Episode Four: Stephen Donart and Robert Teverbaugh

In this powerful episode, we highlight the Hands Up! storytelling series, a unique program that provides adults from diverse backgrounds—with and without disabilities—a platform to explore controversial issues through personal storytelling. The series fosters understanding by reversing the lens on these topics and focusing on our shared humanity.

Featured Stories

“Be Safe” - Stephen Donart marched in pride parades with his saxophone adorned in rainbow leis, only to later navigate an HIV diagnosis and the stigma that followed. His journey from secrecy and shame to self-acceptance and love is one of resilience and transformation. 

“Finally Nekkid” - Robert Teverbaugh explores an unexpected romance that defied fear and personal doubts, leading to a lifelong partnership built on trust, vulnerability, and an unwavering bond.

Transcript

Tales Told Episode 4  Stephen Donart and Robert Teverbaugh

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Shui  0:20  

Hey, Robert.

Robert

Hey, Shui

Shui

So I've always wanted to ask about you and your husband.

Robert  0:26  

Well, Shui, when two men love each other very much,

Shui  0:31  

Not that goose face. How did you meet? How did you get together? Was it fireworks right away, or was there mumbling and fumbling all around?

Robert  0:40  

Well, Shui, when two men love each other, very, very much. 

Steve

Give me the microphone.

Shui

Stephen!

Steve

Come on. Introduce me Shui

Shui  0:52  

Right you are, everybody, this is Steve. Steve is our executive producer. He's the Program Director at Tellin’ Tales, and he has his arm in pretty much everything.

Robert

And he's pretty.

Shui

And he's pretty.

Robert 1:07  

And I'm pretty.

Steve

I'm the pretty one.

Shui  1:10  

Okay, Steve, is there anything you want to tell the good people before they hear your story?

Steve and Robert  1:15  

Well, when, when two men love each other very much? 

Robert

Now you see why I married him,

Shui  1:21  

All right, let's hear that story. Thanks.

Steve  1:50  

Oh, I played the saxophone, and I used to march and pride parades all the way from Cincinnati to Duluth. And to be honest, it was much more out of community connection than it was out of protest. And let's face it, Chicago, it's a party. It's a celebration, but most of the cities, including Milwaukee, which is only 90 miles away, the parade routes, they're lined by protesters, the signs like aids is the wrath of God, homosexuality is a disease you are going to hell. If I met friends on the trip, people I'd be surrounded with this chorus, from my fellow bandmates of, “have fun, but be safe.”  This was the 1990s, so “be safe” meant safe sex. At that time, every gay bar had a bowl of condoms right there on the counter. Every urinal had a sign right in front of it reminding you to be safe. HIV and AIDS can be controlled. All you gotta do is “be safe.” I read everything on Web MD, I knew exactly what be safe meant.

Then 10 years later, I developed this rash on my leg, and it was painful because the nerves were being attacked. And the quick diagnosis was Shingles, but the secondary diagnosis was to get tested for HIV. It didn't make any sense, though, everything I was doing, it was considered 99% safe. It had to be something else. It wasn't. In fact, my CD four count was 186 when anything below 200 is considered full blown AIDS.

I was terrified. I'd seen movies like Philadelphia and I would run my own personal version of this tear jerker in my brain like over and over again, with me as the protagonist.  In my head, I knew that HIV was no longer considered a death sentence. Let's be honest, nobody really knew the effects and side effects of being on medication for what 20, 30, 40, years. My one saving grace was my doctor, Dr Kessler. The first thing he said to me was, hey, it is my job to make sure you die of something else. But in my heart, I'm thinking 5, 10, years. 

I told people who checked on me about the symptoms,  but never the cause. Because they had told me to be safe, and I assured them that I was, because I thought that I was.  The shame, embarrassment, worried about the reaction, but more worried not about what they'd say, but what they wouldn't say. And I knew,  I knew exactly what they were thinking. And then those signs, right? It's the Wrath of God. What did I do to bring this on myself?  So I kept it really close to my chest? I went to every single doctor's appointment by myself. I didn't talk to people for a long time because I developed Thrush, and it means there's white spots in your mouth and someone could notice it, and although the pain for the Shingles are still at an 8 or a 10, I forced myself to go right back to work because I didn't want to have explanations or doctor's notes. 

