Speaker 1: But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 1: the Outspoken Podcast Network. Hey, this is Jordan with a
Speaker 1: quick note. After this episode, we just have two more
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Speaker 1: for the support. Now let's get into the show.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty four, myself and seven of my pals,
Speaker 2: seven of my.
Speaker 1: Friends, gay friends, friends.
Speaker 2: All involved in the theater a little bit. Somehow. We're
Speaker 2: all at brunch and we all started talking about what
Speaker 2: we were hearing stories about, and rather than be concerned
Speaker 2: about how we might be at risk, we were pushing
Speaker 2: it away. How it was the older gay man.
Speaker 1: It felt far away.
Speaker 2: It felt far away. That was nineteen eighty four. By
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four of the eight of us four were
Speaker 2: dead and two, including myself, were HIV positive.
Speaker 1: As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
Speaker 1: I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
Speaker 1: ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
Speaker 1: that by seeking out our history, and what I found
Speaker 1: are people and stories full of courage, perseverance and love
Speaker 1: in this so we'll meet Tom Viola, one of the
Speaker 1: most important people in the fight against AIDS. Over the
Speaker 1: course of his career, he's raised nearly half a billion
Speaker 1: dollars to combat the crisis. We'll learn how he got
Speaker 1: involved and how, in addition to fighting the AIDS crisis,
Speaker 1: he was living it too. For my Heart podcast, I'm
Speaker 1: Jordan and Solves and this is what we loved. I
Speaker 1: remember my first time hearing about PREP. Prep is the
Speaker 1: groundbreaking drug that is ninety nine percent preventable against HIV
Speaker 1: according to the federal government. I was fresh out of
Speaker 1: the closet and new to San Francisco, where i'd moved
Speaker 1: for my first job. I was really lucky to have
Speaker 1: found this unbelievably confident group of gay friends who had
Speaker 1: zero issues talking about sex. That was the opposite for me,
Speaker 1: growing up devoutly catholic. I felt embarrassed and shameful when
Speaker 1: friends would even bring up the topic, and frankly, I'd
Speaker 1: judged other gay men for being promiscuous. But I had
Speaker 1: a friend at the time who, in his own words,
Speaker 1: described himself as a quote self proclaimed slut. I'd never
Speaker 1: even heard of this before, and when he said it,
Speaker 1: my cheeks turned cherry red. I remember asking, aren't you
Speaker 1: scared of HIV? I asked that because I was scared
Speaker 1: of it. He was far more informed than me on
Speaker 1: the topic and seemed to accept that sex was a
Speaker 1: natural part of his own life. He patiently asked me
Speaker 1: if I had ever heard of PREP. His explanation literally
Speaker 1: changed my life. My next guest, Tom Viola, has been
Speaker 1: one of the most important figures in the fight to
Speaker 1: drive access to PREP and to end the AIDS crisis.
Speaker 1: For thirty six years, Tom was the leader of Broadway
Speaker 1: Cares Equity Fights AIDS, one of the most important AIDS
Speaker 1: nonprofits in America. Over the course of his career, he
Speaker 1: led the Broadway community in raising nearly half a billion
Speaker 1: dollars for the cause, helping save the lives of countless people.
Speaker 1: After a storied career defined by the AIDS crisis, he
Speaker 1: retired on December thirty first, twenty twenty four. But before
Speaker 1: becoming a leading voice for gay rights, he was a
Speaker 1: closeted young man in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: I was a quiet kid. So I was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: south of the city, in sort of a nineteen sixties suburb.
Speaker 2: So the boys that I played with when I was
Speaker 2: particularly younger, we grew up together, and I can remember
Speaker 2: very distinctly and thought about this in a long time
Speaker 2: that one of the games we played when we got
Speaker 2: to be like a little more closer to being adolescents
Speaker 2: was a game that goes called Smear the Queer. And
Speaker 2: that's where we would all be in somebody's backyard and
Speaker 2: somebody would have like a volleyball, and somebody would throw
Speaker 2: it up in the air, and then whoever caught the
Speaker 2: ball would run and everybody else would run after him
Speaker 2: to tackle him, or hence the name supposedly Shmear the Queer.
Speaker 2: And I even at that, you know, as like again
Speaker 2: probably like fifth sixth you know, pre ad asolescent kid.
Speaker 2: I got that that wasn't so whether that was having
Speaker 2: a sense that I was gay, I certainly didn't know
Speaker 2: what that was about at all, but I felt separate.
Speaker 1: Well, that leads so perfectly into my next question, At
Speaker 1: what point did you know that you were gay?
Speaker 2: You know, I I knew, I knew what piqued my interest.
