Hostage (9 page)

“And one of the biggest challenges facing us right now, of course, is medical care. Yes, we’ve got wonderful doctors. Yes, our technology is fabulous. But as a nation we have to decide just what the government’s role is and how far the individual is supposed to go.” Clariton stepped around the edge of the podium and with a shrug said, “Frankly, I believe—and I’ve stated this numerous times—that we’ve got to rein in the federal government’s responsibility. Let me ask you this: If some fool is stupid enough not to wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle and he breaks his neck, is it my responsibility if he’s underinsured to make up for his stupidity and support him via medical assistance? Now, I don’t have anything against smokers and I certainly don’t want to go tangling with any of the tobacco companies, so please don’t repeat this outside of this room… but if somebody—and, I mean, we’re all aware of the health risks—smokes a few packs a day and then gets cancer, just what is the government responsible for? Should my tax dollars go to care for him, should he be eligible for Social Security for the rest of his life? Likewise with AIDS. I mean, gays know how you get it. And they should know how to prevent it. But if some guy goes into the bushes and comes out HIV positive, is the United States government supposed to pay for his medical care? Are American families responsible for homosexual practices? I think not. No, in all these cases I believe it’s up to the individual to take care of himself, to seek and secure private health insurance. We are, after all, a capitalistic society. Insurance companies make money. Drug companies make money. Doctors make money. And so do you good business people. All I’m saying is it’s your money, your country, and you have to decide how it is you want to spend your tax dollars.”

A round of applause broke out, and Clariton smiled and did his best to look as modest as possible. As the clapping continued, his aide took the opportunity to step up to the podium and whisper in his ear.

Clariton then said, “I’m sorry, but my trusty aide Carol has informed me that we’re running out of time. I can take a couple of quick questions, and then I’ve got to move on.”

Without saying anything new, Clariton answered exactly two rather benign questions. And then telling the audience how wonderful they were and how great Minnesota was—“But heed my words, your state taxes are too high, and you can tell the Democrats I said that!”—he was off, moving swiftly out of the room.

Cindy switched off the tape recorder and stood there beaming. This was too great. A true scoop. Granted, this wasn’t video, only voice, but back at the station Roger was nevertheless going to love it, and on the news tonight her audience would eat it up. Dear God, this could be the break she’d been wanting. They’d run some footage of Clariton’s book-signing this morning, then perhaps a still photograph of Clariton himself with a voice-over from the luncheon. There were some great excerpts, a few things he’d never publicly said—oh, the tobacco companies wouldn’t like it, not one bit—and, yes, this was the stuff of great news.

As the applause began to subside, Cindy peered around the corner. The five-grand-a-plate lunch was winding up, but a number of these well-heeled executives were lingering over coffee and political gab. Okay, so she’d stick around for a few minutes, see if she could speak to a couple of them, then duck out the way she had come in.

Oh, this was too incredibly perfect.

All Rawlins wanted was
to get on that plane and go to New York. Maybe he was reading too much into it, maybe a long weekend in Manhattan wasn’t that big of a deal for Todd, perhaps a mere lark, but Rawlins couldn’t help looking at the trip as a signal, a sign that this was it, the big relationship of his life. He’d had his disco days, he’d had his fuckathon, dating one guy after another, but all he wanted now was one simple but seemingly impossible thing: someone to love who loved him too. And he prayed to God that Todd Mills was that guy at last.

So he just had to get well, and he had to do it fast.

But, dear God, his sinuses were killing him. If anything, the pain was getting worse, and now, driving to his doctor’s and gingerly touching his forehead, he had the sensation of walnuts being stuffed up his nasal cavity. Ugh. This time he was going to get down on his knees and beg his doctor for the strongest possible medication. The drugs he’d been taking—a decongestant and an antibiotic—weren’t even touching the pain.

