The Night I Got Infected with HIV

Twenty years after my HIV diagnosis in 1987, I invited my friends and family to a major anniversary celebration in New York City. During that event, I shared the story of my HIV journey through storytelling and song.

Now, decades later, reflecting back on that evening, I am sharing this recording in the hopes that we can all celebrate our personal milestones together.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Okay, thanks for coming. Is there enough food for everybody? Oh, I gotta shut my phone off. That's the first thing I should do. We're standing in the front here. They're sitting in the front if you want to sit down in the front. Thank you for coming tonight. Um, I had this idea about a year ago that I'd like to celebrate my 20th anniversary with HIV with a few of my closest friends. And um the list kept getting longer and longer. So um here we are. And I want to start at the very beginning of where it all happened, um, 20 years ago this week. And in the next few songs, I want to take you on a journey that ends, at least tonight, with all of us. And from here on in, we'll see where the next episode is. So, in the beginning, it was 20 years ago in November, 20 years ago this week, when I was working off Broadway to get my union card, my equity card, and was an out-of-work actor, and I wanted to get my union card. I got a gig with this theater called Musical Theatre Works.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

And one person recently they folded about 10 years ago, but they put a lot of shows together that actually made it to Broadway, they worked shopped a lot of shows, and I was told that I could get my union card and find it. I was an apprentice as I'm I was the assistant to the assistant stage manager for seven or eight different shows. And the first show that we did was called The No Frills Review at the Cherry Lane Theatre. And my job was to clean out the trapdoor that the actors had to use, and I got 50 bucks that week. And my dad was proud because I just got my degree from NYU and it was$10,000 a semester. I'm underneath the trapdoor, I'm listening longingly to the actors rehearsing their lyrics because I was the actor. I'd been trained to do this, but I was behind stage. I was under the stage. The songs that year that I heard, those seven different shows that I did to get my equity card, became a sort of soundtrack to the year. They were the underscoring of the events that led to us being here tonight. The first show was called The No Frills Review, and when I was working on it, Martin Charman was directing it. I was under the stage, under the trapdoor. I was alone, I was lonely, I was feeling invisible. Wasn't that lonely? And this guy comes up to me and he says, I uh I see you here every day. You're um you're working on a set. I'm um I'm Racy, he says. My name is Racy. My real name is Paul Somethingstein, but uh I call myself Racy because it's a cool name. So um, listen, I know your secret. And uh it's safe with me. And he reaches into his pocket and he gives me his his uh his phone number. Now, the pocket for the teenagers that I teach all over the world is a very important thing. In the pockets of our genes we hide our secrets, especially if you're a teenager. And in the pockets of our genes, we hide our favorite things, our dreams, the things we're afraid to say, the words. And he had his phone number and he gave it to me, and I said, I'm never gonna call this guy. And then I did. So I went to his apartment on November 30th, 1987. Last night, 20 years ago, 70th of Columbus, and I remember getting off the subway. It was walking two blocks to from this train station and one avenue over, and I saw the newsstand from November 30th. It was the cover of the New York Post said this title, The Man Who Gave Us AIDS. Everywhere in 1987 there were the letters HIV and AIDS, and now only one day a year in the United States, in the media, and that's tomorrow, today, World AIDS Day. If it's about other countries, we'll talk about it, but not in this country. But I said to myself, that's not my problem, because I don't have to worry about things like that. And I put my hands in my pockets and I walked down the road towards his apartment. Down the road.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

I remember there's a diner with the best pie on the mall. And the girl who made me laugh had a peace that gave me half.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

I kissed her and I missed her.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

That Christmas Eat. I knew how she would feel, but I had to close the deal. I called her up from north of nowhere down the road.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