Speaker 2: I don't know that it was necessarily sexual interest at
Speaker 2: that time. I got up early Saturday morning when I
Speaker 2: was a little kid, like literally at seven or eight
Speaker 2: in the morning, to watch Tarzan Wow, and I had,
Speaker 2: I know, was about Johnny Weismuller in his you know,
Speaker 2: very sexy long class. And one of the kids I
Speaker 2: grew up with his name was down And when we
Speaker 2: were about in eighth grade, what began as wrestling with
Speaker 2: each other turned into more than wrestling with each other,
Speaker 2: and that continued, you know, that was like seventh eighth grade.
Speaker 2: And then at about right before we went into ninth grade,
Speaker 2: he literally looked at me and he said, we can't
Speaker 2: do this anymore. Wow. You know, we're going into high school.
Speaker 2: We can't do this anymore. Wow. And I remember sort
Speaker 2: of being like, what does high school have to do.
Speaker 1: With this, were you rejected?
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean I realized now as I even just
Speaker 2: say it and sort of felt the conversation again. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it felt like what I would now say was like
Speaker 2: someone breaking up with me. And what I really made
Speaker 2: a point of doing in both high schools I went
Speaker 2: to with the freshman sophomore and then the second one
Speaker 2: junior in particular junior and senior year, was making sure
Speaker 2: I was always able to pass. I sort of kept
Speaker 2: everybody at bay because meanwhile, I'm seeing kids, even back
Speaker 2: in the seventies when I was in high school, early seventies,
Speaker 2: who were having a horrible time because it was clear
Speaker 2: they were gay, even if people didn't recognize it like
Speaker 2: they do now. And I was determined that would never
Speaker 2: be me. And that's a lot of stress, stress, self hatred,
Speaker 2: and shame.
Speaker 1: Tell me more.
Speaker 2: I remember there was an article in Time magazine about it.
Speaker 2: I can still see the cover. It was called the Homosexuals,
Speaker 2: so this is maybe like nineteen seventy one, seventy two,
Speaker 2: and on the cover was a handsome young man sort
Speaker 2: of in shadow and you couldn't really see a face,
Speaker 2: but just a silhouette. And I remember reading this in
Speaker 2: the living room at home and being horrified, Wow that
Speaker 2: even reading this sort of found me out.
Speaker 1: So you went to the University of Cincinnati to study
Speaker 1: musical theater. Is that where you came out?
Speaker 2: You know, it was where we all first kind of
Speaker 2: began to figure out what that was. You would see
Speaker 2: the freshman class of any musical theater program in and
Speaker 2: you would look across the guys and you would literally
Speaker 2: think of some of them gay by May they would,
Speaker 2: And I'm sure that I was one day that somebody
Speaker 2: looked at and went gay by May. So that's where
Speaker 2: I I really came into my own and came out
Speaker 2: to my friends, and you know, worked summer Stock and
Speaker 2: you know, all the all of that really came together.
Speaker 2: And also where I really knew I wanted to come
Speaker 2: to New York City. Both I thought to be an actor,
Speaker 2: but you know what the truth was, I wanted to
Speaker 2: come to the city to be gay. You and well,
Speaker 2: but i'd been I visited when I was sixteen with
Speaker 2: a friend of mine and we were sort of supposed
Speaker 2: to be staying with these nuns who were friends of
Speaker 2: one of our mothers. And these nuns more or less
Speaker 2: gave us keys to these little rooms and said, have
Speaker 2: had boys. And so we just ran around for six days.
Speaker 2: But you know, we also split up at times to
Speaker 2: just like explore on our own. And when we did that,
Speaker 2: one time I had sex.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: I was hanging around somewhere, like in around Macy's or something,
Speaker 2: and I was just kind of cruising, cruising but looking
Speaker 2: in windows, just sort of just getting them. And I
Speaker 2: realized that this maintenance worker was sort of looking at me.
Speaker 2: I'm a sixteen year old kid, and he indicated that
Speaker 2: I should follow him, and I did.
Speaker 1: You automatically knew exactly.
Speaker 2: Exactly what he wanted. I'd been doing it in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2: And he took me into some building and we ended
Speaker 2: up in some warehousey room. And I mean, it's nuts
Speaker 2: when I think is sort of some of the you know,
Speaker 2: fact I could have what could have happened, you could
Speaker 2: have would have shout it. But I was thrilled with
Speaker 2: the even as much as the sex.
Speaker 1: The adventure of that well, and it seems like it
Speaker 1: was also a form of connection.
