His name was Tod Morger.
In the summer of 1986, I was 16. My high school district’s community theater was doing a production of A Chorus Line. Tod was cast as ‘Richie’.
Tod was in his mid-to-late 20s, tall, lean, had curly hair he’d dyed platinum blond and spiked up, and an exceptional dancer.
Midway through rehearsals, Tod was no longer involved. The show had to be restructured so the role of ‘Richie’ was merged with another character.
There were rumors as to why Tod wasn’t doing the show anymore. One or two gay men in the cast told me what they’d heard might have been going on with Tod, but nothing was ever said “officially.”
One night a couple of weeks after leaving the show, Tod came to visit a rehearsal, and I will never forget my late friend, Michael Irpino, literally running and leaping into Tod’s arms, and Tod catching him. It seemed like Mike was never going to let go. The hug lasted forever.
A week or two after the show closed, I called Tod and asked if I could hang out with him.
I don’t remember why I asked, and I don’t know why Tod agreed to spend time with me either! I was just this high school kid in the chorus. We barely knew each other.
However, on a mid-August day in 1986, Tod spent an afternoon with me, walking around the north side of Chicago.
I’m a little fuzzy on whether we had lunch, but know he accompanied me to a record store so I could pick up the latest Janet Jackson and Madonna singles.
He showed me his apartment near the Sheridan Road “L” stop; practically underneath the train tracks. I was briefly introduced to his partner. Whenever I am on the “L” and the path curves around a bend near Sheridan Road, I see where he lived and think of him.
I have little to no memory of anything we talked about that day, but I certainly know we didn’t talk about AIDS, or that he had AIDS, which appeared to be the reason he left A Chorus Line.
Nevertheless, he was kind to spend a few hours walking around with a kid he didn’t know. I’ve never forgotten that; not just because he was the first person I’d ever known to have AIDS, but because he gave me his time.
— — — — -
The first time I heard of AIDS was during a seventh grade class in 1983. My classmate Greg — who, I learned, way after our school years, was also gay — was sitting next to me reading Time magazine and telling me about what was expected of this disease.
He said millions were expected to contract this thing; interestingly, he made no mention of it being labeled a “gay disease.”
I remember being slightly spooked, but also remember thinking, at the time, the idea that millions of people would get this seemed a stretch.
He turned out to be correct, though. Sadly.
Several friends I’d make later on, would tell me about all the friends they’d buried due to this plague. I emerged unscathed by comparison. I didn’t have the experience of losing nearly everyone I knew.
If I’d been born any earlier, maybe things would have been different.
HIV/AIDS only directly affected me in the sense that I had to be vigilant about sex practices.
Sometimes, despite the fact that certain behaviors are still risky, and the choices I see them making are somewhat reckless, I envy today’s youth. They have different choices when it comes to sex because of HIV prevention drugs.
— — — — -
I had my own scare in 1991.
I’d just been hired at an Olive Garden; the one time I thought I’d do the “waiter/actor” thing. It was my third day on the job. I had a rotten cold, but knew calling in sick just a few days after being hired would look bad.
I was in a training period and the manager told me to man the front door on a 20 below zero windchill night in the northern suburbs of Chicago.
I said, “Look, you can see I came in sick. Have me do something else. Just don’t stick me by the front door. Please!”
He refused. I said, “Then I can’t work here,” and left.
I was still living with my folks. I was in my room, with what I thought was just a standard flu, for the next few days. At some point my mother saw me. Alarmed, she said, “You are yellow! You’re going to the hospital!”
Those three days in the hospital were terrifying. No one knew what was going on. My parents, my sister, and my friends couldn’t come in my room without masks. My family had to have tests to see if I might have given them whatever this was.
One time a doctor came into my room with a bunch of med students and began to poke and prod me. I started visibly, uncontrollably, shaking.
I’d never seen this doctor, and nobody had given me any test results! So, I assumed he, and the students standing around, knew something I didn’t.
When I asked this doctor what he and the others were doing, he shushed me! When my doctor found out about all of this, heads apparently rolled.
Although I had been “out” to my folks for a few years, no one else in my family knew.
Since I was in the hospital, extended family needed to be told what was going on, and since HIV/AIDS was on the table as a possible diagnosis, the official reporting of “Paul is gay” needed to happen.
Some tough conversations happened that weekend. There was much anger and resentment mixed with fear. I gather the nurses saw how stressed I was, because they sent in a priest to talk to me.
