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It was back to B’More, Hon. I escaped Wilmington, North Carolina in the dead of night leaving a clean house with a big tree down in the back yard and a stack of unpaid bills that could choke a mule. I gave Chanter and her boyfriend most of my books and everything I knew I wouldn’t have a place for at my new destination. I was EMPTY, living right there in the seat of my old, uninsured water truck, Iris, expired tags and all. I did still have a bicycle. The 60 dollars from Kay Eager came in handy since most of the two thousand dollars from Baxter-Hyland Pharmaceuticals went towards the final VHS copies, mailings and film festival entries. We had gotten one invitation from Yamagata, Japan for the film, but there was no money to do anything about it. I arrived three weeks before Christmas at the home of a still living brother, Yabba Duda, and I parked the truck off the street in back of his small combination farm/junkyard. I had been totally out of the drug culture for a dozen years until trying to get money from the pharmaceutical companies that got away with killing a lot of people. I didn’t know anyone in Baltimore with hemophilia. I was officially out of the BLOOD and flat broke. Everything was normal. I crashed on the couch.

Jackal had rotten teeth and lived in a back room of the house. Jackal was an ex-con with a big heart and was Yabba’s right arm since Yabba had such horrible health. Yabba had a stroke a couple of years earlier and something called Reiter’s Syndrome which he said had caused him to have a heart valve replaced several years earlier; he wanted me to make a movie about his Reiter’s Syndrome. “What’s with this homophelia?” he asked. “It’s hemophilia, Yabba. You really should read once in awhile.”

“I do stuff—I don’t need to read,” Yabba told me on my arrival. “Look at you. You read books and you’re on my couch. I haven’t read a book since high school. I own a bar.”

Despite his ill health and constant pain and handfuls of medication and beer every day, he managed to function as a father to kids that weren’t his blood and operate a redneck bar. The problem was that his wife was still around. Yabba and Courtney had a son in the marriage that was actually Yabba’s best friend Jackal’s son though it was not something discussed openly since Yabba had this thing about collecting things and ownership for the prestige of ownership–the obvious didn’t seem to bother him outwardly—the kid looked exactly like Jackal. Yabba’s wife, Courtney, lived in an upstairs apartment with her boyfriend Bobo, a part time crack dealer who didn’t like kids. Yabba took care of Jackal and Courtney’s son Gorp who suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and Courtney’s daughter Madonna from a former boyfriend, and held on to a confused set of morals and responsibilities. Besides a drug problem, Courtney also had a severe drinking problem. “I love my children,” was her Mantra—“I really love my beer,” was her activity.

The “Redneck Bar” in Essex was directly across the alley from an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting room and employed some of the foxiest deranged fillies that ever bit the cap off of a bottle of beer. It was good to be home for the holidays. FaLaLaLaLa LaLa LaLAAA.

The Ricky Ray Relief Act had virtually died with the upcoming election. I got to perform my second reason for moving to North Carolina, the first being escaping from Florida, voting against Jesse Helms. On the morning of the election I hopped on my bicycle bright and early and peddled over to the armory and voted for the other guy with confidence that no one I had met the previous year and a half had admitted to voting for Jesse Helms. In fact, many had expressed opposition to his narrow, vindictive, negative style. Jesse Helms won the election easily.

Lindsay Wagner did a Book Signing in Wilmington for her vegetarian Cookbook. I bought a book and spoke with her since there was no one else in line at the time. “Sarah Lewis worked for you, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” Ms. Wagner said.

“She had my screen play TRAPEZOID and said she set up a meeting with you in 1987 and I drove out and stayed in shelters and the meeting never happened. I wrote it under the name Norman Iland. What happened? ”

“Sarah never said anything to me,” Ms. Wagner said, “sorry. I’ve never seen or heard of TRAPEZOID or Norman Iland” I ran down a list of my other alter egos to no avail and left as she looked around for security.

Anyway, I picked up a car from Triangle the day of the conference and hoped to drive to Research Triangle Park with Brent who was to be one of the featured speakers at the conference, but his need to remain independent and not be stuck in a car with me over-rode any economic considerations. In my state of teetering on the edge of financial disaster and homelessness this all seemed rather silly to me but it really made sense to him to avoid me. I grabbed the smallest car I could get and counted on great gas mileage. When I arrived at the conference the first thing I noticed was the Boss’s Race Car parked out front of the hotel. It was an honest to god NASCAR car, all painted with his logo and named Factor VIII. The Boss had done well in the home care business. In the Hotel I found BG, Linda Robertson smoking in the hallway and saw many familiar faces. Laureen Kelley was in one of the conference rooms with parents conducting a morning session. BG took me around to a few of the hotel rooms where the kids of different age groups were being entertained by able volunteers. The Wet bars were stocked with fresh fruit and snacks for the kids. Many of the kids had hemophilia, but only one wore a crash helmet. Most of the parents had grown to accept the dangers of head injuries and the responsibility of aware people as opposed to being over protective of their babies. I found some old kid friends in the groups and bounced between rooms, chowing down on food that had been lacking in my diet. The blood products were much safer now, but I couldn’t help think of the number of children that were infused with blood products that contained a destructive virus, by their mothers in the past. Room service began to replace the snack trays with kid type hot lunch trays, so I made my way back up to the main conference room to catch the end of Laureen’s morning session and find out where the adults were eating.

