P.O.V. **flag**; Silverlake Life:view

The thing I remember most about Tom is what he feels like, you know, I know what his neck feels like to kiss him, to bite it, and I know what his head feels like in his forehead. Because I was so used to just being able to run it to the other room and kiss him on the forehead or pester him or bother him or get some attention from him, and I can't do that anymore. I was very scary to look at him the first time after he had died due to looking at the base,

but I did. I don't remember it, but I know I looked at him, and then I wanted to close his eye because it's very strange seeing a dead person staring. And I tried just like in the movies to close the island, but that's close, it pops back open. And as I said to Tom, I apologized that life was like the movies, and the movies did just so dramatically close the islands, and it's all over with, but it didn't. Tom Jocelyn was my film teacher back in college in the mid-70s. He was my mentor, and later he and his lover Mark Massey became two of my closest friends.

When they were both diagnosed with AIDS, Tom decided to shoot a video diary. He asked me to finish it if he couldn't. Because this is the first footage from the beginning of a first take from a sort of life, and I thought I'd show this to Mark, and the message is going to be clear of that.

I'll have a part of here. The here we are at thrifties doing one of those

tasks that just will never ever get done unless you do it. It's so tough. It's the simplest five minute task. You have to come to the car and lie

down and put the seat back and rest and catch a breath. Put away to live. What a way to die. And now I'm going to call in Alamra. Alamra is a healing spirit from our northern and parents.

He will work with your own self to create a pattern, harmony, and order. So all this harmony will disappear from your body. You'll feel wonderful. Your body will sing. It'll be like a beautiful symphony. So, Umrah, we have a new friend here. Mark, would you please come and do a nice blessing on Mark? Oh, Tee-tah! Tee-tah! Tee-tah! Tee-tah! Tee-tah! Tee-tah! Tee-tah! Tee-tah! Tee-tahu! Tha! Okay, that's good. Is there a image up here? Yeah, it has to be a bit there.

It'll come up here. There we go. There it is. Okay, I want to be able to hear more. When you first found out you're about your illness. I've had a lover named Mark and we went together for 22 years now. So we finally made the decision to get our test, which was about six years ago. And then I went in and I came out positive and it was very shocking to say the least. And it's always covering in the back of your mind and you're looking for, you know, KS spots or lesions or some sign of the disease that's finding you really here. I was hit very suddenly with the Croctococcus meningitis, which is kind of a brain disease.

I got up with this in and so beautiful. Described by my doctor as it's kind of like bats hanging from the back of your brain stem upside down and slowly eating their way up. Lovely. Anyway, that hit with the smashing series of headaches and high temperatures in the rest of the hospital. So the pastor telling my parents that I had AIDS went to Mark. How did it feel to tell your friends and your family what sort of reactions did you get? For a long time, I didn't tell anybody. I didn't want to tell anybody because AIDS is such a horrible thing that people's minds to everybody. It's a death sentence. So when you tell somebody that you have AIDS, they start treating you that way, like you're a sick person or a lover or somebody's going to die soon, and it's not a comfortable way to live. I mean, it may be true that I could die in six months or two years or five years or whatever, but you can't live like that.

And to have people looking at you that way all the time is really uncomfortable. You're feeling crappy. Oh, I didn't. God, I think Tom started telling people that I had AIDS. And then when he gets sick, because I've had AIDS for almost two years. And when he gets sick this past summer, he ended up slowly telling people because he had to when they were able to reveal that I had AIDS. And this is my role. Who's really? I don't know, okay. Yeah? This is slowly because you should be looking at the camera, but maybe look at the camera and you can't see yourself in the monitor. Well, let's look forward into the void instead. How's that for a traumatic effect? What a composition works. This is a really gonna. You're supposed to imagine this is some kind of plant blowing in the breeze.

Yeah, I should actually look like an amoeba for me. That's because you're probably more primordial than I am. So you can see my case, radiation burns. One thing I've noticed on this here is your, where are you? You're down here someplace. Is your eye? Yeah, whether you hit that red line on your eyelid there. Oh, let's over here. No, there's one on this side. What are you saying? Is one now? There isn't one. Where? That's there? There is one. Where? That's there? That's a little line, yeah. That's new? I don't know. I've never seen it before, but I've never, I haven't looked at your eyes in a long time. I haven't either. I haven't seen it now. Maybe you'll get to have the... Oh God, thanks. A little led shield stuck in my eyelid. Sure feels like it.

Well, Silver Lake Life normally takes place in Silver Lake, California. But in the end, it goes where I go. And it's Christmas time. And this summer, when I almost died, my family came out and saw me. One of the things that we talked about was the way to keep me going. A goal to set, live towards was Christmas when I fly back and sail over the mall. So, in December, Mark and I hopped into the airplane, ready to go back to the cold winter to share Christmas with my family.