Speaker 2: It was because I remember talking with him. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: Well, So you moved to New York after college, and
Speaker 1: from what I've understood about this time, period. It seems
Speaker 1: like it was yeah, just anything goes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's put it this way. Anything that went you
Speaker 2: could find this is after yes, exactly. This isn't the
Speaker 2: time period of the seventies, you know it was, I
Speaker 2: mean it was extraordinary.
Speaker 1: How did you meet other gay people on the street.
Speaker 2: On the street all the time, there was sort of
Speaker 2: the walk pause, look.
Speaker 1: Let's go wow an energy exchange.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah yeah. And you know, and I what the
Speaker 2: thing I did love at that time were the baths,
Speaker 2: because it was no nonsense. You got sort of to
Speaker 2: the point.
Speaker 1: And these are bath houses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, whether it was the Saint Mark's baths or the
Speaker 2: club baths or the Everard baths.
Speaker 1: It explained one of them, because I think for my
Speaker 1: generation they don't really exist.
Speaker 2: They were like clubhouses with all kinds of lockers and
Speaker 2: then all kinds of little cabins, little rooms where you
Speaker 2: could rent one or the other. And then if you
Speaker 2: had a room, either you have sex there with somebody
Speaker 2: who came in, or crews around until somebody invited you in.
Speaker 2: And I know that there were people who weren't and
Speaker 2: would spend like the weekend there. I remember there was
Speaker 2: a particular snow day. This is maybe like in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight, lived on seventy first Street. Huge snow, the
Speaker 2: city is like buried and absolute standstill. And I called
Speaker 2: a friend of mine, my friend Jimmy, who lived on
Speaker 2: seventieth Street, a block away from me, and I said,
Speaker 2: you know what he said, I said, let's get that
Speaker 2: to the club bass. I said, you know it is
Speaker 2: going to be jammed, okay, because there's nothing anybody can do,
Speaker 2: but they'll get there. That was open, and that was open,
Speaker 2: and I was right. I mean, so yeah, it was,
Speaker 2: you know, a free for all.
Speaker 1: And what about friendship?
Speaker 2: What about That's how I made a lot of friends
Speaker 2: where the sex would wear off and you're, you know,
Speaker 2: and you would just be palsed because you realize you
Speaker 2: liked each other.
Speaker 1: I want to ask about you coming out to your parents, sure,
Speaker 1: because I mean two Catholic parents, that's a big deal.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was a big deal. And see when I
Speaker 2: left home to go to school, I never really came back.
Speaker 2: I'll bet I never spent three days in a row.
Speaker 2: After I left to go to CCM as a freshman.
Speaker 2: Probably the next time I spent any more time was
Speaker 2: that I was after my dad died and we were
Speaker 2: moving everybody out of the house. I just had very
Speaker 2: little connection to it. I mean, I always felt a
Speaker 2: little bit separate from my family, even in that way,
Speaker 2: because so much of my life was separate from them.
Speaker 2: And then finally I guess I was twenty four, I think,
Speaker 2: and I began to just be embarrassed almost that I
Speaker 2: was sort of closetly pretending not to be something that
Speaker 2: I wasn't to them. So I really decided that I
Speaker 2: should tell them, and I was really nervous about it
Speaker 2: because my father and I had a not great relationship.
Speaker 2: I always felt like a disappointment to him. He'd been
Speaker 2: a big jock. I was not what he bargained for,
Speaker 2: and rather than try and dig in or find out
Speaker 2: what he had gotten, he really kind of just stepped away.
Speaker 2: And I told him, now, you know whatever that you no,
Speaker 2: I'm gay. And this would have been in like seventy eight,
Speaker 2: seventy nine, so this is preates. So they weren't. We
Speaker 2: didn't jump to worrying about that. But my father sort
Speaker 2: of did what I expected him to do, which is
Speaker 2: kind of just shut down about it, and my mother
Speaker 2: sort of went right away to it being sort of
Speaker 2: stereotypically almost her fault. It's just something I said. No, no, no,
Speaker 2: this actually has very little to do with either of you.
Speaker 2: This is really just who I am, how I felt
Speaker 2: all my life, even as a little kid. I've known
Speaker 2: this for a long time, how you did. And then
Speaker 2: we kind of just moved on.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Tom hears about AIDS for the
Speaker 1: first time. Tom was officially out and living in New
Speaker 1: York and New York City in the seventies was like
Speaker 1: a playground for gay men across the country. Music, fashion,
Speaker 1: and nightlife centered around sex, and for many gay men
Speaker 1: it was the first time they felt permission to express
Speaker 1: their sexuality. But right as the party of the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies climax and a new decade began, a mysterious disease
Speaker 1: killing gay men began to circulate. I wonder if you
Speaker 1: can talk about the first time that you heard about AIDS.
