WEBVTT - Should We Do This? 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:03.400 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:03.600 --> 0:00:07.760 This episode contains discussion of suicide listener discretion as advised. 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:14.840 It is a vertigious feeling trying to reconstruct the past, 0:00:15.560 --> 0:00:18.919 realizing how much my memories have been revised to fit 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:22.840 my later understandings of and rationalizations for what happened. 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:26.439 If something doesn't fit the story, it just gets left 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:28.720 out until it sneaks. 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:32.080 Back one day, suddenly appears amid the other memories. 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:35.440 And the simple narrative line is wrecked. The neat explanation 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:36.839 no longer works. 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:39.960 If there is a truth at all in this world 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:44.560 of overlapping shimbdjectivities, it sometimes seems too complicated to hold 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:45.080 in my head. 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:48.440 I wish so much sometimes. 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:51.239 He could come back and tell me everything, fill in 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:55.760 all the blank, exactly what happened and when and why. 0:00:56.520 --> 0:00:58.440 I think maybe we could be straight with each other. 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:01.080 Now I know he would want me to get this right. 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:08.240 That's Marian Winnick, journalist, author, book critic, and frequent commentator 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:12.839 on nprs All Things Considered. Her memoir First Comes Love 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:16.080 was first published thirty years ago and is just out 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:21.160 in a new anniversary edition. Marian's is a story of love, loss, 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:24.679 and the secrets our hearts silently instruct us to bury, 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:29.160 and the way those secrets tend to nonetheless reveal themselves 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:41.560 in the fullness of time. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:44.720 is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:47.960 the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:54.160 keep from ourselves. 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:58.040 I was born in Manhattan, and when I was two 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:01.040 and my sister was about to be born, we moved 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:04.760 to the Jersey Shore, which was my father's hometown, and 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:08.320 it was a wonderful place to grow up, right by 0:02:08.360 --> 0:02:11.519 the beach, with lots of employment opportunities on the boardwalk. 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:15.240 For my teen years, What were your teeniers like? I 0:02:15.360 --> 0:02:18.800 was wild? My sister was too. My poor parents. 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:23.840 I often reflect on how unbelievably bad and crazy and 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:27.560 wild we were. And I mean it literally seemed like 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:30.600 my entire teen years was devoted to figuring out the 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:32.960 worst thing that I could possibly do and doing them. 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:37.080 Just in terms of really awful boyfriends. 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:39.320 You know, who would steal my guitar and then get 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:41.480 busted and have to be bailed out of jail. And 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:44.160 I don't know what the hell was wrong with me, 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:47.280 but it was like I had. I had the bad 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:51.400 boy attraction in a very serious way in my teens. 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:55.600 That lessoned somewhat when I went to Brown University for college. 0:02:55.639 --> 0:02:58.520 I was young, just seventeen. There weren't as. 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:04.400 Many truly people to fall in love with, but I 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:10.679 still managed to have a very obsessive and focused romantic attachments. 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:12.320 That was a kind of a theme for me. 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:16.560 So you were excelling academically even as you were blowing 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:17.040 things up. 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:19.880 Yes, it's rumored that I learned to read before I 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:20.480 was three. 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:23.720 I skipped of grades when I was young. That's why 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:25.520 I graduated from college so young. 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:31.360 And yeah, I was a combination smarty pants and mental case. 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:35.960 So did you know when you were a Brown or 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:39.440 even earlier that you wanted to be a writer? 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:43.200 Yeah? I started writing when I was eight. I had 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:44.960 a pen name Tracy Beth Richardson. 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:47.520 I still have the works of Tracy Beth Richardson that 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:51.120 my father had his secretary type up. And I wrote 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:55.400 these rhyming poems that were against the Vietnam War and 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:59.880 all kinds of you know, emotional drama. And Tracy Beth 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:03.120 Richardson lasted for you know, probably till I was almost 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:06.520 ten years old, and then I continued with poetry, and 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:08.440 my first two books. 