It seemed to be some tension about this trip to the Hampshire. I was already sick, I was worried about the cold. And I think they were also worried that I had started to make this tape again. Because literally, 15 years ago, I'd made a movie about being gay and growing up gay. And it was asking a lot of them at the time. And this is some of that material. One day, in this very spot, this is less than 300 yards from my house. I'd bicycle down here. This is around 14 to 15.

And I came across this street. A rock and under the rock was a note. And there was right under here, and there were notes in it. And the notes were between two gay lovers. They were communicating when they were going to meet. So, I wrote back to them, a scared shit, of course. But I wrote back to them, telling them about it. And then came back, and they left me a dirty magazine. And being gay, every mother finds dirty magazines that the kids collected, that they hide under the mattress, but not dirty mail magazines. And you develop this whole inner secretiveness where you learn not to tell people, and to hide things, and to cover things up. And it begins to change your personality. And you learn how to socialize with women, and pretend to follow the whole route that all your peers are following. When, in the end, it's kind of all a lie.

And you learn to lie pretty well. I'm tired of lying. I don't want to lie anymore. So I make this film. My name is Mark Massey, and I'm your lover. Back in college, you had decided that you couldn't love anybody, and you didn't want to love anybody. And you were going to love everybody through film by doing great, tender, romantic films. And I madly fell in love with you, because I was desperately in need to love somebody. And our minds just seemed to work together. We understood life kind of on the same level. And it took almost a year of me yelling and screaming and pulling my hair out and getting very suicidal before you finally fell in love with me. Okay. What's your name and what's your relationship to me?

My name is Mary Jocelyn, middle of name Kimball, and I am your mother. Okay. Are you nervous? Not very, no. I am. Can you remember clearly the first time that I ever told you, but I was homosexual? Yes, indeed. Could you relate that? Yes, it was in the lobby of the New England Center at the University of New Hampshire. And I was standing at the time on an orange rug, and I very shortly sat down. I don't even like to think about it. I think it's awful. And I think we must have done something wrong to get that way. And I don't think you ought to advertise it. I don't think in this movie, you are even mentioning it, because it would be maybe not embarrassing to you, but it would be embarrassing as hell to me.

Family life has always meant so much, and the thing that you would not have a family of your own was a great disappointment to me. What about my husband, you get along right? I don't know how frank I should be about this time. I don't know. Mark, it seems to be a nice guy. There are two or three things against him that are far as I'm concerned. First is Lux. He looks like he's going to fall over, and he looks like he's got TV to me, I don't know. And of course he's got two strikes against him anyway, having something to do with your married life, so we say it doesn't seem quite normal to us, to the normal people. So naturally he's got three strikes against him. On the other hand, he's always very nice and pleasant to me anyway, but I don't think I'd have seen him more.

But in other words, he isn't the type of guy I would pick out for a friend. You understand? He and I couldn't get along, I'm sure, because we think in different circles, different ways, and so on. We just don't think alike. We don't live alike. I think he resents a great deal about me, and I resent something about him. She's a typical liberal. On the surface, she's nice and kind to what she knows, and says, okay, I realize that she doesn't know what gay is. She says we're homosexual, and she accepts the fact that we're homosexuals, and she feels sort of sorry for us in our own little way that we can't live like the rest of the world. And those sort of things, when you build them up on a larger scale, that's what makes homosexuals commit suicide. As we begin to see who we are, we've got to see that little seemingly unimportant details, such as words and labels, tell a story, fairy tale of sorts. So let me say a little about gay as opposed to homosexual.

They are opposites, and not just two words expressing similar objects, because only one talks about objects. In order to understand these words, we must understand that this society is a multi-cultured one, but in reality, it recognizes only one culture. The others are on a genocidal attack. So now for us, it is a beautiful thing to be blatant, where at one time it was looked on upon. We have come to see that it is the fairies, faggots, queens, et cetera, that were through their blatantists the first to challenge the system. In essence, saying they had the right to be super gay, because blatant is beautiful. So we also know that it will not be until what Straits call blatant behavior is accepted with respect, that we are in any sense any of us free. The personal is the political, the economic, and the cultural. Gay is the revolution.

Oh, yes. Well, when that showed on PBS, there was a little consternation I can tell you. So maybe some fear that I was redoing a new tape also added to the pressure. But I arrived, and it was an entourage to meet Mark and me, friendly people from the family. This is my man, ever beautiful. And back at home, this is Sam about to take the treat at the table from my father. Don't feed the dog at the table. It goes down fast, isn't it? It sure does. Hi!