Speaker 2: Oh, I can tell you exactly. At a boyfriend at
Speaker 2: the time, we were living together on seventy first Street,
Speaker 2: and my friend who I mentioned before about the bath house, Jimmy,
Speaker 2: lived across the street. So Bob and I and Jimmy
Speaker 2: and a mutual friend of ours friend, a woman Fran
Speaker 2: used to get up early, you know, together and go
Speaker 2: to breakfast most mornings. And it was July third, and
Speaker 2: we'd gone to the Greek coffee shop at seventy second
Speaker 2: West End and we'd we used to buy the papers
Speaker 2: to post the news and the Times share them, and
Speaker 2: I think Jimmy maybe had that article that said rare
Speaker 2: cancer in homosexuals, I think was the headline, and he
Speaker 2: passed did you read this? And I read it and
Speaker 2: just kind of thought, oh, what's that mean? And I
Speaker 2: looked at Jimmy and I said to me, the only
Speaker 2: gay disease. It's going to kill you, as if one
Speaker 2: of your knickknacks on a high shelf falls off and
Speaker 2: hits you in the head. And that was about as
Speaker 2: much as we sort of paid attention to it at
Speaker 2: that time. But that was the beginning of it in
Speaker 2: sort of working its way into our lives. Because the
Speaker 2: story that really exemplifies sort of where it fell in
Speaker 2: for me in those first year, a couple of years,
Speaker 2: and then ten years hence was in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: myself and seven of my pals, seven of my friends
Speaker 2: gay friends, all involved in the theater a little bit. Somehow,
Speaker 2: We're all at brunch and we all started talking about
Speaker 2: what we were hearing stories about, and rather than be
Speaker 2: concerned about how we might be at risk, we were
Speaker 2: pushing it away. How it was the older gay man
Speaker 2: with those gay men in their forties who've been partying
Speaker 2: too hard in the village. You know, it was gay
Speaker 2: men who There were all kinds of reasons why we
Speaker 2: really were sure it wasn't our circle.
Speaker 1: Of It felt far away.
Speaker 2: It felt far away. That was nineteen eighty four. By
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four of the eight of us, four were
Speaker 2: dead and two were HIV positive. And by ninety four,
Speaker 2: I mean, I was already doing the work with proday
Speaker 2: Care Secuit. If I'd say it's but believe me, we
Speaker 2: were in it.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting because Tom, this is happening at a
Speaker 1: time when there's so many different ways that gay people
Speaker 1: are getting involved in the fight against AIDS. You have
Speaker 1: people really involved in protests, you have people really involved
Speaker 1: in policy. You kind of chose this other very critical
Speaker 1: route fundraising, and so I wonder if you could talk
Speaker 1: about like what made you choose that route or how
Speaker 1: it shows you rather well, I mean I love the theater.
Speaker 2: I love the activity of the theater. I enjoyed the
Speaker 2: sense of family it created, and even beyond just I
Speaker 2: did some work as an actor, you know, something off Broadway,
Speaker 2: Way way off Broadway, and you know, regional theater and
Speaker 2: dinner theater, but I didn't have any kind of acting
Speaker 2: creative amount to anything. But then I was doing a
Speaker 2: lot of freelance writing and had a lot a much
Speaker 2: better quality of break as a freelance writer than I
Speaker 2: did as an actor, like a playwright. No, as an
Speaker 2: art you're doing a lot of magazine articles. And one
Speaker 2: of the jobs I got that was a pen for
Speaker 2: hire was high for an eight week gig at actress
Speaker 2: Equity to write some pamphlets for them and a ridiculous
Speaker 2: staff manual, and that, literally, who would have known, got
Speaker 2: my foot in the door. I had been working very
Speaker 2: closely with an actress, a brilliant actress named Colleen Dehurst,
Speaker 2: who was very involved in the creation of Equity. Fight say,
Speaker 2: it's in this extraordinary road that my life kind of
Speaker 2: got dropped onto.
Speaker 1: Tom had been working as the assistant to the legendary
Speaker 1: Broadway actress Colleen Dewhurst. She was the president of the
Speaker 1: major labor union representing actors and stage managers called Actors Equity.
Speaker 1: They had put together a council focused on the response
Speaker 1: to AIDS called Equity Fights AIDS. Colleen asked Tom to
Speaker 1: lead that committee. Separately, producers in the business founded their
Speaker 1: own response to the crisis, called Broadway Cares. That organization
Speaker 1: was led by Roger McFarlane, who would become Tom's business
Speaker 1: partner and mentor when the groups merged in ninety two.
