ABOUT AN HOUR’S DRIVE north of Denver on the South Platte River, Greeley has been an important agricultural center since the middle of the 19th century, when it was named after the same Eastern newspaper editor who advised—Go west, young man. Depending on who’s talking, Greeley is either a small city or a large town. Laid out along City Beautiful lines, it boasts broad tree-lined streets, a large city park, and the neoclassical porticoes of the University of Northern Colorado. Downtown has pretty well been superseded by the commercial strip, which has its due complement of fast-food and auto franchises.
Local crops have long been sugar beets and grains but, as everywhere, the small family farms are dying or dead. Until not too long ago, this part of Colorado from the air looked like a patchwork quilt or straw matting or crude parquet wormy with gullies and creeks. In winter, the fallow fields lay below like white table napkins, creased, unfolded. There was something human-scaled and even feudal about the landscape. But on high-tech farms today, the fields are watered and fed by rotating pipes on wheels, so in some places it looks as if a prodigious stack of phonograph records has been strewn across the plains.
To an outsider driving along Highway 85 from Denver, this country can seem relentlessly bleak. Once the land yielded up sod houses. Now it’s dotted with silos, broken-down farmhouses, oil pumpers, cottonwoods lifting limbs like arthritic fingers to the sky. Ruled off by straight-edge roads, bisected by the interstate—like a zipper or an appendix scar—the landscape looks hard, flat, and unforgiving.
To the west, the earth swells, skews, bucks, and collapses against the feet of the Rockies. Seen from Greeley and the little town of Kersey nearby, where Mike grew up, the mountains don’t seem quite part of the natural order of things. There’s something abrupt and arbitrary about their appearance on the horizon. Even on days flooded with brilliant sunshine, clouds pile up along the shoulders of the mountains, white clouds, rolling in across the continental divide, unreal looking, like surf in slow motion.
In spite of his initial optimism, a little over a week after he arrived in Greeley, Mike had to be admitted to the hospital he was born in. His physician was William Jennings, a hematologist-oncologist at Weld County Hospital who also served as medical director of the hospice attached to the Northern Colorado Medical Center. By the summer of 1986, Dr. Jennings had treated fewer than four AIDS patients in a semirural practice that could hardly have seemed more remote from San Francisco and Ward 86—or even from Denver and Denver General Hospital.
Most of the 245 AIDS cases tabulated in Colorado thus far—the year before, 1985, the number had stood at about half that—had been counted in Denver. For most of its history, Denver maintained its identity as a raunchy, devil-may-care cow town. Now it was an enormous, sprawling city of some 1.5 million, many of them new residents drawn by the mild climate and generally high standard of living. Gay men were hardly oblivious to the allure of Denver and the population included as many as 90,000 of them.
Denver’s cosmopolitanism notwithstanding, Colorado is a politically conservative state. Quarantine of people with AIDS was seriously considered there and, by law, the names of HIV-positive individuals are on file with the health department. The fact that rates of HIV infection continued to be disproportionately low in the state was not, however, entirely due to the conservative social climate. Rather, it was due to the efforts of a few individuals who had heard the alarm bell in the early 1980s, set up the Colorado AIDS Project, and hastened to educate the state’s gay men that waves of infection spreading across the country threatened to engulf them.
When he was admitted to the hospital on August 9, Mike was suffering from fever, confusion, and diarrhea. In his initial examination eight days before, Dr. Jennings had seen in Mike a man in declining health. This impression was confirmed by the discharge report from Garden Sullivan Hospital—which amounted to a concise chronicle of AIDS-related debilitation. When he’d first examined Mike, Dr. Jennings noted continuing evidence of crypto-plasmosis leading to sepsis and pulmonary involvement.
Mike was destined to be one of the 14,345 AIDS-related deaths reported in the U.S. by the end of September. Although the actual cause of his death would remain a mystery—his family refused to permit an autopsy—it clearly involved progressive respiratory failure presaged, of course, by the pneumocystis pneumonia and cryptococcus he’d been treated for in San Francisco. Finally, something prevented the transfer of oxygen from the air in Mike’s lungs to his blood. His pulmonary system would continue to deteriorate through another course of treatment for pneumocystis and beyond.
In his initial examination, Dr. Jennings had found continuing evidence of all the complaints Mike had reported in San Francisco—painful enlarged lymph nodes, chronic rectal venereal warts, chronic rectal herpes, thrush, and anemia. Mike complained of worsening pain in his legs and his Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions had proliferated—he now had four to five purplish, bruiselike cancers on his hard palate, two to five on his trunk, two to three on his right flank, and one on his left forearm.