I'm Whiti Jocelyn. I'm Tom's older brother. Hi! Yes, it is me, Whiti Jocelyn. It is I. I see it's me, Whiti Jocelyn, the star of the previous Tommy Jocelyn spectacular. My wife Susan. What happened right away when you found out that you had AIDS? You say when you had AIDS, it was kind of, it wasn't that we didn't expect to hear it, because you had told us that Mark had AIDS. And that you did not. And we started talking about you being sick, and your dad said about his brother Bob who had died a few years earlier. He had gone to see him once. I could only stay in the room for five minutes, because it was just too painful for him. Dad never went back apparently after the first time I went to visit him, and said he didn't want to see him remember him that way, I guess. At that point the phone rang.

And you said to your mom, I'll never forget these exact words. Mom, I just wanted to ask you, do you understand AIDS? Do you understand what's happening? And she said yes, and he said, do you understand? I sort of sensed like he was saying, you know, I'd kind of like you guys to come out here, and I said it, I think quite bluntly, you know, you guys should go. And then, well we'll think about it, we'll think about it, I don't know, I don't know. And you turned around and said to him, didn't you listen to that phone call? Tommy wants you out there. What's he got to do? It's just, I guess I find it hard this day. Your mom and dad just sort of are dealing with it on a, it doesn't exist. Oh, look at all the presents today.

Now, the idea was not to make you spend a fortune. Okay, so I'm going back out here, I'm going back out there. Oh, here we are back in the hospital. So, in the emergency room, in the middle of the Hampshire, from four days away from going home, it's January 1st. I always say whatever you do in a first day of the year is what you do for the rest of your life.

There we are. Now, biotus LA, like N-Tex LA, contains an over-the-counter drug that's called fennel propanolomy. A fennel propanolomy is a decongestant, and it works pretty well as a decongestant, but it does a whole bunch of other odd things, including sleep disturbances and palpitations and urinary urgency. The first thing we should do is to undo, and that is to not take the biotus and not take the septic lexin. I don't want to give you something across.

Well, by the time we finished in the Hampshire this year for Christmas, I was sick, exhausted, happy with my family, and never so glad to get away and come back to the lights of Hollywood. The first thing we need to do is to clean the windows. The first thing we need to do is to clean the windows. Now, you haven't had any school breakfast. No, I could you check to make sure there's nothing up here for it.

I found the viral infection. The blood stagnation seems to be pretty well cleared up. Was this too long? Good. Yeah, fungus in the hospital too. Okay. What's going on? I think it's pretty much the same. You've got a lot more of that brownish. There is more yellow on. You haven't noticed any new lesions?

No. Well, miracle of miracles are going to be the same formula two weeks in a row. Hey guys, what's wrong? No, it's okay. We went to the documents. We went through our usual thing this morning with him, which was fine.

I got too tired to film towards the end and went and slept in the car or a market lunch. I didn't have lunch because we were going to go right home. I remember he said we were going to go right home and you can have soup and then I go shopping. I remember that so he brought me some soup anyway because the soup was so good. What happens next? We're on the way home and I say, okay, I get enough energy. Go ahead, do the food shopping at APLA. It's right between here and home. It's an easy stop and I go to the bank and get my glasses fixed. So he does that and I do that. And then we're on the way home and he says, look, we're almost done. I'm going to go to the health food store, which is not on the way home and it is now 3.30. So we go to the health food store and I sit in the car and try to sleep and can't.

So then he comes back and says, look, it's only one more stop. I'm going to go to the may fair because get tonight's dinner so I don't have to go out again. We've got to protect my health. I haven't had any dinner. I haven't had any. Jesus, you try to be helpful getting screwed time and time again. I hate being a nice guy. Well, of course, it wasn't really Mark's fault. It's just angry with my incapacity to do the normal things that I used to be able to do. And it gets me so angry. Where?

Voila! Can you ask me this? Can you tell me something you managed to go that I wanted to hear and put on tape? About loving you? Yes. Got some. Oh, there's no idea I love you. As I said, you asked me, how much or something? There. Just do you love me. I said it hurts because I can't stand to music. It drives me crazy. I can't do anything about it. I can't control it. I don't know what it means. It makes you unhappy and it makes me happy and it drives me nuts. It sometimes makes me very angry. I thought so, but the times I've got to can't do anything about it. And I love the times it hurts because I can't do anything for you. And sometimes it scares me. Oh, there's a good night's kiss, huh?

Two people don't get those. That's another bad night. I slept for half an hour and an hour and then we got into sleep for another two hours, based on my head banging. And then while I'm awake I just think of all these things. In this case it's about the auto show. It's supposed to be an auto show tomorrow. It will be the first thing to have done all week that isn't a doctor's visit. But I don't think I have the energy to go. I've already canceled a couple of dissertations. I thought I was taking a wheelchair, but I'm even ready to admit that I want a wheelchair yet. I'm going to go through the hassle of that.