We Tangoed after Laureen finished speaking. It was a continuation of the Dance from Philadelphia and then San Diego. For a few brief seconds, that’s all that mattered was the Dance. A lunch of cold cuts and salads was served informally in the banquet room and Brent’s quick wit provided the snappy appetizer. After lunch Dale Brisson and Brent Runyon both spoke of their childhood with hemophilia and told some blood jokes before Laureen Kelley completed her afternoon session. I asked the Boss for money so copies of the film could be sent to Richard at the treatment center for distribution. A thousand dollars would have saved me, but he agreed to five hundred. That made his total contribution to the project 2500 dollars which was less than the cost of the one day conference for thirty families. The Boss was gathering possible lifetime customers with the conference. The film would only help the community as a whole. There wasn’t enough self-interest involved even though many of the participants in the film and the credits were either his employees or North Carolina customers. Whether the film would help me personally or not was unknown to me. I had been financially trashed already with no way out so my self-interest was clouded and somewhat irresponsible.

When the conference ended I drove Laureen to the airport after she changed clothes in her room. She filled out a great pair of jeans and bought the beer at the airport while waiting for her departing flight. I returned to the hotel and ate and drank on the Boss before playing car tag with the slightly intoxicated Brent on the two and a half hour drive back to Wilmington. The five hundred dollars came and went to keep everything plugged in before I could get copies made. I was willing to renege on the deal if no other money came through. Continued pestering of Moses and Baxter-Hyland International, a weekend FedEx of my last VHS copy of the film, and a receptive blue suit got me a commitment of two thousand more dollars for copies, phone and escape. I knew I had to get out of town. Thanksgiving was upon us and I knew that there would be no new commitments in the winter. I began cleaning house and packing. Kay’s daughter never posted for the sofa-bed, so I threw it out with the trash. The bank covered a thousand dollar check to the phone company while I waited for the money from Baxter International. The FedEx check had been somewhat misdirected and was late. When I did finally get the check I noticed that it had been written on another North Carolina Bank and the option presented itself of stiffing my bank for the thousand and cashing the check at the other and using the money for the escape I was preparing for. Instead I thanked the banker woman for having faith in me–the thousand was covered plus overdraft penalties. I had the VHS copies for the treatment center made, sent Baxter 15 copies for internal use and had a few repairs done on the truck but she still smoked. Kay Eager called before the phones were unplugged and agreed to deposit the last 60 dollars directly into my account. Wayne Ward who worked for the boss came by the night before I left town to pick up the copies of the film for the treatment center and he took me out for a steak dinner and a couple of shots of Jack Daniels.

I loaned the truck to local in the film business. He told me he had hired a few fellows from a half-way house to help him move stuff and one of them had been unhappy with the pay. I asked him why he didn’t hire me and he said I wouldn’t have been happy with the pay. He gave me fifty dollars for the use of the truck. When I got the truck back Iris was a bit smoky out her rear. I believe I was as burnt out as Iris or I would have volunteered to drive the truck. My judgment was shot.

Kay Eager, the Doctor Brinkhaus connection, called and asked me to move her furniture to Charleston, South Carolina. Her furniture included a piano. Need I say more. The truck had no brakes. I had the brakes repaired at a garage on the corner while a cop from the Motor Vehicles office up the road watched. I figured I would make the run on Sunday morning when they were closed. The deal with Kay was for a hundred sixty dollars but only a hundred when I got to Charleston and the balance at a later date. Her next month’s storage would have cost her another ninety dollars. I loaded the truck on Saturday myself, including the piano. The truck was blowing blue smoke to fill a block, but Iris kept me on the road and I felt I owed Kay Eager big time for the introduction to Doctor Brinkhaus. With keeping everything plugged in, that money from the homecare company was dissipating rapidly. My blood plasma donation income of thirty a week was my main cash flow. We continued to send out proposals and film festival entries. Nothing had changed. Everything was exactly the same as it had been for 18 months. And we didn’t even have a perfect print. The settlement offer for the hemophilia community was still in limbo with no hope for any money for anyone in the near future. I drove the smoking truck with a load of furniture, leaving before dawn, to Charleston, passing through Myrtle Beach and arriving at Kay’s house by 10:00 a.m. She had a doctoral student living with her. He was large enough to help unload the truck and the piano. The truck had eaten more gas than it should have due to the blue smoke and whatever was wrong with Iris. My paranoia helped me recall Rooster’s death tangled up in blooms in front of the house I was living in and enough people knew I had been working with people with AIDS. The film guy I had allowed the use of Iris mentioned a disgruntled halfway house inhabitant and I thought maybe someone put something in one of the two gas tanks. I didn’t know.