Speaker 1: Broadway was being badly affected by AIDS. Stage actors, choreographers,
Speaker 1: and dancers were dying. Tom's work was to fundraise for
Speaker 1: people in the industry who needed financial help because of
Speaker 1: their diagnosis. Without work, many of these entertainment professionals couldn't
Speaker 1: pay for treatment, some couldn't afford meals, and others didn't
Speaker 1: even have the money to pay for their own funerals.
Speaker 1: Tom's organization filled in the gap. The work felt fulfilling
Speaker 1: for Tom. He was really good at it and it
Speaker 1: kept him very busy.
Speaker 2: I know people who were like nearly thrown out of
Speaker 2: their apartments, you know. I know people who were in
Speaker 2: the hospital and I had no place necessarily where they
Speaker 2: could land afterwards. I know people who needed meals, who
Speaker 2: couldn't work, who needed emergency financial assistance. I knew people
Speaker 2: whose families were not going to pay for their funerals.
Speaker 2: You know, there were hundreds of clients, and at that
Speaker 2: time they were dying. I got a note one time
Speaker 2: from a guy, Nick Pippen was his name, and he'd
Speaker 2: been a dancer, and this is probably maybe nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: one or something, and Nick had gotten very sick and
Speaker 2: debilitated and unable to work and then sick but got
Speaker 2: back to us apartment and he wrote me a note
Speaker 2: that just literally sent to the office, No, he left
Speaker 2: it on my desk, that just said this, you have
Speaker 2: made this atheist believe again in angels. And Nick died
Speaker 2: soon soon afterwards.
Speaker 1: Because for a lot of these guys, when they would
Speaker 1: get a disease like this, your insurance is what covers you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or insurance that wasn't covering you, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, because they believe me. There were insurance companies
Speaker 2: who were not interested in doing this, and a lot
Speaker 2: of folks just weren't insured. I mean, you know, they'd
Speaker 2: end up in in the hospital under it as a charity.
Speaker 2: Very bad debtor charity case.
Speaker 1: Or if you can't work anymore because you're too sick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you lose your Yeah. So you know, cobbling together
Speaker 2: insurance was part of what the Actors Fund did. Well,
Speaker 2: that's what it still does.
Speaker 1: You know, at that time kind of leading up to
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, it seems to be getting worse and worse,
Speaker 1: like the statistics around death keep at that time.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was horrific, and those few years particularly, I
Speaker 2: mean the eighties were a little bit different because there
Speaker 2: was a sense and you know, I mean I have
Speaker 2: a lot of friends who were in Act Up and
Speaker 2: we funded Act Up, and there was an energy and
Speaker 2: the demos that were being done, and you know that
Speaker 2: to all of that. And then finally, I know that
Speaker 2: in After the Night ninety one, ninety two, ninety three,
Speaker 2: people were we were we were just exhausted by it.
Speaker 1: And you had raised a lot of money by that point.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, we had for that time, but people
Speaker 2: were really really worn out.
Speaker 1: I wonder for you, do you have a memory of
Speaker 1: what the most emotional moment was for you?
Speaker 2: I mean, I remember Bob's funeral very well.
Speaker 1: That was your partner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we were together for ten years. We
Speaker 2: weren't really living together, like as partners in that last
Speaker 2: couple of years, but I was his caretaker, so it
Speaker 2: felt like that. I mean, you know I was when
Speaker 2: Bob died in ninety one, I was thirty seven and
Speaker 2: he was maybe thirty two something like that.
Speaker 1: It's a young age.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very young age. Yeah. I mean Bob's been gone
Speaker 2: now longer than he was around. And I remember his funeral,
Speaker 2: certainly on seventy second Street, feeling like my life being
Speaker 2: both there as an individual with all the emotion and
Speaker 2: all the personal attachment, and also being there as like
Speaker 2: producing the event.
Speaker 1: Like working as I mean living.
Speaker 2: Working and living it, and often the living it being
Speaker 2: a little bit pushed away by the working of it.
Speaker 2: But I remember looking at him and sort of feeling
Speaker 2: like everything had collapsed in on itself. The work. Again,
Speaker 2: that's very early equity, if I'd say, it's work.
Speaker 1: And you've also been really open Tom about during that
Speaker 1: time struggling with substance abuse.
Speaker 2: Yes, I did. I mean I always was.
Speaker 1: Was it alcohol?