True, you couldn’t be gay these days and not be a hypochondriac, but Rawlins kept telling himself he had a good doctor and that they’d get to the bottom of it. Last week he’d had a thorough physical, and if nothing showed up in all those tests then he’d go see an allergist. After all, it could be something like dust mites. Or it very well could be Girlfriend. Rawlins had never had an allergic reaction to cats before, but then he’d never lived with one, and he’d been all but living full-time at Todd’s for the last month.

And thank God for that.

Curt’s death wasn’t something he was going to get over, not ever. Of that he was sure. Rather, Rawlins already understood that Curt’s death was destined to become a marker in his own life, a before-and-after kind of thing, for watching the course of Curt’s illness had altered something quite fundamental in Rawlins. Quite simply, he’d never seen anything as awful as what Curt had endured. First Curt’s asshole of a lover of five years had dumped him—just walked out the door and never came back—the very day Curt had discovered both that he was HIV positive and that his condition had already progressed into AIDS. Next there was the endless assault of infections, the parade of doctors. And then Rawlins had witnessed how Curt had so quickly fallen apart, as if he were running for the grave. Rawlins had seen AIDS before, of course, but until Curt much of it had been at arm’s length. This was Minneapolis and Saint Paul, after all. This was flyover land, about as safe from AIDS as any gay man could be. Thank God the epidemic hadn’t hit as it had in New York and San Francisco, where Rawlins had heard of guys going to their hundredth AIDS funeral, of apartment buildings emptied of all the men, and of telephone lists rendered useless because all the numbers belonged to dead men.

For Rawlins, Curt’s death had simply proved to be the proverbial straw. While he knew of death after death of Twin Cities men, Curt’s was amazingly the first AIDS death he’d been involved with on a near daily basis. Was it because so many others had retreated to die at family homes and farms up north or in the Dakotas or Iowa? Or was it because Rawlins was a shit, a self-centered faggot who’d been too afraid to give his time to any of the charity groups? Both, undoubtedly. Regardless, until Curt he’d never seen anything so awful so up close, how AIDS didn’t just attack one part of the body, but every part, the lungs, the skin, the mind, the inside of the mouth, even the fingernails. For Curt, however, Rawlins had been there, changing his diaper and spoon-feeding him broth and laughing and crying. Jesus Christ, he kept screaming inside, why couldn’t Curt have hung on just a bit longer, why couldn’t he have gotten any of the new drugs soon enough to make a difference? Rawlins nearly went insane watching Curt slip away, and he wouldn’t have made it if Todd hadn’t been there.

God, thought Rawlins as he drove through the sunny day toward Park and 26th, Todd Mills was the best thing that had ever happened to him. And there was no way Rawlins wasn’t going to New York. The last thing he wanted was to give Todd some reason to back off, for it was only in the last month or two that they had crossed some sort of line—or rather Todd had crossed it, for Rawlins had been there, waiting, hoping. Shit, he was so in love with Todd Mills. And what he loved most about him was something he couldn’t identify, something he’d never felt with anyone before. Simply, when they were together nothing else seemed to matter. And that was when Rawlins knew this was right, that there was a God or a Higher Power or whatever. You just didn’t get the chance to feel that way about someone else, male or female, without an Almighty blessing you.

So as Rawlins parked his car and turned off the engine, he was determined to buck the pain and infection tormenting his sinuses. There was no other choice. I’m going to be okay, I’m going to be okay, I’m going to be okay, and I’m going to New York, he chanted as he got out, zipped up his leather coat, and started toward the short brick building housing his doctor’s office. He pulled open the glass doors and entered a waiting elevator car. Boy, wouldn’t he like to have his blood pressure taken right now. Must be way up there. And then the lift started, carrying him to the top. When he reached the third floor and stepped out, however, he was immediately dizzy. That was what was really driving him crazy, his sense of balance, for his blocked sinuses had caused fluid to build up in his inner ear. He took a deep breath, steadied himself. Just give me a drug that works, he prayed. The pressurized cabin of an airplane really would be torture.

Entering the first door, he went right up to the receptionist’s desk and said, “Hi, I’m Steve Rawlins and I have an appointment with Dr. Samuelson.”