Kay was still doing bio-feedback with a few people for pain and stress relief and preaching as a minister. The doctors at the Chapel Hill screening had asked about Kay. I told them that she was preaching. They looked disappointed as Doctors will do when someone leaves their profession even though they drove her out of it. Kay had worked for Doctor Brinkhaus in the early 70s and besides washing dishes had written some very famous papers and the doctors acknowledged this to me and I told Kay. She said they never told her and had taken the credit. While the puffy student and I finished unloading the truck, Kay drove to Macdonald’s for coffees. The student that was renting a room from her was involved in research for diabetes as Kay had been in research for blood. Kay’s house had been nailed by Hugo the Hurricane, but it was all repaired, with fallen trees and debris removed because the house had been hit and damaged by debris. I had no idea what was going to happen to the tree in Saint’s yard. I had no power, no money and my honor had been thrown out with the dishwater.

I returned to Wilmington in a puff of blue smoke, using most of the 100 dollars for gasoline. I made one more trip to the storage facility to pick up a sofa bed that originally didn’t fit on the truck with the piano, hoping that Kay’s daughter would find the way and time to pick it up at a later date. I left it in the back of my truck, good OLE Iris the water truck. The trip was a net loss but the brakes were fixed and I was looking at the possibility of escape.

The relentless pursuit of funding continued along with the gratification of writing this story as a novel while sitting at the kitchen table, looking at the fallen tree in the yard which generated its own life and energy and escape from reality of failure. The last thing I wanted in the story was a lot of anger that I attempted to shake off in my fingers while performing tai-chi in the mornings.

In speaking to Dominic Bono about the new prints for the film, he suggested that we go for a new optical track and two good prints. This seemed to be a good direction to head since the prints that were intended for other markets were not only unfit for viewing, but unused since several avenues and possible contacts had not panned out. I called the lab and ordered the prints being certain to add that I didn’t expect to pay for them since they obviously screwed up. My main contact at the lab had become Howdy Doody, a kindly kid who was the main colorist at the lab. He was in jail the first time the prints were run and the owner, who only saw the bottom line, ran the prints. Color Lab billed me for the prints so I called Dominic and reminded him about his leaking roof after it was repaired by professionals and his feelings about professional responsibility, and he said he would take care of it.

The conference, which was to feature Laureen Kelley and hosted by the Boss’s homecare company, gave me the opportunity to see the queen in action and touch base with many of my friends from the hemophilia community. The possibility of hitting the boss up for some additional money for distribution was also high on my list. I had spoken to Richard Atwood from the treatment center in Winston-Salem about distributing the video through the treatment centers to schools and other avenues. Richard was the South-East regional administrator for treatment centers. There had been a major conflict between the hemophilia Community and the hemophilia treatment centers in the early 80s and a lot of bad blood still flowed. Many members of the community felt that the treatment centers could have prevented the contaminated blood products from being distributed because they were the ones who actually did a lot of the work and saw the proliferation of AIDS but simply followed orders in most cases and continued to distribute the tainted blood products. The treatment centers had come a long way, however, and frequent blood product recall notices were now the order of the day.

I made it to Dominic Bono’s house in Vienna by Thursday night. He knew that people had fucked up. There were five scenes out of sync on the film and the video master. He called Nelson Funk and I made arrangements to get his corrections the following day. I dropped the corrected sound track at the lab in Rockville, knowing that someone had fucked up and I needed good prints to compensate for the several bad prints that I had already paid for. Dominic also made arrangements for me to meet with a woman in downtown DC on Sunday for corrections to the digital master, plus additions to the credits. I briefly visited with family and friends to make sure I still had some friends not affected by blood disorders. I had tried to keep the entire thing objective so my outside contacts and their general lack of interest with anything that didn’t concern them personally helped me keep a real perspective about the human animal keenly in check. No one really gave a duck’s ass anywhere, unless the duck’s ass was on their own red neck. No one could figure out why I was doing what I was doing since there was no real money involved. I was living and doing what I wanted to be doing was my delusional mantra. I had to have the car back to Triangle by noon the next day, but I did have a corrected digital master and dub master in tow to take back with me. There were high hopes of additional screenings for the film. Since we had been sending out out-of-sync VHS tapes to film festivals those early hopes were dashed. After all, it was a film about sickness and death and a touch of compassion. That was hard enough to sell, let alone ventriloquist’s puppet speech patterns. On my final leg down 95 with the dog leg on 40 to Wilmington I did my mileage check. I clocked in at over 7,000 miles in two weeks. The car rental was for unlimited mileage. Oobladee, OOOObladuh. I found a woman on the banks of the Cape Fear River and capped the caper with a cookie.