Dr. Jennings also noticed a variable degree of alertness in Mike, and this, perhaps more than any of Mike’s other symptoms, convinced the doctor that Mike belonged in the hospital. Dr. Jennings ordered a spinal tap, thinking Mike might have an infection of the central nervous system, but nothing was found.
Perhaps surprisingly, considering all Mike was enduring, he continued to exhibit no symptoms of manic-depressive disease. All the same, Dr. Jennings was confronted with a different patient from the one who presented himself at Ward 86 in May. Lauren Poole met a waiflike survivor with all his wits about him. Dr. Jennings met a sad and angry man who talked in a flat voice and exhibited no sense of humor. Mike didn’t strike the doctor—who routinely dealt with cancer patients—as a person who wanted to live.
The doctor said they just wanted to do some tests but Mrs. Rocha knew. They got things then they died. She knew now, they’d been fooling themselves. They’d heard what they wanted to hear in San Francisco. She’d felt so good when he started to put on some weight but the fact was, in every other way Mike had been going downhill since he got out of the hospital in San Francisco. He was sick on the plane.
Now she realized what was happening to Mike. She could see it in his eyes. There was a faraway look in his eyes now. His eyes were glassy. She’d seen the same look in her brother’s eyes before he died. She’d seen it in her father’s eyes when they put him in the nursing home.
When she pressed Dr. Jennings, he didn’t say much, just that he couldn’t predict how long Mike would live. “I don’t want to tell you that he’s going to last this long or that long, because that only complicates the situation.” She knew, sometimes they struggle on and on.
Dr. Jennings told her he thought Mike’s mental attitude was knocking him down. She agreed with this. But what good would it do to tell Mike his mental attitude was important, give him some kind of pep talk? If she could see death in her son’s eyes, he could read what was on her mind, too. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t lie to Mike. He’d laugh in her face.
Dr. Jennings said that after a point the idea was to keep Mike comfortable. Yes, that’s what they wanted done, she replied, no respirators or any machines if it came to that, if that time came.
He went in on a Saturday and they let him out on Tuesday. He announced he was going to California.
“I might want to go back to San Francisco.”
“What do you want to do that for?”
“This is going to be too much trouble for you, to deal with this.”
“We’ll deal with it together. Is there anything you want to talk about?”
“No.”
But she could see how troubled he was. He didn’t talk. He didn’t watch TV. He didn’t read. He just lay in bed looking at the ceiling. When she entered the room, he would close his eyes and pretend to be asleep.
He wouldn’t take a bath. She let a couple of days pass before she said, “Mike, you have to get up and take a shower.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
So a few more days went by and she told him, “Mike you have to get up and take a shower or let me help you take a bath.”
“Bug off,” he said. “I don’t care if I die dirty or not. Just leave me alone. Quit bugging me.”
She sat down on the end of his bed.
“Mike, do you really believe you have two years to live?”
“No, I’m not gonna live that long,” he said. “I don’t want to anyway. I knew a guy in the hospital in San Francisco, they told him one month, the next month he was gone. Once they diagnose your AIDS, you’re gonna die, Mom. I know that. You’re not gonna last long. I want to die, too. I’m tired of living this way. I don’t want to hassle with it anymore. But I’m afraid to die till I make things right with God. I fucked up my life. I would like a priest.”
So she called Our Lady of Peace and the priest said, “Father Urban lives right across the alley from you.” So Father Urban came and talked to Mike and gave him Holy Communion. Mike was very happy. Father Urban was very nice. He said he’d be back. But he never came back—she’d see him outside when she was hanging the wash out on the line and he wouldn’t look her in the eye. Then one day, Father Urban ran into Mrs. Rocha’s friend Shirley on the street and asked her if she would mind giving Mike Holy Communion. Shirley was taken aback. She asked Father Urban, Wasn’t it up to him to do that? Maybe Father Urban was afraid after all. Whatever. He never came again, and Mike said, “To hell with him.”
One day she saw Mike take papers out of his datebook and rip them into tiny pieces and throw them in the trash.
The pain and weakness in Mike’s legs got worse. Larry would come and take his brother out in the wheelchair, wheel him to the park. Mike was unsteady on his feet and often Mrs. Rocha’s husband would have to help him move from here to there. Yes, her husband was good to Mike. He took him to the flea market in the wheelchair. When she was out, he stayed with Mike and warmed up his food for him. Other times, Shirley, who had known Mike since he was little, since Kersey, sat with him.
