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With dawn I decided to bypass San Diego and see if I could track down Susan Resnik who had moved to Delmar, California with her husband and had been a major contributor to the project, both in information and food. Our entire relationship had been over the phone and fax with occasional e-mail. Of course, her dissertation on the social history of hemophilia had been a major breakthrough in my information gathering about hemophilia. Because of contact with her and access to her interview with Doctor Brinkhaus that final hit of post-production money enabled the film to be finished. The long film became nothing but a pipe dream, no longer a quest, unless the positive receptivity for further funding happened at the meeting. That seemed like a very silly pipe-dream at the time, looking at the amount of money that would be needed to film a national social history on hemophilia and the sparseness of the hemophilia community. I called Susan Resnik from a corner payphone near an active coffee shop and sidewalk cafe. She fetched me and fed me at a patio bagel shop which was owned by a couple of lawyers, lawyers in love. After breakfast, I followed Susan back to her condo where I met her husband, a Jewish accountant, spoke to him briefly and was given access to a real shower and a place to change into fresh clothes. Susan planned to attend the meeting. I really wanted her to see the film on the big screen. That film and video difference was hard to impress upon people who had only seen the VHS video copy. Dominique told me to keep the bar of soap I used for my shower. The condition I was in after my 2900 mile-three day journey, this didn’t surprise me. She probably burned the towels after I left. It was probably the cigars. After all, she was a Doctor of Public Health. I’m surprised I wasn’t quarantined on the spot. I made my way to the resort on the fringe of San Diego where the Meeting was being held and staked out the territory. I didn’t have a ticket to get in so no one gave me a name tag or anything. I managed to pick up a program and the film wasn’t on the agenda. But none of that surprised me because The National Hemophilia Foundation was funded by the Pharmaceutical industry, the same industry that poisoned so many hemophiliacs with HIV and didn’t really care to say much more than it wasn’t their fault. Nah, there was no chance for a larger independent project. I was just hoping to get gas money back home at that point. The fact that I had no place to crash indoors didn’t seem that big of a deal since the fold down back seats of the Cavalier allowed me to sleep partially in the trunk and had been adequate to a point. There was no running water and that hygiene thing is important.

The resort was spacious and spread out with sporadic shuttles and you could spot the hemophiliacs painfully dragging their legs behind them. Brent was there on the ticket of the company that had poisoned him–A company which had told me that their priority in funding was a web site and they couldn’t see putting any money into a film about hemophilia. Their USA headquarters was in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. They had recently changed their name from Armour to Centeon for their USA operations. Everyone who is paid by them swears that they’re the good guys of the industry. Brent and I were soon joined by his colleague, Bollero, a twenty-something HIV positive hemophiliac who was on Brent’s Board of Directors for his hemophilia organization CHAPS. He also claimed to believe that HIV didn’t cause AIDS. Bolero was an independent graphic artist and he wasn’t funded by the pharmaceutical industry–Go figure. I didn’t know if it was his wishful thinking or just his close friendship with Brent. Brent continued to insist that HIV didn’t cause the disease, claiming that more discussion was needed, even after over four thousand members of the blood community had died of AIDS since the early 80s.

I was there. I was back in the blood, still alienated from a community that felt that it had been betrayed by the industry that served it. Why should they trust anyone when our society has evolved to the profit motive being financed by big business, while public figures claim volunteerism is the path while being financed by big business that thrives on death–Life feeds on death feeds on life and so on.

The Boss appeared at the bar where he grabbed some late lunch and I passed him an invitation to view the film. He hadn’t gotten one previously and he was an exhibitor, so I wondered what had happened to the invitations I Fed Exed the Prince. As far as anyone was concerned, this was to be an undocumented non-event viewed by several hundred people who just might happen to show up. 2000 people from 14 different countries were to attend the Meeting. Several hundred showed up for the opening session. I sat with the North Carolina delegation: Dale, the Roman, Richard Atwood and the frizzy haired blonde. The Executive Director gave a rah-rah speech about cooperation between the community and industry. The Executive Director had neither hemophilia nor AIDS. The community was divided within itself with more factions than members, some belonging to multiple factions. The film was introduced and it was shown. The reaction was great in my eyes though the hall was only half full. . The president of the World Hemophilia Federation was the next speaker. He spoke glowingly of the film and how valuable a tool it was in bringing the message to the public. He was from Dublin, Ireland. A reception followed at the exhibition hall and the positive response continued. I was looking for gas money. I spoke to the president of World and he mentioned the possibility of worldwide distribution to treatment centers. He was an HIV positive hemophiliac. I found Agnes Ofgod at her booth and hugged her for ten minutes and she introduced me to Woman, a glowing red head with a smile that melted my heart. I saw Susan Resnik and Laureen Kelley the well funded Dish.

