The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler? (24 page)

These were very damaged little boys, three years old and five years old, with a tortured history that created day-to-day dynamics that required saintly patience. I succeeded and failed, failed and succeeded.

Some of the problems were practical. Shopping for the three-year-old’s diapers, I didn’t have a clue how much he weighed. So with shoppers looking on in disbelief, I simply put him on a vegetable scale and figured it out.

Their emotions were not as easy to solve. The older one had already developed a manipulative personality that affected fake charm to get what he wanted. The younger one became so dependent on me that he would not fall asleep unless he was virtually attached to my body.

According to what I was told, their father had molested one of his daughters with her brothers present—to what extent remained in question. On parole, he visited as often as he could. I liked him a lot—a fact that disturbed many of my friends.

If I learned nothing else in my short career as a foster parent, it reconfirmed my belief that nothing is black-and-white. Yes, the kids’ dad fucked up, but he saved his money, got on a bus, and came to take his boys to get their hair cut. In reality, our similarities outweighed our differences. He was a dad, struggling.

I didn’t condone his actions, but I refused to stigmatize him. My opinion of him was based largely on his interaction with his kids and with me. There was goodness in him, no matter how much badness he had acted out.

When Sir Ian asked me to be his date at the Emmy Awards, not only did I have to figure out what to wear; I had to get a babysitter. The vision of a stretch limo pulling up to my house and the sight of the knight bounding out of the glamorous car in his smart tuxedo, eager to meet the boys, are memories I cherish. He practically knelt on the front lawn in order to make eye contact with them.

Nominated for
And the Band Played On
, Ian was outlandishly generous as we made our way through the assembled press cadre, who were shoving microphones and cameras in his face. “This is my date, Michael Kearns,” he repeated over and over, “the first openly gay actor in Hollywood.” What a lovely man.

He didn’t win, but along with Armistead Maupin (whose movie
Tales of the City
, based on the book, was nominated in several categories), our queer visibility was reason enough to celebrate at the elite Governor’s Ball. But I had to admit something to myself: I missed the boys and worried that “Zavey” (my nickname for Xavier) wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. Ian arranged for the limousine to take me home after the requisite amount of schmoozing.

Because he had an early flight back to San Francisco, Randy Shilts’ widower joined me for the ride. I was able to share the story about Randy being insistent that I appear in the film; Randy was one of very few gay men who had, before or since, actually fought on my behalf.

All the hoopla surrounding
And the Band Played On
was made even more poignant without Randy present to celebrate. This was certainly not the first or the last time an artist didn’t live long enough to see the results of his or her monumental labor.

After four months of life with the boys, I was exhausted but couldn’t resist when I got a call in January from Vista: “We’ve got a five-month-old African American baby girl. She was born two months premature with no prenatal care, weighing less than three pounds, to a crack cocaine-addicted mother.” She needed immediate placement and because her mother had other kids in the system, it was likely to move to an adoption.

“Her name is Tia.”

CHAPTER 44
               

My mother had called me at the beginning of the year, finally admitting that she was an alcoholic and ready to seek help. I promised that I would visit at the end of the month, not knowing that I would be arriving in St. Louis with my daughter.

Tia slept on my chest from the time the plane took off in L.A. to the landing in St. Louis. My mother tried to act grandmotherly, but it was not a part she could play with conviction, so her predictable resentment showed.

We immediately went out to dinner. It was a good thing that I was getting used to schlepping all the baby’s equipment (bottles, blankets, bouncy seat), since Grandma offered no help. Before we had even begun a word of conversation, the waiter appeared and my mother, staring me right in the eye, defiantly barked out her order: “Zinfandel.”

That three-syllable word ended our dysfunctional relationship. I vowed to myself that I would no longer be her boyfriend, her savior, or her hero. The catalyst that allowed me to sever the unmanageable bond was Tia. At forty-five years old, I was creating my own family.

Back home, Tia and I established a rhythm. Her expressionless face, which was of great concern when I first saw her, quickly transformed into the face of an animated, curious and strong little creature.