The next morning I immediately dropped in to give blood for money, dropped the dub master off at the studio for fresh VHS copies and returned the car, filling out the check for two-hundred-eighty dollars. Chanter picked me up at the car rental office and took me home to die. Instead I was immediately on the phone to Dublin, Ireland looking for that worldwide distribution.

“Get it funded,” I was told.

These bloody guys were driving me nuts. I sent out another ten proposals and learned that the Boss was having a conference for hemophiliac families in the next few weeks featuring my main dancing partner, Laureen, the funded queen. He was flying her into North Carolina, renting a hotel and feeding the troops for a one day session. He didn’t get the far reaching implications of a definitive film/video—mass media product about hemophilia that featured a few of his clients. I pestered the Hawaiian/Asian Yamaguchi in Las Vegas and sent him a copy and he loved it. He had become a millionaire several times over because of the hemophilia community. He finally said that he doesn’t fund projects, but after the first of the year he would make a contribution directly to the chapter and leave it up to them whether they wanted to do anything. I figured that my relationship with the chapter was officially over since the group at the National Meeting didn’t even offer me floor space to crash on. I was stuck in a giant Riddle and there was a tree in the back yard that FEMA wouldn’t remove because it didn’t hit the house.

The Sunday drive up Coastal Highway was just that, a Sunday drive avoiding Southern California forest fires. I stopped off in Huntington Beach to see some old friends from back East in Baltimore. We had stopped off to see Frank and Kandy when I was out there with Glasseye who died of lung Cancer. Frank had just been diagnosed with prostate Cancer, so when I tried to hit him up for gas money after showing him and Kandy the film he said that he would contribute if it was about Cancer. And the preacher said, “In sickness and in health till death–Or to quote Kierkegaard, “Sickness unto death.” When I got closer to LA I called the treasurer of Hemophilia of North Carolina to tell him to expect a check from the homecare company. I told him my situation about having to stop off in Rockville and Vienna to deal with a few problems and he agreed to make a direct deposit to the Bear Naked account as soon as they got the check, withholding the Chapter’s 5% plus any transfer expenses incurred. I drove to downtown LA and looked for the company where I sold plasma for eight bucks a pint back in 1987 while I was homeless in LA. They were supposed to have screened donors since 1985. I recalled speaking to another homeless guy with visible needle tracks on his arms who had been a regular donor at the center.

I found downtown LA before the sun went down. The homeless delegation was not as prevalent as it had seemed in 1987. I got a couple false leads to where some homeless guys thought that they remembered where the plasma collection center had been located. At first I thought it had been turned into a parking garage across from the Ronald Reagan Building which would have been appropriate since Gipper was at least partly responsible for setting up the climate for the AIDS epidemic since he never even spoke the word as though it weren’t there. But it was all too vague. I figured I should spend another day of research since things seemed a little screwy. I drove to Coastal Highway and North of Malibu before I found an appropriate spot to park and sleep until daylight.

The next morning I called Dominic Rodriguez Sepulveda who had kicked me out on the street in 1987 and set up an appointment with him for later that afternoon. He was no longer in ladies lingerie. I had all morning to find the building of blood. I questioned a guard at City Hall where I had spent a couple of nights in 1987 and he directed me to a building a short walk away, and there it was, the sign was still on the building at 263 Main Street, BIO-MEDICS PLASMA CENTER. I bounced from one City or County Agency to the next, finally being directed to the Business License Division. The Plasma Bank had been in business from 1982, at the height of blood contamination, until 1992. And in 1987, two years after screening was to have begun, they were operating full force to an inflated population of 35,000 homeless people in LA for the Super Bowl, out there in the COMBAT ZONE. I called the owner of the building who had the vacancy for rent and got stiffed after he told me that there was an operation in Long Beach and another in Nevada, owned by his former tenant. The same private operator was still in business.

I was worn out and went to see Dominic Rodriguez Sepulveda so I could hit him up for gas money and show him the video of the film. Dominic had been a major manufacturer of Easy Now in the late 70s and early 80s. It later became known as Estacy. He was no longer in his house in Westwood and no longer had his Mazerati. He had lost everything. He was going to NA and AA meetings at least once a day. He looked at the film and commented how he believed that the hemophilia community should be allowed to die off because they were inferior.

“You’re Jewish. Didn’t Hitler say something like that about the Jews?”

“I’m Jewish only on my mother’s side. That was different,” he said.

