February 19, 2025 • 40 mins
Tom Viola stepped down in December 2024, after leading Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS for 36 years. His fundraising has helped save countless lives. He reminisces on what it was like to live through the grief and trauma of the AIDS crisis — and how he coped.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
the Outspoken Podcast Network. Hey, this is Jordan with a
quick note. After this episode, we just have two more
before our season officially ends, and I have two things
to ask you. First, if you haven't already, go follow
me on Instagram or TikTok at your underscore again solve
(00:23):
that's JR underscore g O n s A l v S.
That way we can keep in touch and you can
stay with me on my journey. And two, for our
season finale episode, I want to hear from you, so
send me a voice note on Instagram or email it
to but We Loved at gmail dot com and tell
(00:45):
me what the show means to you. As always, I
couldn't do this without you, and thank you so much
for the support. Now let's get into the show.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
In nineteen eighty four, myself and seven of my pals,
seven of my.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Friends, gay friends, friends.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
All involved in the theater a little bit. Somehow. We're
all at brunch and we all started talking about what
we were hearing stories about, and rather than be concerned
about how we might be at risk, we were pushing
it away. How it was the older gay man.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
It felt far away.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
It felt far away. That was nineteen eighty four. By
nineteen ninety four of the eight of us four were
dead and two, including myself, were HIV positive.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
that by seeking out our history, and what I found
are people and stories full of courage, perseverance and love
in this so we'll meet Tom Viola, one of the
(02:02):
most important people in the fight against AIDS. Over the
course of his career, he's raised nearly half a billion
dollars to combat the crisis. We'll learn how he got
involved and how, in addition to fighting the AIDS crisis,
he was living it too. For my Heart podcast, I'm
Jordan and Solves and this is what we loved. I
(02:48):
remember my first time hearing about PREP. Prep is the
groundbreaking drug that is ninety nine percent preventable against HIV
according to the federal government. I was fresh out of
the closet and new to San Francisco, where i'd moved
for my first job. I was really lucky to have
found this unbelievably confident group of gay friends who had
(03:11):
zero issues talking about sex. That was the opposite for me,
growing up devoutly catholic. I felt embarrassed and shameful when
friends would even bring up the topic, and frankly, I'd
judged other gay men for being promiscuous. But I had
a friend at the time who, in his own words,
(03:33):
described himself as a quote self proclaimed slut. I'd never
even heard of this before, and when he said it,
my cheeks turned cherry red. I remember asking, aren't you
scared of HIV? I asked that because I was scared
of it. He was far more informed than me on
(03:55):
the topic and seemed to accept that sex was a
natural part of his own life. He patiently asked me
if I had ever heard of PREP. His explanation literally
changed my life. My next guest, Tom Viola, has been
one of the most important figures in the fight to
drive access to PREP and to end the AIDS crisis.
(04:19):
For thirty six years, Tom was the leader of Broadway
Cares Equity Fights AIDS, one of the most important AIDS
nonprofits in America. Over the course of his career, he
led the Broadway community in raising nearly half a billion
dollars for the cause, helping save the lives of countless people.
(04:40):
After a storied career defined by the AIDS crisis, he
retired on December thirty first, twenty twenty four. But before
becoming a leading voice for gay rights, he was a
closeted young man in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I was a quiet kid. So I was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
south of the city, in sort of a nineteen sixties suburb.
So the boys that I played with when I was
particularly younger, we grew up together, and I can remember
very distinctly and thought about this in a long time
that one of the games we played when we got
(05:22):
to be like a little more closer to being adolescents
was a game that goes called Smear the Queer. And
that's where we would all be in somebody's backyard and
somebody would have like a volleyball, and somebody would throw
it up in the air, and then whoever caught the
ball would run and everybody else would run after him
(05:43):
to tackle him, or hence the name supposedly Shmear the Queer.
And I even at that, you know, as like again
probably like fifth sixth you know, pre ad asolescent kid.
I got that that wasn't so whether that was having
a sense that I was gay, I certainly didn't know
(06:05):
what that was about at all, but I felt separate.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Well, that leads so perfectly into my next question, At
what point did you know that you were gay?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
You know, I I knew, I knew what piqued my interest.
I don't know that it was necessarily sexual interest at
that time. I got up early Saturday morning when I
was a little kid, like literally at seven or eight
in the morning, to watch Tarzan Wow, and I had,
I know, was about Johnny Weismuller in his you know,
very sexy long class. And one of the kids I
(06:42):
grew up with his name was down And when we
were about in eighth grade, what began as wrestling with
each other turned into more than wrestling with each other,
and that continued, you know, that was like seventh eighth grade.
And then at about right before we went into ninth grade,
(07:02):
he literally looked at me and he said, we can't
do this anymore. Wow. You know, we're going into high school.
We can't do this anymore. Wow. And I remember sort
of being like, what does high school have to do.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
With this, were you rejected?
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yes, I mean I realized now as I even just
say it and sort of felt the conversation again. Yeah,
it felt like what I would now say was like
someone breaking up with me. And what I really made
a point of doing in both high schools I went
to with the freshman sophomore and then the second one
junior in particular junior and senior year, was making sure
(07:41):
I was always able to pass. I sort of kept
everybody at bay because meanwhile, I'm seeing kids, even back
in the seventies when I was in high school, early seventies,
who were having a horrible time because it was clear
they were gay, even if people didn't recognize it like
(08:03):
they do now. And I was determined that would never
be me. And that's a lot of stress, stress, self hatred,
and shame.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Tell me more.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
I remember there was an article in Time magazine about it.
I can still see the cover. It was called the Homosexuals,
so this is maybe like nineteen seventy one, seventy two,
and on the cover was a handsome young man sort
of in shadow and you couldn't really see a face,
but just a silhouette. And I remember reading this in
(08:33):
the living room at home and being horrified, Wow that
even reading this sort of found me out.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So you went to the University of Cincinnati to study
musical theater. Is that where you came out?
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You know, it was where we all first kind of
began to figure out what that was. You would see
the freshman class of any musical theater program in and
you would look across the guys and you would literally
think of some of them gay by May they would,
(09:12):
And I'm sure that I was one day that somebody
looked at and went gay by May. So that's where
I I really came into my own and came out
to my friends, and you know, worked summer Stock and
you know, all the all of that really came together.
And also where I really knew I wanted to come
(09:33):
to New York City. Both I thought to be an actor,
but you know what the truth was, I wanted to
come to the city to be gay. You and well,
but i'd been I visited when I was sixteen with
a friend of mine and we were sort of supposed
to be staying with these nuns who were friends of
one of our mothers. And these nuns more or less
(09:54):
gave us keys to these little rooms and said, have
had boys. And so we just ran around for six days.
But you know, we also split up at times to
just like explore on our own. And when we did that,
one time I had sex.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I was hanging around somewhere, like in around Macy's or something,
and I was just kind of cruising, cruising but looking
in windows, just sort of just getting them. And I
realized that this maintenance worker was sort of looking at me.
I'm a sixteen year old kid, and he indicated that
I should follow him, and I did.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
You automatically knew exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Exactly what he wanted. I'd been doing it in Pittsburgh.
