October 15, 2020 • 37 mins
In 1995, Vivian’s uncle Helio died of AIDS. Now, 25 years later, Vivian’s on a search to find the man who cared for him until his death.
Credits
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein.
This episode was produced by Stevie Lane. The senior producer is Kalila Holt.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Blumberg, Caitlin Kenney, Mimi O’Donnell, Lydia Polgreen, Reyhan Harmanci, Nabeel Chollampat, and Jackie Cohen.
The show was mixed by Bobby Lord.
Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, Michael Hearst, Haley Shaw, Blue Dot Sessions, and Bobby Lord. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin Jackie.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hello, who calls it six thirty on Friday night?
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Wait? Wait?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
What?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I wanted to say one thing? Hello?
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Yeah, you do you know that a new season of
my show is starting?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I had no idea Listen.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I wanted to wash you great luck. Is this a
kiss off?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
From Gimblet Media.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight Today's episode Vivian
right after the break. This story begins back before the quarantine,
(01:23):
a time when people didn't start conversations with how are
you holding up? During those innocent days. We started with
the weather.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
It was minus forty last week minus forty. My front
door froze shut. I had to use like a hair
dryer to get out of the house.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Vivian lives in Canada, and while I'm always happy to
talk about Canada, white Horse is beautiful.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
I once had an opportunity to go there.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
It's not the reason why we're here. Vivian's reached out
to talk about something that happened twenty five years ago
that she still has questions about the death of her
uncle Ellio.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
I grew up in Winnipeg. There's like nothing that sexy
about Winnipeg and my uncle it was like he had
just like breathed off of like a film set, Like
you wear this black leather jacket. He's like tight jeans,
and he smoked cigarettes and he just emanated coolness. I
(02:20):
don't really know how other to say it than he did. Yeah,
this swagger.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Ellio lived in New York City. He was a journalist
and had friends who were artists and writers. He gave
Vivian her very first journal, which he still carries around
to this day. In Vivian's memory, there was a lightness
about Elio. Everything was always for a laugh, Like the
time they were back visiting their family in Brazil and
Elo had Vivian and her brother full dozens of paper airplanes.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
He was staying on the ninth or tenth floor of
this apartment building and it was like this really beautiful
sunny day and we like walked out onto the balcony
and just like shot off like one hundred of these
airplanes into the sunshine. It felt like electric and so
like free.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
On the inside of Vivian's arm is a tattoo of
a paper airplane. It's there to remind her of the
freedom and lightness she felt that day. It's there to
remind her of Elli Oh. November seventh, nineteen ninety two,
Vivian was nine years old. It was her brother's birthday
and the family was heading out to celebrate when the
(03:31):
phone rang. It was Elyo's roommate, a man named Marcello.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
And Marcello just said straight up like Elu had a
seizure that's related to AIDS and he's sick, and that
was how the family found out that one that he
was gay, in too, that he had AIDS.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Ellio was in his mid thirties and had never told
his family he was gay. In fact, he often spoke
of wanting to find a wife and settle down. Over
the next few years, the illness advanced rapidly, so Vivian's
family planned out visit. Vivian remembers one trip in particular,
her dad packed her and her brother into the car
to drive from Winnipeg to New York, a twenty five
(04:18):
hour road trip to.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
My dad's little Honda Civic with no air conditioning.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
This is Vivian's brother, Eduardo. He's three years older than
Vivian and has clearer memories from the trip down.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
It was like hottest summer on record.
Speaker 6 (04:33):
Along the way.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
We had to stop in convenience stores and supermarkets just
to cool off.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Eduardo says. His father brought along a video camera and
entered ELO's tiny apartment on Lafayette Street already rolling. Elio
was lying prone on the couch, not wanting to be recorded.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
She turned his head from us, kind of pulling the
blanket off over his sighs his head and being like
embarrassed at how he looked.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Elio was thin and frail and hooked up to IV tubes.
Vivian's grandparents had flown in from South Paulo. Watch them
with their son.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
I remember them not touching him because presumably they were
afraid to get sick. And I remember thinking that was
like really just like really weird and really sad. The
family didn't really help. They didn't help, like when when
(05:32):
Ali was sick. I guess my dad's conception of health
thing was like, oh, I'm going to bring the kids
for like five days and we'll come visit. But no
one like stopped their lives to like come look after him.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
While the family paid for all of Elio's medical bills,
the person who actually did stop his life did come
look after Eli. Oh was the man who made the
phone call that November day in nineteen ninety two. Marcello
has almost no memories of Marcello, and Eduardo's memories are vague,
(06:13):
Marcello moving about the apartment, always in the background, referred
to by ellioh only as a friend. Growing up, the
name Marcelo meant nothing to Vivian. It was only later,
as a teenager that she learned Marcelo had been partners
with her uncle for thirteen years.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
And I think part of it is because, you know,
unlike an aunt, like say Ellie was heterosexual, on dating
a woman, his partner would have been introduced in that way, like, oh,
well this is your aunt or this is a more
important person in your life.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Right, Elliot couldn't say, hey, this is your uncle exactly.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
But in some ways, you know, even though it sounds
really weird, it's like he is kind of my uncle.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Hmmm, I don't think it sounds that weird.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
I mean it's sort of like, you know, if things
had been different, if your uncle had married him, you
guys would have had a formal connection, and instead there
isn't exactly a name for him, and as a result,
you've lost that person who was so good to your uncle.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
Yeah, exactly. It was obviously so like shamed in my
family that you know, we couldn't even call ell you gay.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
The wound Vivian feels over the injustice or family did
to Elioh has only grown deeper over the years as
she's become better able to put herself in her uncle's shoes.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
I didn't really clue into being attracted to women until
I was like twenty early twenties. I couldn't let myself
even think about that because seeing how the family like
treated my uncle, like, I'm sure it left this message
with me, you know that it wasn't a good thing.
(08:17):
This month I turned thirty seven, I turned thirty seven,
which is the same year that my uncle passed away.
And so at this point in my life, if I
had this illness, like terminal illness, and I was living
on the other side of the world and my family
didn't come, you know, to help.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Me, as Marcela did.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Yeah, yeah, I don't even know him, like I can't
even remember like a visual of him, and yet like
I feel very connected to this person. I want to
find Marcello and I want to tell him thank you
(09:09):
for looking after Elu for that huge sacrifice that he made,
and I think I want to let him know that
I have spent, you know, so much time like thinking
about him.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
After the break the search for Marcelo, I don't have
much to begin my search for Marcelo. Vivian remembers that
(09:53):
back when he was living with elioh Marcelo worked as
a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art, but
I can't find any record of his employment. When Vivian
told me about Elio's old group of artist friends, though,
she singled out one artist by name, a very famous
usical composer. And while the composer's number isn't readily available,
(10:13):
I do happen to have his cousin's number. Hello, Ira,
Oh shit, do we have an interview now? Potty mouth
broadcast or Ira Glass is cousins with minimalist musical composer
Philip Glass, the old friend of Vellios.