A few months later, it’s getting close to the holidays, my CD four count is up to 400 and Dr Kessler. Dr Kessler, every single appointment started with,  “How many medications did you miss in the past two days? How many medications did you miss in the last week? How many medications did you miss in the last month?”  He was drilling it into my head. You do not miss medications. It is dangerous. Viruses mutate. Then comes Christmas. I get to go home. It's like a week. I never get to go home for a week. And Christmas with my family is phenomenal. We play games. So I won the Santa Contest, which means they put glue all over my face and I dipped it into a bowl of cotton balls. Whoever has the most that stick, you win. Then my mom makes like, 50 different kinds of cookies, so you're never actually hungry when it's time to eat the real food. And then Christmas Eve, there's no one in the basement. This is my chance to sneak down and get my medications. No one will notice. But my backpack’s gone.  I looked everywhere I couldn’t find it. I searched the house. My nephew, who had almost the same backpack as I did, accidentally took it and was already halfway back to Florida. I was terrified, because what you can do. How you explain that, hey, I've got to leave Christmas Eve and go back to Chicago. I can't stay.  It's like coming out all over again, that anxiety, the fear of the reaction, disgust.  My dad. My dad spent the next hour, called every goddamn pharmacy within a 60 mile radius and drove to the Quad Cities to get me what I needed. My mom, she cried. It was joy and connection. And then by the end of the evening, I'm like catching ping pong balls in a Santa hat. 

At some point, I just accepted the fact I'm gonna be alone for the rest of my life, right? Because you feel like, like, that can of dented lima beans that's sitting there past its expiration date, in that cart in the front of the Jewel, you're damaged goods. Stop dating, which, to be honest, I have social anxiety, so I never really asked people out anyway. And I did start hanging out at this bar called Cocktail before rehearsals of the jazz band I was playing in with the director.  And the bartender, he was handsome. He was smart, engaging, the guys I was hanging out with, their idea of a good time. They'd sit there right in front of the window and watch the men go by, yeah. And then they’d rate them on a scale of one to 10, yeah. So needless to say, I spent a lot of time talking to the bartender, and he would talk about philosophical things, and we both discovered we were both directors, had theater degrees, and had a lot in common. So I got the courage. I asked him to go to the Goodman, which was not a date to the Goodman, and we went to Calo afterwards. And then you go, you dissect the show and analyze things. And we were directors. So there's all kinds of things that Goodman could have done differently that would have made it a whole lot better. But we connected in many ways. And he asked me out to his house for pot roast. Way to my heart. I liked him. Liked him a lot. So what do you do? You've got to rip the bandage off quickly, right, deal with the pain right away. You can't tell. Someone you're HIV positive after the fact, right? So while watching the movie, getting handsy, starting to make out a little bit. I had to whisper those dreaded words. We got to talk. The only thing you need to know, we have been very for 19 years.

More recently, I was assigned to teach this College Readiness class, right? And there's a unit on, how do you handle these new found freedoms of college, including STDs and HIV? And I was, I was shocked at the level of ignorance in the students. Someone actually asked me, Can you get that from a toilet seat? So I found without explaining why I had so much information, I did what teachers do yet teach, and then it was a few months later, we had a friend come over who needed a sympathetic ear because his girlfriend just told him that she was HIV positive. He didn't know how to handle it. Where did you take that information? I was compelled? I had to tell my story, and now I'm telling a bunch of strangers, some friends, and the anxiety is still there. I'm still worried about what people might be thinking in the lobby when I go out, and how people are going to respond. But you know what?  Hiding it is not worth it.

Robert  12:11  

Wow. Way to come out to everyone at once. This is your story, yeah, wow. Way to come to everybody, okay, yeah, okay, 

Steve

Yeah, well, half measures weren't doing anyone any good.

Shui  12:22  

Even so, that's a wonderful story, and you've only heard the half of it. Oh, it's not going to be when two men love each other very much, is it?

Robert  12:30  

Well, it's that too. But like, you know, here's my side of the story. 

Robert  12:53  

I'm banking out at the end of my bartending shift. It's the early 2000’s and I'm the afternoon guy at the other end of the room is my friend Ryan. I am clearly not in the best mood. There's this guy, Steve, who's been coming in regularly to my shift for a couple of months now, and it's clear he's interested in me. When I first met him, actually, when I first saw him, I was interested in him too. Way interested, very much my type. Now I could go on and on, but I've only got seven and a half minutes, and I kind of figure, you know what he might look like. 

I've gotten to know him in snippets, glances, little chats. I loved his awkward farm boy blush when he was paid a compliment, watching how we listen so thoughtfully and with deep respect to the most inane bar soaked treatises on God fucking knows what you've ever heard. He was magnetic and he was hot. I found out he's super smart and self effacing and funny and considerate and really, really kind, and none of that was what I was looking for. When he finally asked me out, I heard myself say yes, and was immediately shocked and and thought, Who the fuck release the emergency brake on my mouth. But I'd said it and it was out there. I told Ryan that I had agreed to the date, and he was instantly all a bubble about, oh my god, you're so cute, and you'll be such a wonderful couple. And look at you. You're so Twitter painted and clearly smitten. And I picked up an empty bottle of Absolute and chucked it at his head. 