And he took me into some building and we ended
up in some warehousey room. And I mean, it's nuts
when I think is sort of some of the you know,
fact I could have what could have happened, you could
have would have shout it. But I was thrilled with
the even as much as the sex.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
The adventure of that well, and it seems like it
was also a form of connection.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
It was because I remember talking with him. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Well, So you moved to New York after college, and
from what I've understood about this time, period. It seems
like it was yeah, just anything goes.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, let's put it this way. Anything that went you
could find this is after yes, exactly. This isn't the
time period of the seventies, you know it was, I
mean it was extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
How did you meet other gay people on the street.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
On the street all the time, there was sort of
the walk pause, look.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Let's go wow an energy exchange.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Oh yeah yeah. And you know, and I what the
thing I did love at that time were the baths,
because it was no nonsense. You got sort of to
the point.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And these are bath houses.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Yeah, whether it was the Saint Mark's baths or the
club baths or the Everard baths.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
It explained one of them, because I think for my
generation they don't really exist.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
They were like clubhouses with all kinds of lockers and
then all kinds of little cabins, little rooms where you
could rent one or the other. And then if you
had a room, either you have sex there with somebody
who came in, or crews around until somebody invited you in.
And I know that there were people who weren't and
would spend like the weekend there. I remember there was
a particular snow day. This is maybe like in nineteen
(12:25):
seventy eight, lived on seventy first Street. Huge snow, the
city is like buried and absolute standstill. And I called
a friend of mine, my friend Jimmy, who lived on
seventieth Street, a block away from me, and I said,
you know what he said, I said, let's get that
to the club bass. I said, you know it is
going to be jammed, okay, because there's nothing anybody can do,
but they'll get there. That was open, and that was open,
(12:50):
and I was right. I mean, so yeah, it was,
you know, a free for all.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And what about friendship?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
What about That's how I made a lot of friends
where the sex would wear off and you're, you know,
and you would just be palsed because you realize you
liked each other.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
I want to ask about you coming out to your parents, sure,
because I mean two Catholic parents, that's a big deal.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yes, it was a big deal. And see when I
left home to go to school, I never really came back.
I'll bet I never spent three days in a row.
After I left to go to CCM as a freshman.
Probably the next time I spent any more time was
that I was after my dad died and we were
moving everybody out of the house. I just had very
(13:39):
little connection to it. I mean, I always felt a
little bit separate from my family, even in that way,
because so much of my life was separate from them.
And then finally I guess I was twenty four, I think,
and I began to just be embarrassed almost that I
(14:03):
was sort of closetly pretending not to be something that
I wasn't to them. So I really decided that I
should tell them, and I was really nervous about it
because my father and I had a not great relationship.
I always felt like a disappointment to him. He'd been
(14:23):
a big jock. I was not what he bargained for,
and rather than try and dig in or find out
what he had gotten, he really kind of just stepped away.
And I told him, now, you know whatever that you no,
I'm gay. And this would have been in like seventy eight,
seventy nine, so this is preates. So they weren't. We
(14:46):
didn't jump to worrying about that. But my father sort
of did what I expected him to do, which is
kind of just shut down about it, and my mother
sort of went right away to it being sort of
stereotypically almost her fault. It's just something I said. No, no, no,
this actually has very little to do with either of you.
This is really just who I am, how I felt
(15:09):
all my life, even as a little kid. I've known
this for a long time, how you did. And then
we kind of just moved on.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
When we come back, Tom hears about AIDS for the
first time. Tom was officially out and living in New
York and New York City in the seventies was like
a playground for gay men across the country. Music, fashion,
(15:41):
and nightlife centered around sex, and for many gay men
it was the first time they felt permission to express
their sexuality. But right as the party of the nineteen
seventies climax and a new decade began, a mysterious disease
killing gay men began to circulate. I wonder if you
(16:03):
can talk about the first time that you heard about AIDS.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Oh, I can tell you exactly. At a boyfriend at
the time, we were living together on seventy first Street,
and my friend who I mentioned before about the bath house, Jimmy,
lived across the street. So Bob and I and Jimmy
and a mutual friend of ours friend, a woman Fran
used to get up early, you know, together and go
to breakfast most mornings. And it was July third, and
(16:30):
we'd gone to the Greek coffee shop at seventy second
West End and we'd we used to buy the papers
to post the news and the Times share them, and
I think Jimmy maybe had that article that said rare
cancer in homosexuals, I think was the headline, and he
passed did you read this? And I read it and
(16:55):
just kind of thought, oh, what's that mean? And I
looked at Jimmy and I said to me, the only
gay disease. It's going to kill you, as if one
of your knickknacks on a high shelf falls off and
hits you in the head. And that was about as
much as we sort of paid attention to it at
that time. But that was the beginning of it in
(17:15):
sort of working its way into our lives. Because the
story that really exemplifies sort of where it fell in
for me in those first year, a couple of years,
and then ten years hence was in nineteen eighty four,
myself and seven of my pals, seven of my friends
(17:38):
gay friends, all involved in the theater a little bit. Somehow,
We're all at brunch and we all started talking about
what we were hearing stories about, and rather than be
concerned about how we might be at risk, we were
pushing it away. How it was the older gay man
(18:00):
with those gay men in their forties who've been partying
too hard in the village. You know, it was gay
men who There were all kinds of reasons why we
really were sure it wasn't our circle.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Of It felt far away.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
It felt far away. That was nineteen eighty four. By
nineteen ninety four of the eight of us, four were
dead and two were HIV positive. And by ninety four,
I mean, I was already doing the work with proday
Care Secuit. If I'd say it's but believe me, we
were in it.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Well, it's interesting because Tom, this is happening at a
time when there's so many different ways that gay people
are getting involved in the fight against AIDS. You have
people really involved in protests, you have people really involved
in policy. You kind of chose this other very critical
(18:54):
route fundraising, and so I wonder if you could talk
about like what made you choose that route or how
it shows you rather well, I mean I love the theater.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
I love the activity of the theater. I enjoyed the
sense of family it created, and even beyond just I
did some work as an actor, you know, something off Broadway,
Way way off Broadway, and you know, regional theater and
dinner theater, but I didn't have any kind of acting
creative amount to anything. But then I was doing a
lot of freelance writing and had a lot a much
better quality of break as a freelance writer than I
(19:27):
did as an actor, like a playwright. No, as an
art you're doing a lot of magazine articles. And one
of the jobs I got that was a pen for
hire was high for an eight week gig at actress
Equity to write some pamphlets for them and a ridiculous
staff manual, and that, literally, who would have known, got
my foot in the door. I had been working very
(19:47):
closely with an actress, a brilliant actress named Colleen Dehurst,
who was very involved in the creation of Equity. Fight say,
it's in this extraordinary road that my life kind of
got dropped onto.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Tom had been working as the assistant to the legendary
Broadway actress Colleen Dewhurst. She was the president of the
major labor union representing actors and stage managers called Actors Equity.