Speaker 6 (10:30):
I seek sorry, sorry, sorry, be okay, give me a
second to turn on gear on my side.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Sure, okay, okay.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
You never want to bother the people you admire, but
in the back of your mind you think, okay, maybe someday,
in an emergency, I might be entitled to a favor,
and then you ask them to write a preface to
your experimental novella published by a small Canadian press, and
then you ask them to introduce you at your book
launch that's only attended by seven people. This is how
(11:04):
I felt phoning up to chop yet another branch from
the giving tree, which is I a glass. So I
just wanted to I wanted to ask you for a
phone number. Okay, a cousin of yours.
Speaker 7 (11:23):
Keep going.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Do you know who I'm talking about?
Speaker 7 (11:27):
I assume you mean Philip.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Being something of a storyteller, the mention of Philip prompts
Irah to tell the story of when he and his
wife vacationed with Philip and his girlfriend in Italy.
Speaker 6 (11:42):
He was finishing up at one of his operas and
he had an electric piano brought in and they were
in a bedroom like down the hall from us, and
so we would be woken up by him composing, which
is crazy.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
And you were doing vocal warm ups, well he.
Speaker 6 (11:56):
Was, Yeah, I was just practicing staying over and over.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
Stay with us, Stay with us, stay stay with us.
Irah promises to reach out to Philip on my behalf
to see if he still has Marcella's phone number. Hey,
before you go, can I share with you a little
knock knock joke?
Speaker 7 (12:20):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Knock knock, who's there? Knock knock?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Who's there? Knock knock?
Speaker 7 (12:26):
Who's there?
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Knock knock?
Speaker 7 (12:30):
Who's there?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Philip Glass?
Speaker 6 (12:34):
Yeah, I know that one.
Speaker 7 (12:35):
I'm sure he knows that one too, Do you think so?
Speaker 6 (12:38):
I mean, that's like, can I just say, like, that's
a level of fame that you or I cannot even
aspire to to have.
Speaker 7 (12:45):
A knock knock joke named after you? Who gets that?
Who gets that?
Speaker 5 (12:50):
You know?
Speaker 7 (12:50):
Who gets that banana?
Speaker 4 (13:07):
A week later, Ira writes back, Philip doesn't have anything,
which is to say, Ira concludes at the end of
his email, knock knock, who's there? Not Philip Glass? And
so the search continues. Vivian's dad, Jacques, doesn't have a
current number for Marcello. The last time he saw him
(13:28):
was five years after Elio died. Still feeling guilty about
the circumstances surrounding his brother's death, Jacques had sought Marcello out.
I felt that the only person who could absolve me,
Jacques said, was Marcello. But the encounter was fraught. Jacques
later spoke of it with Vivian, telling her he walked
away feeling like Marcello was angry with their family for
(13:50):
abandoning elioh hearing this, I wonder if Marcello is still angry.
Perhaps after all of these years, Marcello doesn't want to
be found. The only other thing I know about Marcello
is that he'd been involved in AIDS activism. After extensive googling,
(14:12):
I discover an article on an HIV resource site from
nineteen ninety eight written by Marcello's spelled with one L,
not two, as Vivian had remembered, being so young at
the time. Maybe there are other details Vivian is misremembering,
And sure enough it's in a nineteen ninety four staffing
report for the Met not the MoMA, that I find
(14:32):
the one eld Marcello. He now lives in San Francisco,
and in my excitement, I leave him a rambling, incoherent
message about how I know this must be so weird,
but I'm calling on behalf of Elio's niece, Vivian Marcello. Hey,
I'm so glad that you have the time to talk.
The very next day, Marcello calls back, and right off
(14:55):
the bat admits that his feelings about Elio's family are mixed.
Speaker 8 (15:00):
It's it's complicated, it's very complicated.
Speaker 9 (15:04):
It's just really it's a complicated history.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Marcelo unravels it for me, beginning at the same place
Vivian did November of nineteen ninety two. It was the
morning after Bill Clinton was elected.
Speaker 9 (15:19):
We're sitting in a coffee shop reading the results of
the elections, and I had a grandma's seizure right in
front of me.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
They rushed to a nearby hospital, where tests were performed,
and for the next few days Marcelo walked around in
a stupor. When they received the official diagnosis, Marcello picked
up the phone and made the call to Vivian's house.
The learning that Elio had AIDS was devastating. The disease
(15:49):
itself was all too familiar in New York City. By
that year, nineteen ninety two, AIDS had become the leading
cause of death in American men aged twenty five to
forty four.
Speaker 9 (15:59):
You remember in the nineties an eight as you would
see people gone, can the sheikshare?
Speaker 8 (16:04):
You know?
Speaker 9 (16:06):
And so that was sort of like a certain look.
However handsome he was, he got that look. He had
lost control of his bomb movements.
Speaker 8 (16:16):
He was in diapers, he was blind, he was I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
Marcello was in his late twenties when it became Leo's
full time nurse. Ellio was sick for three years, and
just months before the AIDS cocktail became widely available.
Speaker 8 (16:36):
He died very beautifully. He died very peacefully.
Speaker 9 (16:41):
In those last moments. It was a beautiful night. There
was this blue sky, and there's stars and a crescent moon.
And as we looked up the sky, this airplane sort
of crisscrossed took the moon.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
As Marcello speaks, I'm reminded of Ellio in Brazil flying
paper planes off the balcony.
Speaker 9 (17:05):
And we waved at Alu and then we said goodbye,
and then he passed.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
True to Jacques's telling, Marcello was angry with the family's behavior,
especially during the last days of Elio's life. That's when
things grew complicated. The family had set aside funds so
Marcelo could pay for the embalming. It had to happen
as soon as Elo died before the body could be
sent to Brazil.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
For burial.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
When Marcelo knew Eleo only had a day or two left,
in the midst of so many other worries and so
much sadness, he phoned Eleo's middle brother, Vivian's uncle, so
arrangements could be made, but Vivian's uncle didn't believe him,
insisting Elyo had more time The.
Speaker 9 (17:53):
Day before he was dying. You know, I said, listen,
I need your guys to release the money because this
is going to happen. And he suggested that I was
trying to talk at the money, and I lost it
at that moment.