The show that I was working on when I went to Racy's apartment was called, interestingly enough, Walk on the Wild Side. It was the musical version of the book from our childhood, and it was a great musical. And what I loved about that musical are some of the lyrics in the songs. I would sit backstage, I was the prop master, and I would listen longingly, longingly to the actors rehearsing or performing their lyrics. I remember in particular one that went like this The Life We Lead don't last too long. That's why they say live for today. And another one that went, everybody's got a story, and they tell it really well. How they had a chance in heaven and they ended up in hell. I rang Racey's buzzer. I walked up the five flights of stairs to his apartment. The first flight of stairs, I said to myself, Who am I? I am my mother's bonus, and I am my father's pride and joy. But in eighth grade I was the faggot. And in ninth grade, I was the one who's so gay. And in tenth grade I was trying to fit in and trying to belong like everybody else. Who am I? I'm a contradiction. Second flight of stairs, hands in pockets where I held on to my secrets and my dreams. I said to myself, Whose arms will I fall into? Maybe tonight this person, because I'm lonely. The third flight of stairs, I was looking for a weapon. The weapon I was gonna use that night was a condom, but I forgot to bring it. So the fourth flight of stairs, I said what everybody says when they're about to do something they don't want to do, but they're gonna do it anyway. It's a long sentence. I shouldn't do this, it's just this once. Next time I'll be safer, but in but out loud we say with one word, we say fourth flight of stairs. Fifth flight of stairs. The banister is broken. I knock on the door, he opens it. There's um there's uh a brown couch against a window made of corduroy, and there's a bookcase on one wall with three shelves. Some photo albums on the bottom shelf, terms of endearment was one of the movies in the middle shelf and some other books in the top shelf. He played a song on his keyboard. The song sucked. He couldn't sing, he couldn't play, but I told him I liked his song. I lied because I wanted him to like me. We talked about HIV, I never asked him if his results for HIV were ever positive or negative. I left my jeans on the floor and climbed into the loft bed. And I left my secrets on the floor too. The words I wanted to say were see me differently than anybody else. Love me back, hold me just for a little while, notice me. Buddy list me, I am me, text me, but if you say you're gonna do it, do it. Be drunk on me. And I waited for the sound of a condom wrapper. The sound of safer sex 20 years ago last night, which is the same sound today, and I didn't hear it. And I turned my head and I looked the other way. A few weeks later, I got really sick. He came over to my apartment. He had never been to my apartment. I'd always go to his place for those two or three times I would visit with him. And when he came to my apartment, he brought two bags of groceries. I was lying in bed with 103 fever. I was really sick. I remember I had spots on my torso, and I had gone home earlier to ask my mom what she thinks it was. She said it's it's probably just a rash, and I was taking some tetracycline to clear up the whatever the rash was. I was lying in bed, I had a high fever and a headache, and he came through the door and he made me a pot of potato soup. I don't cook, so it was really cool to have some the smell of food in my apartment. The smell of kindness and care. I watched him as I was lying in the bed. I watched him as he lowered the flame of the pot to a simmer. And he came over to me and I thought to myself, he's not so bad. He loves me. He loves me not. You know that game we play with ourselves. I call it the captivity of emotional ambivalence.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Welcome to the Hebrew.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Here we await the pleasure of our Lord. He is generous and virtuous, industrious, because he has walked with princes in the city, and I have pulled my wagons in a circle. He came over to my bed. He sat down. He did this thing with his hands. He did this tracing his hands up and down the top of my forearm. And I call that a glancing touch. A glancing touch because it's the kind of touch that you can see through into somebody. I wanted to believe that he can actually see inside of me. I wanted it to be seen in a way that others don't see me. And I was sick, I had a fever, I had a flu, it was the acute onset. I didn't know that, we didn't know that back then 20 years ago. So when he asked nicely, I let him, even though I didn't want him to, I let him have his way with me one last time. And when he was done, he rolled away. And I remember him. Salty and sweaty. And I remember me. The harvested young find. There we were lying together at the intersection of risk and need.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Night falls on the harbour. Time for the arrival of our Lord.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

He is whistling, caught the bar car, brings me groceries, hangs his coat up, hands me flowers, kisses me, kisses me.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

We have vowed to cherish, to honor till we perish this stranger to our days here in Paris, where we daily pull our wagons in a circle.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