They had put together a council focused on the response
to AIDS called Equity Fights AIDS. Colleen asked Tom to
(20:22):
lead that committee. Separately, producers in the business founded their
own response to the crisis, called Broadway Cares. That organization
was led by Roger McFarlane, who would become Tom's business
partner and mentor when the groups merged in ninety two.
Broadway was being badly affected by AIDS. Stage actors, choreographers,
(20:45):
and dancers were dying. Tom's work was to fundraise for
people in the industry who needed financial help because of
their diagnosis. Without work, many of these entertainment professionals couldn't
pay for treatment, some couldn't afford meals, and others didn't
even have the money to pay for their own funerals.
(21:07):
Tom's organization filled in the gap. The work felt fulfilling
for Tom. He was really good at it and it
kept him very busy.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
I know people who were like nearly thrown out of
their apartments, you know. I know people who were in
the hospital and I had no place necessarily where they
could land afterwards. I know people who needed meals, who
couldn't work, who needed emergency financial assistance. I knew people
whose families were not going to pay for their funerals.
(21:38):
You know, there were hundreds of clients, and at that
time they were dying. I got a note one time
from a guy, Nick Pippen was his name, and he'd
been a dancer, and this is probably maybe nineteen ninety
one or something, and Nick had gotten very sick and
debilitated and unable to work and then sick but got
(21:59):
back to us apartment and he wrote me a note
that just literally sent to the office, No, he left
it on my desk, that just said this, you have
made this atheist believe again in angels. And Nick died
soon soon afterwards.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Because for a lot of these guys, when they would
get a disease like this, your insurance is what covers you.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, or insurance that wasn't covering you, you know what
I mean, because they believe me. There were insurance companies
who were not interested in doing this, and a lot
of folks just weren't insured. I mean, you know, they'd
end up in in the hospital under it as a charity.
Very bad debtor charity case.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Or if you can't work anymore because you're too sick.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah, you lose your Yeah. So you know, cobbling together
insurance was part of what the Actors Fund did. Well,
that's what it still does.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
You know, at that time kind of leading up to
nineteen ninety five, it seems to be getting worse and worse,
like the statistics around death keep at that time.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yes, it was horrific, and those few years particularly, I
mean the eighties were a little bit different because there
was a sense and you know, I mean I have
a lot of friends who were in Act Up and
we funded Act Up, and there was an energy and
the demos that were being done, and you know that
to all of that. And then finally, I know that
(23:26):
in After the Night ninety one, ninety two, ninety three,
people were we were we were just exhausted by it.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
And you had raised a lot of money by that point.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Oh yeah, yeah, we had for that time, but people
were really really worn out.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
I wonder for you, do you have a memory of
what the most emotional moment was for you?
Speaker 2 (23:55):
I mean, I remember Bob's funeral very well.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
That was your partner.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, I mean we were together for ten years. We
weren't really living together, like as partners in that last
couple of years, but I was his caretaker, so it
felt like that. I mean, you know I was when
Bob died in ninety one, I was thirty seven and
he was maybe thirty two something like that.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
It's a young age.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, very young age. Yeah. I mean Bob's been gone
now longer than he was around. And I remember his funeral,
certainly on seventy second Street, feeling like my life being
both there as an individual with all the emotion and
all the personal attachment, and also being there as like
(24:45):
producing the event.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Like working as I mean living.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Working and living it, and often the living it being
a little bit pushed away by the working of it.
But I remember looking at him and sort of feeling
like everything had collapsed in on itself. The work. Again,
that's very early equity, if I'd say, it's work.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
And you've also been really open Tom about during that
time struggling with substance abuse.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Yes, I did. I mean I always was.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Was it alcohol?
Speaker 2 (25:19):
It was no, it was alcohol was never really the
problem was it was it was coke? It was Yeah,
I thank god every day of my life that I
was so young that myth never crossed my path because
I never as far as the drugs went, I never
sort of searched them out initially, but if people had them,
(25:40):
I was always happy to.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I was just sort of stupidly adventurous. I mean, you know,
I was. There was a poker game of all of
us at one time, and that game would always involve
somebody having some kind of coke or wed, and I
realized it. It became a point probably about nineteen eighty
five eighty six or my attention, and suddenly the poker
(26:02):
game didn't matter as much as the cocaine did. And
so there were a couple of years there in the
eighty six eighty seven where I kind of really sort
of slid clearly off the beaten track and went into
the program, you know, began to go to meetings and
did that successfully until about nineteen ninety two, and then
(26:26):
really had a pretty big messy what they call slip
relapse relapse. Yes, Bob passed away in ninety one after
being sick for a while and being his caretaker, and Colleen,
who had gotten very close with and worked with as
her assistant, she passed away the following in August of
ninety one. Oh my god, So those were huge. You know.
(26:48):
I don't remember feeling like I could have had a
moment where I could have just sat in a chair,
you know, and cried, you know, and somebody might have
checked on me, you know who I know, And my
position was to check on the three or other people
who were doing that.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
A little bit like in a sense, there was no
time to grieve.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
There wasn't. I went down to Washington, d C. For
the quilt that was being displayed in the mall. It
was ninety two Broadway Cares like if I'd say it's
as merged. We were involved in some presentation thing and
some events, and it was a whole like five day weekend,
and I was tired, and I was exhausted, and i'd
(27:31):
really never walked through the quilt because everything had been
about work. I was helping with arrangements for speakers and
all sorts of things. And before I was heading back
to New York, like on a Sunday Monday, something, I thought,
I've really got to other than just be here, I've
got to really walk through this and experience it. So
I did and sort of got lost in it. I
(27:55):
found Bob's panel. I found my friend Blaine's panel, who
was very close friends that who I'd lived with.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
These are like the size of coffins.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Yeah. And I was getting on the train to come
home immediately afterwards, and I think I was just so
between being tired and just had opened to myself to
what all this meant and the grievance of it and
the grief of it, that I literally got off the
(28:24):
train and went to a dealer. And that was sort
of what kicked off this really sort of massive relapse.
And I was sure that if I could show up
for work and keep my obligations and you know, that
things were fine. They weren't. When I finally did manage
to sort of slow down, to stop this myself and
(28:47):
try to get back to meetings in January.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
This is ninety three.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Ninety three, Roger was my partner at Broadway Cares. Really
need to go see my friend doctor Howard Grossman, who
was my doctor for a long time, to get checked up,
because to make sure you're okay with just all sorts
of things.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
So I did just like a full exam, just a.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Full exam, you know, after you've come off of all
this idiot behavior and I did, and Howard called me
and he said, you need to come down to my office.
And I said, okay, well that's clear. And I went
down to Howard's office where he told me it's just
maybe like beginning of February, you're HIV positive. You know,
ninety three, there were no medications. And that was like
(29:34):
the last kick in the ass where I just kind
of went fuck it. And finally, I mean Roger like
grabbed me by the throat and he said, look, you're
either going to rehab or you're fired.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
After years of grief from the AIDS crisis, losing his
partner and his mentor whom he loved, Tom had a relapse.