Speaker 8 (18:10):
That's just when Baalistic.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
The family had left Marcello the burden of caring for
elioh and now on top of that, they were accusing
him of theft. Marcello knew he wouldn't be welcomed as
a part of Elio's family, and so he did not
attend the funeral in Brazil. He would later learn from
friends who were present that he wasn't thanked. In fact,
there wasn't so much as a mention of his name,
(18:33):
not at the service nor in the death announcement, which
is to say Marcello's feelings are indeed complicated, but when
he looks up a photo of Vivian online and sees
her face, something is made simple.
Speaker 8 (18:49):
She looks like al a lot.
Speaker 9 (18:51):
She looks like you a lot.
Speaker 8 (18:52):
She looks like of all the kids, she is the
one who looks like him a lot.
Speaker 7 (18:57):
She looks like him.
Speaker 8 (18:58):
That's incredible.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
By the end of our call, Marcelo has agreed to
meet Vivian in New York, where you can introduce her
to the people and places Elio loved best. Coming up
after the break, Vivian and Marcello stay with us, Stay
with us, Stay with us, Stay with us.
Speaker 10 (19:31):
Stay with us.
Speaker 9 (19:48):
So we would shop on these blocks on Broadway because
there are designtic source vintage clothing.
Speaker 10 (19:53):
So this is this is are we walked around here.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
Vivian has flown to New York to deliver a thank
you that's twenty five years overdue, and Marcelo has his
own agenda to introduce Vivian to the real Elio. And
so we're in the village on a tour through l life.
Marcelo points out their favorite hans and tells Vivian about
Eleo's career as a journalist, the time he profiled the
(20:17):
Beat poet Alan Ginsberg showing up for the interview. Eleo
found Ginsburg in the midst of writing a poem.
Speaker 9 (20:23):
Alan Gisberg starts yelling at him, saying, you interrupt the
moment of inspiration.
Speaker 7 (20:28):
This poem is gone. It's gone, gone, gone.
Speaker 9 (20:30):
I won't remember a thing anymore. Held.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Marcello also takes Vivian to meet some of Ello's old friends.
Speaker 11 (20:41):
You must be the niece, how are you?
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Ruth was a well respected New York tattoo artist in
the seventies and eighties. Nowadays, her work is exhibited all
over the world. Her apartment is where Eleo's New York
memorial was held.
Speaker 11 (20:56):
It was another aide's death. It was another terrible, terrible loss,
and everybody here had experienced it or nurses, somebody, you know.
To the end, I mean as young people as people
in the thirties.
Speaker 8 (21:09):
Right, So you're very lucky anywhere, very lucky you didn't get.
Speaker 11 (21:16):
Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic that you didn't.
Speaker 9 (21:20):
The irony had said, twenty five years we'll talk about
a virus, and twenty five years later, celebrating out of here,
we are talk about a virus again.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
It's early March twenty twenty, a few days after the
first confirmed case of COVID nineteen in New York. It's
that one weird week when we thought bumping elbows would
solve everything. In fact, here we are on a social call,
playing it quote safe by eating the snacks Ruth made
from individually prepared bulls. Just days later, schools across the
(21:50):
city would be closed, Restaurants, stores and offices all shut.
Like with the beginning of the AIDS pandemic, our government
would again fail in its response, our medical system would
again prove ill equipped, misinformation would abound, and doctor Anthony Fauci,
who decades earlier led tactical charge against the AIDS outbreak,
(22:11):
would be back on TV picking up the slack. In
contrast to the religious service in Brazil, Ruth says that
the memorial at her place for Elio that day was
a raucous affair, you know.
Speaker 9 (22:27):
With a conga line announcing the conga around this apartment.
Speaker 11 (22:30):
Well, all these good looking guys in one room. You know,
it wasn't going to stay sad for two.
Speaker 12 (22:39):
It was the best funeral ever anywhere.
Speaker 8 (22:43):
I remember being drunk and stoned.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
We also pay a visit to Ken, an artist and
an old boyfriend of Ellio's. The artist's life has been
good to Ken. He looks far younger than his seventy
five years.
Speaker 8 (22:56):
You haven't seen the clothes off.
Speaker 12 (22:58):
Gravity tends to do very nasty things to budys.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Ken tells us about the trip he and Elio took
to Mexico early on in their relationship. Ken had been
going through a phase at the time where he was
wearing green contact lenses. Elio had never seen Ken without them.
I would always tell Ken how much he loved his
beautiful green eyes.
Speaker 12 (23:18):
I said, shit, how am I going to tell him
that these beautiful green eyes are fake?
Speaker 8 (23:25):
So I decided I'm not going to tell him. What
the hell?
Speaker 12 (23:29):
So we go to Mexico and I got something in
my eyes and they started bleeding.
Speaker 8 (23:35):
We have to go to a hospital. We got to
the clinic.
Speaker 12 (23:41):
The guy patched my eyes up, said you'll be blind
for twenty four hours. So the next day I took
the patches off, and then Eliot's looking at me and he.
Speaker 8 (23:52):
Goes, oh my god. I said, what he said, your
eyes changed color?
Speaker 7 (23:59):
So I tell this is perfect.
Speaker 8 (24:01):
I looked in the mirror and said, oh my god,
they did. So that ended that.
Speaker 12 (24:07):
I don't know if he ever found out.
Speaker 8 (24:16):
Elliot melted everybody down that he met.
Speaker 12 (24:20):
He was so charming. I never met anyone you couldn't
be mad at him. I tried so hard to be
mad at him so many times, and you couldn't be
mad at him.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
Ken directs his gaze at Vivianne.
Speaker 8 (24:33):
You're lucky, You're lucky to have had an uncle like Elleo.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
Vivian is basking in Ken's praise of her uncle. The
room feels warm and friendly until Ken opens his mouth again.
Speaker 8 (24:47):
I have to say his family.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
Was horrible, Ken says his but he is still looking
at Vivianne. He might as well have said your your
family was horrible. Ken is being honest, but it sucks
the air out of the room.
Speaker 12 (25:02):
Truly horrible. It was shocking to me. It was really
shocking to me. When his mother came. She was so
cold and so distant from l e Oh.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
I know, of course, Vivian knows. It's why she's here.
Come on this way, Vivian, Marcelo and I are at
my office all day long. Marcello's been playing to her
guide to Eleo's old life. But I want him and
(25:37):
Vivian to get a chance to connect one on one.