“Do you Tango?” I asked Laureen.

“A little,” she said. And we made a date for a dance at the Ball on Saturday night.

The responses continued along a positive line with the only hitch being that most of the exhibitors, the ones from where additional funding would come, didn’t see it. They didn’t know about it. It had been an undocumented non-event. It never really happened. They gave it no value–With the exception of Vickie Strange from Caremark a national homecare company who I had been speaking to for a year about funding. She said that she had sent a check for two thousand dollars to Hemophilia of North Carolina for the film. She said that there were a few sections of the film that were not in sync. The lips moved and the voice followed. I didn’t know how that could be with the professionals I had working in post-production. This was the first time I had viewed the new prints and I was in the back of the room. I fucked up. I thanked her for the money but still had to figure out a way to get gas money for the ride home. It was still a good thing. So a celebration was in order.

The White Cavalier proved to be a trusty steed though 25 miles per gallon seemed a little daunting for a cross-country round trip. The six hundred buck contribution from the lawyer had already been partially dug into with invitations the Prince had told me to have printed up for the exhibitors at the National Meeting and of course a new business card. “A Drop of Blood” was to be educational and funding was needed for distribution. I carried extra prints of the film just in case anything went wrong. It was better to be prepared than to travel 3,000 miles and end up with no show. My previous year’s experience in dealing with the suits in Philadelphia had taught me that they only put money where they knew they would benefit from their captive customers. What better public relations for a company could there be than delivering an empathetic message to the public about a community that no one cared about unless, of course, you didn’t want the public to know anything about the community that generated billions of dollars and could be treated as sub-human guinea pigs. The road, however, was my friend, and the journey was my passion with the destination of San Diego being only a pit stop in the journey.

After leaving Fish to the “Guiding Light” I continued westward with a stop in Ashville, North Carolina, a town I had wanted to visit for the past 20 years. I had heard that it was one of those hip, artistic communities from a somewhat hip and sexually talented woman who wanted to appear artistic by preparing gazpacho and eating tofu between erotic encounters. I hadn’t seen or heard from her for ten years but even a faded memory of something good can channel a reaction if you listen to it. Anyway, I stopped off at a coffee shop called Vincent’s Ear where the children of old hippies hung out and coffee was fifty cents, before venturing back to the car to the sound of a French Horn which permeated the air in that blissful Monday twilight. The changing leaves of the Blue Ridge Mountains faded quickly into the cover of darkness as the sun outran me westward.

On the approach to Nashville, Tennessee I stopped off and attempted to get through to Agnes Ofgod. She had been a key contributor to the film and I had never met her in person though I had seen her on a video which had been produced by a Nashville TV station about hemophilia and AIDS. She spoke passionately of how her hemophiliac husband had been unknowingly infected by the system and died, leaving her to fend for herself and two sons. She, however, managed to avoid the deadly bullet and start a homecare company where she provided blood clotting factor to the community in the name of the Lord. Agnes Ofgod was a beautiful woman and she had told me how, since her husband’s death, several key members of the hemophilia community had lied to her to try to get her in the sack. Boys will be boys. I’m sure even though they may have been HIV positive that they also had good teeth. They were ahead of me in that respect. I wasn’t about to put a condom over my head. I knew she had planned to attend the National meeting, but since it was to begin on Thursday I thought that there may be the possibility of catching her before her flight out. I was able to access her answering machine which gave me little hope of catching up with the person. I pulled into a rest area and crusted over for a nap before continuing into Nashville. The last time I had been through Nashville was ten years previous on a cross country trip with my dead friend, Glasseye, in a drive-away Buick Regal. He caught a plane home from LA and I slept in City Hall before spending ten days in homeless shelters for Super Bowl Week while attempting to gain access to Lindsay Wagner who supposedly had one of my screenplays. It was also the first time I had sold plasma, though I was unaware of what it would be used for at the time. In 1987 I didn’t know what hemophilia was. Though thoughts of my dead brother gave me a smile I couldn’t help but wonder if the plasma center in downtown LA was still in operation. It had been my brother’s first cross-country trip and he farted the entire journey, I’m sure filling the Grand Canyon with methane gas. The streets of Nashville were deserted so I passed by the Grand OLE Opry House that I had visited with my brother, continuing without stopping and wheeling and watching for activity somewhere. I spotted bright lights and neon down a side street, and one person walking. I circled the block and parked a block’s walk from the lights. Printer’s Alley was brighter than its activity that Tuesday morning. The Monday night hard-core revelers were few, but that’s the fascinating thing about committed night-lifers, the real characters are more visible without the weekend warriors blowing off steam in some self-indulgent exercise in posturing.