Speaker 2: It was no, it was alcohol was never really the
Speaker 2: problem was it was it was coke? It was Yeah,
Speaker 2: I thank god every day of my life that I
Speaker 2: was so young that myth never crossed my path because
Speaker 2: I never as far as the drugs went, I never
Speaker 2: sort of searched them out initially, but if people had them,
Speaker 2: I was always happy to.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I was just sort of stupidly adventurous. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: I was. There was a poker game of all of
Speaker 2: us at one time, and that game would always involve
Speaker 2: somebody having some kind of coke or wed, and I
Speaker 2: realized it. It became a point probably about nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: five eighty six or my attention, and suddenly the poker
Speaker 2: game didn't matter as much as the cocaine did. And
Speaker 2: so there were a couple of years there in the
Speaker 2: eighty six eighty seven where I kind of really sort
Speaker 2: of slid clearly off the beaten track and went into
Speaker 2: the program, you know, began to go to meetings and
Speaker 2: did that successfully until about nineteen ninety two, and then
Speaker 2: really had a pretty big messy what they call slip
Speaker 2: relapse relapse. Yes, Bob passed away in ninety one after
Speaker 2: being sick for a while and being his caretaker, and Colleen,
Speaker 2: who had gotten very close with and worked with as
Speaker 2: her assistant, she passed away the following in August of
Speaker 2: ninety one. Oh my god, So those were huge. You know.
Speaker 2: I don't remember feeling like I could have had a
Speaker 2: moment where I could have just sat in a chair,
Speaker 2: you know, and cried, you know, and somebody might have
Speaker 2: checked on me, you know who I know, And my
Speaker 2: position was to check on the three or other people
Speaker 2: who were doing that.
Speaker 1: A little bit like in a sense, there was no
Speaker 1: time to grieve.
Speaker 2: There wasn't. I went down to Washington, d C. For
Speaker 2: the quilt that was being displayed in the mall. It
Speaker 2: was ninety two Broadway Cares like if I'd say it's
Speaker 2: as merged. We were involved in some presentation thing and
Speaker 2: some events, and it was a whole like five day weekend,
Speaker 2: and I was tired, and I was exhausted, and i'd
Speaker 2: really never walked through the quilt because everything had been
Speaker 2: about work. I was helping with arrangements for speakers and
Speaker 2: all sorts of things. And before I was heading back
Speaker 2: to New York, like on a Sunday Monday, something, I thought,
Speaker 2: I've really got to other than just be here, I've
Speaker 2: got to really walk through this and experience it. So
Speaker 2: I did and sort of got lost in it. I
Speaker 2: found Bob's panel. I found my friend Blaine's panel, who
Speaker 2: was very close friends that who I'd lived with.
Speaker 1: These are like the size of coffins.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I was getting on the train to come
Speaker 2: home immediately afterwards, and I think I was just so
Speaker 2: between being tired and just had opened to myself to
Speaker 2: what all this meant and the grievance of it and
Speaker 2: the grief of it, that I literally got off the
Speaker 2: train and went to a dealer. And that was sort
Speaker 2: of what kicked off this really sort of massive relapse.
Speaker 2: And I was sure that if I could show up
Speaker 2: for work and keep my obligations and you know, that
Speaker 2: things were fine. They weren't. When I finally did manage
Speaker 2: to sort of slow down, to stop this myself and
Speaker 2: try to get back to meetings in January.
Speaker 1: This is ninety three.
Speaker 2: Ninety three, Roger was my partner at Broadway Cares. Really
Speaker 2: need to go see my friend doctor Howard Grossman, who
Speaker 2: was my doctor for a long time, to get checked up,
Speaker 2: because to make sure you're okay with just all sorts
Speaker 2: of things.
Speaker 1: So I did just like a full exam, just a.
Speaker 2: Full exam, you know, after you've come off of all
Speaker 2: this idiot behavior and I did, and Howard called me
Speaker 2: and he said, you need to come down to my office.
Speaker 2: And I said, okay, well that's clear. And I went
Speaker 2: down to Howard's office where he told me it's just
Speaker 2: maybe like beginning of February, you're HIV positive. You know,
Speaker 2: ninety three, there were no medications. And that was like
Speaker 2: the last kick in the ass where I just kind
Speaker 2: of went fuck it. And finally, I mean Roger like
Speaker 2: grabbed me by the throat and he said, look, you're
Speaker 2: either going to rehab or you're fired.
Speaker 1: After years of grief from the AIDS crisis, losing his
Speaker 1: partner and his mentor whom he loved, Tom had a relapse.
Speaker 1: On top of this, he had just gotten his diagnosis
Speaker 1: of HIV. His work partner and mentor at the time
Speaker 1: had given him an ultimatum, go to rehab or lose
Speaker 1: your job. And for Tom, that's what made it real.