“Shalom”

I made my way to HOLLYWOOD and picked up a few cigars for the long ride and headed for Las Vegas, hoping to get up with the Hawaiian/Asian who consulted for the huge homecare company. The hour grew late and I heard an advertisement for rooms for 20 bucks a night at Buffalo Bill’s Resort across the California State line in Nevada. I blew right by the slot machines and took a room on the ninth floor where a roller coaster passed by the window. I showered and slept like a baby in a real bed, not one of acrylic, not one of straw. I called Yamaguchi from the really big homecare company the first thing in the morning and he was leaving on a plane for Salt Lake within the hour. He blew me off. I expected to have to keep the long distance calls rolling at the usual feverish pace. I was locked in. The money raised was once more being used to raise money. I called the treasurer of the Chapter and they had gotten the check for two thousand and deposited it into the Bear. I called the bank and had money transferred into my personal account which I could squeeze from a bank machine but that wouldn’t take effect until midnight. The Black Jack tables looked inviting downstairs but the money was tight enough that there was no room for funding in that direction.

I headed in the direction of Las Vegas, having lived there in ‘70 and passed through on several occasions, including the trip with Glasseye. Las Vegas loomed on the horizon like a giant Spoon in the desert, gleaming in the sunlight.

“Ain’t no Fairy Godmother for Duda,” he said aloud to himself, and turned hard right toward Boulder, Nevada. I picked up hitchhikers outside of Boulder. They were headed to Albuquerque after going broke in Vegas, losing the truck and everything else they had. I dropped one passenger at is home and the other in a trailer park where he discovered his girlfriend had changed the locks on the trailer. “I’ll stay with a neighbor till morning,” he said. I kept on truckin’. I was out of money and low on gas before the bank machine coughed up in Tucumcari on Wednesday morning. A Chicken Fried Steak for breakfast in Amarillo Texas, at the Blue Front Diner and nothing could be finer with two thousand miles to go.

On Friday morning I met with Brent and Bolero for breakfast before making the rounds of the Exhibitors to see if any more funding would be available for distribution. I also realized that there was a possible sync problem with the film and the video transfer. Since I had pawned my TV/VCR I hadn’t had open access to the final product. I had checked everything up until the last prints and transfer and then counted on the professional film processing lab. Something had appeared wrong during the transfer, but the button pusher simply pushed a few buttons and said that it was okay. Because of my lack of experience, I believed him. I fucked up. Everyone had already been paid. The content and production was there. Most of the money had gone to Post production and I would have to deal with those matters back East. I sat by the pool and drank beer which was offered at a poolside hospitality suite. The Boss and a man named Moses visited with women sunbathing by the pool. I remembered Moses from the meeting in Philadelphia the previous year. He was the Boss’s friend and worked for Baxter Hyland International, one of the four pharmaceutical companies involved in the blood products contamination of the 80’s. I had spoken to him a few times over the past year and also other people from Baxter to no avail. Baxter had initiated the 600 million dollar settlement offer which was in the process of being modified and accepted. Hyland had been one of the first companies to market concentrated clotting factor back in the late 60s, partly through the urging of King Doctor Brinkhaus. I saw an opening. I made it a point to walk over and say hello to the Boss and Moses before they left the poolside. They were both wearing dark blue suits. I needed a funder for a second screening.

I showered and changed clothes in Brad and Bolero’s room and returned to the Exhibition hall for the last Friday session. I spoke with a Hawaiian/Asian guy who was a CEO of a major homecare company that I had been courting for a year and a half. He was leaving for Las Vegas and said he would think about it. That did me no good at the moment. I saw Moses and convinced him that the film touched the bases but didn’t point fingers. We needed a funder for a screening. We needed a funder for distribution.

“It’s a public relations coup,” I told him.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

There was only one more Exhibitor Session left for Saturday and I needed to give the word to the office to arrange for the projection equipment ahead of time. I saw Moses with other suits in front of the Baxter-Hyland booth with less than a half hour remaining for the Friday session.. I stood in a circle of Corporate Suits, naked and enthusiastic and sincere, so I did the Tango–First in one direction, then to the other, like a court jester that didn’t know when to quit.

“Just the facts, Ma’am,” I sang. Of course, there were no women there. “No whining! The only wine is poured into a glass.” I chanted. “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo…”

They said, “Yes.”

I spread the word quickly about the Screening to be held in the back of the Exhibition Hall the next morning and the fact that it was being funded by Baxter-Hyland. I was a major nuisance without a name tag. Moses collared me and asked that Baxter’s name not be used as the funder for the screening. Moses was covering his ass since the suits hadn’t seen the film yet.