On top of this, he had just gotten his diagnosis
of HIV. His work partner and mentor at the time
had given him an ultimatum, go to rehab or lose
your job. And for Tom, that's what made it real.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
My denial was based on being able to do my job,
and I was determined that I would do that just
to prove to myself that I wasn't and it wasn't
a problem that I wasn't an addict. And as a
therapist has told me since the only thing that probably
would have got my attention to stop was what's called
job jeb, you know, job jeopardy. When Roger said, if
(30:41):
you don't get your back together, I'm fucking firing you.
It was like, no, no, it can't happen. And that's
what basically got me, thank God, and it hazeled and
said it doesn't always work. It worked for this boy
who liked to be busy.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
What was going through your mind when you got the diagnosis?
Speaker 2 (30:58):
You know what, I I'm not even sure what was
going through my mind. And you know, speaking of you know, shame,
I'm a little not not embarrassed, but people are human.
People make mistakes. But it does seem like I should not.
You know, had I been smarter about other aspects of
(31:20):
my life, this wouldn't have happened. I should have known better.
You know, I was working in this community, you know,
whether it was around fundraising, but I certainly knew all
the all the how the science worked and why you
would want to use a condom, and clearly I was
(31:41):
didn't and wasn't at that time, you know, through that relapse,
and had I not gone to Hazelton at that for
that month, I'm sure I wouldn't be here.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Wow. And so that was a positive experience for you.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Uh No, rehab was tough by the time I left.
It was a positive experience, but initially it was horrific.
It's like ten rooms of two, so it's like twenty
guys in a unit, and I was put in there
with someone who looked at me got my story right
away and immediately it was not going to share room
(32:14):
with a fagot wow, I mean, and was really shitty
about nasty about it, and of course not wanting to
be there. That's kind of all I needed to tell
them why I couldn't stay. There was a guy in
the theater community, a guy named Fred Nathan who was
a press agent, and Fred had a really rough row
(32:35):
with cocaine and freebase crack. Roger knew enough to talk
to my unit counselor to say Tom should talk to
Fred on the phone. So I bring me in the
office and I'm just pissy about everything, and I'm on
the phone with Fred. Now. I don't know if you
know the twelve steps a little bit, okay, but there
(32:55):
is a step called the fifth step, where you tell
your deepest dark secrets, usually to your sponsor, so that
you can begin to move past them. The fourth step
is writing them all down. So Fred, crazy asshole literally
says to me, says, Tom, you want to stay if
(33:15):
only for this reason, when all these guys in your
unit have to do their fifth step with someone and
they don't want to tell somebody that they sucked dick
for blow, he'll be willing to talk to you. So
you're going to get some great, great stories.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
I feel bad for laughing about it.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
And the worst part is that's why I stay.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
I mean, I stayed for much more ultimately, but Fred
was just smart enough to know that that salacious, sort
of ridiculous story would slow me down enough to go, Okay,
all right, I'll go back to my room.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
And where were you when you heard about the new
drugs that we're going to save people's lives in nineteen
ninety six six, I think.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah, I don't. I mean, I was working at Broadway
Care certainly, and I certainly would have been aware of it.
But the reason why I can very much remember that
date is because I had a friend in the hospital,
my friend John Hatchett, who literally John wasn't going to die.
He was weeks away, months away at most from this
taking him out. He was down at Saint Vincent's and
(34:26):
we went down to see him, and then suddenly word
kind of leaked that John had gotten a hold of
I think through being at Saint Vincent's this new drug,
this combination therapy, and that suddenly he was like getting better.
He's a perfect example of someone who just hit the
(34:47):
lotto with how those drugs came out and where he
was in his life at that time. But the sad
thing about that there were friends of mine who, if
they had lived another six months, they would have hit
(35:07):
the medications and they probably would literally still be here today.
And I have other friends as well who if the
medications hadn't come exactly what they when they did, if
they hadn't come, if they came six months later, they'd
be gone. There wasn't a moment we all rushed out
on the beach and hugged each other because oh my god,
(35:28):
there's medications. I think it was as I remember it,
it was more like, oh my god, there might actually
be some hope here. It was almost like whispered because
you couldn't you didn't want to shake it. By screaming it.
You didn't want to somehow jinx it or embrace it
and then be told no, not quite what we thought,
not yet, because they've done lots of that. So it
(35:50):
was more of a quiet resolution. And then you began
to literally see people have like a Lazarus moment where
someone like On who was clearly on his way out,
we'd more or less gone to see John to say goodbye,
was suddenly like John's out of the hospital. Wow, We're
going to dinner with John. Wow, fucking John has a
(36:12):
new boyfriend.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Well, you know you just retired, Oh yeah, Tom on
December thirty first, after a long thirty six years that
Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS, and you've raised three hundred
million dollars.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Actually raised more than that. I mean we you know,
we've raised it's crazy to say. I mean, we talked
about the money that we've granted, but we've raised just
over half a billion dollars, over five hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Well, I mean, there's no doubt that your work and
work with Broadway Cares Equity Fight Says has been such
a huge part of the story around putting an into
so much of the death in the nineties and eighties.
What is the next frontier of this fight and this
(37:09):
issue that you know so much of your life has
been defined.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
By well, I mean when I think of what Broadway
Cares continues to do in the future, there needs to
be access points where young men like yourself can have
access to prep so that they don't get sick and
then spread the disease. You know, public policy work that's
done so that some of the stigma that folks are
trying to reimpose that's fought against right. So I don't
(37:34):
think that any of the need to do this while
it's changed will ever and I know for some this
will be heresy go away.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
This is a show about history and teaching histories of
young people, but it really sort of ends up being
about passing things down from one generation of queer to
the next. And having lived through so much of this
particular history, what do you want to pass down about
(38:12):
it too?
Speaker 2 (38:12):
You know what I'd like to tell you, and then
you're thinking of looking here across the table at you
and seeing thousands of young men and women, non binary
folks behind you is something that a therapist told me
when I first got sober in like eighty eight, and
they like, let's say around nineteen ninety and I was
(38:35):
filled with anxiety about could we do enough? What were we
going to do? How were we going to do this?
And she looked at me and she said, look. She
grabbed a card off her table. I was sitting across
from her. She grabbed a pen and she was writing
something on the back of the card. She handed me
(38:56):
the card and she said, it's four points. I want
you to read them out out. And what they said
were this. Number one, begin where you are. Number two,
do what you can with grace, Number three, move forward
in faith, and number four ask for help. And she
(39:20):
said you'll be fine, You'll figure it out. Wow. And
that's what I would say, did anybody of a younger
generation who around anything is going, what the fuck? Begin
where you are, ask for help.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
What We Loved is hosted by me Jordan go Andsolves.
New episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write
in to tell your story, email us at but We
Loved at gmail dot com, or you can send me
a message on Instagram or TikTok at your underscore against Solves.
We are a production of the Outspoken podcast Network and
(40:03):
iHeart Podcasts, But We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries.
Our producers are Joey pat Emily Meronoff, and Christina Loranger.
Our executive producers are me Maya Howard and Katrina Norvil.
