Today, December 1, is World AIDS Day, an event marked each year by events great and small. Since I became a member of this community in 2006, I've tried to generate a diary each year as one of the "small" events.
Last year, I wrote about how I came to be infected with HIV almost exactly thirty (now 31) years ago. My late partner Mario who passed away 19 years ago this coming Sunday. This year I've chosen to write a bit (okay, more than a bit) about him and about our six-year relationship.
Medical advances notwithstanding, every day people here and in other nations contract HIV, sicken and die. During the worst years of the epidemic, thousands upon thousands of individuals passed away--people who were, for the most part in the prime of their life, who could have made a difference in the world. There is no way to ameliorate the sense of loss, one can but but bear witness to it and remember those who didn't make it.
There's more below the fold, so keep reading.
I want to be clear that my purpose in writing this particular diary is not to garner sympathy from you who may read it. We had a relationship of six years duration, so Mario's been dead for three times as long as I even knew him. It would be morbid in the extreme were anyone to get the impression that I'm carrying a torch for him at this late date. On the other hand I most definitely loved him and I certainly don't want to forget him; many of those who died during the height of the epidemic had to experience an early death all by themselves and all but forgotten. Mario was fortunate; he had his family, he had his friends (though many of those friends are now also deceased) and he had me.
Mario was only ten weeks younger than me. We were born in 1951 but were opposites in many respects. I was born in the Bronx and grew up in Queens, while Mario was born and raised in Antioch, California, east of San Francisco. My dad was an engineer; his dad was very much working class (to be honest, I don't remember what he did for a living, though I'm certain Mario told me). My dad was a workaholic, Mario's dad, though certainly a hard worker and devoted to his family, was an alcoholic. I was the oldest of two kids, Mario was the youngest of five. I'm a stereotypical Jewish New Yorker, Mario was Latino. Both of us had troubled childhoods, though though in very different ways. Even as a teenager Mario was abusing alcohol while I, as a teen, was very much a straight arrow (so to speak). I did my best to make up for that once I got to college of course but Mario undoubtedly had the head start in that respect; at the age of 15 he was arrested for public intoxication. Mario knew rather early on that he was attracted to guys while I was clueless about my sexuality for an almost absurdly long long time. I was painfully earnest and honest while Mario rather liked making things up.
Mario took off for the freedoms of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district as soon as he graduated high school. His given name was actually Frederick but as soon as he arrived in San Francisco he began introducing himself as "Mario" because he'd had a crush on a classmate with that name. Nobody other than his parents and siblings (and their children, his nieces and nephews) ever called him "Fred." You have to admit Mario's a far sexier name.
Mario quickly became a part of the post-hippie and early gay liberation era counterculture of San Francisco. When he was 21 he met a man named Peter, who was a few years his senior. They began a fourteen-year relationship. Sometime around 1976, Peter and Mario relocated to the Santa Barbara area; they returned to San Francisco in 1982 or 1983. During his time in Santa Barbara he obtained an Associate of Arts degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management from Santa Barbara City College and became a chef. The restaurant business is not an easy one; and many of his co-workers used amphetamines (in the form commonly referred to back then as "Black Beauties") to deal with the stress of kitchen work. This was his first introduction to speed. At some point Mario began injecting IV crystal meth.
We first met on the night before Halloween in 1986, a couple of weeks after I relocated from Washington, DC to San Francisco. Mario been trying to get sober for the past but with only limited success. Because of Mario's alcohol and drug problems, he and Peter had parted ways definitively. He was trying to move on, single for really the first time in his adult life. It was actually Mario's AA sponsor who introduced us. We were not at an AA meeting but rather at another 12-step meeting focused on relationship issues. To be honest I did not give the introduction a second thought (well, I must have at some level; after all, I still recall our initial introduction). That wasn't because I didn't find him attractive but because, like Mario I was also recently out of a rather messy relationship and was more focused on trying to take stock of myself than on trying to form a new partnership.
We began dating so casually that I didn't realize we were going out. I cannot claim to speak for the majority of gay men, either now or during other eras, but based on my own experience to that point, when it came to guys you weren't really dating someone unless you were sleeping with them; if anything it was an initial sexual hookup that started things off. Mario simply approached me one day and asked if I'd like to go to a movie with him--a Sunday matinee. If I'm not mistaken it was right around Valentine's Day, 1987. We saw "The Black Widow," a movie of no great distinction. It's funny the things you remember and what you forget. We had fun; watching the movie led to jokes about dysfunctional relationships. I dropped him off somewhere near his house and went on my way. We agreed to see another movie the following Sunday. After several weeks of Sunday matinees, Mario called me up one evening to tell me he was attracted to me; I was actually somewhat taken aback and didn't respond right away. Instead we kept on going to matinees.