Speaker 8 (25:40):
Sit down, Okay, sit here, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Marcello sits on the couch, knees pressed together. Vivian is
seated across from him in an armchair, hands tucked between
her thighs. She's been waiting all day, all day, and
twenty five years for the chance to thank Marcello, and
so she stumbles her way forward, beginning with the ways
in which her family let Elo down.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
I feel like the family, I feel like there was
like kind of like this like internalized shame. I don't know,
It's like that side of the family couldn't really see
past that that he was gay, and that was like
that lasting memory was like that shape.
Speaker 9 (26:21):
Yeah, but I also feel like.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Marcello interrupts Vivian before she can get very far, but
almost immediately trails off. He looks down at his hands
in his lap and adjusts his feet on the carpet.
When he speaks again, he speaks softly.
Speaker 9 (26:42):
I feel compelled to say something. It would be simplistic
to say that just because the family didn't accept his
being gay, this difficulty is not all on your family side.
That was also Elia's inability to be who he was
(27:05):
fully really yeah.
Speaker 5 (27:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
According to Marcello, Eleo never fully embraced his own gay
identity and so was never honest with the family about
who he was.
Speaker 9 (27:16):
He was gay, had a partner for ten years, you know,
he was HIV positive, So all of that sort of
came out for the family side and the worst possible way.
So there's a lot here of broken trust.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Marcello's own family knew he was gay by the time
he was in his late teens, knew that Eleo wasn't
just a roommate. Marcello had been wanting Eleo to be
more transparent with his family for years. Instead, when the
family was around, Marcello says, Elo made him feel like
a mistress, like he had to disappear. So as much
as the family didn't acknowledge Marcello, Eleo didn't acknowledge Marcello
(27:57):
to the family either. Although they were a couple, Eleo
refused to fully commit to Marcello, continuing to date other
people like Ken. It was painful for Marcello. In fact,
Marceau admits that he'd been on the verge of breaking
up with Elio when they found out he had AIDS.
Speaker 10 (28:15):
But made aue this ray of light.
Speaker 9 (28:19):
Being joyful also made him more difficult to pin down
and taking responsibility and ownership for things that you do
as you become a grin up. So I want to
sort of take a bit of the weight from your family.
Just there's a little bit on his side as well.
Speaker 8 (28:42):
There was his.
Speaker 9 (28:43):
Own like internal internals, paral boughs. So I think there's
the dartful value, and there's the chicken Alio. There is
all of this a sort of wrapped and this fantastic
human being, you know, and he's just a person.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
I think I relate to maybe the chicken val. Like
in my early twenties, like I started dating women and
it was something that I shared with my dad and
my brother. My mom was actually like going through some
difficult stuff like in my twenties, And to be honest,
(29:26):
she actually still doesn't know, but I guess she soon.
Speaker 9 (29:30):
Well, yes, listen, if you have white stuff, it's faster
than you. But if you address it, it's a way
of connecting, connecting.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
Marcella was encouraging Vivian to not hide who she is
the way Alio did until he got sick.
Speaker 9 (29:48):
He's softened, He softened you know.
Speaker 13 (29:51):
I it might sound a little sanctimonious or piles on
my part, you know, but I loved him throughout, thick
and thin, and when he got sick, he allowed me
to love him in a way that he couldn't before.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
We really.
Speaker 9 (30:14):
We're a couple in a way that we had never
been before.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
From Marcelo, those last days offered some of his happiest
memories of their relationship. Dying allowed Elio to finally grow up.
Speaker 9 (30:34):
Sometimes he would hallucinate and he would go to parties
in his hand. I remember this one that was a
party by the Russian embassy, and he was talking about
all the people he was meeting at the Russian embassy,
and he was in bed and he would do.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
This Marcello minds smoking a cigarette.
Speaker 9 (30:55):
But in that state. I remember one moment that is
the most precious moment of all days before he died,
I said to him, I love you, and he was
he had no cognition, his smile like year to year,
(31:17):
and I never forgot that.
Speaker 8 (31:20):
So I love.
Speaker 9 (31:22):
Him very very very much, and he loved me back.
And I had doubts from time to time, but in
that moment I felt it, do you want.
Speaker 10 (31:45):
To commit.
Speaker 5 (31:58):
I feel like not a lot of people would go
to that length, you know, I mean my family didn't.
But like I even wonder, like.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
Vivian struggles for the right words for the first time
during the trip, She's trying to put herself not in
Elio's shoes, but in Marcello's if.
Speaker 5 (32:19):
The rules were reversed, Like, do you think Elie would
have done that for you?
Speaker 9 (32:29):
It's all as a question for me, ALA's ask that
I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
The fact that you like moved in and took care
of him is it's it is really incredible in it.
I think it just shows like how compassionate and like
how loving of a person you are that you were
able to do that. So yeah, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 9 (33:09):
I didn't expect to feel the wam feeling right now.
That held a grudge for a while, and I was
proud of the grudge. I was proud of being spurned,
and I think I grew attached to that.
Speaker 7 (33:23):
I held that.
Speaker 9 (33:25):
As a kind of a badge of honor in a way,
and I don't anymore. Also, I'm ready to receive it.
I don't think I was so thank you. I really
really appreciate that there's a poem by John Ashberry which
(33:48):
I'm going to completely destroy and bustardize. But there's an
image that I really love. He says, Somewhere someone is
running desperately towards you, and I have this image of you, like.
Speaker 8 (34:06):
Not desperately, but sort of.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
Like when slow. I feel that too, because of you know,
the nature of everything that had happened. It was like
I didn't get that opportunity to have you, as you know,
an uncle in my life. So can I claim you
(34:32):
as my uncle?
Speaker 10 (34:37):
Okay?
Speaker 5 (34:38):
All right?
Speaker 4 (34:44):
Twenty five years ago it had been Marcelo asking to
be let into the family, but now it's Vivian who's
doing the asking. Marcelo moves forward to embrace her. In
the end, Vivian receives an uncle as amazing as the
(35:06):
one she always imagined.
Speaker 10 (35:07):
Remember you were I need?
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Did a girl?
Speaker 9 (35:11):
Remember your her was blondish?
Speaker 10 (35:15):
Would you like to remember your tiny.
Speaker 14 (35:45):
Now that the fernures returning to its good will home,
Now that the last month's rent is skating with the
damaged bottle.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Take this moment to deserve.
Speaker 10 (36:05):
If we mess him and we tied felt for far
from the Thames at Acid and leave.
Speaker 4 (36:21):
This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Stevie Lane along
with me Jonathan Goldstein. Our senior producer is Khalila Holt.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg, Caitlin Kenny, mime,
O'Donnell Lydia Polgreen, Rayhan Harmansey, Nobille Chalmpott, and Jackie Cohen.
Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows,
(36:41):
John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions, Michael Hurst, Hailey Shaw,
and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on
our website, Gimbletmedia dot.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Com slash Heavyweight.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Our theme song is by the Weaker Than's courtesy of
Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Hailey Shaw.
Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email us at
Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com. We'll be back with the
new episode next week.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Ba and
Pushkin Jackie.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hello, who calls it six thirty on Friday night?
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Wait? Wait?
Speaker 3 (00:34):
What?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I wanted to say one thing? Hello?
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Yeah, you do you know that a new season of
my show is starting?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I had no idea Listen.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I wanted to wash you great luck. Is this a
kiss off?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
From Gimblet Media.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight Today's episode Vivian
right after the break. This story begins back before the quarantine,
(01:23):
a time when people didn't start conversations with how are
you holding up? During those innocent days. We started with
the weather.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
It was minus forty last week minus forty. My front
door froze shut. I had to use like a hair
dryer to get out of the house.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Vivian lives in Canada, and while I'm always happy to
talk about Canada, white Horse is beautiful.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
I once had an opportunity to go there.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
It's not the reason why we're here. Vivian's reached out
to talk about something that happened twenty five years ago
that she still has questions about the death of her
uncle Ellio.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
I grew up in Winnipeg. There's like nothing that sexy
about Winnipeg and my uncle it was like he had
just like breathed off of like a film set, Like
you wear this black leather jacket. He's like tight jeans,
and he smoked cigarettes and he just emanated coolness. I
(02:20):
don't really know how other to say it than he did. Yeah,
this swagger.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Ellio lived in New York City. He was a journalist
and had friends who were artists and writers. He gave
Vivian her very first journal, which he still carries around
to this day. In Vivian's memory, there was a lightness
about Elio. Everything was always for a laugh, Like the
time they were back visiting their family in Brazil and
Elo had Vivian and her brother full dozens of paper airplanes.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
He was staying on the ninth or tenth floor of
this apartment building and it was like this really beautiful
sunny day and we like walked out onto the balcony
and just like shot off like one hundred of these
airplanes into the sunshine. It felt like electric and so
like free.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
On the inside of Vivian's arm is a tattoo of
a paper airplane. It's there to remind her of the
freedom and lightness she felt that day. It's there to
remind her of Elli Oh. November seventh, nineteen ninety two,
Vivian was nine years old. It was her brother's birthday
and the family was heading out to celebrate when the
(03:31):
phone rang. It was Elyo's roommate, a man named Marcello.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
And Marcello just said straight up like Elu had a
seizure that's related to AIDS and he's sick, and that
was how the family found out that one that he
was gay, in too, that he had AIDS.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Ellio was in his mid thirties and had never told
his family he was gay. In fact, he often spoke
of wanting to find a wife and settle down. Over
the next few years, the illness advanced rapidly, so Vivian's
family planned out visit. Vivian remembers one trip in particular,
her dad packed her and her brother into the car
to drive from Winnipeg to New York, a twenty five
(04:18):
hour road trip to.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
My dad's little Honda Civic with no air conditioning.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
This is Vivian's brother, Eduardo. He's three years older than
Vivian and has clearer memories from the trip down.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
It was like hottest summer on record.
Speaker 6 (04:33):
Along the way.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
We had to stop in convenience stores and supermarkets just
to cool off.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Eduardo says. His father brought along a video camera and
entered ELO's tiny apartment on Lafayette Street already rolling. Elio
was lying prone on the couch, not wanting to be recorded.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
She turned his head from us, kind of pulling the
blanket off over his sighs his head and being like
embarrassed at how he looked.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Elio was thin and frail and hooked up to IV tubes.
Vivian's grandparents had flown in from South Paulo. Watch them
with their son.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
I remember them not touching him because presumably they were
afraid to get sick. And I remember thinking that was
like really just like really weird and really sad. The
family didn't really help. They didn't help, like when when
(05:32):
Ali was sick. I guess my dad's conception of health
thing was like, oh, I'm going to bring the kids
for like five days and we'll come visit. But no
one like stopped their lives to like come look after him.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
While the family paid for all of Elio's medical bills,
the person who actually did stop his life did come
look after Eli. Oh was the man who made the
phone call that November day in nineteen ninety two. Marcello
has almost no memories of Marcello, and Eduardo's memories are vague,
(06:13):
Marcello moving about the apartment, always in the background, referred
to by ellioh only as a friend. Growing up, the
name Marcelo meant nothing to Vivian. It was only later,
as a teenager that she learned Marcelo had been partners
with her uncle for thirteen years.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
And I think part of it is because, you know,
unlike an aunt, like say Ellie was heterosexual, on dating
a woman, his partner would have been introduced in that way, like, oh,
well this is your aunt or this is a more
important person in your life.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Right, Elliot couldn't say, hey, this is your uncle exactly.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
But in some ways, you know, even though it sounds
really weird, it's like he is kind of my uncle.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Hmmm, I don't think it sounds that weird.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
I mean it's sort of like, you know, if things
had been different, if your uncle had married him, you
guys would have had a formal connection, and instead there
isn't exactly a name for him, and as a result,
you've lost that person who was so good to your uncle.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
Yeah, exactly. It was obviously so like shamed in my
family that you know, we couldn't even call ell you gay.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
The wound Vivian feels over the injustice or family did
to Elioh has only grown deeper over the years as
she's become better able to put herself in her uncle's shoes.
Speaker 5 (07:43):
I didn't really clue into being attracted to women until
I was like twenty early twenties. I couldn't let myself
even think about that because seeing how the family like
treated my uncle, like, I'm sure it left this message
with me, you know that it wasn't a good thing.
(08:17):
This month I turned thirty seven, I turned thirty seven,
which is the same year that my uncle passed away.
And so at this point in my life, if I
had this illness, like terminal illness, and I was living
on the other side of the world and my family
didn't come, you know, to help.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Me, as Marcela did.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Yeah, yeah, I don't even know him, like I can't
even remember like a visual of him, and yet like
I feel very connected to this person. I want to
find Marcello and I want to tell him thank you
(09:09):
for looking after Elu for that huge sacrifice that he made,
and I think I want to let him know that
I have spent, you know, so much time like thinking
about him.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
After the break the search for Marcelo, I don't have
much to begin my search for Marcelo. Vivian remembers that
(09:53):
back when he was living with elioh Marcelo worked as
a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art, but
I can't find any record of his employment. When Vivian
told me about Elio's old group of artist friends, though,
she singled out one artist by name, a very famous
usical composer. And while the composer's number isn't readily available,
(10:13):
I do happen to have his cousin's number. Hello, Ira,
Oh shit, do we have an interview now? Potty mouth
broadcast or Ira Glass is cousins with minimalist musical composer
Philip Glass, the old friend of Vellios.