There were several clubs still in operation with a few offering dancing girls and a cover charge. It was around 2:00 a.m. I found Skull’s Rainbow at the end of the alley and there was no cover and a live country singer on stage with a dozen or so patrons at tables and the bar in the back. An old man sat in shadows of piled high papers and fliers. He wore a skull cap and was gray and motionless and at peace on his barstool throne while people passed money to the attractive blonde behind the bar in exchange for alcohol. I had a Tanqueray and club soda with fresh squeezed lime for a reasonable price as the singer charmed the audience with his finger pickin’ style and smooth as silk voice with a snare drummer and bass back-up. I really felt welcomed as a stranger especially since there was no cover charge. A good tourist bar will welcome you and your money in exchange for a little mutual respect any day of the week. Signed pictures of famous people plastered the walls, with the old gray man in many of the pictures. I shook hands with the owner while the singer invited friends from the audience on stage. Tim McGraw and a couple of Gatlin Brothers or someone pretending to be them performed. “I Like it, I Love it, I want some more of it.” And I was on the road again, enjoying a cocktail in a little club in Nashville. The other singer got back on stage and thanked the guest performers before singing one last song for the night. I did last call and shook the hand of Money when he got offstage, Eddie Money that is. I took it as an omen and knew that I would find enough money to pay for the gas to get home and maybe the car. Triangle was holding a blank check for the car rental. The car was costing a hundred-thirty a week with unlimited mileage. The lights went up and I made my way back to the Cavalier, feeling mellow from the libation and ambiance.

I continued on the road toward Memphis with the sparse traffic of the nocturnal interstate creating the incentive to travel, with the road belonging to me and a few trucks. I stopped at another rest stop before dawn and Memphis and once again crusted over for a nap on the reclined pan in the bosom of the auto. I was in Elvis Country.

A cowboy bath of cold water brought the real Tuesday morning alive with a slight October chill in the air. I copped a few Memphis brochures, including Graceland and drove into Memphis where I went right to Beale Street where my brother and I had shared catfish and beer. Everything was quiet as the morning warmed, so I found bacon and eggs at a little cafe a few blocks away downtown before heading westward across the Mississippi River into Arkansas. The water I had sold for nine years was out of Hot Springs so I headed South at Little Rock to see what had been the source of my over-priced drudgery for nine years in my quest for self-examination of who I really was. It was a liquids thing, though blood is thicker than water, it was still a fluid life giving force not much different than any libation including alcohol which provided a different access to life’s gifts if kept in control. It was that flow that I was attempting to grab hold of again, that force of life that generates activity and purpose to move onward, not stagnating, grasping meaning where perhaps there was none, like Agnes Ofgod performing God’s will by selling blood products to the hemophilia community and putting her profits back into the community in the name of the Lord. To me her cause was honorably and nobly human. My differences with Agnes had been in our discussions of God, but she contributed to the project anyway.