The next few shows that Musical Theatre Works were doing were something called Batteries Not Included, and the next one was Kiss Me Quick Before the Lava Reaches the Village. Denise, you remember that? It was a good show. I met Racy in a diner on 28th Street and 2nd Avenue, which a week after this conversation, the diner burned down, interestingly enough. Met him in a diner because I just wanted to get tested for a whole bunch of STIs. I did not know what was wrong with me. So I went to the Department of Health on 9th Avenue. Got tested for syphilis and gonorrhea and chlamydia and HPV and herpes, and then while I was there, they said maybe you should get an HIV test. They were the first people, these doctors, that I ever told what I was doing. I kept my secrets hidden. I kept everything deep inside. And I went to the diner and met Ray and I said, Yeah, I got tested today for syphilis. And he said, Good partner. He called me partner. I hated that because it made me think that he forgot my name. I said I got tested for gonorrhea and chlamydia and all the other diseases. And he said, I'm proud of you, partner. And he picked up a cup of tea. They were lunching, there were a bunch of ladies lunching in the corner. The tablecloth was green and white striped. The check was already on the table. I said, I got an HIV test too. The tea was next to his mouth, the cup. He put it down slowly and he looked away from me and he said, Why? I said, because we're having unsafe sex, Racy. And I told these guys at the Department of Health, and they said that he interrupted me and he said, You didn't give anybody my name, did you? I said, No. He said, You're not saying I infected you, do you? I said, no. He said, because HIV is in the New York City water. And I knew that it was not, and I knew something wasn't right. He said, and he leaned into me with the hard heels of his hands against the table, and I watched the tea spill onto the check. He whispered in my ear, if you tell anybody that I infected you, I'll kill you. I drive. Get to the next place. There's always a next place. Follow the eye. The man's gotta drive.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

None of them. Drive.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

I was told by Musical Theatre Works that I would get my equity card with one more show. Now it's May. We're going on rehearsals in June. It's opening in July. The show, ironically enough, was called Internal Combustion. About the invention of the car. Everything that happened on the stage that year was happening under the stage in my life. I went to get tested a second time. Because the first time I got tested, those results weren't going to reflect the unsafe sex that I had with Racy. We believed back in 87 you had to wait six months. We called that the window period. Now we know it's a little less than three months, so I waited the full six months. And on June 1st, I went to the Department of Health on 9th Avenue and I stood there and I waited for my results. I'd given my blood three weeks earlier, because nowadays you get your results in 15 minutes. And the longer you've been infected with HIV, the quicker the strip turns color. But back then it was three weeks. When I first gave my blood three weeks earlier, somewhere in the middle of May, I met the test counselor. Her name was Elena. She said, You're not going to be infected with HIV. It was just a few times with one guy. But if you do come back positive, you're not going to die of AIDS. Here's what you're going to die from. The reason you'll die, Scott, is because you don't know how to say no. So I'm going back three weeks later to get my results, and Elena's already giving some results to somebody else, and the receptionist asks me if I want to wait, or would I be able to just get my results from some other counselor and I didn't know how to say no. So I let a stranger named Larry, who didn't know me, give me my results. He called me into his office. I could smell the fear in the waiting room. There were two videos over my head, and one was a loop, a reel of symptoms of gonorrhea in Spanish. And on the other was a loop of let's make a deal at the game show. And I walked in, and he had this folder in his hand. And I heard him say, I'm I'm sorry. It's positive.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

The life we lead don't last too long.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

No one I see gets through for free. I was in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago. I was at the university and uh teaching. I met a beautiful 25-year-old who came up to me after my talk. He waited until everybody was gone. And he he just returned from serving 18 months in Iraq. He's a freshman. All of his peers are 18 years old. He doesn't relate to them. And he said, I need to know what you thought the very second you heard the words, I'm sorry, it's positive. What were you thinking? I need to know. And so I wanted to give him an answer that he could understand. And I said, Mike, it was kind of like this. It's kind of like I'm standing in a room, and the building around it falls down, but I'm still standing. And there are bullets flying around me, but I'm not bleeding. And the air in the room is gone, and I'm still breathing. And I saw in my mind's eye my mother. But I couldn't see her face. I only saw the back of her head. And I heard my father calling out to me. My dad, whenever I was in trouble or whenever he didn't know what to do for me, would say my name three times. He'd say, Scotty, Scotty, Scotty. And I heard him saying, What did you do? I can't fix this. I can't take this away. What have you done? And I heard this voice from somewhere that said, Are you ready to stop running from death? Are you ready to stop running from life? I took a phone number, put it in my pocket, walked down the stairs, got to the corner of Ninth Avenue, and the corner of Ninth Avenue and the Department of Health happens to be 28th Street, four and a half blocks from where we're standing, four and a half blocks from where we are tonight. Twenty years ago, I looked down this road and said to myself, where am I gonna go now? What do I do now? How do I find my way?

SPEAKER_00 18:10

To get back home. Where I can hold you. Where the good fashion I told you, five, another open.