Speaker 2: My denial was based on being able to do my job,
Speaker 2: and I was determined that I would do that just
Speaker 2: to prove to myself that I wasn't and it wasn't
Speaker 2: a problem that I wasn't an addict. And as a
Speaker 2: therapist has told me since the only thing that probably
Speaker 2: would have got my attention to stop was what's called
Speaker 2: job jeb, you know, job jeopardy. When Roger said, if
Speaker 2: you don't get your back together, I'm fucking firing you.
Speaker 2: It was like, no, no, it can't happen. And that's
Speaker 2: what basically got me, thank God, and it hazeled and
Speaker 2: said it doesn't always work. It worked for this boy
Speaker 2: who liked to be busy.
Speaker 1: What was going through your mind when you got the diagnosis?
Speaker 2: You know what, I I'm not even sure what was
Speaker 2: going through my mind. And you know, speaking of you know, shame,
Speaker 2: I'm a little not not embarrassed, but people are human.
Speaker 2: People make mistakes. But it does seem like I should not.
Speaker 2: You know, had I been smarter about other aspects of
Speaker 2: my life, this wouldn't have happened. I should have known better.
Speaker 2: You know, I was working in this community, you know,
Speaker 2: whether it was around fundraising, but I certainly knew all
Speaker 2: the all the how the science worked and why you
Speaker 2: would want to use a condom, and clearly I was
Speaker 2: didn't and wasn't at that time, you know, through that relapse,
Speaker 2: and had I not gone to Hazelton at that for
Speaker 2: that month, I'm sure I wouldn't be here.
Speaker 1: Wow. And so that was a positive experience for you.
Speaker 2: Uh No, rehab was tough by the time I left.
Speaker 2: It was a positive experience, but initially it was horrific.
Speaker 2: It's like ten rooms of two, so it's like twenty
Speaker 2: guys in a unit, and I was put in there
Speaker 2: with someone who looked at me got my story right
Speaker 2: away and immediately it was not going to share room
Speaker 2: with a fagot wow, I mean, and was really shitty
Speaker 2: about nasty about it, and of course not wanting to
Speaker 2: be there. That's kind of all I needed to tell
Speaker 2: them why I couldn't stay. There was a guy in
Speaker 2: the theater community, a guy named Fred Nathan who was
Speaker 2: a press agent, and Fred had a really rough row
Speaker 2: with cocaine and freebase crack. Roger knew enough to talk
Speaker 2: to my unit counselor to say Tom should talk to
Speaker 2: Fred on the phone. So I bring me in the
Speaker 2: office and I'm just pissy about everything, and I'm on
Speaker 2: the phone with Fred. Now. I don't know if you
Speaker 2: know the twelve steps a little bit, okay, but there
Speaker 2: is a step called the fifth step, where you tell
Speaker 2: your deepest dark secrets, usually to your sponsor, so that
Speaker 2: you can begin to move past them. The fourth step
Speaker 2: is writing them all down. So Fred, crazy asshole literally
Speaker 2: says to me, says, Tom, you want to stay if
Speaker 2: only for this reason, when all these guys in your
Speaker 2: unit have to do their fifth step with someone and
Speaker 2: they don't want to tell somebody that they sucked dick
Speaker 2: for blow, he'll be willing to talk to you. So
Speaker 2: you're going to get some great, great stories.
Speaker 1: I feel bad for laughing about it.
Speaker 2: And the worst part is that's why I stay.
Speaker 3: I mean, I stayed for much more ultimately, but Fred
Speaker 3: was just smart enough to know that that salacious, sort
Speaker 3: of ridiculous story would slow me down enough to go, Okay,
Speaker 3: all right, I'll go back to my room.
Speaker 1: And where were you when you heard about the new
Speaker 1: drugs that we're going to save people's lives in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six six, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. I mean, I was working at Broadway
Speaker 2: Care certainly, and I certainly would have been aware of it.
Speaker 2: But the reason why I can very much remember that
Speaker 2: date is because I had a friend in the hospital,
Speaker 2: my friend John Hatchett, who literally John wasn't going to die.
Speaker 2: He was weeks away, months away at most from this
Speaker 2: taking him out. He was down at Saint Vincent's and
Speaker 2: we went down to see him, and then suddenly word
Speaker 2: kind of leaked that John had gotten a hold of
Speaker 2: I think through being at Saint Vincent's this new drug,
Speaker 2: this combination therapy, and that suddenly he was like getting better.
Speaker 2: He's a perfect example of someone who just hit the
Speaker 2: lotto with how those drugs came out and where he
Speaker 2: was in his life at that time. But the sad
Speaker 2: thing about that there were friends of mine who, if
Speaker 2: they had lived another six months, they would have hit
Speaker 2: the medications and they probably would literally still be here today.