At some point toward the middle of May I suddenly stopped hearing from him and could not reach him by phone either at work or at home. When he resurfaced he confessed that he'd picked up crystal meth once again. It was during the time I couldn't get hold of him that I realized how much I missed him (anyone reading this who as even a passing familiarity with twelve-step recovery will find this fact rather amusing). I don't think I even acknowledged to him that the attraction was mutual until he was clean and sober once again. If I'm not mistaken, the weekend of San Francisco's Gay Pride celebration marked the first time we spent a night together.
Things seemed to go smoothly for a number of months. We'd go out to dinner once or twice a week and, on a Friday or Saturday evening, hit a movie the night together. We often went to one or another of the numerous sushi restaurants in the Castro. He would make little sculptures from wasabi and shrimp tails.
The following May I realized that I had become at least psychologically dependent on Ativan (a benzodiazapine which I'd been taking by prescription for some time). For me this marked the end of a very long pattern of switching substances before my addiction to them could become too apparent to me. I asked Mario to take me to a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous. Not long after, though as far as I know not related to this new development, Mario began having some second thoughts about being in a committed relationship; he wasn't sure he was ready and he found it "scary." He decided to take a time out and play the field; he soon was dating someone else in NA. We did our best to remain friends though at times I found it very challenging. He seemed to be having fun; I was miserable.
I entered our relationship knowing full well that I was HIV-positive and I was very vocal about it from the start. Mario on the other hand did not know his status, which was the case for most people back then. The only reason I knew my status was that, during a hospitalization in 1985, my doctor had thought the information might be useful in treating me for something else entirely unrelated. There were no medications; AZT did not become available until 1987 and you only took AZT if you HAD to--if you'd already developed an opportunistic infection or if your CD 4 count (CD 4 cells being the principal portion of the immune system attacked by HIV) went below 200. Mine was not there at the time; I didn't go on medication until 1991 by which time the standards for taking medication had someone changed; in fact my CD 4 count has never fallen below 200. I'm truly lucky in that respect.
Other than just knowing your status, if you tested positive in 1987 you could do...what? Worry? Write your will? I even told my friends not to bother getting tested because it seemed pointless. When Mario and I began dating we were incredibly, almost comically careful. At one point I developed some sort of bump at the back of my throat. "I'd better not kiss you until we know what's going on." It turned out to be some sort of non-STD, viral thing that was surgically removed and never returned.
Mario seemed to be perfectly well at the time, though his sexual history (like mine, not very pretty) and his history of IV drug use likely are what motivated him to seek HIV testing. Although we were, at this point, "just friends" I went to the Castro District Health Clinic with him for his test, and again when he returned to get his results two weeks later. Before you could get your results they showed you a video. The video was a local product. San Francisco being in some ways a rather small town it isn't surprising that one of the main participants in the video was an acquaintance of ours, a straight musician of some repute (he wrote the incidental music for the movie "Sid and Nancy") who was also HIV-positive. I don't recall the precise content of the video; it was a "take care of yourself and don't despair and this is how you use a condom" sort of thing. Mario left the interview room quite despondent. He'd tested positive. He shortly thereafter discovered that his CD 4 count was 150 and began taking AZT.
Within a couple of months Mario concluded that breaking up with me had been a mistake. I graciously consented to take him back. I'd gone through my own changes during the time we were apart and realized that I needed to relate to him on a healthier, less emotionally dependent basis than I had previously. And so it went. We parted again briefly the following year due to another relapse with alcohol and speed. He admitted later on that he had broken up with me for the express purpose of "going out" (as the expression is used in AA and NA). I shrugged my shoulders and told him I'd suspected as much; we were on once again and shortly thereafter took our first real vacation together--a nine-day trip down the California coast to Big Sur, Santa Barbara, San Diego and back, by way of the San Diego Zoo and Disneyland. It was a revelation--to him at least--that after nine days of being together 24/7 we weren't sick of each other. In the aftermath of the Loma Prieta earthquake, the power was off in Mario's neighborhood for several days. Where I lived, the power returned within a few hours, so we again spent several days living together on a trial basis.
Early the following January, Mario had one more go-round with alcohol and speed. One night in the midst of it we met up for dinner. It was the only time I ever saw him intoxicated. It was not a pleasant experience for either of us. Some people are fun when they're loaded; Mario wasn't one of those people (nor am I). Fortunately he had himself admitted to an in-patient treatment program at a facility specifically for individuals with a "dual diagnosis" of substance abuse and HIV.