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:10.080 That in my early twenties were poetry. 0:04:10.320 --> 0:04:12.880 So I was a poet and I was very much 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:14.280 poet personality too. 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:19.400 Why the pen name. I just didn't think Marion Winnick 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:20.320 was going to make it. 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:22.240 You know, clearly I might have wanted to be a 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:29.000 wasp since Tracy Beth Richardson is so waspy. 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:33.080 After college, Marion imagines a life abroad. She travels to 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:36.039 Berlin with a plan to attend film school, but the 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:39.839 plan soon dismantles when she doesn't get accepted and becomes 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:44.440 incredibly homesick. After just three months, she returns to the US, 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:49.599 longing for the familiarity of home, as she says she's 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:53.839 dying to see the new Jersey Turnpike. Back in the States, 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:57.719 Marianne's life begins to orbit Austin, Texas, a city she 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:01.360 discovers almost by accident her visiting a college friend over 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:05.560 spring break. Austin in the late nineteen seventies is small, 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:11.719 scrappy and magnetic, cowboys and hippies, music, Mexican food, and possibility. 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:14.800 Marian falls in love with the city and builds a 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:18.159 life there, bringing her sister and close friends along for 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:22.680 the ride. For nearly two decades, Austin becomes her center 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:26.000 of gravity, even as she briefly leaves to attend graduate 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:29.599 school in New York in the early nineteen eighties. In 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:34.080 New York, Marian enrolls in the MFA program at Brooklyn College. 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:37.400 She begins in poetry, but switches to fiction, where her 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:41.839 deeply autobiographical stories are met with encouragement, an early step 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:45.760 toward the personal essays she will eventually write. At the 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:49.359 same time, she works for the Stanley Kaplan test prep company, 0:05:49.800 --> 0:05:53.880 surrounded by other Ivy League graduates, spending her day's writing 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:58.240 exam questions and even sitting for tests herself. It's there 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:00.320 that she falls deeply in love with a co worker. 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:06.440 It's an intense, destabilizing relationship that ends painfully, compounded by 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:11.400 her escalating drug use and chaotic lifestyle. By nineteen eighty three, 0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:16.040 the heartbreak is fresh and consuming. A close friend, Sandy, 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:21.479 decides what Maria needs is escape, something loud, reckless, and communal. 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:25.039 She insists they go to New Orleans for Marti Gras, 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:30.120 hoping the city's excess and celebration might offer relief. She 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:32.960 also tells her about a young man who will be there, 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:34.560 a man named Tony. 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:38.080 It was a bit counterintuitive since part of what was 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:41.080 ailing me is that I was getting high and drinking 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:43.839 all the time. But they just wanted to get me 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:46.479 out of New York City. And then my sister and 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:49.120 her boyfriend also came. A whole bunch of us went 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:51.839 in a car to Marty Brown in March in nineteen 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:56.039 eighty three. This best friend of mine, Sandy, went to 0:06:57.000 --> 0:06:59.599 Lake Placid School of Art. Well, this is while I 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:02.880 was at and you know, Tony was a figure skater 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:03.560 and he was in. 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:04.719 Training in Lake Placid. 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:09.600 So Sandy met another artist named Shelley, and Shelley was 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:12.560 friends with Tony. So these people that we were going 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:16.920 down to visit were this, this whole group. Shelley, her boyfriend, 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:21.480 and Tony and Sandy had told me about Tony many times, 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:23.400 Tony the gay ice skater. 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:27.240 He's so handsome, he's so funny, he's so cool. 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:30.400 So I knew many many good things about Tony the 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:33.120 gay ice skater, and then one. 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:35.240 Thing I definitely knew is that he was a gay iceater. 