Plus it's raining out so that will make that even worse. And I just shouldn't go. But if I don't, I'm admitting that I'm doing to lie here in this bed for the rest of my life. That's an unpleasant reality. So I don't know. Well, although the real issue wasn't the auto show or not the auto show and it was about tossing and turning at night, you'd be happy to know that we decided not to go to the auto show. And now we're going to go to the record store instead. I'm going to go to the record store.

And now I'm going to go to the record store. I'm going to go to the record store. Where are we? Where are we? Where are we? You ever told me where we are yet? We're here. This is our superman, Stronium 90 rod here.

This is what you weren't supposed to drink in the 1950s and milk. Dr. Melby also gave me a couple of names of people to check out about things for gas. I've heard a couple of cases of successful treatment of people who have never had gas leading to be clearly. And from one of the problems, of course, is expensive. Okay. Are we on the third time for the alphabet of the fourth time? We're on the third time. I'm ready for my class. I'm Mr. Demille. There we go. Just before we get into the session, you said that both of you were not quite up to par

or less than or whatever. I wonder if it might be helpful to talk about what they have been happening or how both of you are right now? Well, I've really been six since the Hampshire. Feevers running an average of 101 and stuff like that. We went to Dr. Matt and got a tea mixture and stuff that demanded every half hour, which is a discipline that I'm not up to. And then I would fall asleep and miss a bell. Oh, you don't miss a bell. You're making it sound like you miss, or I've just missed one or two today. If you're left on your own, you take half or less of what you're supposed to take.

To me, there's a problem there. If you're supposed to take it every half hour and you kind of forget and only take it two or three times a day, that's more than forgetting. But for me to, like, say, okay, I can't do this anymore. You do it. In another situation, I could do that. But the fact that we both have AIDS, I have the added fear that, well, if he dies, of course, I don't want him to do that. That's the major thing I don't want him to die. But the other thing is that leaves me alone with AIDS to die by myself with AIDS. Can you explain to him at all? No. I can't. I mean, part of me says, well, I do take my medicine. And then it's true that I don't take all my medicine. I guess one of the things that affects me a lot is I probably am a Doomsday AIDS, you know, in a sense that statistically and everything else, it seems to have its arc,

if you will. And I'm pretty far down the arc and I know that there's always exceptions. But I do feel, you know, the wall is not that far away. And there's a certain amount of desperation in relation to this kind of thing, but videotaping as compared to just the other parts of life. So... The difference between the two of you in this issue that I see is that given the same threat, your way of finding that threat is different, quite different. You mark you're trying to lower the threat. You're trying to make the most out of what you have. Well, this is my bedroom.

There's this shelf here with flowers, food, and tapes to be edited. The camera and do my diary with is Mark. Here I am, Helga with the laundry. I have just done all of our little delegates, our little Andes, our things. Thank you, Helga. This is the camera that I do my diary work with. And then one, two, three cups of medicine that I drink. And there's the tape deck. And here's the monitor, which is on a amateur device. It's going to be raised and lowered and pulled out and pushed away. It was all designed with the idea that I'd end up sick and dead all the time. And yet still be able to make my movie.

I'm going to take this whole tequila, so make it a good one. Oh, no!

Oh, no! Oh, no! How are you doing? I'm fine. How are you? Actually, I'm pretty tired. I've been doing this all day long. Oh, that's terrible. But you've got a long way to go. You think of making it all the way? It's going so fast. It's wonderful today. People in the inner time make it go so fast. Yeah. Great. I'll make it all the way. Have a good time. Thank you. Well, let's see. I've been very sick for two and a half weeks. Lying in bed, mostly all the time.

I've just seemed to the last couple days be regaining strength. You're only going to see me on my good sides. During that time, I got extremely depressed. I would have been happy to have just died. The phrase that I came up with is that I have lost the steam of life. The steam of life, the thing that powers you keeps you rolling toward something. I know the lesson is that you're just supposed to learn to roll and not roll toward something, like a rolling stone. It's old wisdom, and it is wise. But I feel so empty.

And I feel so pointless, and I have so much trouble remembering anything good I've done. As if that brings value to my life, I don't know. Of course, it doesn't bring value to my life. And I know the real story is that you get what you get. You live a happy life. You've had a happy life. You live a tormented life, and you're always worrying. And you're saying that's the life you will have lived. You see a chair, and we're deciding if we're going to sit in it,

or continue to the next chair in a brave effort of physical dynamism. We pass the chair in a brave effort of physical dynamism, and I love you, Mark, so much. A little action, please. I was assigned right here. I was assigned right here.

