Heavyweight - #32 Vivian

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

In 1995, Vivian’s uncle Helio died of AIDS. Now, 25 years later, Vivian’s on a search to find the man who cared for him until his death. Credits Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein. This episode was produced by Stevie Lane. The senior producer is Kalila Holt. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Blumberg, Caitlin Kenney, Mimi O’Donnell, Lydia Polgreen, Reyhan Harmanci, Nabeel Chollampat, and Jackie Cohen. The show was mixed by Bobby Lord.  Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, Michael Hearst, Haley Shaw, Blue Dot Sessions, and Bobby Lord. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jackie? Hello? Who calls at 6.30 on a Friday night? Wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait. I wanted to say one thing. Hello? Yeah.

Do you know that a new season of my show is starting? I had no idea. Listen, I wanted to wish you great luck. Is this a kiss-off? Yeah. Yeah. From Gimlet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight.

Today's episode, Vivian. Right after the break. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio. Exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated.

19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. This story begins back before the quarantine, a time when people didn't start conversations with, how are you holding up?

During those innocent days, we started with the weather. It was minus 40 last week. Minus 40? My, like, front door froze shut. I had to use, like, a hairdryer to get out of the house. Vivian lives in Canada, and while I'm always happy to talk about Canada... Whitehorse is beautiful. I once had an opportunity to go there.

It's not the reason why we're here. Vivian's reached out to talk about something that happened 25 years ago that she still has questions about. The death of her uncle Elio. I grew up in Winnipeg. There's, like, nothing that sexy about Winnipeg. And my uncle, it was like he had just, like, breezed in off of, like, a film set. Like, he wore this black leather jacket,

he's like tight jeans, and he smoked cigarettes, and he just emanated coolness. I don't really know how other to say it than he did, he had this swagger. Elio lived in New York City. He was a journalist and had friends who were artists and writers.

He gave Vivian her very first journal, which he still carries around to this day. In Vivian's memory, there was a lightness about Elio. Everything was always for a laugh. Like the time they were back visiting their family in Brazil, and Elio had Vivian and her brother fold dozens of paper airplanes. He was staying on the 9th or or tenth floor of this apartment building, and it was, like, this really beautiful sunny day, and we, like, walked out onto the balcony

and just, like, shot off, like, a hundred of these airplanes into the sunshine. It felt, like, electric and so, like, free. On the inside of Vivian's arm is a tattoo of a paper airplane. It's there to remind her of the freedom and lightness she felt that day.

It's there to remind her of Elio. November 7th, 1992. Vivian was nine years old. It was her brother's birthday, and the family was heading out to celebrate when the phone rang. It was Elio's roommate, a man named Marcelo. And Marcelo just said straight up, like, Elio had a seizure that's related to AIDS, and he's sick.

And that was how the family found out that, one, that he was gay, and two, that he had AIDS. Elio was in his mid-30s and had never told his family he was gay. In fact, he often spoke of wanting to find a wife and settle down. Over the next few years, the illness advanced rapidly, so Vivian's family planned out visits. Vivian remembers one trip in particular. family planned out visits. Vivian remembers one trip in particular. Her dad packed her and her brother into the car to drive from Winnipeg to New York, a 25-hour road trip. And my dad's little Honda Civic with no air conditioning. This is Vivian's brother, Eduardo. He's three years older than Vivian and has clearer memories from the trip down. It was like hottest summer on record.

Along the way, we had to stop in convenience stores and supermarkets just to cool off. Eduardo says his father brought along a video camera and entered Elio's tiny apartment on Lafayette Street, already rolling. Elio was lying prone on the couch, not wanting to be recorded. He turned his head from us, kind of pulling the blanket up over his eyes, his head, and being, like, embarrassed at how he looked. Elio was thin and frail and hooked up to IV tubes. Vivian's grandparents had flown in from Sao Paulo.

Vivian watched them with their son. I remember them not touching him because presumably they were afraid to get sick. And I remember thinking that was like really, just like really weird and really sad. The family didn't really help. They didn't help like like, when Elio was sick. I guess my dad's conception of helping was like, oh, I'm going to bring the kids for, like, five days, and we'll come visit. But no one, like, stopped their lives to, like, come look after him. While the family paid for all of Elio's medical bills,

the person who actually did stop his life, did come look after Elio, was the man who made the phone call that November day in 1992. Marcelo. Vivian has almost no memories of Marcelo, and Eduardo's memories are vague. Marcelo moving about the apartment, always in the background, referred to by Elio only as a friend. Growing up, the name Marcelo meant nothing to Vivian.