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:40.800 He answered the door when the car load of us 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:43.119 from New York pulled up in front of the house 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:46.080 and it was up in the Garden district, and I 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:48.880 took one look at him, and I really, you know, 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:53.560 it was like, boy, I just something happened. I really 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:58.320 became instantly attached, enamored. 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:01.360 I don't know, and I people, you know, saying, well, 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:02.880 I didn't I know he was gay. 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:05.320 Yes, I certainly knew he was gay, but that kind 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:06.840 of made it easier for me. 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:11.600 To act the way I did. I was very flirty. 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:16.040 I sat in his lap within moments of us our arrival, 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:18.320 and I was just. 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:21.680 Head over heels or something, I don't know. 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:23.400 And then they said, somebody has to go to the 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:26.080 grocery storre, so Tony and I got to do this 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:29.800 errand together, and he drove me down. 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:31.400 To the levee so I could see. 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:34.360 It, and you know, we're like in the car, playing 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:39.800 disco music and smoking cigarettes, and I just knew, like, Okay, 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:40.240 this is it. 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:42.560 My whole life is changing right now. 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:46.640 So how long were you there that trip and sort 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:50.439 of what was the feeling that you had of what 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:51.440 was happening between you. 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:53.480 We were there for about a week. 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:57.079 Tony was working at a gay bar in the French Quarter, 0:08:57.160 --> 0:08:59.600 and I would basically sit there in the gay bar 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:00.880 the whole time he was working. 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:03.840 At this point, I was saying things. 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:07.120 Like, I must be a gay man in a woman's body. 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:09.920 I'm going to get a sex change so I could 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:13.240 be Tony's boyfriend. Things were so different then, there was 0:09:13.280 --> 0:09:16.360 no gender fluidity. But he started falling in love with 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:21.200 me too, and I it was obvious, and so my 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:25.520 concept of the situations changed. So I went back to 0:09:25.559 --> 0:09:28.840 New York and then we started like having this long 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:32.760 distance phone call relationship, and it just was clear that 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:35.640 he was getting just as obsessed with me as I 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:36.560 was with him. 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:39.720 There was this great detail right where one of your 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:42.480 friends tells you that he has your photo, and he's 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:44.640 like carrying it around with him and propping it up 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:45.599 wherever he goes. 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:48.240 Right like when they go to a restaurant, he'd prop 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:51.840 me up on the napkin dispenser and order me something. 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:54.760 So yeah, and we were on the phone. 0:09:54.960 --> 0:09:57.520 This is when there actually was long distance charges too. 0:09:57.559 --> 0:10:00.440 We were yell the phones for hours. He came to 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:03.719 New York and helped me move back there. I ended 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:05.760 up finishing my master's degree by mail. 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:07.640 We lived in New Orleans. 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:12.480 So at this point you and Tony are a couple, yes, right, 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:17.280 and you describe it as or At several points you 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:20.200 describe it as you knew that he was gay and 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:22.840 you knew that you were straight, but you were together. 0:10:23.400 --> 0:10:25.800 It wasn't a question of whether she wasn't gay or not. 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:28.120 And he didn't identify as bisexual. 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:33.000 That's true, but we did sometimes have set It was 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:36.840 never a big part of our relationship in the early times. 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:40.679 I was, you know, really really focused on it and 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:45.560 very hoping to make it happen. Frequently we tried, and 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.600 it wasn't a total disaster. I mean, we have two 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:53.320 you know, we had two sons, and it just wasn't that. 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:56.560 I don't think that his love for me. 0:10:56.840 --> 0:10:59.640 I do think it was romantic, but I think it 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:03.760 never was physical in the way or erotic in the 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:07.320 way that we usually are with our romantic partner. 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:12.680 And you marry. Tell me about getting married. That was 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:13.800 nineteen eighty six. 