Speaker 2: And I have other friends as well who if the
Speaker 2: medications hadn't come exactly what they when they did, if
Speaker 2: they hadn't come, if they came six months later, they'd
Speaker 2: be gone. There wasn't a moment we all rushed out
Speaker 2: on the beach and hugged each other because oh my god,
Speaker 2: there's medications. I think it was as I remember it,
Speaker 2: it was more like, oh my god, there might actually
Speaker 2: be some hope here. It was almost like whispered because
Speaker 2: you couldn't you didn't want to shake it. By screaming it.
Speaker 2: You didn't want to somehow jinx it or embrace it
Speaker 2: and then be told no, not quite what we thought,
Speaker 2: not yet, because they've done lots of that. So it
Speaker 2: was more of a quiet resolution. And then you began
Speaker 2: to literally see people have like a Lazarus moment where
Speaker 2: someone like On who was clearly on his way out,
Speaker 2: we'd more or less gone to see John to say goodbye,
Speaker 2: was suddenly like John's out of the hospital. Wow, We're
Speaker 2: going to dinner with John. Wow, fucking John has a
Speaker 2: new boyfriend.
Speaker 1: Well, you know you just retired, Oh yeah, Tom on
Speaker 1: December thirty first, after a long thirty six years that
Speaker 1: Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS, and you've raised three hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars.
Speaker 2: Actually raised more than that. I mean we you know,
Speaker 2: we've raised it's crazy to say. I mean, we talked
Speaker 2: about the money that we've granted, but we've raised just
Speaker 2: over half a billion dollars, over five hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, there's no doubt that your work and
Speaker 1: work with Broadway Cares Equity Fight Says has been such
Speaker 1: a huge part of the story around putting an into
Speaker 1: so much of the death in the nineties and eighties.
Speaker 1: What is the next frontier of this fight and this
Speaker 1: issue that you know so much of your life has
Speaker 1: been defined.
Speaker 2: By well, I mean when I think of what Broadway
Speaker 2: Cares continues to do in the future, there needs to
Speaker 2: be access points where young men like yourself can have
Speaker 2: access to prep so that they don't get sick and
Speaker 2: then spread the disease. You know, public policy work that's
Speaker 2: done so that some of the stigma that folks are
Speaker 2: trying to reimpose that's fought against right. So I don't
Speaker 2: think that any of the need to do this while
Speaker 2: it's changed will ever and I know for some this
Speaker 2: will be heresy go away.
Speaker 1: This is a show about history and teaching histories of
Speaker 1: young people, but it really sort of ends up being
Speaker 1: about passing things down from one generation of queer to
Speaker 1: the next. And having lived through so much of this
Speaker 1: particular history, what do you want to pass down about
Speaker 1: it too?
Speaker 2: You know what I'd like to tell you, and then
Speaker 2: you're thinking of looking here across the table at you
Speaker 2: and seeing thousands of young men and women, non binary
Speaker 2: folks behind you is something that a therapist told me
Speaker 2: when I first got sober in like eighty eight, and
Speaker 2: they like, let's say around nineteen ninety and I was
Speaker 2: filled with anxiety about could we do enough? What were we
Speaker 2: going to do? How were we going to do this?
Speaker 2: And she looked at me and she said, look. She
Speaker 2: grabbed a card off her table. I was sitting across
Speaker 2: from her. She grabbed a pen and she was writing
Speaker 2: something on the back of the card. She handed me
Speaker 2: the card and she said, it's four points. I want
Speaker 2: you to read them out out. And what they said
Speaker 2: were this. Number one, begin where you are. Number two,
Speaker 2: do what you can with grace, Number three, move forward
Speaker 2: in faith, and number four ask for help. And she
Speaker 2: said you'll be fine, You'll figure it out. Wow. And
Speaker 2: that's what I would say, did anybody of a younger
Speaker 2: generation who around anything is going, what the fuck? Begin
Speaker 2: where you are, ask for help.
Speaker 1: What We Loved is hosted by me Jordan go Andsolves.
Speaker 1: New episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write
Speaker 1: in to tell your story, email us at but We
Speaker 1: Loved at gmail dot com, or you can send me
Speaker 1: a message on Instagram or TikTok at your underscore against Solves.
Speaker 1: We are a production of the Outspoken podcast Network and
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts, But We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Joey pat Emily Meronoff, and Christina Loranger.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are me Maya Howard and Katrina Norvil.
Speaker 1: Original music by Steve Boone. Special thanks to Jay Bronson
Speaker 1: and Roquel Willis. If you loved this episode, leave us
Speaker 1: a rating and follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify,
Speaker 1: and thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.