It was only later, as a teenager, that she learned Marcelo had been partners with her uncle for 13 years. And I think part of it is because, you know, unlike an aunt, like, say, Elio was heterosexual and dating a woman, his partner would have been introduced in that way, like, oh, well, this is your aunt, or this is a more important person in your life. Right. Elio couldn't say, hey, this is your uncle. Exactly.

But in some ways, you know, even though it sounds really weird, it's like, he is kind of my uncle. Hmm. I don't think it sounds that weird. I mean, it's sort of like, you know, if things had been different, if your uncle had married him, you guys would have had a formal connection. And instead, there isn't exactly a name for him. And as a result, you've lost that person who was so good to your uncle. Yeah, exactly. It was obviously so like shamed in my family that, you know, we couldn't even call Elio gay. You know, we couldn't even call Elio gay. The wound Vivian feels over the injustice her family did to Elio has only grown deeper over the years,

as she's become better able to put herself in her uncle's shoes. I didn't really clue in to being attracted to women until I was, like, 20, early 20s. I couldn't let myself even think about that because seeing how the family like treated my uncle, like I'm sure it left this message with me, you know, that it wasn't a good thing. This month I turned 37. I turned 37, which is the same year that my uncle passed away.

And so at this point in my life, if I had this illness, like terminal illness, and I was living on the other side of the world, and my family didn't come, you know, to help me. As Marcello did. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even know him.

Like, I can't even remember, like, a visual of him. And yet, like, I feel very connected to this person. I want to find Marcelo, and I want to tell him thank you for looking after Elio, for that huge sacrifice that he made. And I think I want to let him know that I

have spent, you know, so much time, like, thinking about him. After the break, the search for Marcelo. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute?

I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio. Exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly.

I don't have much to begin my search for Marcello. Vivian remembers that back when he was living with Elio, Marcello worked as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art, but I can't find any record of his employment. When Vivian told me about Elio's old group of artist friends, though, she singled out one artist by name, a very famous musical composer. And while the composer's number isn't readily available, I do happen to have his cousin's number.

Hello? Ira. Oh shit, do we have an interview now? Potty-mouthed broadcaster Ira Glass is cousins with minimalist musical composer Philip Glass, the old friend of Elio's I Seek. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Let me, um, let me... Okay, give me a second to turn on gear on my side. Sure. Okay? Okay. You never want to bother the people you admire,

but in the back of your mind you think, okay, maybe someday, in an emergency, I might be entitled to a favor. And then you ask them to write a preface to your experimental novella published by a small Canadian press. And then you ask them to introduce you at your book launch

that's only attended by seven people. This is how I felt phoning up to chop yet another branch from the giving tree, which is Ira Glass. So I just wanted to ask you for a phone number.

Okay. A cousin of yours. Keep going. Do you know who I'm talking about? I assume you mean Philip. Being something of a storyteller, the mention of Philip prompts Ira to tell the story of when he and his wife vacationed with Philip and his girlfriend in Italy.

He was finishing up at one of his operas, and he had an wife vacationed with Philip and his girlfriend in Italy. He was finishing up one of his operas, and he had an electric piano brought in, and they were in a bedroom, like, down the hall from us, and so we would be woken up by him composing, which is crazy. And you were doing vocal warm-ups while he was doing that. Yeah, I was just practicing, saying over and over, stay with us, stay with us, stay, stay with us. Ira promises to reach out to Philip on my behalf to see if he still has Marcello's phone number.

Hey, before you go, can I show you with you a little knock-knock joke? Sure. Knock-knock. Who's there? Knock-knock. Who's there? Knock-knock. Who's there? Knock-knock. Who's there? Knock-knock. Who's there?

Knock-knock. Who's there? Philip Glass. Yeah, I know that one. I'm sure he knows that one too. Do you think so? I mean, that's like, can I just say like,

that's a level of fame that you or I cannot even aspire to. To have a knock-knock joke named after you. Who gets that? Who gets that? You know who gets that? Banana. A week later, Ira writes back.