During a March visit with both the Vista Del Mar social worker and the DCS (Department of Children’s Services) worker, the DCS representative asked me if I was interested in adopting Tia.

Vista was in the position of knowing they could not reveal my HIV status without my permission, so it gave me great pleasure to say, “Absolutely.” Nearly one year after the adoption fiasco, it seemed that I was once again poised for parenthood.

Very carefully and always mindful of the future, I began to create a family circle with Tia in the center of a group of people—young, old, gay, straight, married, single, rich, poor, black, white—who would help me raise her. I minimized out-of-town performances unless I felt the trip was doable with a baby in tow.

It was always fortuitous to get asked to do something in town and especially if the person asking was Michel Greif (the director of
Rent
). Several prominent actors would perform a staged reading of Larry Kramer’s
The Normal Heart
to benefit the Salk Foundation. Among the players were David Hyde Pierce, Tom Hulce and David Marshall Grant. I played Tommy, the southern sissy with the best laughs in the show (age goes out the window in a staged reading).

Greif began the rehearsals by sharing something personal about his lover. I felt it was a deliberate way to set the tone, encouraging the actors to adopt his degree of freedom. His job was to create an environment that was safe in order to create good work. On television and film sets where homosexuality is in the air, there tends to be some underlying tension.

We rehearsed for several days. At some point, it became obvious to me that I was not a member of the elite clique that quickly developed among the cast members. Why? After giving it some thought, I realized that these guys were all more in the closet than out. Presumably, some of them knew my feelings about that particular choice. While no one was outright mean to me and they were all a joy to act with, I was “the odd man out.” Or should I say “the openly queer man out”?

An incident haunts me to this day. We were all assembled in the dressing room, snugly. One of the thespians mentioned Chekhov and then each one of them proceeded to pontificate on what Chekhov play they did, where they did it, whom they did it with and what color their costumes were. It was slightly bizarre to hear them blathering on, overenunciating in their well-trained theater voices.

“I did it in modern dress,” one of them said. “I was in
The Cherry Orchard
in San Diego,” said another. A third chimed in, “I did
The Seagull
with Amanda Plummer!”

Well, excuse me, girls, but I have never done Chekhov (other than performing scenes in acting class). I did plays called
Bathhouse Benediction, Dream Man
and
Jerker
(often wearing no costume whatsoever with actors you never heard of who have since died of AIDS).

Here we were, performing Kramer’s treatise about the importance of coming out and the actors in the play had not one personal thing to share. No one mentioned a lover who would be in the audience. No one said they were going to dinner with their partner after the show.

And, God forbid, no one told any hot buttfucking stories. Can you imagine what the tenor of a conversation would be if the dressing room was full of straight actors? There would be more cunt talk than Chekhov talk. My costars were hiding, even among themselves, in order to protect their careers. It pissed me off. What was the purpose of doing a reading of
The Normal Heart
if you were unable to do the most basic thing to help demystify AIDS: come out. It was pure bullshit.

(To be fair, some of these guys have since come out. Better late than …)

Unfortunately, Paul Monette’s physical deterioration had rendered him incapable of partaking in one of our commiserating bitchfests about Hollywood homophobia. He would have certainly had a spin on the backstage Chekhov chatter.

Paul’s disdain for all the filled closet spaces in L.A. was part of his personal and public forum. No one (perhaps with the exception of John Rechy) perceived the town’s dangerous homophobia with more clarity than Paul did. To join forces with him on a particularly vitriolic diatribe was as good as sex.

I took Tia to visit Paul. “On his deathbed” would be the bluntest way to set the scene. His lover, Winston Wilde, was in the living room, graciously handling everyone who wanted to bask in Paul’s heat one more time, while a nurse attentively stood by.

“You wouldn’t believe what he went through to get that baby,” Paul told the nurse. “He had to fight.” His senses, including his vision, were weakening, but he managed to get a close look at the baby girl in my arms.