Speaker 6 (10:30):
I seek sorry, sorry, sorry, be okay, give me a
second to turn on gear on my side.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Sure, okay, okay.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
You never want to bother the people you admire, but
in the back of your mind you think, okay, maybe someday,
in an emergency, I might be entitled to a favor,
and then you ask them to write a preface to
your experimental novella published by a small Canadian press, and
then you ask them to introduce you at your book
launch that's only attended by seven people. This is how
(11:04):
I felt phoning up to chop yet another branch from
the giving tree, which is I a glass. So I
just wanted to I wanted to ask you for a
phone number. Okay, a cousin of yours.
Speaker 7 (11:23):
Keep going.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Do you know who I'm talking about?
Speaker 7 (11:27):
I assume you mean Philip.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
Being something of a storyteller, the mention of Philip prompts
Irah to tell the story of when he and his
wife vacationed with Philip and his girlfriend in Italy.
Speaker 6 (11:42):
He was finishing up at one of his operas and
he had an electric piano brought in and they were
in a bedroom like down the hall from us, and
so we would be woken up by him composing, which
is crazy.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
And you were doing vocal warm ups, well he.
Speaker 6 (11:56):
Was, Yeah, I was just practicing staying over and over.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
Stay with us, Stay with us, stay stay with us.
Irah promises to reach out to Philip on my behalf
to see if he still has Marcella's phone number. Hey,
before you go, can I share with you a little
knock knock joke?
Speaker 7 (12:20):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Knock knock, who's there? Knock knock?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Who's there? Knock knock?
Speaker 7 (12:26):
Who's there?
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Knock knock?
Speaker 7 (12:30):
Who's there?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Philip Glass?
Speaker 6 (12:34):
Yeah, I know that one.
Speaker 7 (12:35):
I'm sure he knows that one too, Do you think so?
Speaker 6 (12:38):
I mean, that's like, can I just say, like, that's
a level of fame that you or I cannot even
aspire to to have.
Speaker 7 (12:45):
A knock knock joke named after you? Who gets that?
Who gets that?
Speaker 5 (12:50):
You know?
Speaker 7 (12:50):
Who gets that banana?
Speaker 4 (13:07):
A week later, Ira writes back, Philip doesn't have anything,
which is to say, Ira concludes at the end of
his email, knock knock, who's there? Not Philip Glass? And
so the search continues. Vivian's dad, Jacques, doesn't have a
current number for Marcello. The last time he saw him
(13:28):
was five years after Elio died. Still feeling guilty about
the circumstances surrounding his brother's death, Jacques had sought Marcello out.
I felt that the only person who could absolve me,
Jacques said, was Marcello. But the encounter was fraught. Jacques
later spoke of it with Vivian, telling her he walked
away feeling like Marcello was angry with their family for
(13:50):
abandoning elioh hearing this, I wonder if Marcello is still angry.
Perhaps after all of these years, Marcello doesn't want to
be found. The only other thing I know about Marcello
is that he'd been involved in AIDS activism. After extensive googling,
(14:12):
I discover an article on an HIV resource site from
nineteen ninety eight written by Marcello's spelled with one L,
not two, as Vivian had remembered, being so young at
the time. Maybe there are other details Vivian is misremembering,
And sure enough it's in a nineteen ninety four staffing
report for the Met not the MoMA, that I find
(14:32):
the one eld Marcello. He now lives in San Francisco,
and in my excitement, I leave him a rambling, incoherent
message about how I know this must be so weird,
but I'm calling on behalf of Elio's niece, Vivian Marcello. Hey,
I'm so glad that you have the time to talk.
The very next day, Marcello calls back, and right off
(14:55):
the bat admits that his feelings about Elio's family are mixed.
Speaker 8 (15:00):
It's it's complicated, it's very complicated.
Speaker 9 (15:04):
It's just really it's a complicated history.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Marcelo unravels it for me, beginning at the same place
Vivian did November of nineteen ninety two. It was the
morning after Bill Clinton was elected.
Speaker 9 (15:19):
We're sitting in a coffee shop reading the results of
the elections, and I had a grandma's seizure right in
front of me.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
They rushed to a nearby hospital, where tests were performed,
and for the next few days Marcelo walked around in
a stupor. When they received the official diagnosis, Marcello picked
up the phone and made the call to Vivian's house.
The learning that Elio had AIDS was devastating. The disease
(15:49):
itself was all too familiar in New York City. By
that year, nineteen ninety two, AIDS had become the leading
cause of death in American men aged twenty five to
forty four.
Speaker 9 (15:59):
You remember in the nineties an eight as you would
see people gone, can the sheikshare?
Speaker 8 (16:04):
You know?
Speaker 9 (16:06):
And so that was sort of like a certain look.
However handsome he was, he got that look. He had
lost control of his bomb movements.
Speaker 8 (16:16):
He was in diapers, he was blind, he was I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (16:26):
Marcello was in his late twenties when it became Leo's
full time nurse. Ellio was sick for three years, and
just months before the AIDS cocktail became widely available.
Speaker 8 (16:36):
He died very beautifully. He died very peacefully.
Speaker 9 (16:41):
In those last moments. It was a beautiful night. There
was this blue sky, and there's stars and a crescent moon.
And as we looked up the sky, this airplane sort
of crisscrossed took the moon.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
As Marcello speaks, I'm reminded of Ellio in Brazil flying
paper planes off the balcony.
Speaker 9 (17:05):
And we waved at Alu and then we said goodbye,
and then he passed.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
True to Jacques's telling, Marcello was angry with the family's behavior,
especially during the last days of Elio's life. That's when
things grew complicated. The family had set aside funds so
Marcelo could pay for the embalming. It had to happen
as soon as Elo died before the body could be
sent to Brazil.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
For burial.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
When Marcelo knew Eleo only had a day or two left,
in the midst of so many other worries and so
much sadness, he phoned Eleo's middle brother, Vivian's uncle, so
arrangements could be made, but Vivian's uncle didn't believe him,
insisting Elyo had more time The.
Speaker 9 (17:53):
Day before he was dying. You know, I said, listen,
I need your guys to release the money because this
is going to happen. And he suggested that I was
trying to talk at the money, and I lost it
at that moment.
Speaker 8 (18:10):
That's just when Baalistic.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
The family had left Marcello the burden of caring for
elioh and now on top of that, they were accusing
him of theft. Marcello knew he wouldn't be welcomed as
a part of Elio's family, and so he did not
attend the funeral in Brazil. He would later learn from
friends who were present that he wasn't thanked. In fact,
there wasn't so much as a mention of his name,
(18:33):
not at the service nor in the death announcement, which
is to say Marcello's feelings are indeed complicated, but when
he looks up a photo of Vivian online and sees
her face, something is made simple.