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:16.920 We went to New Jersey and got married at my 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:20.400 parents golf club, and it was performed by a mayor. 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:23.559 So it wasn't like traditional in a religious sense. 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:25.400 But I had a you know. 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:28.520 Big mail on in a puffy dress and he was 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:35.240 at a gorgeous suit, and the general outlines of it were. 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:35.559 Just like a wedding. 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.560 Lots of our friends were there are crazy friends, so 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:43.240 much wild, colorful hair at this wedding. 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:45.400 It was insane. And then the other half of the 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:47.000 people were my parents' friends from. 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:49.480 The golf club, and they were like, you know, just 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:52.280 pie eyed at this whole situation. 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:54.079 It was pretty funny. 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:56.520 After the wedding, we moved to Austin and we could 0:11:56.520 --> 0:12:00.400 not live in the French Quarter anymore because everyone in 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:03.760 the whole French Quarter seemed to be Tony's ex wifefriend. 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:05.439 It was, you know, it. 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:09.440 Was this really intense gay community and neighborhood and it 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:13.080 was really not going to work out for people. 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:17.040 Not everyone could have any understanding of what I was. 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:19.040 Doing there and what was going on with us, and 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:22.600 a lot of people didn't like it, you know, and 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:26.199 so if this time, it's like everything in our life 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:27.960 was so up for grams like should I go to 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:29.280 law school, shouldn't we do this? 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:30.079 Should I go back? 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:33.840 And Tony had lived in Austin before, and I had 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:35.240 my long term. 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:37.920 Love of Boston, so that was something we could agree on. 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:40.640 The idea was that he was going to hit A 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:42.760 friend of his had offered him a job at. 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:44.719 The skating rink teaching. 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:49.200 And when we got there and this guy perceived that 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:54.320 Tony was with me, he evaporated that and you know, 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:58.040 didn't return Tony's clause. This whole job offer disappeared because 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:01.680 the guy was so freaked out that Tony had a girlfriend. 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:05.560 And so the idea that he was going to teach 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:06.760 bigger skating and. 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:09.560 Support me while I wrote the Great American Novel or 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:11.240 whatever was did not pan out. 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:13.760 So I got. 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:16.400 A job from it at a software company where I 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:20.080 ended up working for ten years. I wrote all the 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:23.959 software manuals and I wrote all the marketing stuff. And 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:26.240 it was this time of the tech boom in Austin, 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:30.080 so this was a good good choice for me. And 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:33.880 then Tony hairdresser turned out to be a great choice. 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:35.520 He was really a great hairdresser. 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:40.840 By nineteen ninety, you have two sons, and you're living 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:45.000 in Austin, and Tony's doing well as a hairdresser, and 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:50.000 you're working for the software company. There's also this specter 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:51.880 out there of aids. 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:55.080 We knew he was HIV positive when we got married, 0:13:56.440 --> 0:13:59.560 and we knew that I wasn't, and we had had 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:05.760 so much contact of unsafe kinds that I felt, Okay, well, 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:07.480 if I don't have it, I'm not going to get it. 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:09.680 You know, I pretty much have injected it into my 0:14:09.800 --> 0:14:10.319 veins and. 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:13.760 I don't have and I didn't you know, zero convert 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:16.360 as they say, So you know, I thought I would 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:18.680 never get it. I thought there would certainly be a 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:22.320 cure pretty soon because Tony, even though we knew we 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:24.800 had it in nineteen eighty five, it was really pretty 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:28.480 healthy until you know, for another six seven years. 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:33.560 So this speaks to also the whole idea of like 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:35.680 the secrets that we keep from ourselves. 