I was assigned right here. I was assigned right here. I was assigned right here. I was assigned right here. I was assigned right here. I was assigned right here. I was assigned right here. It's you.

It's you. It's for you again. I didn't say it. Turn around. Hi. Hi. Singed it as nobody here. We're going. The woman who invited us here who owns the place is very nice. It's been very nice to listen. She would like me to keep my shirt on so I don't freak out any of the people. And I do that, but it also then feeds into that bad part of me that I don't, you know, being self-conscious and disliking my body and whatnot. Mostly, I worry about those things as I don't want to upset other people with having to look at ugly me. So it ends up feeding into a bad part of me or I suggest normally be proud of it. It's normally I'm proud that I've been alive this long. And I just like screw you. I'm living, you know?

I'm not dead. Back into the tubby hole. What? What are you doing? Flashing me your KS? Yeah. I'm going to sleep quite a bit. Think about all that stuff.

What is in the best of our umm, what is the best of our umm, for me? Hold on a second. What is this that passes before my eyes every day? There's been most of my time looking, seeing, just watching this strange thing pass in front of me. I'm not much of a participant in life anymore. I'm a distant viewer, just watching it all pass by knowing that I'm not going to have

that much longer to keep my eye on the prize. Is that industrial sound in the background, those big dumpsters being pulled up, someone rebuilding their house, more trash blowing to some dump that doesn't have room for it, and a freeway that's full of cars. This civilization is so strange. I've never felt much a part of it. I think being gay separates you little, certainly having AIDS and being a walking dead, if you will, separates one from the everyday world.

It's a beautiful day in a neighborhood. It really is a beautiful day, by the way. People's son, not too hot, not too cold, he breathes, I don't know what anybody could ask for more. Dr. Jenkins in the office here today, a monthly visit, as well it's kind of time. Maybe you may be start looking for an auspice, a corollary of all of that information, of course means the average life span in the auspices two months, it's time, that kind of stuff, which was very startled to hear, I think I was sick, even though someone just wanted

to be, and was greeted with very mixed feelings, a real bombshell, and that's about it, that's story. What have you been doing since then? About the same as I was doing before, sleeping a lot, rolling over, steaming some more, that kind of thing, taking part in magazines. Tell me about all the people coming to visit and what you feel about it. Well, that's kind of hard, having a lot of guests and we have a lot more coming, it seems like they're coming to say hi before we die, and let's say hi to Mark and Tom and Chris things are going to get a bit bad real quick.

Yep, and what do you feel as soon as you visit now that it's done over? It was a nice visit, kind of innocuous, it ended very quietly, the last day and a half, she almost stayed away from me because I was sleeping a lot, so I didn't get to see her much, which was okay in terms of what I wanted to have happened, she knew I had to stay away, so I had no trouble, you apparently had more trouble than I did. Yeah, you took the camera. What do you think as soon as you came in? Well, I wait till you get me in frame. Well, it's funny, you probably slept through most of Sue's visit, but Sue's visit was very helpful, very good, she helped a lot, I learned a lot, she got me through a lot of bad times, but it was a whole situation where Sue was into, Tom is dying of AIDS, and the reason she stayed away from me for those last two days is because you were going through

a period of acceptance and withdrawal and needed to be left alone so that you would get ready to die, not that you were just sleeping, you were sleeping, it was very taxing in that way and that it was like a barrage of death notices, which I don't think was positive for me in the end, in that vein. Oh, I didn't know that. Good morning, Tom, as I said earlier, this is June 1st, how are you today? It's about the beginning, you started on my ear and bow? No, I started on your empty breath, this play. Oh, very good, thank you. You made it another month? We made it another month. Yeah, May April. March, what is it? It's June 1st here. June 1st, my mind's been getting big lately, which is sort of a problem carrying out a mask conversation, happened in the car the other day, I don't know, who's I in the car

the other day, anybody? Because the doctor's on Tuesday, no, you've never been to Canada, don't you? We are having our fabulous European ocean cruise, Mr. Jocelyn is out here on the deck with his sunglasses, his walking stick, his little cap to keep the sun off the top of his head and his chocolate shake.

Welcome, welcome, I hope you're enjoying your trip. This is where we're going, somewhere in the Mediterranean, so we'll keep track further input on our journey, shorter than we thought it was going to be, but then that's life. This is Judy, Judy Lynn's visit, yes you're in focus here, could you go into the living room and get the photograph of Todd and me?

In the frame? You have the one in the frame. Judy is a photographer, and this particular photoshoot you're going to show us is the one to pay for us, for us, a year and a half ago on a anniversary, and it's really good to be able to take some of the letters, okay, come on for a guy. There we are, it's Tom and me and Tom in the picture, a year and a half ago, we're obviously right after he had a great haircut, do you remember who else is coming next week? You know what I should do, I should make a big chart on the wall with a calendar of everybody who's coming.