Brent and Bolero had a dinner engagement with Centeon, Brent’s new employer. I didn’t want to hang out in the compound longer than was necessary to conduct business. I really didn’t have anywhere to crash. I was rest stopped and trunked out. I had approached several people about a place to crash and came up empty. I drove over to San Diego acting as a taxi service for the Boss’s secretary who was hosting a dinner for chosen people. Her husband had been a hemophiliac who had died of AIDS and she had become one of the Boss’s key personnel. She was running late and the lobby was packed with people waiting to escape. I got her to her restaurant as the shuttle van pulled up with her group and she raced in the door to be there to greet them without them knowing she was late. Her being a family member of the hemophilia community, this must have been a surprise to the guests, her being there on time–at least before they arrived. I didn’t have any invitations from anyone since I was basically a gate crasher with a film. I did my exploring over at the beach and watched the full moon being eaten by the Pacific Ocean, then found my way back to the Gas Lamp District for a little staking out of the area since Brent and Bolero had expressed an interest in navigating the area at some future point in time. I exhausted myself with walking and drove eastward out of San Diego, past the Resort Compound and to a lookout point on the Mountain. There were several people parked there, presumably couples watching the stars, engaged in intelligent conversation about astronomy and our relationship as a human element in the universe. I reclined in the trunk again, slightly half-baked, crusted over and slept.

The next morning I drove through the check point which was set up to look for illegals and plant life, said my name, “Duda”, and caught up with Brent and Bolero for coffee before taking a morning dip in the pool. There was still a little running around to do to get a payment voucher from Baxter-Hyland for the projection equipment. But they hadn’t changed their minds despite my continued usage of their name as funding the screening, qualifying things by telling everyone not to tell anyone. The screen and projector were set up in the rear of the hall and the projectionist disappeared so I ran the thing several times during the final session, cringing each time I saw the little mistakes, knowing I had work to do back East in Rockville with the lab and Vienna with Dominic Bono the cutter and Nelson Funk at Rodel Audio..

After the session, Brent, Bolero and I cruised over to the Gas Lamp District for beers, and hand-rolled cigars. The only remaining event was the Ball and I was looking forward to my annual dance with Laureen. I had also lined up several other possible dancing partners including Agnes Ofgod and her entourage of Christians. We returned to the Resort with quite a bag on and I was allowed to bathe and change clothes for the Dance. Since the room was on the other side of the compound from where the dance was being held, I gave Brent and Bolero a ride over and without much thought, locked the keys in the car. This was not a good omen. After several attempts with a clothes hanger, then calls to the front desk and several false starts with the janitorial staff, I contacted a locksmith and they agreed to hop over and pop the lock for twenty-five bucks. I drank scotch quickly and found Laureen for a dance, then Agnes Ofgod, and everyone did that macaroni dance that the Democrats loved so much. After the Ball, we emptied all of my luggage, with the exception of a towel and cutoffs, from the trunk of the car into Brent and Bolero’s room, flipped down the back seat, stuck Brent between Agnes Ofgod and The gorgeous redhead Woman with their feet in the trunk, back to back with Bolero, Chelsea and another HIV positive hemophiliac named Lamarr in the back seat. Joan of Art sat in the other bucket seat up front with me. All of the women had been married to hemophiliacs who had been infected with HIV because of the contamination of the blood supply. There were eight adults in the Cavalier. I was the driver of an authentic AIDS mobile and I was a regular blood donor.

We drove over to the Beach with Brad and the Christian women telling dirty jokes in the trunk. I had explored enough that I was able to take the most direct route to the Beach without getting very lost. Joan, Chelsea and Agnes Ofgod had all lost their husbands to AIDS, Woman’s husband was still living but home with the kids. She wanted to go for a swim in the ocean. The Moon was full. I discreetly slipped on my cutoffs and we all walked on the beach at the edge of the ocean. Woman removed her dress.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“I have AIDS,” she said.

“Don’t stop,” I said, taking her hand. We ran for the breakers without thought or hesitation. It was a pleasant Southern California October night. We were salt in the ocean, a dance in the night, goose bumps on the edge. She dried quickly as the others watched and I stood there with a broken heart. She was thirty two years old, bright shiny blue eyes with a few tear drop freckles, and she had been infected with HIV because dark blue suited corporations, government agencies and the National Hemophilia Foundation saw the early warning signs of contaminated blood products as an odds thing, as though it were a sporting contest with profits valued over human lives. We all found a bar and the bouncer almost didn’t let Woman in for her youthful appearance and lack of ID, but the other seven of us convinced them. I held hands with Woman and looked in her eyes. I went to kiss her and she said, no, she had never cheated on her husband. They had been high school sweethearts. He also had full blown AIDS, both were on treatments, and she was having a good day. I wanted her right there.

I drove the AIDS mobile back to the resort and dropped off my valuable cargo before heading back to the mountain for a nights rest in the trunk. In the morning I hit Brad up for a couple hundred dollars for gas money for the ride back–Met Woman and walked her to breakfast, then headed up the coast to see if a plasma company was still collecting blood in the skid row section of downtown LA.

After the reception I talked Brent and Bolero into heading down to Tijuana with me to do a little exploring.