Philip doesn't have anything. Which is to say, Ira concludes at the end of his email, knock, knock, who's there? Not Philip Glass. And so the search continues. Vivian's dad, Jacques, doesn't have a current number for Marcelo. The last time he saw him was five years after Elio died. Still feeling guilty about the circumstances surrounding his brother's death,

Jacques had sought Marcelo out. I felt that the only person who could absolve me, Jacques said, was Marcelo. But the encounter was fraught. Jacques later spoke of it with Vivian, telling her he walked away feeling like Marcello was angry with their family for abandoning Elio. Hearing this, I wonder if Marcello was still angry. Perhaps after all of these years, Marcello doesn't want to be found. Marcelo doesn't want to be found. The only other thing I know about Marcelo is that he'd been involved in AIDS activism. After extensive Googling,

I discover an article on an HIV resource site from 1998 written by a Marcelo spelled with one L, not two, as Vivian had remembered. Being so young at the time, maybe there are other details Vivian is misremembering. And sure enough, it's in a 1994 staffing report for the Met, not the MoMA, that I find the one-L'd Marcello.

He now lives in San Francisco, and in my excitement, I leave him a rambling, incoherent message about how I know this must be so weird, but I'm calling on behalf of Elio's niece, Vivian. Marcelo. Hey. I'm so glad that you have the time to talk. The very next day, Marcelo calls back and right off the bat admits that his feelings about Elio's family are mixed. It's complicated. It's very complicated. It's just really, it's a complicated history.

Marcello unravels it for me, beginning at the same place Vivian did, November of 1992. It was the morning after Bill Clinton was elected. We're sitting in a coffee shop reading the results of the elections. And I had a grand mal seizure right in front of me. They rushed to a nearby hospital where tests were performed, and for the next few days,

Marcello walked around in a stupor. When they received the official diagnosis, Marcello picked up the phone and made the call to Vivian's house. picked up the phone and made the call to Vivian's house. Though learning that Elio had AIDS was devastating, the disease itself was all too familiar in New York City. By that year, 1992,

AIDS had become the leading cause of death in American men aged 25 to 44. You remember in the 90s and 80s, you would see people who gaunt and the shikser, you know, sunk. And so that was sort of like a certain look. And Alio, however

handsome he was, he got that look. He had lost control of his bowel movements. He was in diapers. He was blind. He was... I'm sorry. Marcelo was in his late 20s when he became Elio's full-time nurse.

Elio was sick for three years, and just months before the AIDS cocktail became widely available, he died. Very beautifully. He died very peacefully in those last moments. It was a beautiful night. There was this blue sky and there's stars and a crescent moon. And as we looked up the sky, this airplane sort of crisscrossed the moon. As Marcelo speaks, I'm reminded of Elio in Brazil, flying paper planes off the balcony. And we waved to Elio, and then we said goodbye, and then he passed.

True to Jacques' telling, Marcelo was angry with the family's behavior, especially during the last days of Elio's life. That's when things grew complicated. The family had set aside funds so Marcelo could pay for the embalming. It had to happen as soon as Elio died, before the body could be sent to Brazil for burial. When Marcelo knew Elio only had a day or two left,

in the midst of so many other worries and so much sadness, he phoned Elio's middle brother, Vivian's uncle, so arrangements could be made. But Vivian's uncle didn't believe him, insisting Elio had more time. The day before he was dying, you know, I said, listen, I need you guys to release the money because this is going to happen.

And he suggested that I was trying to pocket the money. And I lost it at that moment. I really, I just went ballistic. The family had left Marcelo the burden of caring for Elio. And now, on top of that, they were accusing him of theft. Marcelo knew he wouldn't be welcomed as a part of Elio's family, and so he did not attend the funeral in Brazil. He would later learn from friends who were present that he wasn't thanked. In fact, there wasn't so much as a mention of his name,

not at the service, nor in the death announcement. Which is to say, Marcelo's feelings are indeed complicated. But when he looks up a photo of Vivian online and sees her face, something is made simple. She looks like Elio a lot. She looks like Elio a lot. She looks like Elio of all the kids. She is the one who looks like him a lot. She looks like him. It's incredible. By the end of our call, Marcelo has agreed to meet Vivian in New York, where he can introduce her to the people and places Elio loved best.

Coming up after the break, Vivian and Marcelo. Stay with us. Stay with us. Stay with us. Stay with us. Stay with us. So we would shop on these blocks on Broadway because there are these antique stores, vintage clothing. So this was the area. Oh, this is where we walked around here.

Vivian has flown to New York to deliver a thank you that's 25 years overdue. But Marcelo has his own agenda, to introduce Vivian to the real Elio. And so we're in the village, on a tour through Elio's old life. Marcello points out their favorite haunts and tells Vivian about Elio's career as a journalist, the time he profiled the beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

Showing up for the interview, Elio found Ginsberg in the midst of writing a poem. Alan Ginsberg starts yelling at him, saying, you interrupted a moment of inspiration. This poem is gone, it's gone, gone, gone. I won't remember a thing anymore. Marcello also takes Vivian to meet some of Elio's old friends. Hello. You must be Denise. I am. How are you? I'm good. How are you? friends. Ruth was a well-respected New York tattoo artist in the 70s and 80s. Nowadays, her work is exhibited all over the world. Her apartment is where Elio's New York memorial was held. It was another AIDS death. It was another terrible, terrible loss. And everybody here had experienced it or nursed somebody, you know, to the end.

