Finding My Way—and Staying Alive—During the AIDS Crisis

Jan. 31: I went into Caswell-Massey this afternoon to buy ear plugs & came out with a $45 hairbrush. And I don’t even brush my hair.

Feb. 3: Liberace is dying & the Disease Control Center in Atlanta is talking about having everyone admitted to a hospital be required to take the AIDS test. So there will be lots of people breaking some ribs and leaving the next morning knowing they’re antibody-positive? Wonderful.

Feb. 12: How I think these days: Just give me time enough to finish “Stolen Words.” Draft “Aurora 7” [my second novel]. Then I can get sick. Just as a year ago I was making a bargain with God: just let me finish revising “Arts & Sciences.” Maybe, if I’m lucky, I can keep this up for 40 years.

Feb. 13: Went to Howie the dentist this morning. A thorough cleaning and no problems. But my AIDS fears travel everywhere with me. Why, I think, is he asking me how my “general health” has been? And when he tells me that the remaining 2 wisdom teeth . . . will eventually have to come out, I think: what if I have it done overnight in a hospital? And what if by then they’re giving the AIDS test to everyone? Will I wake up to hear a nurse tell me that my wisdom teeth are out & that, by the way, I’m antibody-positive?

Feb. 20: [N.] is scared of [possibly] being gay and being in N.Y., and so I sit across from him, feeling old & possibly lethal, offering my bromides and cautions & grounds for hope I certainly don’t believe in.

Feb. 22: What irony: all that worry over being homosexual. And then, not much after it began to seem okay to be so, we must learn to practice every self-restraint we can think of.

“If you want to get anything done, talk to the guy in the corner.”

Cartoon by Frank Cotham

Feb. 23: In the afternoon I called Joyce [my lawyer] . . . to make an appointment to have my will done. . . . Melodramatic? Maybe the timing, though I’ve meant to do this anyway, since I do now have money, property, copyrights to think about. And consider this: she’s thinking of getting out of the wills business—too many of her clients have ARC, get AIDS, die, leave lovers who fight with parents. It’s become too depressing.

Feb. 24: I see mandatory AIDS testing coming. They won’t exactly drag one off the streets to do it, but they’ll make it a requirement for so many things—visas, hospital stays, insurance, licenses of all kinds—that it will become impossible to go much further through life without having [the test]. And millions will get psychological death sentences.

March 2: I ran. At 5:00 there was that gaudy color-photograph effect on the eastern edge of the reservoir. The sky was inky dark blue, and the buildings were as white as Marilyn Monroe’s teeth. A trick that God, the great showoff, kept up for a couple of minutes. It was spectacular. A strong wind, too—the track was sprinkled with feathers.

March 9: [Arthur Miller at the Y.] Pompous, old, overrated bore. He read from his memoirs (I counted 3 grammatical errors) & had the dumb audience eating out of his hand. Even after he called it quits rather abruptly & left the stage at 9:00. At the party upstairs in the nursery school he never even took off his coat. Oh, Marilyn, how you must have missed Joe D.

March 18: Walking on 2nd Ave. in the 60s this morning I saw a blond woman walking in the other direction. I thought: “Gee, she’s pretty.” The mind tends toward understatement sometimes. I got a few steps closer and realized it was Catherine Deneuve.

March 22: A new crush: [N. and I] went to a coffee shop across from Lincoln Center and sat and talked about everything for hours. He had a fingernail paring caught between his teeth and repeated efforts to dislodge it with a toothpick succeeded only in bloodying his gums. That I found all this adorable instead of disgusting will tell you where I am.

March 23: Mona Simpson & three girls from Paris Review were [at a party] . . . chattering amongst themselves—and only themselves—like quadruplets who’d been raised in the forest.

March 26: Greg has the Vidalian fuck-&-move-on-&-count-on-your-friends-for-everything-else view. Which I accept as his, just as he understands my looking-for-the-Mr.-Right-One drive.

April 6: Doug calls & asks if I’d like to be on a segment of “Good Morning America” being produced by [his ex-boyfriend]. It’s about love in the 80s & I’m supposed to function as a representative successful, reasonably attractive youngish gay man—filmed running in the Park, etc. Well, no, thanks. But I’m flattered.

April 20: Tommy’s book has come out & it’s brought back all the old disbelief that this ever could have happened. [Louise and I] talked about the latest AIDS horror stories in the press & I walked her home as far as 34th St., down 1st, past the bums getting ready for the night in their cardboard boxes in Ralph Bunche Park.

April 28: I opened the door at 7:30 to [G., an Italian writer], who, just as David said, is just this side of being handsome, but with a beautiful compact build and Florentine blue eyes. He has a son who’s 9. He and his ex-wife are both journalists & have been here for a year. He is charming, very smart, and very impetuous.

Finding My Way—and Staying Alive—During the AIDS Crisis
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