Original music by Steve Boone. Special thanks to Jay Bronson
and Roquel Willis. If you loved this episode, leave us
(40:26):
a rating and follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify,
and thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.
But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
the Outspoken Podcast Network. Hey, this is Jordan with a
quick note. After this episode, we just have two more
before our season officially ends, and I have two things
to ask you. First, if you haven't already, go follow
me on Instagram or TikTok at your underscore again solve
(00:23):
that's JR underscore g O n s A l v S.
That way we can keep in touch and you can
stay with me on my journey. And two, for our
season finale episode, I want to hear from you, so
send me a voice note on Instagram or email it
to but We Loved at gmail dot com and tell
(00:45):
me what the show means to you. As always, I
couldn't do this without you, and thank you so much
for the support. Now let's get into the show.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
In nineteen eighty four, myself and seven of my pals,
seven of my.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Friends, gay friends, friends.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
All involved in the theater a little bit. Somehow. We're
all at brunch and we all started talking about what
we were hearing stories about, and rather than be concerned
about how we might be at risk, we were pushing
it away. How it was the older gay man.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
It felt far away.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
It felt far away. That was nineteen eighty four. By
nineteen ninety four of the eight of us four were
dead and two, including myself, were HIV positive.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
that by seeking out our history, and what I found
are people and stories full of courage, perseverance and love
in this so we'll meet Tom Viola, one of the
(02:02):
most important people in the fight against AIDS. Over the
course of his career, he's raised nearly half a billion
dollars to combat the crisis. We'll learn how he got
involved and how, in addition to fighting the AIDS crisis,
he was living it too. For my Heart podcast, I'm
Jordan and Solves and this is what we loved. I
(02:48):
remember my first time hearing about PREP. Prep is the
groundbreaking drug that is ninety nine percent preventable against HIV
according to the federal government. I was fresh out of
the closet and new to San Francisco, where i'd moved
for my first job. I was really lucky to have
found this unbelievably confident group of gay friends who had
(03:11):
zero issues talking about sex. That was the opposite for me,
growing up devoutly catholic. I felt embarrassed and shameful when
friends would even bring up the topic, and frankly, I'd
judged other gay men for being promiscuous. But I had
a friend at the time who, in his own words,
(03:33):
described himself as a quote self proclaimed slut. I'd never
even heard of this before, and when he said it,
my cheeks turned cherry red. I remember asking, aren't you
scared of HIV? I asked that because I was scared
of it. He was far more informed than me on
(03:55):
the topic and seemed to accept that sex was a
natural part of his own life. He patiently asked me
if I had ever heard of PREP. His explanation literally
changed my life. My next guest, Tom Viola, has been
one of the most important figures in the fight to
drive access to PREP and to end the AIDS crisis.
(04:19):
For thirty six years, Tom was the leader of Broadway
Cares Equity Fights AIDS, one of the most important AIDS
nonprofits in America. Over the course of his career, he
led the Broadway community in raising nearly half a billion
dollars for the cause, helping save the lives of countless people.
(04:40):
After a storied career defined by the AIDS crisis, he
retired on December thirty first, twenty twenty four. But before
becoming a leading voice for gay rights, he was a
closeted young man in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I was a quiet kid. So I was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
south of the city, in sort of a nineteen sixties suburb.
So the boys that I played with when I was
particularly younger, we grew up together, and I can remember
very distinctly and thought about this in a long time
that one of the games we played when we got
(05:22):
to be like a little more closer to being adolescents
was a game that goes called Smear the Queer. And
that's where we would all be in somebody's backyard and
somebody would have like a volleyball, and somebody would throw
it up in the air, and then whoever caught the
ball would run and everybody else would run after him
(05:43):
to tackle him, or hence the name supposedly Shmear the Queer.
And I even at that, you know, as like again
probably like fifth sixth you know, pre ad asolescent kid.
I got that that wasn't so whether that was having
a sense that I was gay, I certainly didn't know
(06:05):
what that was about at all, but I felt separate.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Well, that leads so perfectly into my next question, At
what point did you know that you were gay?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
You know, I I knew, I knew what piqued my interest.
I don't know that it was necessarily sexual interest at
that time. I got up early Saturday morning when I
was a little kid, like literally at seven or eight
in the morning, to watch Tarzan Wow, and I had,
I know, was about Johnny Weismuller in his you know,
very sexy long class. And one of the kids I
(06:42):
grew up with his name was down And when we
were about in eighth grade, what began as wrestling with
each other turned into more than wrestling with each other,
and that continued, you know, that was like seventh eighth grade.
And then at about right before we went into ninth grade,
(07:02):
he literally looked at me and he said, we can't
do this anymore. Wow. You know, we're going into high school.
We can't do this anymore. Wow. And I remember sort
of being like, what does high school have to do.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
With this, were you rejected?
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yes, I mean I realized now as I even just
say it and sort of felt the conversation again. Yeah,
it felt like what I would now say was like
someone breaking up with me. And what I really made
a point of doing in both high schools I went
to with the freshman sophomore and then the second one
junior in particular junior and senior year, was making sure
(07:41):
I was always able to pass. I sort of kept
everybody at bay because meanwhile, I'm seeing kids, even back
in the seventies when I was in high school, early seventies,
who were having a horrible time because it was clear
they were gay, even if people didn't recognize it like
(08:03):
they do now. And I was determined that would never
be me. And that's a lot of stress, stress, self hatred,
and shame.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Tell me more.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
I remember there was an article in Time magazine about it.
I can still see the cover. It was called the Homosexuals,
so this is maybe like nineteen seventy one, seventy two,
and on the cover was a handsome young man sort
of in shadow and you couldn't really see a face,
but just a silhouette. And I remember reading this in
(08:33):
the living room at home and being horrified, Wow that
even reading this sort of found me out.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
So you went to the University of Cincinnati to study
musical theater. Is that where you came out?
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You know, it was where we all first kind of
began to figure out what that was. You would see
the freshman class of any musical theater program in and
you would look across the guys and you would literally
think of some of them gay by May they would,
(09:12):
And I'm sure that I was one day that somebody
looked at and went gay by May. So that's where
I I really came into my own and came out
to my friends, and you know, worked summer Stock and
you know, all the all of that really came together.
And also where I really knew I wanted to come
(09:33):
to New York City. Both I thought to be an actor,
but you know what the truth was, I wanted to
come to the city to be gay. You and well,
but i'd been I visited when I was sixteen with
a friend of mine and we were sort of supposed
to be staying with these nuns who were friends of
one of our mothers. And these nuns more or less
(09:54):
gave us keys to these little rooms and said, have
had boys. And so we just ran around for six days.
But you know, we also split up at times to
just like explore on our own. And when we did that,
one time I had sex.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
I was hanging around somewhere, like in around Macy's or something,
and I was just kind of cruising, cruising but looking
in windows, just sort of just getting them. And I
realized that this maintenance worker was sort of looking at me.
I'm a sixteen year old kid, and he indicated that
I should follow him, and I did.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
You automatically knew exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Exactly what he wanted. I'd been doing it in Pittsburgh.