I mean, as young people, as people in their 30s, right? So you're very lucky. Yeah. Yeah, you were. Very lucky. That you didn't get it. Yeah. Yeah, it's fantastic that you didn't.

The irony is that 25 years we talk about a virus and 25 years later, celebrating, here we are, talk about a virus again. It's early March 2020, a few days after the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in New York. It's that one weird week when we thought bumping elbows would solve everything.

In fact, here we are on a social call, playing it, quote, safe, by eating the snacks Ruth made from individually prepared bowls. Just days later, schools across the city would be closed. Restaurants, stores, and offices all shut. Like with the beginning of the AIDS pandemic, our government would again fail in its response, our medical system would again prove ill-equipped, misinformation would abound, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who decades earlier led the tactical charge against the AIDS outbreak, would be back on TV, picking up the slack. In contrast to the religious service in Brazil, Ruth says that the memorial at her place for Elio that day

was a raucous affair. You know, with the conga line. Dancing the conga around this apartment. Well, all these good-looking guys in one room, you know, it wasn't going to stay sad for too long. It was the best funeral ever anywhere. I remember being drunk and stoned. We also pay a visit to Ken, an artist and an old boyfriend of Elio's.

The artist's life has been good to Ken. He looks far younger than his 75 years. You haven't seen the close-off. Gravity tends to do very nasty things to bodies. Ken tells us about the trip he and Elio took to Mexico early on in their relationship. Ken had been going through a phase at the time where he was wearing green contact lenses.

Elio had never seen Ken without them and would always tell Ken how much he loved his beautiful green eyes. I said, shit. How am I going to tell him that these beautiful green eyes are fake? So I decided I'm not going to tell him. What the hell? So we go to Mexico and I got something in my eyes and they started bleeding. We have to go to a hospital. We got to the clinic. The guy patched my eyes up, said, you'll be blind for 24 hours. So the next day, I took the patches off. And then Elio's looking at me, and he goes,

oh, my God. I said, what? He said, your eyes changed color. So I said, oh, this is perfect. I looked in the mirror and said,, oh my God, they did. So that ended that. I don't know if he ever found out. Elio melted everybody down that he met. He was so charming. I never met anyone. You couldn't be mad at him. I tried so hard to be mad at him so many times and you couldn't be mad at him. Ken directs his gaze

at Vivian. You're lucky. You're lucky to have had an uncle like Elio. Vivian is basking in Ken's praise of her uncle. The room feels warm and friendly. Until Ken opens his mouth again. I have to say, his family was horrible.

Ken says his, but he is still looking at Vivian. He might as well have said your. Your family was horrible. Ken is being honest, but it sucks the air out of the room. Truly horrible. It was shocking to me. It was really shocking to me when his mother came. She was so cold and so distant from Elio.

I know. Of course Vivian knows. It's why she's here. So come on this way. Vivian Marcello and I are at my office. All day long, Marcello's been playing tour guide to Elio's old life. But I want him and Vivian to get a chance to connect one-on-one. Sit down.

Okay. Sit here. Yes, thank you. Marcello sits on the couch, knees pressed together. Vivian is seated across from him in an armchair, hands tucked between her thighs. She's been waiting all day, all day and 25 years, for the chance to thank Marcello. And so she stumbles her way forward, beginning with the ways in which her family led Elio down.

So she stumbles her way forward, beginning with the ways in which her family led Elio down. I feel like the family, I feel like there was kind of like this internalized shame around. I don't know, it's like that side of the family couldn't really see past that, that he was gay. And that was like, that lasting memory was like that shame. Yeah, but I also feel like... Marcelo interrupts Vivian before she can get very far, but almost immediately trails off. He looks down at his hands in his lap and adjusts his feet on the carpet.

When he speaks again, he speaks softly. I feel compelled to say something. When he speaks again who he was fully. Really? Yeah, yeah. According to Marcello, Elio never fully embraced his own gay identity, and so was never honest with the family about who he was. He was gay, had a partner for 10 years. You know, he was HIV positive.

So all of that sort of came out for the family side in the worst possible way. So there's a lot here of broken trust. Marcello's own family knew he was gay by the time he was in his late teens, knew that Elio wasn't just a roommate.

