GRATEFUL DEAD
I called a film-maker friend, Steve Yeager, in Baltimore who agreed to act as director of photography. Fabio arranged for a meeting with an independent film-maker in Charlotte, and I made an appointment to get together an itemized budget. We continued to send out proposals within the hemophilia industry and finally began to go the foundation route. Brent was beginning to get cold feet about the project when no new money was coming in and money began to go out for expenses. His weekends became extended and his interest wavered. I still didn’t have any direct contact with anyone in the community besides the creative leads I had established by luck and persistence.
Then we got a call from Wayne Ward, who worked for one of our initial contributors HRA, Hemophilia Resources of America, a home-care company out of New Jersey with a strong customer base in North Carolina. We set up a lunch meeting. My older brother died of lung cancer that had traveled to his brain the morning before the lunch meeting—the same day that Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead died. I went to the meeting and acquired three names and numbers of people in the North Carolina hemophilia community that Wayne felt might be interested in participating in the film. He also told me about an upcoming gathering of people in the blood community in the western part of the state. I left Brent and Wayne with the check and immediately drove up to Baltimore to view my brother’s closed casket, attend the funeral, drink single malt scotch at the wake, and participate in the passage of life in a gathering of the living. I also visited the fascist water man who owed me money, so I could continue to focus exclusively on the blood community.
Brent was called out of town by the pharmaceutical company he worked for, to help with a market study on packaging in three different cities. That was his bread and butter. While he was away, I contacted the three people on Wayne’s list. They were all interested and excited by the prospect of telling the blood story. Argo was picked up by the dog catcher on one of his runs around the lake while I was at the office. The dogcatcher left a note on my door. I hadn’t changed the tag Rooster had given him. I showed the note to Cleo the next day. I told her there was no way to keep him fenced in, that I had done all that I could do.
“They will kill him,” she said.
“He won’t stay in the yard.”
“Chain him up,” she said.
I found this a little bit much. I had built the fence up and cooked his meals, and I wasn’t even supposed to have pets.
“Enough,” I said.
When Brent returned from his trip for the pharmaceutical company that had infected him with HIV back in the early eighties—he said he could no longer participate in the film project. I wondered if Cleo had anything to do with getting me thrown out of her building or if Brent’s funding by Armour Pharmaceuticals was put into jeopardy because of his connection with the proposed film. I had to move the office into my house. I had phone lines added and I called Muffy. I needed an assistant. I was communicating with people in the blood community, a community in hiding. I had finally retreated whole-heartedly to the cave. I dug in and waited for a further onslaught from Cleo. But I was free from the dog. I took down the extended fence barricades and felt released from a great weight, and I still had my balls. I don’t know what happened to Argo, my focus was people. Well…