and experienced a moment that has never left me. There he was, bundled up in the silken silver blanket that had been his prop in
Jerker
and that would, in a matter of days, be all that was left of him. That fusion of life and art was breathtaking.

The phone call came before sunrise. David’s voice, more southern sounding than usual, simply said, “He’s gone.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can, sweetie,” I said. I knew the hospital and the room number, so I threw on some clothes and drove over Laurel Canyon to Cedars Sinai as the night became day. I remember very little about the drive, although I must have been speeding up those hills and navigating those curves like a madman.

I arrived in the room and stood at the door, momentarily stilled, as I watched David pace around the bed where his dead husband was “gone,” but still warm. Almost militaristically, he half marched around the sides of the bed, turning when he reached the headboard against the wall. He kept it up, not even sensing my presence. I suddenly realized that I’d seen this choreography before; the night my grandmother got the news that my uncle John had died, she paced around the dining room table, trying to maintain some semblance of composure. And I then remembered the day that I visited Sean, when—as he circled his bed aimlessly—he repeated, “What am I going to do? Am I going to die?

“David,” I whispered. He stopped his deathbed march, and we held each other tight.

“Is it time to go?” I asked, knowing that it was.

“Yes,” he said, but not before the farewell kiss. Hadn’t I directed him in this scene? It was as eerie as it was beautiful. He insisted on driving himself home. Later in the day, I agreed to go shopping with him for new shoes to wear to the memorial.

We actually wound up getting matching shoes just to be silly, anything to buoy ourselves up from the sadness. I remember Philip was late picking me up to go to the cemetery and I was furious. In retrospect, I realize it was part of his inability to deal with death, a fact that would become clearer, painfully so.

Ever in motion, I had a gig in San Francisco. Philip and David were with me when I got word that my mother’s husband had died after what had been diagnosed as a bad flu. So I arranged to fly from San Francisco to St. Louis to help her cope with the funeral. I jokingly referred to myself as “a widow’s assistant.”

Because I had to leave San Francisco early, I was unable to visit Chesley while I was there; little did I realize that it was my last chance.

Playing the role of the grieving widow gave my mother ample opportunity for self-centeredness along with exacerbated boozing. I did my best and returned to L.A. to find out that Chesley had died.

I would arrange the L.A. memorial, a few months down the line so that we could get the word out. I reflected on a twenty-four-hour period that I had spent with him, exploring San Francisco while sharing our histories. By day’s end, we were both exhausted and fell into a blissful sleep on his small bed, like brothers do.

The memorial would be held at the theater where
Jerker
premiered. David and I would perform a scene from the play. David had not been out of the house for an extended period of time, and the reason became apparent when he showed up at the reading, gaunt and trying to disguise his obvious weight loss. Whether this was part of his grieving process or part of his dying process, no one knew. It was almost unbearable reading the words of the play, written by Chesley and originally performed by Joe, opposite a fading David.

I tested positive.

CHAPTER 36
               

I remember the sound of the doctor’s voice, confirming what I’d intuitively suspected. But hearing the words—“tested positive”—was like no bit of information I’d ever received. Instantaneously, like that moment in
The Wizard of Oz
, everything in my life went from black-and-white to Technicolor. And my altered perception of the world has never changed. I’m not suggesting Technicolor is always pretty; it can be too shadowy, too nuanced, too intense. But there were no more hues that contained logic or reason or simplicity or even sanity. Life pulsed with colors—wild, drunken, scary, gorgeous and, above all, infectious.

Like so many aspects of my unorthodox approaches to life, my relationship with Philip was not conventional. During the first year, we established a pattern that suited our individual personalities. We had no desire to cohabitate. His house in Studio City and the house I was renting in Glendale were, as they say in these parts, “freeway close.” In California, that translates to about twenty minutes of driving time. We spent one or two nights together, usually on the weekend, and usually went to dinner midweek. There were exceptions to our routine, of course—parties, benefits, memorials.

We spoke on the phone daily (sometimes several times) and had sex weekly (rarely more than once). We were monogamous. We referred to ourselves as lovers, rather than boyfriends, and we did love each other.

After Philip died, a good friend of mine admitted to me, “I was never really comfortable around Philip.”

I’ll never forget the look on her face when I said, “Neither was I.”

And it was true. Until the last two months of his life, I always felt like I was trying to win his attention. The relationship often felt like a job; I might get fired or quit if he didn’t live up to my expectations or I didn’t live up to his. Yet this dynamic was what energized the bond between us. We clearly had something to learn from each other in spite of our contradictory emotional makeups.

A trip to Paris was fabulous but not without repercussions. Forget the Eiffel Tower and the Sainte-Chapelle and Victor Hugo’s mansion; my favorite place in Paris was Père Lachaise, a cemetery where a host of artists had arrived at their final resting place. Hugo, in fact, said, “To be buried in Père Lachaise is like having mahogany furniture.”