“Tijuana?” Brent said.

“Tijuana?” Bolero repeated.

“Hey, uh, that’s in Mexico,” Brent said, raising his eyebrows and grinning.

“Mexico,” Bolero repeated.

Both of these guys had limps and were a bit on the small side. Though Bolero was taller he was on the skinny side. He had great teeth. We piled into the Cavalier and headed for Tijuana. We crossed over the border and found a parking spot after circling an area for half an hour, not knowing where we should stop, if we should stop or what we were going to do when we stopped. I never had that problem when I was traveling alone. I simply knew when it was time to stop, but these guys had game legs and none of us spoke the language. I was responsible for their well-being and continued freedom. I did know that if they got cut they wouldn’t bleed to death all over the sidewalk, but I didn’t have the need to prove a point. I was fascinated by the fried chicken stands which lined the slanted sidewalks side-by-side like carnival booths at a church picnic.

“How much?” I inquired.

“”Two dollars,” the woman in the booth next to the one I asked responded. I diverted my attention to her from the one I had approached.

“Hey guys, two bucks for a chicken dinner,” I said.

“This ain’t Colonel Sanders,” Brent said with a smirk. “I think I’ll pass.”

“This ain’t Colonel Sanders,” Bolero repeated.

I was truly amazed to find two members of the hemophilia community agree on anything. I sat down at the table and ate a chicken leg with green sauce, beans and rice, tortillas and chilies. I was in heaven, but neither did I have a weakened immune system. The two guys waited patiently very close by as drunken Mexicans nodded out at adjoining tables and others staggered down the street. It didn’t seem to be a very touristy night.

After the snack we ventured by a bar where a barker stood out front and invited us in, so that’s where we went.

“Do they have donkeys in here?” Brent asked.

“Chiquitas!” The barker responded, smiling.

“That’s a banana.” Brent said.

Bolero pushed him through the door and we were greeted by women immediately. A nude dancer performed on the well lit floor. We ordered bottled beer and were soon joined by very young girls.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Eighteen,” she said, “No Anglais.”

We each bought our Chiquitas a drink and bottled beers for ourselves while watching the naked girl on the floor as the disc jockey insulted us with panache over the public address system.

“Pendeyho, Gringos.”

My two buddies could have wiped out the entire town by ordering more expensive drinks for the girls. They both really liked girls a lot but they were too responsible to take it upstairs, even though they still denied that HIV caused AIDS. The warmth of the body of the scantily clad child in my lap made me deny that she was younger than 18. She didn’t speak English, or so she said. But she was wearing braces which did nothing to detract from her overall beauty. I was in a club in Tijuana. The music was loud and the dancing girls were naked.

“Where’s the donkey?” Brent yelled as he attempted to charm the young thing in his lap into submission.

Bolero was with the oldest of the three women and seemed to be having the only real conversation, but after Brent’s comment he managed to blurt out, “This ain’t Colonel Sanders.”

“Pendeyho, Gringo!” came the voice over the PA.

It was definitely time to move on. I drove Brent and Bolero back to the resort on the fringe of San Diego and then to a rest stop outside of San Diego where I slept in the trunk of the car. It’s another tequila sunrise. There’s a danger that lurks in your eyes. Let’s dance.

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.

124 SHOWTIME

I made trips between the lab in Rockville and Dominic Bono’s house, being nothing more than a courier, and then the word came down that the hearing on the Ricky Ray Relief Act, which was to compensate HIV positive hemophiliacs $125,000 each, would be held at the Sam Rayburn Building on a day in September.

A week before the hearing and after a couple of thousand miles of driving I received an “answer print” on a Friday afternoon, the day before the annual meeting at Camp Carefree in Greensboro for the North Carolina Hemophilia group. I called the King, Dr. Brinkhaus and we set up a screening for Sunday at the hospital. On Friday night, I drove to Carolina, stayed in a cheap motel and picked up a projector at a rental house in Raleigh on Saturday morning, before driving to Greensboro for a screening for the group of thirty people. I carried a screen and a speaker along with the projector. Two women ran out of the room quickly after the film had ended. I didn’t know why. I had looked at it well over a hundred times by then.

There was still not enough money to pay for everything. I had a video transfer scheduled for that Wednesday, the day before the Ricky Ray hearing. I desperately wanted a print for the hearing. People were coming from around the country to get their day in court before the chairman of the committee who had expressed that he really didn’t give a good duck’s ass. He didn’t know what hemophilia was. I drove back to Wilmington on Saturday to check on the house, my first trip home since Hurricane Fran. A fifty foot tree had fallen in the back yard, but it missed everything. On Saturday night I screened the film for the production assistant and a couple of other people. There were some rough spots but I knew the lab would take care of them, if I could get the money.