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:39.760 Like when he got tested, not every person who had. 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:43.600 Been you know, knowingly exposed, you know, whether through drugs 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:46.920 or through or through sex, went and got tested. A 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:49.520 lot of people buried their head in the sand. What 0:14:50.480 --> 0:14:55.360 made Tony and you get tested in nineteen eighty five. 0:14:56.400 --> 0:14:57.120 We're planning to. 0:14:57.040 --> 0:15:00.880 Get married and have children, so we didn't really stick 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:02.960 our heads in the sand. We had to find out 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:06.800 what the situation was. And you know, a lot of 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:11.160 people don't know that our children could only have become 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:14.720 HIV positive if I had become HIV positive. 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:17.600 It's transmitted from the blood of the mother. 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:22.000 So as long as I didn't suddenly get it the 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:24.520 time that we conceived, they would not get it. 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:27.240 You know. Among the many things I was so. 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:29.200 Confident about, that was one of them where I was 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:32.520 right at least, you know, so uh yeah, but we 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:35.520 had to know, and you know, the treatments were so 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:38.760 slow and in coming, and the ones there were so 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:40.920 many that did app didn't do much at all. But 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:44.880 we were macrobiotic and did all kinds of New age 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:48.240 health things and you know, tried everything that you could 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:52.280 think of for years, in addition to AZT and whatever 0:15:52.400 --> 0:15:53.840 drugs they started having. 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:57.840 And so there was a shift in those years when 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:02.400 it's so interesting and plinian on the one hand, the 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:06.000 hard partying and all of the wildness and all of 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:09.200 the dangers and all of the risks, and the two 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:12.960 of you, in falling in love, know that you want 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:15.760 to do this very traditional thing, which is get married 0:16:16.040 --> 0:16:19.560 and have a family. So did that change for you 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:23.280 in those years when you were starting to focus on that. 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:27.920 Of course, I mean I had always thought, well, when 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:30.120 I get ready to be a mom, I'll just quit 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:32.480 all this, and a lot of people would think, well, 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:36.200 it won't be that easy, especially since heroine was one 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:37.680 of the drugs I was involved with. 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:39.720 But that's exactly what happened. 0:16:40.080 --> 0:16:43.880 So the minute we started trying to get pregnantly, I 0:16:44.000 --> 0:16:45.000 just quit everything. 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:50.000 And I mean not just drugs and alcohol, but caffeine. 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:53.040 And cigarettes, which I had been smoking for years, and 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:57.040 I wouldn't need food additives, and so I just did 0:16:57.080 --> 0:17:00.800 it all like instantly, because the important. 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:03.760 To me of becoming a mom was everything. 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:08.600 Tony supportively, you know, stopped doing a lot of things too, 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:12.040 though it wasn't as firm a decision for him, and 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:15.320 he ended up kind of getting sucked back into a 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:16.440 lot of partying. 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:21.399 Describe Tony as a dad. He was like a wonder dad. 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:24.560 It's so amazing because I don't think he had ever 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:28.159 even dreamed that he would be a dad, as you know, 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:30.679 as a gay man in the seventies and eighties, and 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:33.920 he was such a natural. He spent all his time 0:17:33.960 --> 0:17:36.800 with the boys. I have, like, don't have any patients. 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:39.680 Don't want to make macaroni necklaces, you know of course, 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:42.120 I loved my babies, and I loved nursing, and there's 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:44.960 a lot of things I love, but I didn't have 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:50.280 much patience for childcare in the early years, or at 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:54.240 least not compared to him. He just was born to, 0:17:54.680 --> 0:17:58.879 you know, be a daddy. So starting in May nineteen 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:02.480 ninety one, I was on the radio maybe two or 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:05.639 three times a month, telling stories about my life with 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:09.200 Tony and the boys mostly and whatever other topics caught 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:15.439 my fancy. So listeners, of all things considered, had you know, 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:18.199 a little window into our life. One of them was 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:20.720 about I'm Jewish, Tony's Catholic. 