Speaker 8 (18:49):
She looks like al a lot.
Speaker 9 (18:51):
She looks like you a lot.
Speaker 8 (18:52):
She looks like of all the kids, she is the
one who looks like him a lot.
Speaker 7 (18:57):
She looks like him.
Speaker 8 (18:58):
That's incredible.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
By the end of our call, Marcelo has agreed to
meet Vivian in New York, where you can introduce her
to the people and places Elio loved best. Coming up
after the break, Vivian and Marcello stay with us, Stay
with us, Stay with us, Stay with us.
Speaker 10 (19:31):
Stay with us.
Speaker 9 (19:48):
So we would shop on these blocks on Broadway because
there are designtic source vintage clothing.
Speaker 10 (19:53):
So this is this is are we walked around here.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
Vivian has flown to New York to deliver a thank
you that's twenty five years overdue, and Marcelo has his
own agenda to introduce Vivian to the real Elio. And
so we're in the village on a tour through l life.
Marcelo points out their favorite hans and tells Vivian about
Eleo's career as a journalist, the time he profiled the
(20:17):
Beat poet Alan Ginsberg showing up for the interview. Eleo
found Ginsburg in the midst of writing a poem.
Speaker 9 (20:23):
Alan Gisberg starts yelling at him, saying, you interrupt the
moment of inspiration.
Speaker 7 (20:28):
This poem is gone. It's gone, gone, gone.
Speaker 9 (20:30):
I won't remember a thing anymore. Held.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Marcello also takes Vivian to meet some of Ello's old friends.
Speaker 11 (20:41):
You must be the niece, how are you?
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Ruth was a well respected New York tattoo artist in
the seventies and eighties. Nowadays, her work is exhibited all
over the world. Her apartment is where Eleo's New York
memorial was held.
Speaker 11 (20:56):
It was another aide's death. It was another terrible, terrible loss,
and everybody here had experienced it or nurses, somebody, you know.
To the end, I mean as young people as people
in the thirties.
Speaker 8 (21:09):
Right, So you're very lucky anywhere, very lucky you didn't get.
Speaker 11 (21:16):
Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic that you didn't.
Speaker 9 (21:20):
The irony had said, twenty five years we'll talk about
a virus, and twenty five years later, celebrating out of here,
we are talk about a virus again.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
It's early March twenty twenty, a few days after the
first confirmed case of COVID nineteen in New York. It's
that one weird week when we thought bumping elbows would
solve everything. In fact, here we are on a social call,
playing it quote safe by eating the snacks Ruth made
from individually prepared bulls. Just days later, schools across the
(21:50):
city would be closed, Restaurants, stores and offices all shut.
Like with the beginning of the AIDS pandemic, our government
would again fail in its response, our medical system would
again prove ill equipped, misinformation would abound, and doctor Anthony Fauci,
who decades earlier led tactical charge against the AIDS outbreak,
(22:11):
would be back on TV picking up the slack. In
contrast to the religious service in Brazil, Ruth says that
the memorial at her place for Elio that day was
a raucous affair, you know.
Speaker 9 (22:27):
With a conga line announcing the conga around this apartment.
Speaker 11 (22:30):
Well, all these good looking guys in one room. You know,
it wasn't going to stay sad for two.
Speaker 12 (22:39):
It was the best funeral ever anywhere.
Speaker 8 (22:43):
I remember being drunk and stoned.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
We also pay a visit to Ken, an artist and
an old boyfriend of Ellio's. The artist's life has been
good to Ken. He looks far younger than his seventy
five years.
Speaker 8 (22:56):
You haven't seen the clothes off.
Speaker 12 (22:58):
Gravity tends to do very nasty things to budys.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Ken tells us about the trip he and Elio took
to Mexico early on in their relationship. Ken had been
going through a phase at the time where he was
wearing green contact lenses. Elio had never seen Ken without them.
I would always tell Ken how much he loved his
beautiful green eyes.
Speaker 12 (23:18):
I said, shit, how am I going to tell him
that these beautiful green eyes are fake?
Speaker 8 (23:25):
So I decided I'm not going to tell him. What
the hell?
Speaker 12 (23:29):
So we go to Mexico and I got something in
my eyes and they started bleeding.
Speaker 8 (23:35):
We have to go to a hospital. We got to
the clinic.
Speaker 12 (23:41):
The guy patched my eyes up, said you'll be blind
for twenty four hours. So the next day I took
the patches off, and then Eliot's looking at me and he.
Speaker 8 (23:52):
Goes, oh my god. I said, what he said, your
eyes changed color?
Speaker 7 (23:59):
So I tell this is perfect.
Speaker 8 (24:01):
I looked in the mirror and said, oh my god,
they did. So that ended that.
Speaker 12 (24:07):
I don't know if he ever found out.
Speaker 8 (24:16):
Elliot melted everybody down that he met.
Speaker 12 (24:20):
He was so charming. I never met anyone you couldn't
be mad at him. I tried so hard to be
mad at him so many times, and you couldn't be
mad at him.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
Ken directs his gaze at Vivianne.
Speaker 8 (24:33):
You're lucky, You're lucky to have had an uncle like Elleo.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
Vivian is basking in Ken's praise of her uncle. The
room feels warm and friendly until Ken opens his mouth again.
Speaker 8 (24:47):
I have to say his family.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
Was horrible, Ken says his but he is still looking
at Vivianne. He might as well have said your your
family was horrible. Ken is being honest, but it sucks
the air out of the room.
Speaker 12 (25:02):
Truly horrible. It was shocking to me. It was really
shocking to me. When his mother came. She was so
cold and so distant from l e Oh.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
I know, of course, Vivian knows. It's why she's here.
Come on this way, Vivian, Marcelo and I are at
my office all day long. Marcello's been playing to her
guide to Eleo's old life. But I want him and
(25:37):
Vivian to get a chance to connect one on one.
Speaker 8 (25:40):
Sit down, Okay, sit here, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Marcello sits on the couch, knees pressed together. Vivian is
seated across from him in an armchair, hands tucked between
her thighs. She's been waiting all day, all day, and
twenty five years for the chance to thank Marcello, and
so she stumbles her way forward, beginning with the ways
in which her family let Elo down.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
I feel like the family, I feel like there was
like kind of like this like internalized shame. I don't know,
It's like that side of the family couldn't really see
past that that he was gay, and that was like
that lasting memory was like that shape.