And he took me into some building and we ended
up in some warehousey room. And I mean, it's nuts
when I think is sort of some of the you know,
fact I could have what could have happened, you could
have would have shout it. But I was thrilled with
the even as much as the sex.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
The adventure of that well, and it seems like it
was also a form of connection.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
It was because I remember talking with him. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Well, So you moved to New York after college, and
from what I've understood about this time, period. It seems
like it was yeah, just anything goes.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, let's put it this way. Anything that went you
could find this is after yes, exactly. This isn't the
time period of the seventies, you know it was, I
mean it was extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
How did you meet other gay people on the street.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
On the street all the time, there was sort of
the walk pause, look.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Let's go wow an energy exchange.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Oh yeah yeah. And you know, and I what the
thing I did love at that time were the baths,
because it was no nonsense. You got sort of to
the point.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And these are bath houses.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Yeah, whether it was the Saint Mark's baths or the
club baths or the Everard baths.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
It explained one of them, because I think for my
generation they don't really exist.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
They were like clubhouses with all kinds of lockers and
then all kinds of little cabins, little rooms where you
could rent one or the other. And then if you
had a room, either you have sex there with somebody
who came in, or crews around until somebody invited you in.
And I know that there were people who weren't and
would spend like the weekend there. I remember there was
a particular snow day. This is maybe like in nineteen
(12:25):
seventy eight, lived on seventy first Street. Huge snow, the
city is like buried and absolute standstill. And I called
a friend of mine, my friend Jimmy, who lived on
seventieth Street, a block away from me, and I said,
you know what he said, I said, let's get that
to the club bass. I said, you know it is
going to be jammed, okay, because there's nothing anybody can do,
but they'll get there. That was open, and that was open,
(12:50):
and I was right. I mean, so yeah, it was,
you know, a free for all.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And what about friendship?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
What about That's how I made a lot of friends
where the sex would wear off and you're, you know,
and you would just be palsed because you realize you
liked each other.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
I want to ask about you coming out to your parents, sure,
because I mean two Catholic parents, that's a big deal.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yes, it was a big deal. And see when I
left home to go to school, I never really came back.
I'll bet I never spent three days in a row.
After I left to go to CCM as a freshman.
Probably the next time I spent any more time was
that I was after my dad died and we were
moving everybody out of the house. I just had very
(13:39):
little connection to it. I mean, I always felt a
little bit separate from my family, even in that way,
because so much of my life was separate from them.
And then finally I guess I was twenty four, I think,
and I began to just be embarrassed almost that I
(14:03):
was sort of closetly pretending not to be something that
I wasn't to them. So I really decided that I
should tell them, and I was really nervous about it
because my father and I had a not great relationship.
I always felt like a disappointment to him. He'd been
(14:23):
a big jock. I was not what he bargained for,
and rather than try and dig in or find out
what he had gotten, he really kind of just stepped away.
And I told him, now, you know whatever that you no,
I'm gay. And this would have been in like seventy eight,
seventy nine, so this is preates. So they weren't. We
(14:46):
didn't jump to worrying about that. But my father sort
of did what I expected him to do, which is
kind of just shut down about it, and my mother
sort of went right away to it being sort of
stereotypically almost her fault. It's just something I said. No, no, no,
this actually has very little to do with either of you.
This is really just who I am, how I felt
(15:09):
all my life, even as a little kid. I've known
this for a long time, how you did. And then
we kind of just moved on.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
When we come back, Tom hears about AIDS for the
first time. Tom was officially out and living in New
York and New York City in the seventies was like
a playground for gay men across the country. Music, fashion,
(15:41):
and nightlife centered around sex, and for many gay men
it was the first time they felt permission to express
their sexuality. But right as the party of the nineteen
seventies climax and a new decade began, a mysterious disease
killing gay men began to circulate. I wonder if you
(16:03):
can talk about the first time that you heard about AIDS.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Oh, I can tell you exactly. At a boyfriend at
the time, we were living together on seventy first Street,
and my friend who I mentioned before about the bath house, Jimmy,
lived across the street. So Bob and I and Jimmy
and a mutual friend of ours friend, a woman Fran
used to get up early, you know, together and go
to breakfast most mornings. And it was July third, and
(16:30):
we'd gone to the Greek coffee shop at seventy second
West End and we'd we used to buy the papers
to post the news and the Times share them, and
I think Jimmy maybe had that article that said rare
cancer in homosexuals, I think was the headline, and he
passed did you read this? And I read it and
(16:55):
just kind of thought, oh, what's that mean? And I
looked at Jimmy and I said to me, the only
gay disease. It's going to kill you, as if one
of your knickknacks on a high shelf falls off and
hits you in the head. And that was about as
much as we sort of paid attention to it at
that time. But that was the beginning of it in
(17:15):
sort of working its way into our lives. Because the
story that really exemplifies sort of where it fell in
for me in those first year, a couple of years,
and then ten years hence was in nineteen eighty four,
myself and seven of my pals, seven of my friends
(17:38):
gay friends, all involved in the theater a little bit. Somehow,
We're all at brunch and we all started talking about
what we were hearing stories about, and rather than be
concerned about how we might be at risk, we were
pushing it away. How it was the older gay man
(18:00):
with those gay men in their forties who've been partying
too hard in the village. You know, it was gay
men who There were all kinds of reasons why we
really were sure it wasn't our circle.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Of It felt far away.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
It felt far away. That was nineteen eighty four. By
nineteen ninety four of the eight of us, four were
dead and two were HIV positive. And by ninety four,
I mean, I was already doing the work with proday
Care Secuit. If I'd say it's but believe me, we
were in it.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Well, it's interesting because Tom, this is happening at a
time when there's so many different ways that gay people
are getting involved in the fight against AIDS. You have
people really involved in protests, you have people really involved
in policy. You kind of chose this other very critical
(18:54):
route fundraising, and so I wonder if you could talk
about like what made you choose that route or how
it shows you rather well, I mean I love the theater.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
I love the activity of the theater. I enjoyed the
sense of family it created, and even beyond just I
did some work as an actor, you know, something off Broadway,
Way way off Broadway, and you know, regional theater and
dinner theater, but I didn't have any kind of acting
creative amount to anything. But then I was doing a
lot of freelance writing and had a lot a much
better quality of break as a freelance writer than I
(19:27):
did as an actor, like a playwright. No, as an
art you're doing a lot of magazine articles. And one
of the jobs I got that was a pen for
hire was high for an eight week gig at actress
Equity to write some pamphlets for them and a ridiculous
staff manual, and that, literally, who would have known, got
my foot in the door. I had been working very
(19:47):
closely with an actress, a brilliant actress named Colleen Dehurst,
who was very involved in the creation of Equity. Fight say,
it's in this extraordinary road that my life kind of
got dropped onto.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Tom had been working as the assistant to the legendary
Broadway actress Colleen Dewhurst. She was the president of the
major labor union representing actors and stage managers called Actors Equity.
They had put together a council focused on the response
to AIDS called Equity Fights AIDS. Colleen asked Tom to
(20:22):
lead that committee. Separately, producers in the business founded their
own response to the crisis, called Broadway Cares. That organization
was led by Roger McFarlane, who would become Tom's business
partner and mentor when the groups merged in ninety two.