The first week he was home, lots of relatives came to welcome Mike back. She had told them all he had AIDS and some of them were scared but came anyway. One of Mrs. Rocha’s sisters told her, “The gays are going to go to hell,” but her older brother said, “Things happen, who knows why?”
Now Mike’s sisters and brothers still came to see him and he would talk to them but if anyone else came he complained, “Mom, I wish these people wouldn’t come over. They freak me out. It’s like they’re coming to see some kind of side show.”
Anyway, the curious would come once to see for themselves a man with AIDS and then not come back. Friends who had known Mike from childhood wouldn’t touch him. They would stand at the foot of his bed and talk from a distance.
Mrs. Rocha’s friend Lucy came but couldn’t sit down. She would sit down then stand up.
“Lucy, what’s wrong with you, you’re so nervous.”
“Oh, I just hate to see people sick,” Lucy said.
“You want a Coke or some pop or something?”
“Yeah, sure—don’t put it in a glass,” Lucy added.
Some people never came. Mrs. Rocha’s brother’s wife never came. When Mrs. Rocha saw her in the Safeway, Tommy’s wife said, “I would come down but I don’t want to take this sickness to my family.”
(Tommy’s wife wept at Mike’s rosary and said how sorry she was. A week after Mike’s death, she appeared at Mrs. Rocha’s door early in the morning. As Mrs. Rocha looked on, her sister-in-law washed all the dirty dishes, stripped the beds and made them up fresh, dusted, vacuumed, scrubbed, cleaned, and tidied the apartment.)
Mrs. Rocha’s friend Irene never came. After her divorce, Mrs. Rocha lived with Irene for three months, they were so close. But in June, when they were having coffee and Mrs. Rocha told Irene she was bringing Mike home, Irene said, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that.”
“Why?”
“We’re all going to get AIDS then.”
“If you’d let me explain what AIDS is, maybe you’ll feel different about it,” Mrs. Rocha suggested.
“No—I don’t want to know.”
It had just been a few weeks, but Mike was now a complete invalid. He was gaunt. His eyes were deep in his face. He had an invalid’s slight tremor. He had an invalid’s problem with time. His memory was going, too. He didn’t always remember which pills he had taken when. He was on painkillers and Mrs. Rocha knew that if he wasn’t watched he would overdose. He hoarded his pills just as he’d always hoarded everything—little things when he was a kid, nothings that he kept to himself, money if he ever had any.
It became routine. Sometimes twice a week, hospice volunteers would bring bedding and pads and other supplies. The nurse would come and take his temperature, check his blood pressure, and treat his herpes—it was bleeding all the time. The men who brought the oxygen wouldn’t come at first but the boss made them come back.
One day Mike might get up and have diarrhea all day. He tried to keep himself clean. He would put the pads in trash bags. But some days he would mess the bed two or three times a day. There was a washer in the basement and Mrs. Rocha used it sometimes two or three times a day. When it got too hard to get the blood and shit out of the sheets, she would just throw them away. The hospice kept bringing new sheets.
Before her husband came home from work, at 5, Mrs. Rocha would have supper alone with Mike. Sometimes it would sit all right with him. Sometimes he would throw up right away, sometimes later. One night she went into his room. His breathing was ragged. It frightened her. She lifted him up and he threw up all over her, head to toe. She cleaned herself off. She cleaned him up. She changed the bedding. She cleaned up the rug. When she bathed him, his hair came out in her fingers.
He was restless at night. He slept during the day. He would turn on the TV then fall asleep. He would stay up all night. Her bed was on the other side of the wall from his. She would hear him moving around.
When she got up to check on him, he would say, “Mom, go to bed.”
One night she sat on the edge of his bed and talked to him.
“What’s bothering you, Mike?”
“Nothing. I just can’t sleep.”
“No, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to go to sleep. I’m afraid I’m going to die.”
“But you could die during the day, too.”
“But you’re here then,” he said. “I worry about death a lot. It frightens me, to die.”
What could she say?
“It frightens me, too. We’re both scared of it.”
She’d go outside to hang up the wash and she’d only be gone five, ten minutes. He’d say, “Gee, you were gone so long.” When she had to go out and clean house in the mornings because they needed the money, Mike would call her wherever she was. “Aren’t you done yet?” he would ask.
One day she saw him tear up a letter he had written to Terry and Gerry, the lovers. He tore it up into little pieces.
He was jaundiced. His feet were swollen. His speech was slurred now. His mind was not right. He was having trouble thinking.