The Love That Almost Killed Me… and the Illness That Saved My Life
The doctor said my life was about to change…
… as if I’d hoped to stay the same all my life. Slowly crawling back from the brink of death, nobody could understand why I was so happy.
Nine months before, I arrived in that tiny mountain town, to begin a year-long national touring contract with a brilliant classical repertory theatre.
The plays were Romeo and Juliet, in which I wore my beard a natural brown; All’s Well That Ends Well, in which I painted my beard grey; and The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont, a meta-theatrical clown show full of modern musical theater jokes. I painted my beard blue.
I’d figured a Shakespeare company would acquaint me with earnest, poetic-types, and — fingers crossed — at least a couple other gay guys… Instead, I was stuck in a van for eight hours a day with a bunch of football bros who talked about nothing but fantasy football… Not a gay guy in sight!
I never categorized the tension as homophobic per se. People just had to get used to me. At that age, I was always rushing barefoot into…