On Sunday I drove to Chapel Hill and had a screening for the King, Dr. Brinkhaus and two other doctors and staff. I asked them for ten thousand dollars so I could pay for a few more things. After the screening I drove back to DC where I turned in the answer print so corrections could be made. I faxed the King the details of the post production expenses that I needed the money for. I called later in the day and another assistant said it was out of her hands. I called the doctor at home and he told me to call another doctor who had been at the screening, who said yes. We arranged for the check to be Fed Exed to my home office where Chanter was to pick up the check and deposit it in the account which was over- drawn if anyone tried to cash their checks before then. By Tuesday it hadn’t arrived and on Wednesday the transfer to video was accomplished with all of its related expenses. I walked out of the lab on Wednesday evening with three video copies complete with titles and credits and a fresh corrected print. I wrote checks.

On Thursday morning I drove from Baltimore to DC early to find a parking space and get my bearings. The hearing was to begin at 9:00 a.m. I had arranged to pick up Turtle and his Mom at the train station at 9:30 a.m., which I did by taxi. When we arrived at the hearing room there was a line waiting to get into the packed room. The Prince was outside and he pointed us out to a woman who ushered us up to the front. I pushed Turtle in his wheel chair. The hearings got a late start and several members of the committee didn’t show up but a Congressman from Florida, Representative Porter Goss was there. Congressman Porter Goss along with Senators Robert Graham of Florida and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts in 1993 had requested that Secretary of Health and Human Services open an investigation into the events leading to the contamination of the blood supply with HIV. The Ricky Ray Relief Bill was introduced July of 1995 and was being held up in committee. Porter Goss spoke eloquently in favor of the Bill. He stayed for the hearing which consisted of a pat hand of experts and only a few members of the community. On the first break the Congressman from Florida walked to where Turtle and I were backed against a wall.

“Excuse me, Senator,” I said. “We produced a film that may help.”

I reached down into a bag and held out a 16mm print. He stopped and looked at Turtle who laughed and then caught himself.

“And you think I should show this to the committee, right,” the Congressman said.

“Sure.” I answered.

He took the print of the film out of my hands and turned it over to his assistant, the woman who had ushered us to the front of the room. They called me later and got a VHS copy and returned the 16MM reel.

After the hearing I drove to Baltimore where I called Chanter and learned that the check from the doctors hadn’t arrived yet. I called the other doctor to get a tracking number.

“I tried to call you last night,” he said. “You’ve been putting too much pressure on us. We’ve changed our minds.”

“Doctor,” I said, “What do you mean you’ve changed your minds?”

“We wish you luck, but it’s not for us,” he said.

“Doctor,” I said calmly, “I have just now come from a hearing in Washington where I put a print of the film in the hands of a Senator–A print that isn’t paid for. I have thousands of dollars of checks out there that will bounce. I will have to call the Senator and ask for that print back because a couple of doctors have reneged on a deal.”

“You seem to be in quite a pickle,” he said. “I’ll make a phone call.”

I called and asked the lab to hold our checks for a couple of days. I called the office of the doctor on Friday and learned the check had been cut and sent. I returned to the lab on Friday and picked up the remaining prints and returned to Carolina where I dropped off a copy of the print to Stephen Pemberton and returned home. By Wednesday most of the ten thousand dollars had been spent to pay for the film. The remaining cash went to repay Chanter and some back rent to Saint. I was broke.

By the National Meeting in San Diego a few weeks later, where a screening at the opening session had been arranged, I got six hundred dollars from an old friend for the trip out. Brent and Dale and the Roman would be there, Dana Kuhn and the Black Prince Val Bias and the Boss and even Agnes Ofgod. I’d meet Susan Resnik for the first time, and get to dance with Laureen Kelley again. The entire hemophilia industry would be there and I was hoping to get some money for distribution of the short film, and maybe funding for the feature length documentary on the history of hemophilia. I didn’t know how I was going to pay for the car or for gas for the ride back. And the phone bill was still overdue.

On Monday morning, a few days before the meeting, I picked up a brand new Cavalier from Triangle, went by the blood place and sold 880 ml of plasma, and then headed west. I had gotten Fish’s new address in the middle of the state from Gastro and dropped in on him. I pulled up to a house with white columns. I knocked on the door and Fish answered, wearing an apron and holding a very large spoon. He invited me into the kitchen where he was cooking dinner before Chips got home from work. He was watching a soap opera. He watched the video copy of the film and he gave me twenty dollars for gas and a bowl of duck soup. I made it to Amarillo on Route 66 by Wednesday morning.

Rupert sang, “A chicken fried steak for breakfast

At the Blue Front Diner, And nothing could be finer, With a thousand miles to go.”

Hey Diddle Diddle

Let’s Tango a Little

The Little Girls Danced to a Tune

The Woman Still Lived to Die for the Sport

And Duda’s Still Truckin’ Too Soon