Lane is coming. Bo is coming next, probably Thursday or Friday after his compound queue, and then a lane is coming next weekend, and then next Thursday your mother and Betsy are coming, and if Whitey can get a plane while he's flying out to San Francisco, he'll come up for a day, and then Sharon and Maddie are supposed to be coming that same weekend, and then after that... What is Whitey? It's Whitey. What is Whitey doing? Home of the brother. What is he doing? They're forced. Oh. I should give him a plane. They are exactly. Should I give you a plane? Exactly. Should give me a plane. Well, there you have it. Let's write him a letter. You love me? Yes, I love you. Do you like me videotaping you? Yes. I like videotaping you too a lot. Looks like he Tom's breakfast. Let's see what we have here. Well, this is what I'm not going to give him now, this is a little thick, this is raspberry cream cheese.

Miso soup, cheesecake, the egg, stir it, mash it up to make it easily edible. Well, well. Let's take it. Should have warned you I'm sorry. Let's see what I'm going to give him now, let's see what I'm going to give him now, let's see what I'm going to give him now. Today's Monday, and I think that's June 19th, I'm not absolutely sure I can check a letter. Tom?

You want a wave? There we go, okay, I love you, you look like Queen Elizabeth, okay, thank you. This is a letter that Tom wrote his mother, he says, I love you and I'm going to mail it for him today, a landlord, Mike, just got his doctors reports back on Friday, and today he told me he wants to go up and see our herb doctor, which means Mike's tests came back positive, and Bob runs lover, he's positive, so he's going back to our herb doctor too. Queen Tom's finger nails today, I soaked them and cut them and cleaned underneath them. Okay, tell me what you thought of Tom, how he looked and how he was. I don't think I had seen Tom for about three weeks, two or three weeks, or had talked to him,

and I was surprised how quickly he'd gone down hill, you haven't seen him for the last time. He was skinnier than I've ever seen him, and I don't know. This is Dr. Matt's idea, he said this is real easy to eat and turkey and rice is full of carbohydrates and protein.

What? Don't forget you're my baby. I'm just doing a medicine care right there. Okay. I don't know if it's going to be a force that's going to be used. I don't know if it's going to be a force that's going to be used. This came in the mail yesterday and this is Tom's medical benefits have to be reestablished because I guess it's been a year or something. I don't know.

And they give you a cover sheet with what kind of information they want and they check it off. First they want the statement of facts for medical, which is this. All these pages, both sides, they want work history, they want everything property, what he owns, what's in the bank, second parent or other spouse income. This is the exact same stupid form that you have to fill out to apply for medical. Also, down here they want his current income verification, as if they already don't know that he has AIDS and he's on SSI and SSD. They know that already, plus they want receipts for childcare costs. Now why check that off? They know he doesn't have any children if they look at the thing and that is banking savings and checking information. They've got all this information. He can't fill this out anyways. The lights that she's going to take the camera to the hunter in the garden today, is that okay?

That's what we're doing. Do you want me to stay on with you? That's okay. Ian's going to be here, the housekeeper. Sue said, Sue told us that the Huntington Gardens were beautiful, well-wet-seen. Today's June 25th, and it's really, really hot.

It's over a hundred degrees or something in the house. Sometimes lying in bed here, all nice and cool. I'll show you, see, even as his pants are done here, but it can be cool. I haven't done any video recording for the last couple of days, because I felt really bad. I gave some food that didn't settle well, and it made him throw up all night. It made him a little sicker and a little weaker, and I was just ashamed I had done that. I was afraid to turn out of the camera, because everybody would see that he was weaker again. Well, I didn't blow up so much. This is Tom's right eyelid.

It has a K-S lesion on it. You can see that on the upper rim, it's very dark, and that hurts him a great deal. See, I can pull the eye open, and you can see down his eye inside. But the top lid up here, he says it hurts him now, but his other eye over here. See, that eye's fine. That eye you can see in the camera, with. Okay, tell the camera how you feel. He says he feels pretty bad. I don't feel the chipper. He doesn't feel the chipper. I don't feel good. He doesn't feel good.

Oh, this is the first of July, and Tom is just died. My little will be died, and I say to him, I say to him, you are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy, which guys are great. You'll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away. And they're beautiful. He's so beautiful. It'll be you, Tommy. All of us, all of your friends will finish the take for you, okay? We promise.

We promise. Bye. Bye, Tom. Any rings, any jewelry, anything? No, I think he lost that ring. I get his hands cracked, but he fell off. On him here? No. No, no. I need to get law information. There you go. I'm going to cover you up again, Tom. All right. There you go. I'll see you next time. Well, you know his name, and his birthday thing. I know that's new stuff. I sure don't want this place, you. Throw it down. What is Tom's birthday to you? November 29, 1946. November 29, 1946. No, that didn't. I do.