After he graduated from his program we decided to move in together on a permanent basis. The process was actually somewhat amusing. The head of his program had to interview us to make sure he was entering a living situation that would be conducive to his continued sobriety. He was suitably convinced. In a certain sense he married us. He moved into my apartment temporarily while we looked for a place that would be "ours" rather than mine or his. We found our home in an archetypical San Francisco Victorian close to the heart of the Castro District--the middle unit of a group of three townhouses that had been converted into six flats. Our second-floor unit had a large brick fireplace in the living room and a back stairway leading to a shared yard with some rather ratty rosebushes in it that Mario set about taming. There were steps leading up to the front stoop and even more steps leading to our main hallway. There was a skylight over the stairway which (we discovered) leaked whenever it rained.
On Valentine's Day, 1991, San Francisco's domestic partnership ordinance went into effect. Looking back from a twenty-year perspective, the limited rights granted by that law seems almost degrading but compared with what had obtained until then it was downright revolutionary. Indeed it took the city two attempts to successfully implement the law. The first time it was passed by the Board of Supervisors in 1989, the voters (even in San Francisco!) actually rejected it. Some of our friends in relationships had made plans long in advance of the day to register. We made up our minds only that morning before we went to work. We left our respective offices an hour early to get to City Hall in time to be registered on the first day; we were in fact one of the last couples to do so and to receive a special certificate (I still have that certificate, in my living room, framed) acknowledging our relationship status.
Our domestic life was rather tranquil. Mario naturally did most of the cooking; the results showed in my waistline. He made the BEST french toast I've ever had; I still regret not learning his recipe before he died, though I believe it had something to do with using heavy cream in the batter. He fattened me up, then teased me about my bulging gut.
In 1991 we both turned 40 years old. We celebrated my birthday at our flat; Mario decided to have his party in Golden Gate Park. Most of the friends we invited to our respective parties later died from AIDS. We took a trip up the California coast to see the redwoods and Mendocino, returning to San Francisco the night the Oakland Hills fire reached it peak. We could see the flames across the bay as we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge.
The following March my job sent me, along with several co-workers including my boss, back to DC for a one-week training program. I departed a few days early to spent some time in Manhattan seeing friends. That winter had been almost completely free of snow but during my last evening in New York several inches fell on midtown. I took the train down to DC the following morning. The day before I left San Francisco, Mario mentioned that he seemed to be having some sort of allergy attack. I didn't think too much of it. As usual when one or the other of us was traveling we agreed to check in nightly. On my first or second night in DC I received a message from one of Mario's friends. He had been admitted to the hospital and had been diagnosed with pneumocystis pneumonia, one of the opportunistic infections most commonly associated with AIDS. I was devastated and anguished. I did not feel comfortable letting my colleagues know what was going on. Luckily I still had quite a few friends in DC to confide in. Unfortunately I maintained this pattern throughout his illness; I suffered in silence during the day, waiting until work was over to share my misery with my friends.
One thing I should mention here is that, at that point, both Mario and I viewed ourselves as in the closet to some degree. I did not discuss my personal life with my co-workers, though my friends and family knew I was gay by that point and, to be honest, I doubt I was fooling anyone other than myself. For Mario's part, despite the fact that his family had met his previous partner Peter on numerous occasions he never felt comfortable discussing his sexual orientation with his parents or siblings. He felt a bit uncomfortable holding hands in public, even in the Castro (this used to irk me more than a bit). On the other hand he was completely open at his job. After he'd completed his substance abuse treatment program he'd taken a clerical job at United Way of San Francisco; he'd come to view restaurant and catering work as being a bit too precarious financially as well as being stressful to the point that it could jeopardize his sobriety. While at United Way he belonged to an LGBT employee group and was part of the campaign that convinced the local chapter to cease funding the Boy Scouts of America due to their anti-gay stance.
Once he was released from the hospital he retired from his job on permanent disability. Before he'd gotten sick, we had made plans for a trip to Hawaii, someplace neither of us had visited. Luckily, by the time the departure date came around, Mario felt well enough to travel. The trip served as a final respite before things really got bad. We visited Maui, the Big Island, and Honolulu. We saw lots of beautiful scenery; I took plenty of pictures. We took a snorkeling trip to Molokini Atoll of of Maui. Mario had a great time in the water; I got seasick. While we were in Hawaii, the Rodney King riots were taking place in Los Angeles and elsewhere.
The timelines begin to blur a bit from here on. One afternoon, probably in mid-May, Mario was out when I got home work; he'd been to see his doctor. I heard the door open; looked down to see him sitting at the foot of our very steep stairway and knew immediately that something was very wrong. His pneumonia had returned. We sat there at the foot of the stairs, held each other and wept.