Marcello had been wanting Elio to be more transparent with his family for years. Instead, when the family was around, Marcelo says Elio made him feel like a mistress, like he had to disappear. So as much as the family didn't acknowledge Marcelo, Elio didn't acknowledge Marcelo to the family either. Although they were a couple,

Elio refused to fully commit to Marcelo, continuing to date other people, like Ken. It was painful for Marcelo. In fact, Marcelo admits that he'd been on the verge of breaking up with Elio when they found out he had AIDS. What made Elio this ray of light, being joyful, also made him more difficult to pin down and taking responsibility and ownership for things that you do as you become a grown-up. So I want to sort of take a bit of the weight from your family, just a little bit on his side as well. There was his own...

Like internal battles. Internal battles. So I think there's the joyful Elio and there's the chicken Elio. So all of this is sort of wrapped in this fantastic human being, you know. And he's just a person. I think I relate to maybe the chicken part of ali like in my early 20s like i started dating women and um it was something that i shared with my dad and my brother my mom was was actually going through some difficult stuff in my 20s. And to be honest, she actually still doesn't know.

But I guess she soon will. Listen, if you avoid stuff, it's faster than you. But if you address it as a way of connecting. Marcello is encouraging Vivian to not hide who she is, the way Elio did, until he got sick. He softened. He softened. You know, I... It might sound a little sanctimonious or pious on my part, you know,

but I loved him throughout, thick and thin. And when he got sick, he allowed me to love him in a way that he couldn't before. We really were a couple in a way that we had never been before. For Marcelo, those last days offered some of his happiest memories of their relationship. Dying allowed Elio to finally grow up. Sometimes he would hallucinate and he would go to parties in his head. I remember this one that was a party at the Russian embassy and he was talking about all the people he was meeting at the Russian embassy and

he was in bed and he would do this. But in that state I remember one moment that is the most precious moment of all. Days before he died, I said to him, I love you. And he had no cognition. His smile, like ear to ear. And I never forgot that. So I loved him very, very, very much. And he loved me back. And I had doubts from time to time.

But in that moment, I felt it. Do you want to clean this? Yes. I feel like not a lot of people would go to that length, you know. I mean, my family didn't. But, like, I even wonder, like... Vivian struggles for the right words. For the first time during the trip, she's trying to put herself not in Elio's shoes, but in Marcelo's.

If the roles were reversed, like, do you think Elio would have done that for you? It's always a question for me. I was asked that. I don't know. I don't know. The fact that you, like, moved in and took care of him is it's it is really incredible and it i think it just shows like how compassionate and like how loving of a person you are

that you were able to do that so yeah thank you thank you um that so yeah thank you thank you um i didn't expect to feel the way i'm feeling right now that held the grudge for a while and i was proud of the grudge i was proud of of of being spurned and i think I grew attached to that. I held that as a kind of a badge of honor in a way. And I don't anymore. Also, I'm ready to receive it. I don't think I was. So thank you. I really, really appreciate that.

There's a poem by John Ashbery, which I'm going to completely destroy and bastardize, but there's an image that I really love. He says, somewhere someone is running desperately towards you. someone is running desperately towards you. And I have this image of you sort of like... Not desperately, but sort of like... A slow run. I feel that too. Because of, you know, the nature of everything that had happened, it was like I didn't get that opportunity to have you as, you know, the nature of everything that had happened, it was like I didn't get that opportunity

to have you as, you know, an uncle in my life. So can I claim you as my uncle? Yes, you can. Okay, good. All right. 25 years ago, it had been Marcelo asking to be led into the family. But now, it's Vivian who's doing the asking. Marcelo moves forward to embrace her.

In the end, Vivian receives an uncle as amazing as the one she always imagined. I remember you were a tiny little girl. I remember you. Her was blondish. It was. I remember you were tiny. Tiny. Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage deposit

Take this moment to decide If we meant it, if we tried Or felt around for far too much For things that accidentally touched This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Stevie Lane, along with me, Jonathan Goldstein. Our senior producer is Kalila Holt. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg,

Caitlin Kenney, Mimi O'Donnell, Lydia Polgreen, Rayhan Harmanci, Nabil Cholompat, and Jackie Cohen. Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Lou Dot Sessions, Michael Hurst, Haley Shaw, and Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions, Michael Hurst, Haley Shaw, and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on our website, gimletmedia.com slash heavyweight. Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at heavyweight or email us at heavyweight at gimletmedia.com.

We'll be back with a new episode next week.