Broadway was being badly affected by AIDS. Stage actors, choreographers,
(20:45):
and dancers were dying. Tom's work was to fundraise for
people in the industry who needed financial help because of
their diagnosis. Without work, many of these entertainment professionals couldn't
pay for treatment, some couldn't afford meals, and others didn't
even have the money to pay for their own funerals.
(21:07):
Tom's organization filled in the gap. The work felt fulfilling
for Tom. He was really good at it and it
kept him very busy.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
I know people who were like nearly thrown out of
their apartments, you know. I know people who were in
the hospital and I had no place necessarily where they
could land afterwards. I know people who needed meals, who
couldn't work, who needed emergency financial assistance. I knew people
whose families were not going to pay for their funerals.
(21:38):
You know, there were hundreds of clients, and at that
time they were dying. I got a note one time
from a guy, Nick Pippen was his name, and he'd
been a dancer, and this is probably maybe nineteen ninety
one or something, and Nick had gotten very sick and
debilitated and unable to work and then sick but got
(21:59):
back to us apartment and he wrote me a note
that just literally sent to the office, No, he left
it on my desk, that just said this, you have
made this atheist believe again in angels. And Nick died
soon soon afterwards.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Because for a lot of these guys, when they would
get a disease like this, your insurance is what covers you.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, or insurance that wasn't covering you, you know what
I mean, because they believe me. There were insurance companies
who were not interested in doing this, and a lot
of folks just weren't insured. I mean, you know, they'd
end up in in the hospital under it as a charity.
Very bad debtor charity case.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Or if you can't work anymore because you're too sick.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah, you lose your Yeah. So you know, cobbling together
insurance was part of what the Actors Fund did. Well,
that's what it still does.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
You know, at that time kind of leading up to
nineteen ninety five, it seems to be getting worse and worse,
like the statistics around death keep at that time.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yes, it was horrific, and those few years particularly, I
mean the eighties were a little bit different because there
was a sense and you know, I mean I have
a lot of friends who were in Act Up and
we funded Act Up, and there was an energy and
the demos that were being done, and you know that
to all of that. And then finally, I know that
(23:26):
in After the Night ninety one, ninety two, ninety three,
people were we were we were just exhausted by it.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
And you had raised a lot of money by that point.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Oh yeah, yeah, we had for that time, but people
were really really worn out.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
I wonder for you, do you have a memory of
what the most emotional moment was for you?
Speaker 2 (23:55):
I mean, I remember Bob's funeral very well.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
That was your partner.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, I mean we were together for ten years. We
weren't really living together, like as partners in that last
couple of years, but I was his caretaker, so it
felt like that. I mean, you know I was when
Bob died in ninety one, I was thirty seven and
he was maybe thirty two something like that.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
It's a young age.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, very young age. Yeah. I mean Bob's been gone
now longer than he was around. And I remember his funeral,
certainly on seventy second Street, feeling like my life being
both there as an individual with all the emotion and
all the personal attachment, and also being there as like
(24:45):
producing the event.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Like working as I mean living.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Working and living it, and often the living it being
a little bit pushed away by the working of it.
But I remember looking at him and sort of feeling
like everything had collapsed in on itself. The work. Again,
that's very early equity, if I'd say, it's work.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
And you've also been really open Tom about during that
time struggling with substance abuse.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Yes, I did. I mean I always was.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Was it alcohol?
Speaker 2 (25:19):
It was no, it was alcohol was never really the
problem was it was it was coke? It was Yeah,
I thank god every day of my life that I
was so young that myth never crossed my path because
I never as far as the drugs went, I never
sort of searched them out initially, but if people had them,
(25:40):
I was always happy to.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I was just sort of stupidly adventurous. I mean, you know,
I was. There was a poker game of all of
us at one time, and that game would always involve
somebody having some kind of coke or wed, and I
realized it. It became a point probably about nineteen eighty
five eighty six or my attention, and suddenly the poker
(26:02):
game didn't matter as much as the cocaine did. And
so there were a couple of years there in the
eighty six eighty seven where I kind of really sort
of slid clearly off the beaten track and went into
the program, you know, began to go to meetings and
did that successfully until about nineteen ninety two, and then
(26:26):
really had a pretty big messy what they call slip
relapse relapse. Yes, Bob passed away in ninety one after
being sick for a while and being his caretaker, and Colleen,
who had gotten very close with and worked with as
her assistant, she passed away the following in August of
ninety one. Oh my god, So those were huge. You know.
(26:48):
I don't remember feeling like I could have had a
moment where I could have just sat in a chair,
you know, and cried, you know, and somebody might have
checked on me, you know who I know, And my
position was to check on the three or other people
who were doing that.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
A little bit like in a sense, there was no
time to grieve.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
There wasn't. I went down to Washington, d C. For
the quilt that was being displayed in the mall. It
was ninety two Broadway Cares like if I'd say it's
as merged. We were involved in some presentation thing and
some events, and it was a whole like five day weekend,
and I was tired, and I was exhausted, and i'd
(27:31):
really never walked through the quilt because everything had been
about work. I was helping with arrangements for speakers and
all sorts of things. And before I was heading back
to New York, like on a Sunday Monday, something, I thought,
I've really got to other than just be here, I've
got to really walk through this and experience it. So
I did and sort of got lost in it. I
(27:55):
found Bob's panel. I found my friend Blaine's panel, who
was very close friends that who I'd lived with.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
These are like the size of coffins.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Yeah. And I was getting on the train to come
home immediately afterwards, and I think I was just so
between being tired and just had opened to myself to
what all this meant and the grievance of it and
the grief of it, that I literally got off the
(28:24):
train and went to a dealer. And that was sort
of what kicked off this really sort of massive relapse.
And I was sure that if I could show up
for work and keep my obligations and you know, that
things were fine. They weren't. When I finally did manage
to sort of slow down, to stop this myself and
(28:47):
try to get back to meetings in January.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
This is ninety three.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Ninety three, Roger was my partner at Broadway Cares. Really
need to go see my friend doctor Howard Grossman, who
was my doctor for a long time, to get checked up,
because to make sure you're okay with just all sorts
of things.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
So I did just like a full exam, just a.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Full exam, you know, after you've come off of all
this idiot behavior and I did, and Howard called me
and he said, you need to come down to my office.
And I said, okay, well that's clear. And I went
down to Howard's office where he told me it's just
maybe like beginning of February, you're HIV positive. You know,
ninety three, there were no medications. And that was like
(29:34):
the last kick in the ass where I just kind
of went fuck it. And finally, I mean Roger like
grabbed me by the throat and he said, look, you're
either going to rehab or you're fired.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
After years of grief from the AIDS crisis, losing his
partner and his mentor whom he loved, Tom had a relapse.