What state was he born in? He must choose it. He happened also a security number, I'll hand it out. I can get it later. I don't know when you get it later. So we're going to use you then as the next account. It's Mark. Right. Am I okay? M-A-S-S-I. This is same address, right? Whoa! Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I can get it in the shop. You know I have to. Yeah. The design of the one man cards. I'm going to wash my hands. I got this book in the mail today.

It's called How to Survive the Lost of a Love. It came from my counselor at APLA. I've been laughing a lot at the book today. I'm in the anger phase. This book tells you all about the different phases you go through. On the left hand column, they have just played old practice of information. On the other page, the opposing page, they have little poetry, little pieces of poems to tell you what they're about. There's titles like What Lost Feels Like, as if I don't know. Then they go through the stages of recovery. There's the first is shock and denial. One of the little poems I liked very much here was I know it was time for us to part.

But today, I know I had much pain to go through. But tonight, which was kind of true, it's kind of like I didn't. I understood all this was going to happen, but it always happened so fast. They also have charts here on the healing process. This is not how we recover. This one here, which they call like a lightning boat with dramatic leaps and depressing backslides. This is how we truly recover. You can expect to be in shock for a while. This emotional numbness may be frightening. You may struggle both to believe and to disbelieve that this could have happened to you. I like that one. Because you do. You struggle to believe it. Like I can't believe it happened. And then once you do believe that it happened, you don't want to believe that it happened. It has happened. It is real. Recognize that a loss has taken place. You are strong enough. You will survive. But that's it. That's all now. This is my self-help book. We'll definitely get me through this depression. And how long? What day is this?

This is day two. Day two after Tom died. And I actually... There was a big dramatic change this morning. All the pain and tension in my gut and the feeling that I can't do anything that I'm trapped and I'm going to throw up in what not or implode. That's gone. I'm going to replace with, as I said, anger, which is much more comical and cynical to deal with. All, here you go. I'm leading.

You're all over the place, Tom. You're all over the place, Tom.

You're all over the place, Tom. You're all over the place, Tom. You're all over the place, Tom. We should know that from the very beginning, God gave all of His creation freedom.

God gave freedom for viruses to exist and one of those viruses causes AIDS. It doesn't mean that God sends AIDS or any other sickness. Bad things do happen to the people. Jesus loves people with AIDS. Jesus loves any sick person. Jesus loves well people. Jesus loves gay people. Jesus loves straight people. Let us never forget that on that cross, Jesus shed His precious blood for all humanity. He didn't have a list of who was worthy and who was not. That salvation was a gift given to all humanity and for all time.

These two characters really shaped my life a lot. They brought me in. They shared life with me very patiently. They showed me New York. They showed me their relationship. They showed me art and the price of being grown-ups. And now they have shown me even more about illness and loss, giving up enduring and about the boundaries of love. And then my thoughts turned to other friends I had lost. How many was it now? It seemed I should be keeping count these things. My thoughts then flashed back to the years of the 60s. In the time when we sat before the television set and were given body counts from Vietnam, 250 enemy dead, 35 Americans dead. It seemed that we as a society want to assign importance to a situation by keeping score. The 35 American dead were less important somehow because the score was 250 to 35 in our favor.

And so now the count marches on in this battle. But we are faced with a dilemma in our war with AIDS. There are no enemy dead to count this time. We are faced with the prospect of counting only the dead among our loved ones. My brother had a dream and he had the guts to do it to be different to follow his dream. My brother Tom looked at the legacy and he believed the rest of his unfulfilled dream. It's over lake life and the view from here. When I last saw Tom, Mark and I spoke of destiny. Perhaps it was Tom's destiny to die in order to create the full impact of silver lake life. Well, before silver lake life could have any impact, it had to be completed. When Tom died, I was in France.

But five months later, I went back to California to film an ending and to visit Mark. We talked about everything that had happened since the last time I saw them. What about Tom's parents? What happened between you and his family when he died? Family. You must talk about family. Well, there was a big issue with Tom anyways. Way back when he first got sick with the CryptoCock as meningitis. Well, whether his family was going to come out here to see him. And they didn't know if he would do any good. And you know, should they come up now? Should they come out later? All these kind of things. And then when he got really sick this last time, there was a question about who should come out again. You know, was it time? One of the things which I haven't even mentioned in any of the tapes of art is Charlie's wonderful line of, well, would it do any good if he came out? And I kept trying to tell Charlie that good didn't make any differences.