0:18:20.920 --> 0:18:22.520 What are we going to do about the holidays? That 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:23.880 would be one topic. 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:27.399 But it wasn't like I'm straight, Tony's gay, or Tony 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:29.520 has held no yeah. 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:33.920 Yeah. We didn't even really say that Tony was gay 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:34.600 at this point. 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:36.879 It was like, it's not that he was trying. 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:39.560 To hide that he was gay, but it didn't play 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:42.560 a big role in our life as parents, so it 0:18:42.680 --> 0:18:44.919 never would have come up at this time. 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:47.920 There was a lot of prejudice against. 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:50.960 People with AIDS, and it was not you know, something 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:53.800 that you would want as a hairdresser to have everyone 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:54.440 in town know. 0:18:54.400 --> 0:18:55.680 That you're HIV positive. 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:58.920 So we didn't talk about it, and we certainly didn't 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:00.880 tell about it on the now sational public radio. 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:04.680 You know, it's not that we hid it from our friends. 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:08.480 But it was not something that I would consider publicizing 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:11.960 or thinking part of my writing. I had a pretty 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:17.280 good sense of Tony's you know, agency and privacy. I'm 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:19.760 just this is like when I'm beginning to become a 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:23.920 personal essayist and really explore my own boundaries of how 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:28.000 vulnerable and honest I'm willing to be in writing. But 0:19:28.240 --> 0:19:31.920 you know, for him, he didn't have to explore that. 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:34.720 You know, I could give him a zone of protection. 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:38.520 So in my first book, which preceded First Comes Love, 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:41.879 which is it's a collection of essays called Telling, I 0:19:42.000 --> 0:19:46.080 referred to Tony once as a sexually ambiguous ice skating bartender. 0:19:46.760 --> 0:19:49.240 And that's the closest I come to saying anything. 0:19:51.560 --> 0:20:06.719 We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:11.720 By nineteen ninety one, Tony's health has declined. Then in 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:15.480 nineteen ninety two it declines much more steeply. Tony is 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:20.000 diagnosed with AIDS. Once he has the dreaded diagnosis, his 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:23.679 drug addiction goes into overdrive because it's not going to matter. 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:27.359 After all, he's been given a death sentence. He lives 0:20:27.400 --> 0:20:29.760 for a year and a half until he succumbs to 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:32.440 the disease when his sons are six and four. 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:37.000 I know, some people that are Tony's generation of AIDS 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:42.960 are patients who have made it. There's not many, but unfortunately, 0:20:43.359 --> 0:20:47.560 at this point, drug addiction was taking such a toll 0:20:47.680 --> 0:20:52.560 on him and kind of eating away at his life force. 0:20:53.480 --> 0:20:56.920 Did he just kind of surrender to his addiction once 0:20:56.960 --> 0:20:59.640 he knew that he was not going to make it. 0:21:00.240 --> 0:21:02.639 Kind of, I mean, he just he I think he 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:04.760 just wrote himself a permission slip. 0:21:04.480 --> 0:21:06.560 That to do anything he wanted to, you. 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:09.440 Know, and once he knew he was going to die, 0:21:10.000 --> 0:21:14.679 that's kind of what happened. He he just stopped, you know, 0:21:14.720 --> 0:21:18.800 worrying about being macrobiotic and all those things. And he 0:21:19.160 --> 0:21:24.440 was prescribed tons of opiates because of these all these painful, 0:21:24.520 --> 0:21:25.840 horrible things that he had. 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:29.960 So this is how it really started. He had bottles 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:34.080 of two hundred perkudans and stuff, and that led. 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:36.639 As it does, you know, to so many people to 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:40.840 street drugs, which he already knew about, and this drug 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:45.080 thing really took over, and in my opinion, is just 0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:47.120 it killed him just as much as Aids did. 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:52.800 So in the end, Tony, he's suffering and he's in pain, 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:56.600 and he wants to end his life and he asks 0:21:56.640 --> 0:21:58.280 you to help him. 0:21:58.560 --> 0:22:03.120 Well, you know, my sister's husband are very close dear 0:22:03.200 --> 0:22:07.240 brother in law, Steve, he died the year before Tony, 0:22:07.359 --> 0:22:12.399 so I guess nineteen ninety three, and he told Tony, 0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:15.960 you know, the end is it's just too terrible. When 0:22:16.040 --> 0:22:19.399 Steve died, he weighed like ninety pounds. He was in diapers. 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:22.920 It was awful. And Tony was really on the way there. 0:22:23.160 --> 0:22:27.720 He was very, very very skinny and very very sick, 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:30.960 and he was in a really wonderful hospice that they 0:22:30.960 --> 0:22:36.000 have in Austin called Christopher House. And what he wanted 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:39.640