I had to get out of that motherfucking date. The fuck was I thinking for a good bit of time I'd been happily single, well, moderately happy, but rather aggressively and quite busily single. Thank you very much. And. Dating somebody who actually seemed to get me, and clearly got to me was not on the table. The thought was terrifying. There had been a slew of failed attempts at self actualization and having to come to grips with the fact that navigating adult relationships was a skill set I was never going to achieve. I finally grew up and gave up. I decided to be content with sitting quietly within myself and honestly battling my own crazy didn't really leave me enough time or energy for the conga line of losers that I had dated and may have actually deserved some of my attention. Why throw good money after bad? I knew that people thought of me as smart, I knew that people thought of me as funny, and I knew that there were some people who thought that I was mildly attractive, and I had many short term relationships with many of them, and that was good enough. It was fine. Shooting for anything more had proven only to be expensive and painful, so I canceled, apparently I canceled the day of. 

Now I remember it differently, but you know, whatever, I canceled the date and I immediately felt like shit, maintaining an arm's length relationship with everybody had kind of become my MO. I clearly had an underdeveloped and very fragile notion of self, feelings of inadequacy and a deep rooted suspicion that I was an imposter in my own life were always just a whisper away in my head. The risk of having all of that fall down again was . . . But Steve has drawn me out, or I had drawn myself out. 

I actually wanted to be closer to the surface, to be in my body, to touch stuff and feel present in my own hands. I wanted to date him, to be with him. And I really wanted to touch him and be touched by him. And that too, was terrifying. You see, I've never understood my body. I've hated it, lived in it, loved it, loathed it and admired it. It's been circus fat. It's been anorexically thin. It's been fitness model muscular, and it has been so weak that it's been hospitalized, twice. I've tested its limits. I've broken and repaired it, and in its better emanations, I've used it as a tool to get exactly what I want from a lot of people, but I never understood it. I could never figure out if I was it, if it defined me, if it was just a place I live for however long, or, or something that just carried me around from day to day. 

We've had a very rocky relationship, my body and me. It's safe to say that for most of my life, I've always felt at least somewhat distanced from it, external to it. Basically, when I, when I try and look at myself, I only see my body, and I just have to assume that I'm in there somewhere. But apparently I really wanted to come out. So after a lot of apologies and groveling, I was finally awarded a second chance at a first date. It went well, very, and shortly thereafter, immediately after, maybe a little too soon after, I found myself asking him for a second date, and he said yes, and that was good, because by that time, I was pretty much all in, dinner and a movie at my place. I don't recall the film, but I made pot roast for dinner, and I might not be confident a lot about my life, but my pot roast is fucking stellar. Operas will be written about it one day. Seriously, I kid you not. Dinner was amazing, of course, and I really needed it to be. I figured clothes were probably going to come off, and if it all went to shit, I need to have felt good about at least something that evening. And if he ran screaming from the room after seeing me, at least I'd have pot roast in the fridge. Hands started roaming and exploring shortly after the movie started, we never got to the end of the movie. 

Me, what I most remember about that night is the enthusiasm, the excitement. I remember a shared shyness and awkwardness and a quirky innocence that hadn't been part of any encounter I'd had in years. I remember actually feeling myself within my body and how wonderful that was. And I remember actually feeling what I thought about my body and how horrible that was. I remember being so afraid and so eager and so sorry that the physicality that I was bringing to the table was as it was. I remember his caution and his care. I was out at sea, and I could see that he could see. I remember him searching my face for acceptance or approval. And I thought, Jesus Christ, dude, you're fucking gorgeous. Did you not know? And when he told me he was HIV positive, I stopped, and I looked at him. He was completely present and vulnerable and defenseless and emotionally raw and so very afraid of what was going to come next. I pounced on him like a dog on a stick of butter. At some point, he peeled me off of him long enough to suggest that we adjourned to the bedroom. Now, I live in a high rise with some walls of glass, and so I moved to lower the blinds, bit and dim the lights and and he said, Fuck that shit. Let's give your neighbors a show. And we did, and we still are, some 20 years on.

I still don't understand this body that I'm in. But when he looks at me as I feel myself in my body that I don't understand, I feel home, I can unbegrudgingly accept it as mine. It is a place that I can live, that I can laugh, that I can love, that I can share that I still don't understand, but that's home, and that is good enough. It's fine. Thanks. 

Shui  22:50  

Like a dog on a stick of butter.

Robert  22:55  

Well, Shui, when two men love each other very much. You know.

Shui

You are too funny. 

Robert

I aim to please.

Steve  23:01  

And he pleases very well. 

Shui  23:05  

There goes our PG rating. 

Robert

You knew that was never going to last.  

Shui

Well, it gives us something to shoot for in our next telling tales.

Steve, Robert, Shui 

Tales Told

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