|
 It
is the Spring of 1992.
Okay, there is no way to dress
up a miserable fact: My friend Michael Santulli is in Beth
Israel Hospital in New York City and he is dying. He can
no longer walk. He is vanishing on his pillow. He’s
31 years old, fer chrissakes—31.
I am an AIDS activist,
but marching in the streets is all I've done. I look good dressed
in an ACT UP t-shirt and righteous rage. I talk to the media
in
effective soundbites.
But
caring for the sick and dying... I'm just not strong
enough. It’s
easier screaming at politicians and pharmaceutical companies.
But this is my pal Michael since Syracuse University when we were naughty
and relentless and discovered volumes of meaning in drugs
and one-night-stands.
So, I visit Michael and bring him
things and try to deal since I'm such
an AIDS hotshot... but all I can offer is hollow hope as he continues to disintegrate.
Well, once I wheeled him across town to the West Village on a sunny afternoon
so he could sink his teeth into a big greasy hamburger from Boxer’s
Pub on 4th Street.
But I digress...
Michael is a big Yoko fan.
One morning, I go to visit him at Beth Israel. We’re making small talk— stuck
in a charade and trying to avoid the obvious. Just then, we both hear a cry
from across the hall. A woman is in pain, crying out in small staccato reverse
gulps.
"Ay ay ay ay ay" —like
that haunting refrain in the Yoko song "Walking on Thin
Ice."
And either Michael or I joke, I don’t
remember who — but I ’ll give it to Michael, because,
after all it’s his story. So Michael says,
"Oh, Yoko must be in the next room" and we laugh and briefly forget
the grief choking both of us.
Anyhow, about a month later, I am invited to Syracuse University to speak about
AIDS activism for their first AIDS Awareness Week.
Bittersweet. This is where Michael and I met. Where his folks still live.
Mike's mom Vicki and her sister Lisa come to campus to hear me talk, while
Michael lies in Beth Israel where his AZT no longer works.
Afterwards, I walk M Street near campus
and visit a shoppe that still carries old records and there they
have a copy of the 45 version of “Walking on Thin Ice”. I snatch it up, figuring I ’ll give it to Michael for his
birthday next month. His last birthday.
Back in New York, I am working on the
launch of LIFEbeat, a new AIDS foundation for the music industry.
We plan a press conference. I find out that that Yoko Ono will
speak there. My heart leaps to my throat - but in a good way.
So, on the day of the press conference, I bring the “Walking on Thin Ice” 45 with me to the
Supper Club in midtown Manhattan and I approach Yoko and explain
my mission and stammer miserably and she grows impatient and
finally barks, “What do you want?” I blurt out,"My friend is a big fan of yours he is dying of AIDS in Beth
Israel his birthday is next week it would mean a lot to him if you signed this
record."
Her face softens—after all, this
is an AIDS charity press conference—and then she takes
the 45 from my hand and pulls the lyric sheet out of the sleeve
and writes on it in black felt tip pen:
To Michael,
Happy Birthday!
Love,
Yoko
NYC '92
At Michael’s birthday party the
next week at Beth Israel in the TV room, I give him the record.
Michael knows I'm a joker so he narrows his eyes. I eventually convince him that Yoko signed it.
He is as happy as a dying 31 year old guy can be.
The doctors shake their head in late
June and Michael is flown back home to Syracuse. I sit next to
him on the four-seater from Teterboro.
Soon it’s mid-July and I 'm in Amsterdam with ACT UP at the AIDS Conference
and raising hell. And one evening I get back to my hotel room and Mike's mom
calls to tell me he is gone.
A month later, we gather at Central
Park on a raw, rainy afternoon and release a flock of helium
balloons into the air. Or at least we try to. There’s too
much of Michael’s ashes in each balloon so they fall earthward. I carry a boombox which plays “Walking on Thin Ice.”
EPILOGUE
It’s March 20, 2004. I'm at a peace march in New York, railing
against Bush and his invasion of Iraq. I stand with a crowd of ACT UP friends,
bottlenecked at the corner of Madison Avenue and 28th. I look to my left and
see Yoko Ono with a group of friends. I go up to her. I'm 12 years older
and many more friends poorer since Michael died. And here is Yoko.
I remind her about the birthday 45
she signed and Michael’s very last birthday. I'm
doing this more for myself than for her. Maybe she knows that. I become flustered and stupidly end my little speech with, "He
died happily," which could not be further from the truth.
Yoko has mellowed. She smiles briefly
and says in a quiet voice, "I'm glad I was able to help."
Photos by Fred and Leigh Klonsky
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A
frantic Gemini based in the Mid-Hudson Valley, Jay Blotcher,
44,
has lived multiple lives as a collage artist, documentary filmmaker,
journalist, AIDS activist, and publicist. His nonfiction
appears in six anthologies, and on writer Thomas Beller's website