World AIDS Day

I know World AIDS Day is not today, it's actually Saturday, December 1, but since most of you read this blog during the week days I wanted to do this post on a day when I get a lot of hits.

Like a lot of people when HIV/AIDS first hit I wasn't worried about it. I wasn't gay so I figured it would never affect me. And like an idiot I retold a shit load of horrid jokes about AIDS and I laughed when others told them around me. Slowly things began to change though as HIV/AIDS made it way deeper and deeper into the fabric of our world.

The first person I knew personally that had HIV/AIDS was a man named Steve Presnell. I first met Steve when he taught an acting class at my alma mater in 1985. At that time I was a snotty nosed punk who knew all there was to know about acting so I didn't listen much to him during class and instead I hit on all the gals and tried to make everyone laugh. Thanks goodness Steve didn't hold my bad behavior in his class against me because after I left school I went to work for him when he was the artistic director at the Showboat Dinner Theatre. It was there working with Steve that I learned most of what I know today about acting and theatre in general. He was a great mentor to me during that time and I reaped the benefit of his long career that he had had in San Francisco directing plays and opera. I learned to build a character quickly in rehearsal and to always go wildly over the top in the first few rehearsals because one could always dial it down a notch or two if one's character was too far out there. I also learned a shit load of technical stuff working with Steve during those years.

One day in the 1987 Steve announced he was scaling back his working hours because he was ill. We all quickly guessed that he had AIDS and he later confirmed that he did indeed have the disease. I always knew he was gay and it didn't bother me one bit, I liked him and respected him no matter what and I also liked his partner Robie.

Soon after Steve told everyone he had AIDS I decided to leave the theatre to pursue other avenues of employment and I ended up moving to Roanoke for a couple of years. During my time in Roanoke Steve became gravely ill and he developed full blown AIDS. He died shortly afterwards. I regret that I was not there to tell him goodbye and to tell him that he was a great teacher/mentor/friend. His partner was by his side though until the end and I did get to tell him how much I liked Steve after I moved back to TN.

Steve may have been the first person I knew personally who had AIDS he was not the person closest to me who had it. That distinction goes to my late brother Charlie.

This is Charlie in his senior class picture.

He was the eldest child in our family. He was five years older than me and I looked up to him some when I was a little kid. I remember he was always reading and writing, he was the first writer in our family. I remember he told me how much fun reading was and that I had better learn to read quick so I wouldn't be left out, he told me that when I was four or five. I busted my ass to learn to read as soon as he told me that.

Charlie was a complicated guy and we had a complicated relationship. I remember thinking many times growing up with him that he hated me for some reason or another, but now as I look back on it I think that he just didn't like all of us other kids infringing on his time with Mom and Dad. It was like he was there first and we were horning in on a good thing he had going. But there were times that he was a cool big brother, like the times he let me tag along on his paper route and he'd give me a few bucks for helping, of course I copied him by blowing all the money he gave me on comic books, soda pop, and candy.

When our Mom died he was 15 and I was 10. He acted out in ways that others in the family thought were weird and they kind of shunned him for awhile. But looking back on it and taking into account our family history of mental illness, what he did was harmless and it never hurt anyone. During the years we all lived with Aunt Rageaholic and Uncle Adultery he, like millions of teenagers before and after him, became dark and creepy. He wrote all sorts of morbid freaky stuff in his private journals and later when other people in our family read them they freaked out and wrote Charlie out of their lives forever. I knew that the rambling shit he wrote was not real and it was just dark fantasy but it gave some of my siblings the excuse they needed to cut Charlie out of their lives for good.

Charlie dropped out of Berea College in the late 70's and he followed a male family tradition of ours, he joined the Navy. He served a tour of duty in the early 80's and then after his hitch was up he left. But after a year or so of bumming around and not working very much he rejoined the Navy again. He served in the Philippines at Subic Bay and it was there, or in Thailand, that he got AIDS, most likely from patronizing a prostitute who did not make him wear a condom.

After he got out of the Navy on his second hitch he landed in California and he went to work for the Pacific Stock Exchange. He was part of a team that investigated insider trading and apparently he was very good at his job. It was also during this time that he married a woman he had met while in the Navy and her name was Lena. I got to meet Lena and see Charlie again back around 1994 or so. They came east for a visit. I was amazed at what a beautiful woman Lena was and I was very proud my brother had landed such a catch, Lena was, and still is, an ethnic Indian originally from Malaysia. (If I got that part wrong Lena, please let me know.) During the visit I noticed that Charlie looked a bit thin and he had trouble breathing at times. I did not know it then but he had already been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.

I moved to Knoxville not too long after that because the company I was with at that time transferred me there. One day I got a phone call from Charlie and he told me he had HIV/AIDS. I was not too shocked but I was very sad. He hung on for years and thankfully his wife Lena stuck by his side throughout his illness. He was forced to stop working but she took up the slack and she not only nursed him through some tough times, she brought home the bacon as well.

In the fall/early winter of 1999 things took a drastic turn for the worse for my big brother. He was on all the latest drugs but nothing helped. The end was in sight and Lena called me one day to tell me that they had taken Charlie to a hospice and his doctors did not expect him to live. She told me that if I wanted to see him I had better fly out to Oakland and see him soon. Then a few days later she called me again and she told me that he was doing better and that they were going to send him home but I should still fly out as soon after Christmas as I could because he could go at any time.

How could I not go see my big brother in his last days? I wasn't going to snub him like others in my family had done so I bought a ticket and I flew out to Oakland to see him in Jan. 2000. When I walked in the door of their house in Oakland and I saw my big brother, who now weighed about 90 pounds, propped up on a hospital style bed in their living room I nearly lost it. Somehow I managed to smile and I cracked a few jokes to lighten the mood. It was mind blowing to see him laying there all emaciated and wheezing and gasping for breath. He still, despite being at deaths door, treated me like I was a pesky little brother. We spent the next few days just talking and watching movies, he loved sci fi movies but for some reason he had missed seeing The Matrix so I bought it for him and we watched it over and over. He loved sushi and I was able to get him some and we got to share it while we watched Keeanu and company. His wife was, and still remains, a saint for doing all she did for him then. I was amazed at her selflessness and her dedication to him during his darkest hours. When I left and I told him goodbye I knew I'd never see him alive again. And I was right. A few weeks later during the Superbowl I got a call from Lena and she told me that he had passed away. I was so sad for her because she loved him so much and she had invested so much of herself in him but I was also grateful that he was no longer suffering.

Like me you probably have lost someone to HIV/AIDS as well. And if you haven't, then I hope you never do because it's a fucking horrible disease. I hope someday we get to stop having a World AIDS day and we make December 1 "Day We Finally Eliminated AIDS Day."