Do you want to see your son one last time before he dies? You know, but anyway, so when Tom died and we're all crying, Charlie comes running into the room. And the first thing he tries to do is get Mary to leave the room. It's all over now. Come on. Come on out here. Come on out here. You know, don't do this to yourself. And I finally had to yell at him and say, you know, leave her alone. Let her stay. This is the last she's going to be with her son. But that whole experience between Mary and I and Tom dying and taking care of him did change her opinion of me even more. I've been adopted, isn't it? It's pretty much a son to her because we both went through something together. The only she and I went through, nobody else did this but she and I. So this experience has really brought us together and made us really close. Seems like there's more than a little bit of honor in this situation. Oh, yes, there. In fact, the time had to die for her to see how much I really did love him.

What about your father? He never got along very well. But when Tom died, I sent him a letter and told him about it. I was surprised. He wrote me a letter back. And this is it. This is the only letter I have ever gotten from my father. Hi, Mark. I have never written you but I am now. I know you have a problem, but take it one day at a time. I had to make the best of it. I had the two of you to take care of. I did tell both of you if you were gay, just don't tell the world. Heck, I told you of gays after me and you said I might like it. Well, I had a gay come to my apartment. Wow. Well, anyway, keep up the faith. It will all work out of your dad. It was a very weird letter. This is surreal letter. That I think that letter does recognize, in that letter my father does recognize that Tom and I were a couple of family.

Because he talks about it in terms of him losing his wife, my mother. How long did you and Tom live together? Almost 22 years. He'll be 22 years, January 11th. Tell me about life now. Life now was very confusing. I mean, it's even hard to organize thoughts on my head to talk about it. Because I'm in horrendous physical pain all the time because of my rectal problems. I'm on lots of painkillers which make me weird. I have my own AIDS, my own falling T cell count. I'm just really beat.

By the easiest way to put it, I'm really, really beat. Along with the gas, it still has that inability to digest food. So I'm still the only eating two meals a day at the most. And it also means I haven't been less, a few days, less couple of days. I haven't been able to take all my medicines at night. That's just not digest. Let me let you still get a letter. The same thing, the center of the lesions are all blanched out. They're still yellow around the edges too. It's only very yellow around the edges. More so I wouldn't say the last week. You think they're yellow or you think they're yellow? Yeah, see this is a lot yellow. And these are more blanched out than they used to be. But when we still have that at the bottom, if the newer ones are still drilling, that's still pretty good. I've figured it out. I've figured it out.

I've figured that dying is just the end. And then it's a big, black, boring, horrible void afterwards. Not that I want to believe that. But some part of me just has never believed that there was anything else. Until Tom came back, all of a sudden, zoomed from Tom always comes from up here somewhere. Zoomed down. He was standing behind the chair and kind of leaning into me and with his head resting on my shoulder, with his head up against the side of my head. And he just stayed there for the longest time. And it really is the strange energy that comes from up high and it comes zipping around. And it's not really attached to the world we live in.

A one conversation I had with him. I was telling him that it was really nice to have him around because it was really hard to live day-to-day without him. But then I said, well, but if you've got a, you know, if it's your time to go, if you've got to go dissipate into the universe and become one with it all, don't hang around here for me. I said, I'll survive. And I get this very clear message. It said, you idiot, I've got nothing else to do now. You know, so he doesn't have anything else to do. He's free. He can do what he wants to do. So he's coming visit me probably about three or four times now. Why do you think he's coming? It's only come three or four times. But let's me just hang around all the time. I mean, I can only, I mean, you know, he's never given any indication I can only guess. So I think it would probably be bad for me. I couldn't get out of my life, which is hard enough to get along with anyways. And he's gone.

I mean, he's dead. So I think he is somewhere else. It's like, you know, I can't go there. He can't come here that often. I don't know. But I think mostly it's because he's dead. And he knows he is. And he's not like stuck here. And I dated him well today. And I dated him well today. And I kissed him on Tuesday.

And I dated him on Friday. And I dated him well today. And I dated him well today. And I dated him well today. Mr. Bones. Yes, Mr. Lacheter. Could you tell me what Gertrude Stein's last words from Alice B. Topless were? Alice turned to Gertrude on her deathbed. And then Gertrude. What's the answer? And what did Gertrude reply? It's a question. I don't need you anymore.

I let my pillow every night. But now I saw the light. Good bye, good bye, sadness. I don't need you anymore. Good bye, good bye, sadness. I can't take it anymore. Good bye, sadness, good bye, good bye. I don't need you anymore. But if they feel every day.

But now I'm playing my way. Good bye, good bye, sadness. I don't need you anymore. Good bye, good bye, sadness. I can't take it anymore. Good bye, good bye, sadness. I can't take it anymore.

Good bye, good bye, sadness.