I took the cutoff to Hot Springs and drove through miles of forested land and variable passing lanes. Then the city suddenly happened with only a light urban sprawl. I ventured downtown where a documentary film festival was in progress so I circled the block, parked and inquired about the possibility of a screening for “A Drop of Blood”. It didn’t seem to be well attended, but it was in the afternoon. I took the literature to enter the film into the following year’s festival, realizing the possibility of any audience for an independent documentary is some hope in any nobly human endeavor. Chanter Leahy had always reinforced the project with her karmic, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo and silly renditions of the nobility of the project. Of course, hemophilia was the “Royal Disease.” Fifty cents at Vincent’s Ear will get you a cup of coffee–Vincent’s Ear, how noble a name. Many of the patrons there had safety pins piercing various parts of their bodies. How noble is the human spirit while enduring human sorrow. I wondered if you walked in off the street with only one ear would they still charge you for the coffee. All life is sorrowful say the Buddhist of some sect or another, but the Bodhisattva participates joyfully in the sorrows of the world. Joseph Campbell and Christine Chanter Leahy expressed participating joyfully in the sorrows of the world—Campbell in his books and Chanter in her chanting. I was directed to the Chamber of Commerce where I stood in line at a fountain and filled a couple of bottles of Naturally Hot Spring water from Hot Springs Arkansas when it was my turn. I washed away my anger at Mister J and the Kid who was crushed while passing a municipal water truck—how much easier things would have been in Blood if they had simply kept up their part of the bargain in our transaction of Faith and Water. The water was warm enough to make tea. I drove partially through Hot Springs National Park before turning south towards Oklahoma and Texas before the sun went down. I had hitchhiked across 10 in Texas before but I didn’t want to head that far south, taking a lonely line across the top of the State on a map that invigorated the night with its big sky and very little traffic on cool 98 where the towns were few and far between and pull offs along the narrow road were a valuable commodity. But I wanted to get through Texas before the sun came up. I stopped for a short nap as the waxing moon made its way across the sky and continued onward in darkness when the moon went down, stopping for a hot cinnamon roll and coffee from a pretty Seniorita in Brownfield. It was the beginning of Wednesday morning still before dawn and a crack in the sky in the mirror and exhaustion forced me to pull into a rest stop with adobe walls and picnic tables. I drove past a small pickup to the other side of the lot with out-buildings between us, pointed the car eastward towards the rising sun and quickly found deep sleep on the reclined plain in the bosom of the cavalier.

When I awoke with the sun warming the air there was movement near the truck. The thirty-something uniformed man welcomed me to Loco Hills, New Mexico.

“I retired from oil”, he said. “Now I meet archeologists and tourists. The diggers come in to bathe in the washroom.”

It sounded good to me. I took a full stand-up bath and changed clothes, leaving the guard with a tai-chi tape and good wishes in his little oasis in the desert. The Cavalier made it to Artesia with the needle on E but only took in 13.5 gallons after 380 miles, so I still had a gallon and a half left according to the owner’s manual. The road began to wind and climb following a flowing mountain stream where ranches were side by side and the countryside became another part of New Mexico that charmed me. Mayhill suddenly appeared out of nowhere, just a little village of cafes on a mountain road. I chose the Firehouse Cafe for breakfast with its few tables and fresh coffee and a disabled man and his wife cooking up food and local gossip. A woman in tight jeans, a cowboy hat and dirty boots spoke of hunting parties. Fire hats hung on the walls along with a few newspaper articles proclaiming the ambiance and burgers of the Firehouse Cafe. I couldn’t figure out why they were there because I had driven through miles and miles of wilderness and Mayhill seemed to be a tourist village, other than the Firehouse which was more like someone’s kitchen with a few extra tables. I followed the winding mountain road then saw the ski lifts and Cloudcroft, a resort I had never heard of before, passing through as the landscape became more dramatic, suddenly opening to the valley with large stretches of white sand in the distance, at the foot of the mountains on the other side. I used the tourist information center in Alamogordo for relief, stopped by an old fort and watched a flying wing pass over the missile sight target area as I passed over the next mountain.–America the beautiful. Las Cruces came quickly with urban sprawl and hotels at its juncture to the interstate, so I stopped for gas, then took the 75 mile an hour speed limit as a minimum, finding easily other vehicles to play tag with, as I removed my shirt and took in the warm desert sun through the open window. I made my daylight goal of Tucson easily before stopping in a Mexican restaurant for Chile Releno and iced tea. When I stopped and asked a woman where I could find reasonably priced cigars she appeared frightened, so I figured I better move on quickly, remembering that people in cities everywhere generally live in fear and paranoia, especially the women folk. It must have been my teeth when I smiled at her. I found cigars on my own and drove off quickly into the sunset, choosing not to drive up to Phoenix, headed for San Diego where the screening was to be at the Opening Session of the National Hemophilia Foundation Annual Meeting at 6:00 p.m. the following night. I grabbed a nap at a mountain top rest stop and once again found peace after waking, for the nocturnal drive into California where I stopped for fuel in El Centro before crossing the final mountain range to the coast. It was early Thursday morning. I had left Wilmington, North Carolina Monday at Noon and enjoyed the ride. As the sky grew gray behind me I pulled off for that nap between night and day where exhaustion is a viable part of transition between night and day, night and day, night and day, you are the one, Baby.