“Certainly, Mr. Rawlins,” said the woman, checking the calendar. “It’ll just be a few minutes. Just have a seat and the nurse will call you.”

It was stupid, but he searched her face. Late fifties, finely wrinkled skin. Plain features. Light-blue glasses. Light-blue sweater. Serious. He thought of all the tests he’d had last week, but there wasn’t a trace that she knew any of the results. Then again, why should she?

He sat down, glanced around. An elderly woman sat across the room in a wheelchair. To his right a small boy was curled in his mother’s lap. And on the other side a young woman was reading
Better Homes & Gardens
and sniffling. Rawlins picked up
Sports Illustrated,
made a weak attempt at thumbing through it, but didn’t really see a single word or picture.

“Steven Rawlins?”

His heart jolted and he looked over. A nurse in a white uniform stood in a doorway looking at his chart. Feeling suddenly nervous, he slowly stood up, then didn’t move for a second, surprised at his feebleness. He looked at the nurse; she smiled back.

With his heart ticking faster and faster and his armpits blossoming with anxious perspiration, he followed the nurse from the waiting room, down one narrow hall, down another, and to a small room for patients. Dear God, prayed Rawlins, please let there be a simple explanation why I can’t rid the infection from my head, please let everything be all right. I’ve got to go to New York next week, because I’ve just found the most wonderful person. Please don’t let me lose him.

“Just have a seat,” she said with a smile as she ushered Rawlins into the room. “The doctor will be right with you.”

Rawlins was too nervous to make a peep, and he went in and sat down on a molded-plastic chair. As the nurse shut the door and disappeared, Rawlins wanted to jump up, beg her not to leave. Aren’t you supposed to take my blood pressure? How long will I have to wait to see the doctor? Oh, and why are my sinuses killing me?

Rawlins closed his eyes and touched his forehead, surprised at the panic suddenly surging through him. There was a gentle knock on the door and the doctor entered, a short man with a graying beard, balding head, glasses.

“Hello, Steve,” he said, extending his hand.

Oh, shit, thought Rawlins as they shook hands, why does he look so serious? “Hi.”

Dr. Samuelson sat down opposite Rawlins, opened Rawlins’s chart. There was a moment of silence that seemed to last forever.

All of the tests they’d done flashed through Rawlins’s mind, but of course there was only one that mattered—the very test that he’d blocked out all week, the very one that was now making him so incredibly nervous—and he blurted out, “Are my test results in? The one for HIV?”

“Yes,” said the doctor, who took a deep breath, then looked right at Rawlins, his face as grave as an executioner’s. “Yes, the results are back, and, Steve, I’m afraid I have some very unfortunate news.”

It’s me again, the guy who offed Curt, and today I want to get up on a soapbox and scream. I want to scream because I hate straight people. I mean, look at this letter that the Florida AIDS Ride received from a Florida state official:

“In my capacity outside the office, I again have no interest in your AIDS bicycle ride. It is my personal belief that AIDS as a disease was created as punishment to the gay and lesbian communities across the world. Unfortunately, due to their lifestyles, many innocent people have also had to suffer. For those people I am truly sorry and hope that one day we can cure this disease. As far as the gay and lesbians of this world… let them suffer their consequences!”

Now, that’s exactly what I can’t stand about AIDS in America—the rationalization that you’re a homo and you’re doomed to get these cooties. How can people be so warped? First of all, duh, no one deserves anything like this. Second of all, wow, there are 30 million people on this planet who’ve been infected with HIV—something like 6.4 million of whom have already croaked of AIDS—and do you think most of them are homos? Hell, no! For the info of straight white Americans who can’t see beyond their own priggish noses, worldwide only five percent to ten percent of HIV infections have been transmitted via homosexual contact. Shocking, huh? Just think of it, every minute of every day six people are infected—that’s 8,500 new cases a day, a 1,000 of which are kids. And almost all of them straight.

I curse the conservatives in America. I curse the religious right, for there is a God, but He or She or It certainly isn’t theirs.