Speaker 9 (26:21):
Yeah, but I also feel like.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
Marcello interrupts Vivian before she can get very far, but
almost immediately trails off. He looks down at his hands
in his lap and adjusts his feet on the carpet.
When he speaks again, he speaks softly.
Speaker 9 (26:42):
I feel compelled to say something. It would be simplistic
to say that just because the family didn't accept his
being gay, this difficulty is not all on your family side.
That was also Elia's inability to be who he was
(27:05):
fully really yeah.
Speaker 5 (27:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
According to Marcello, Eleo never fully embraced his own gay
identity and so was never honest with the family about
who he was.
Speaker 9 (27:16):
He was gay, had a partner for ten years, you know,
he was HIV positive, So all of that sort of
came out for the family side and the worst possible way.
So there's a lot here of broken trust.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Marcello's own family knew he was gay by the time
he was in his late teens, knew that Eleo wasn't
just a roommate. Marcello had been wanting Eleo to be
more transparent with his family for years. Instead, when the
family was around, Marcello says, Elo made him feel like
a mistress, like he had to disappear. So as much
as the family didn't acknowledge Marcello, Eleo didn't acknowledge Marcello
(27:57):
to the family either. Although they were a couple, Eleo
refused to fully commit to Marcello, continuing to date other
people like Ken. It was painful for Marcello. In fact,
Marceau admits that he'd been on the verge of breaking
up with Elio when they found out he had AIDS.
Speaker 10 (28:15):
But made aue this ray of light.
Speaker 9 (28:19):
Being joyful also made him more difficult to pin down
and taking responsibility and ownership for things that you do
as you become a grin up. So I want to
sort of take a bit of the weight from your family.
Just there's a little bit on his side as well.
Speaker 8 (28:42):
There was his.
Speaker 9 (28:43):
Own like internal internals, paral boughs. So I think there's
the dartful value, and there's the chicken Alio. There is
all of this a sort of wrapped and this fantastic
human being, you know, and he's just a person.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
I think I relate to maybe the chicken val. Like
in my early twenties, like I started dating women and
it was something that I shared with my dad and
my brother. My mom was actually like going through some
difficult stuff like in my twenties, And to be honest,
(29:26):
she actually still doesn't know, but I guess she soon.
Speaker 9 (29:30):
Well, yes, listen, if you have white stuff, it's faster
than you. But if you address it, it's a way
of connecting, connecting.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
Marcella was encouraging Vivian to not hide who she is
the way Alio did until he got sick.
Speaker 9 (29:48):
He's softened, He softened you know.
Speaker 13 (29:51):
I it might sound a little sanctimonious or piles on
my part, you know, but I loved him throughout, thick
and thin, and when he got sick, he allowed me
to love him in a way that he couldn't before.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
We really.
Speaker 9 (30:14):
We're a couple in a way that we had never
been before.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
From Marcelo, those last days offered some of his happiest
memories of their relationship. Dying allowed Elio to finally grow up.
Speaker 9 (30:34):
Sometimes he would hallucinate and he would go to parties
in his hand. I remember this one that was a
party by the Russian embassy, and he was talking about
all the people he was meeting at the Russian embassy,
and he was in bed and he would do.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
This Marcello minds smoking a cigarette.
Speaker 9 (30:55):
But in that state. I remember one moment that is
the most precious moment of all days before he died,
I said to him, I love you, and he was
he had no cognition, his smile like year to year,
(31:17):
and I never forgot that.
Speaker 8 (31:20):
So I love.
Speaker 9 (31:22):
Him very very very much, and he loved me back.
And I had doubts from time to time, but in
that moment I felt it, do you want.
Speaker 10 (31:45):
To commit.
Speaker 5 (31:58):
I feel like not a lot of people would go
to that length, you know, I mean my family didn't.
But like I even wonder, like.
Speaker 4 (32:11):
Vivian struggles for the right words for the first time
during the trip, She's trying to put herself not in
Elio's shoes, but in Marcello's if.
Speaker 5 (32:19):
The rules were reversed, Like, do you think Elie would
have done that for you?
Speaker 9 (32:29):
It's all as a question for me, ALA's ask that
I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
The fact that you like moved in and took care
of him is it's it is really incredible in it.
I think it just shows like how compassionate and like
how loving of a person you are that you were
able to do that. So yeah, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 9 (33:09):
I didn't expect to feel the wam feeling right now.
That held a grudge for a while, and I was
proud of the grudge. I was proud of being spurned,
and I think I grew attached to that.
Speaker 7 (33:23):
I held that.
Speaker 9 (33:25):
As a kind of a badge of honor in a way,
and I don't anymore. Also, I'm ready to receive it.
I don't think I was so thank you. I really
really appreciate that there's a poem by John Ashberry which
(33:48):
I'm going to completely destroy and bustardize. But there's an
image that I really love. He says, Somewhere someone is
running desperately towards you, and I have this image of you, like.
Speaker 8 (34:06):
Not desperately, but sort of.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
Like when slow. I feel that too, because of you know,
the nature of everything that had happened. It was like
I didn't get that opportunity to have you, as you know,
an uncle in my life. So can I claim you
(34:32):
as my uncle?
Speaker 10 (34:37):
Okay?
Speaker 5 (34:38):
All right?
Speaker 4 (34:44):
Twenty five years ago it had been Marcelo asking to
be let into the family, but now it's Vivian who's
doing the asking. Marcelo moves forward to embrace her. In
the end, Vivian receives an uncle as amazing as the
(35:06):
one she always imagined.
Speaker 10 (35:07):
Remember you were I need?
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Did a girl?
Speaker 9 (35:11):
Remember your her was blondish?
Speaker 10 (35:15):
Would you like to remember your tiny.
Speaker 14 (35:45):
Now that the fernures returning to its good will home,
Now that the last month's rent is skating with the
damaged bottle.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Take this moment to deserve.
Speaker 10 (36:05):
If we mess him and we tied felt for far
from the Thames at Acid and leave.
Speaker 4 (36:21):
This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Stevie Lane along
with me Jonathan Goldstein. Our senior producer is Khalila Holt.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg, Caitlin Kenny, mime,
O'Donnell Lydia Polgreen, Rayhan Harmansey, Nobille Chalmpott, and Jackie Cohen.
Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows,
(36:41):
John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions, Michael Hurst, Hailey Shaw,
and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on
our website, Gimbletmedia dot.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Com slash Heavyweight.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Our theme song is by the Weaker Than's courtesy of
Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Hailey Shaw.
Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email us at
Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com. We'll be back with the
new episode next week.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Ba and
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