On top of this, he had just gotten his diagnosis
of HIV. His work partner and mentor at the time
had given him an ultimatum, go to rehab or lose
your job. And for Tom, that's what made it real.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
My denial was based on being able to do my job,
and I was determined that I would do that just
to prove to myself that I wasn't and it wasn't
a problem that I wasn't an addict. And as a
therapist has told me since the only thing that probably
would have got my attention to stop was what's called
job jeb, you know, job jeopardy. When Roger said, if
(30:41):
you don't get your back together, I'm fucking firing you.
It was like, no, no, it can't happen. And that's
what basically got me, thank God, and it hazeled and
said it doesn't always work. It worked for this boy
who liked to be busy.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
What was going through your mind when you got the diagnosis?
Speaker 2 (30:58):
You know what, I I'm not even sure what was
going through my mind. And you know, speaking of you know, shame,
I'm a little not not embarrassed, but people are human.
People make mistakes. But it does seem like I should not.
You know, had I been smarter about other aspects of
(31:20):
my life, this wouldn't have happened. I should have known better.
You know, I was working in this community, you know,
whether it was around fundraising, but I certainly knew all
the all the how the science worked and why you
would want to use a condom, and clearly I was
(31:41):
didn't and wasn't at that time, you know, through that relapse,
and had I not gone to Hazelton at that for
that month, I'm sure I wouldn't be here.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Wow. And so that was a positive experience for you.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Uh No, rehab was tough by the time I left.
It was a positive experience, but initially it was horrific.
It's like ten rooms of two, so it's like twenty
guys in a unit, and I was put in there
with someone who looked at me got my story right
away and immediately it was not going to share room
(32:14):
with a fagot wow, I mean, and was really shitty
about nasty about it, and of course not wanting to
be there. That's kind of all I needed to tell
them why I couldn't stay. There was a guy in
the theater community, a guy named Fred Nathan who was
a press agent, and Fred had a really rough row
(32:35):
with cocaine and freebase crack. Roger knew enough to talk
to my unit counselor to say Tom should talk to
Fred on the phone. So I bring me in the
office and I'm just pissy about everything, and I'm on
the phone with Fred. Now. I don't know if you
know the twelve steps a little bit, okay, but there
(32:55):
is a step called the fifth step, where you tell
your deepest dark secrets, usually to your sponsor, so that
you can begin to move past them. The fourth step
is writing them all down. So Fred, crazy asshole literally
says to me, says, Tom, you want to stay if
(33:15):
only for this reason, when all these guys in your
unit have to do their fifth step with someone and
they don't want to tell somebody that they sucked dick
for blow, he'll be willing to talk to you. So
you're going to get some great, great stories.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
I feel bad for laughing about it.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
And the worst part is that's why I stay.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
I mean, I stayed for much more ultimately, but Fred
was just smart enough to know that that salacious, sort
of ridiculous story would slow me down enough to go, Okay,
all right, I'll go back to my room.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
And where were you when you heard about the new
drugs that we're going to save people's lives in nineteen
ninety six six, I think.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah, I don't. I mean, I was working at Broadway
Care certainly, and I certainly would have been aware of it.
But the reason why I can very much remember that
date is because I had a friend in the hospital,
my friend John Hatchett, who literally John wasn't going to die.
He was weeks away, months away at most from this
taking him out. He was down at Saint Vincent's and
(34:26):
we went down to see him, and then suddenly word
kind of leaked that John had gotten a hold of
I think through being at Saint Vincent's this new drug,
this combination therapy, and that suddenly he was like getting better.
He's a perfect example of someone who just hit the
(34:47):
lotto with how those drugs came out and where he
was in his life at that time. But the sad
thing about that there were friends of mine who, if
they had lived another six months, they would have hit
(35:07):
the medications and they probably would literally still be here today.
And I have other friends as well who if the
medications hadn't come exactly what they when they did, if
they hadn't come, if they came six months later, they'd
be gone. There wasn't a moment we all rushed out
on the beach and hugged each other because oh my god,
(35:28):
there's medications. I think it was as I remember it,
it was more like, oh my god, there might actually
be some hope here. It was almost like whispered because
you couldn't you didn't want to shake it. By screaming it.
You didn't want to somehow jinx it or embrace it
and then be told no, not quite what we thought,
not yet, because they've done lots of that. So it
(35:50):
was more of a quiet resolution. And then you began
to literally see people have like a Lazarus moment where
someone like On who was clearly on his way out,
we'd more or less gone to see John to say goodbye,
was suddenly like John's out of the hospital. Wow, We're
going to dinner with John. Wow, fucking John has a
(36:12):
new boyfriend.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Well, you know you just retired, Oh yeah, Tom on
December thirty first, after a long thirty six years that
Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS, and you've raised three hundred
million dollars.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Actually raised more than that. I mean we you know,
we've raised it's crazy to say. I mean, we talked
about the money that we've granted, but we've raised just
over half a billion dollars, over five hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Well, I mean, there's no doubt that your work and
work with Broadway Cares Equity Fight Says has been such
a huge part of the story around putting an into
so much of the death in the nineties and eighties.
What is the next frontier of this fight and this
(37:09):
issue that you know so much of your life has
been defined.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
By well, I mean when I think of what Broadway
Cares continues to do in the future, there needs to
be access points where young men like yourself can have
access to prep so that they don't get sick and
then spread the disease. You know, public policy work that's
done so that some of the stigma that folks are
trying to reimpose that's fought against right. So I don't
(37:34):
think that any of the need to do this while
it's changed will ever and I know for some this
will be heresy go away.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
This is a show about history and teaching histories of
young people, but it really sort of ends up being
about passing things down from one generation of queer to
the next. And having lived through so much of this
particular history, what do you want to pass down about
(38:12):
it too?
Speaker 2 (38:12):
You know what I'd like to tell you, and then
you're thinking of looking here across the table at you
and seeing thousands of young men and women, non binary
folks behind you is something that a therapist told me
when I first got sober in like eighty eight, and
they like, let's say around nineteen ninety and I was
(38:35):
filled with anxiety about could we do enough? What were we
going to do? How were we going to do this?
And she looked at me and she said, look. She
grabbed a card off her table. I was sitting across
from her. She grabbed a pen and she was writing
something on the back of the card. She handed me
(38:56):
the card and she said, it's four points. I want
you to read them out out. And what they said
were this. Number one, begin where you are. Number two,
do what you can with grace, Number three, move forward
in faith, and number four ask for help. And she
(39:20):
said you'll be fine, You'll figure it out. Wow. And
that's what I would say, did anybody of a younger
generation who around anything is going, what the fuck? Begin
where you are, ask for help.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
What We Loved is hosted by me Jordan go Andsolves.
New episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write
in to tell your story, email us at but We
Loved at gmail dot com, or you can send me
a message on Instagram or TikTok at your underscore against Solves.
We are a production of the Outspoken podcast Network and
(40:03):
iHeart Podcasts, But We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries.
Our producers are Joey pat Emily Meronoff, and Christina Loranger.
Our executive producers are me Maya Howard and Katrina Norvil.
Original music by Steve Boone. Special thanks to Jay Bronson
and Roquel Willis. If you loved this episode, leave us
(40:26):
a rating and follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify,
and thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.
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