He decided to tough it out by obtaining treatment as an outpatient. This involved getting a friend to take him to and from the hospital where he'd spend several hours, four or five times a week, inhaling this awful stuff called aerosolized pentamidine. It briefly made him diabetic. Pneumocystis pneumonia is often treated with Septra, a sulfa drug that can also serve as a prophylaxis; I spent a number of years on it myself before later generations of HIV medications made it unnecessary. Unfortunately Mario discovered he was severely allergic to it and the only other form of treatment, a newly-developed drug called dapsone, didn't seem to be effective.
This time it took a good deal longer for him to recover. Getting up and down the stairs began to be challenge. An old friend of mine from New York came to visit sometime in July. It was his first time meeting Mario; he drew me aside and asked me if Mario had always been so frail. During the time Mario spent in his drug treatment program, meals were planned and prepared communally by the clients; they tended to be inexpensive and rather starchy. Mario was never a big guy (in fact he was no more than five foot three or four and I doubt he ever weighed more than 140 pounds) but after the treatment he had a bit of a Pillsbury Dough Boy look to him; once he became ill, the weight disappeared. In fact he began getting noticeably scrawny. For my part, I simply lost my appetite as his illness progressed; by the time he died I weighed less than I had since I'd arrived in San Francisco.
Late in the summer Mario's mom began staying with us on a part-time basis. She'd cook and do housekeeping for us, help get him to medical appointments and keep him company during the day. The annual Castro Street Fair takes place on the first Sunday of October. We lived a mere two blocks from the intersection of Castro and Market Streets so we took a walk down to see the sights (mainly crafts, booths set up by LGBT organizations, food vendors and a stage). We had dinner; I left to run an errand while he went off to an NA meeting. When I returned home the telephone rang; he'd collapsed at the meeting and was once more in the hospital. One lung had collapsed. Although he was able to return home, from that point he was essentially bedridden. His friends began bringing NA meetings to our living room a couple of times a week. His mom was now living with us almost full-time as his needs became more urgent and he needed somebody around at all times. I don't know what I'd have done without her help and generosity.
One Sunday afternoon a week or so before Thanksgiving he said he wanted to see the ocean. It was a fairly mild day but he no longer had any insulation left, so his mom and I bundled him up; I got we got him down the stairs and into the car. We drove to Ocean Beach and watched the waves roll in for a bit. We decided we'd make a Thanksgiving dinner for our families who, up to that point, had never met each other. It was primarily his parents, siblings and their partners and kids, along with my mom and dad. Mario served as an executive chef, directing people--including me--in getting various dishes ready. He was too weak to stand at the stove.
Over Thanksgiving weekend a friend invited me out to see a movie since it was obvious I needed some distraction. The following Wednesday morning I got up to go to work. Mario looked horrible and could barely speak; we called an ambulance and had him taken back to the hospital one last time. Once he was admitted, I somehow managed to get myself to work.
Like most good Mexican-Americans Mario had been raised Catholic but as an adult he didn't consider himself to be one. Long before we met he'd begun practicing yoga and and had found Eastern spirituality more to his liking. On the other hand we had a friend who was in recovery--a Catholic priest who, like us, was both gay and HIV-positive. When I arrived at the hospital that evening our friend was there. Mario told me he was going to refuse any further treatment. Although he had made a will when he'd first been hospitalized, leaving me to be his sole heir and executor, he had some specific requests to make of me. He wanted his memorial service to be held at Metropolitan Community Church rather than at Most Holy Redeemer, the Catholic church in the Castro. As things turned this was one request I couldn't honor. MCC was booked for weeks. Despite his rejection of Catholicism, before our friend and I left the hospital for the evening Mario asked him to administer last rites. Mario told me he'd haunt me (which he did).
The following evening I went to see my therapist, then headed to the hospital. He was on morphine and barely conscious; several of our friends were there. He asked me to give him a sip of water. Once he fell asleep I asked his friends to leave the room so I could have some time alone with him. He was asleep so I sat and held his hand. I called his NA sponsor; his mom called all of his siblings. Mario died shortly before 6 a.m. on Friday, December 4, 1992.
Mario used to tell me what a terrible person he was when he was younger; it was difficult to reconcile some of his stories with the guy I knew...sweet, shy, funny, generous, honest.
The summer after he died, on what would have been his 42nd birthday, his niece and her partner and I took my share of his ashes and (as he'd requested) scattered them in the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park. I bike through the Park...and past the Grove...fairly often. In fact I will be there this coming Sunday. Whenever I go to the Grove, I'm really getting to visit Mario so indeed he isn't truly gone.