Nice scene: Jewish boy with a friendly hospital priest.
Even when I left the hospital, not all test results were back. Back then, you had to wait two weeks for HIV test results.
At some point during those two weeks, I had a dream. A woman nurse was holding two envelopes; whichever one she opened first was my result. She opened an envelope and her hand started to shake.
I woke up, convinced I was HIV-positive.
Except I wasn't.
Eventually, tests came back negative.
I probably never should have been concerned with being positive in the first place, considering I wasn’t doing anything sexually that would make me get remotely close to contracting HIV/AIDS, but back then, we just didn’t know.
I was in one of my musical theater classes the day I got the result; everyone around knew what had been going on with me and how freaked out I was. So, of course, I was bouncing off the walls; thrilled I didn’t have it! Dodged the bullet!
I remember excitedly telling our piano accompanist that I was negative. He said, “Congratulations. I wish I could say the same.”
It wasn’t until that moment that I’d realized how naïve I’d been; to be so blind to anyone else around me testing positive for HIV/AIDS.
Boy, did that teach me a lesson about awareness and sensitivity!
Turned out what I had was Hepatitis-A. In the hospital, I was told if it was Hepatitis-B, I would not be “a happy camper” and it could be a pre-cursor to AIDS. Frightening.
There was another case of Hepatitis reported out of that Olive Garden I briefly worked at. Some of the practices I observed while I worked there make me feel fairly certain that was the ultimate connection; not anything I was doing sexually.
— — — — -
Through the years, I have known many men who are HIV positive, and have dated a few. One man told me his status almost immediately and asked, “It doesn’t scare you that I’m positive?”
“No,” I said. “I know how to protect myself.’
That’s how I’ve always felt. Especially after a second scare in 1996, when a clinic called to tell me someone they were treating had tested HIV-positive and named me as a partner.
I got tested immediately; waited another painful two weeks, and tested negative again. After I dodged that bullet zooming even closer to home, I knew I was making good choices. I’ve never feared an HIV test since.
No matter how many people I’ve known through the years, Tod is the one I remember most.
He is one of only two people I’ve known that died. The other was a wonderful college teacher, Martin de Maat. I wish I’d understood how important having Martin in my corner was, but I was clueless at the time.
I hadn’t seen Tod since that day in 1986. In 1990, I saw his obituary in Gay Chicago magazine. He lived another four years.
Because of that, I often wondered why he needed to leave our show.
Was it his choice?
Was he acting pre-emptively for his health?
Or…I wondered… was he asked to leave the show because he had AIDS? Because of all the high school kids in the show? I don’t know.
Here we are though, 41 years later. 39 after I first heard about AIDS from Greg. Many advances; many setbacks, and now the world finds itself in the middle of an ongoing pandemic that is way more communicable than AIDS ever was.
As activist and actress Alexandra Billings said in a live video that sparked this essay on World AIDS Day in December 2021:
“You want to know who knows how to survive a pandemic? The gay community. Ask us how. We did it.”
Alexandra’s experience was ten times what mine was, though. She’s one of the ones that buried everybody.
— — — — -
Sometime in 1996 or ‘97, I met a woman named Solitaire through the Chicago singer open mics I would attend. One night, Solitaire decided to host a séance at her apartment. It sounded cool, so I went.
We were all in a not-exact circle, eyes closed, etc. At a certain point, Solitaire went around the room and asked if anyone had anything to say.
“My right arm is dead weight,” I said. “I can’t lift it for some reason.”
Truly, I couldn’t!
Solitaire said “Someone has a message for you.” She encouraged me to speak whatever was coming to mind.
I started talking about Tod, and this day (really a few hours) we spent together. I hadn’t thought of him in years!
As I was speaking the story, I felt the weight on my arm lifting, and an energy moving down my arm, reaching my hand, and clasping it as if to hold it (my hands were upturned as if in a meditative state).
I described this feeling out loud. As I did, I added, “He is saying….
“You are loved and you don’t need to be afraid.’”
I cried. The message was so pure; and real.
Solitaire asked if anyone else in the room was picking up on anything. One person said, “I see someone very tall, with curly hair.” Another said, “I see train tracks.”
I’d left out all descriptive details of Tod and where he lived. I never even said his name!
….but what people in the room said they were “seeing”?
I knew it was him.
Tod Morger.
I guess our short time together meant something to him too.