Paul drifted in and out of sleep. I remember holding his dry, weathered hand in one of my hands and Tia’s teensy soft paw in the other, connecting the dots between birth and death.

We went back a couple of days later. “He just won’t die,” Winston said.

“He needs permission,” I said, having played variations on this scene several times during my AIDS career. “You’ve got to convince him that it’s okay with you for him to die,” I said.

“I can’t; I just can’t,” Winston said, understandably not wanting to “cause” Paul’s death.

It was difficult for Paul to relinquish the fighter instinct that had driven him to great heights as a writer and an activist. All he had left was The Fight, and he would not die in act two if he believed there might be an act three.

“Paul, honey,” I said, again sitting in the chair next to the bed with Tia snug in my lap. “You’re probably finished here. You are loved, more than you will ever believe. You have changed people’s lives. You can stop now. It’s okay. It is okay for you to die.

“You will be remembered. Your books will be read. Your story will be kept alive. You are not giving up. You simply don’t need to be here anymore, honey.”

CHAPTER 45
               

Whether my words had anything to do with it or not, Paul died the next day.

Before we left for a New York gig in the spring, Tia’s mother, Tanya Jackson, and her great-great-aunt Marjorie Coleman visited us. During this twenty-minute visit, Tanya teasingly suggested that Miss Coleman adopt the baby.

“No way,” Miss Coleman said adamantly. In her late sixties, Miss Coleman was wearing bright-colored, youthful clothing that didn’t entirely hide the toll that age had taken on her vitality. Both women seemed genuinely impressed, if somewhat baffled, by my ease at taking care of their blood relative.

A Queer Theater Conference, created by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, had brought me to New York that spring. A slew of us comprised an evening of performance at the New York Theater Workshop, with the Five Lesbian Brothers hosting. Tia was sound asleep, nestled in a heap of blankets on the floor of the dressing room. I waited for my turn, listening attentively to the speaker that picked up the onstage performances.

My friend (and editor of my Heinemann theater books) Lisa Barnett was assigned to watch Tia during my ten minutes in the spotlight. A remarkable thing occurred, Lisa said, the moment my voice was fed into the dressing room over the speaker. Tia opened her eyes and turned her head to the left, then to the right, looking puzzled. Then she smiled and did that communicative gurgling thing that babies do before they actually utter words.

“There is no question she knew it was you,” Lisa said, “and she wondered where you were hiding.”

Sometimes it’s the little things that inform the most. (Dear, dear Lisa has since died.)

That summer, my brother Joe visited from the Midwest and we spent several days at our cabin in Idyllwild. The scrambled details of our childhood, revisited by two (sober) adult men, began to form a less haphazard storyline than either of us had imagined independently.

Our mother, under the influence of her demons, had—in her attempt to cast herself as the sane one of our parents—concocted a web of fabrications that Joe and I would disentangle. For four days, like Holmes and Watson, we excavated the particulars of our childhood. There were not necessarily any neat conclusions, but what emerged was a deeper love of each other in our shared angst.

Nearing the end of our short vacation, the three of us took a nap and I remember not really sleeping but hearing the breath of my daughter, my brother, myself: family breath. Tia in her crib, my brother in the bedroom, me on the living room couch, all of us being fanned by a toasty August breeze.

By the time we celebrated her first birthday, the girl was walking like a fashion model and beginning to replace gurgles with words.

Tia’s mother had left a message on the morning of Tia’s big day, saying that she’d call to wish her a happy birthday “in the evening.” We returned home and waited for the call that never, to this day, came.

Miss Coleman visited Tia once before the holidays. Friendly and respectful, she expressed no interest in adopting Tia, especially since she was caring for Donovan, yet another of Tanya’s discarded kids (born after Tia). “You’re doing a great job,” she said. Then she asked me to do her a favor: “Can you cut his fingernails?” Cutting the nails of an infant’s teensy fingers requires a certain blind faith.

“Of course,” I said, realizing the challenges she faced trying to take care of this baby.