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Pretend It's Not Me #2
My Life Experience
It was September 1995. I was living in Costa Rica and I was in big trouble. Communication between myself and the office of the person back home who had sent me there in the first place had been irrevocably damaged, beyond repair. By this point I had already been living there for two years. The ONLY reason I was down there was because after the election the press had wasted no time scaring up leads, trying to get to the heart of the rumors that had been circulating in the gay community since the late 1970's. It was an open secret that we were lovers, that although he was the father of two grown well adjusted, smart and successful children and was happily married, and make no mistake about it, he was happily married, we had been involved for years, long before he even became interested in public office. There had been two elections before his win in 1993, one of them, in 1988, had been so close, there had been a judicial recount. He had lost by sixty votes. Now that he had won his life became the target of rumor mongers, of anti Liberals and the Ottawa gossip mill. I was living on the west coast at this point, and shortly after the election I came home to discover a reporter standing on my doorstep. I rushed past him and his questions, heading straight for the phone. I dialed William's private number, he answered right away. I spared no time in telling him what had just happened. I could hear the terror, the desperation in his voice. He wanted me to leave the country immedietly. He didn't care where I went or how much it cost, as long as the press couldn't find me. When I realized I was being asked to leave the country, to leave everything I knew, including my friends, I started to protest. I asked him why I couldn't leave Vancouver and just move to Vancouver Island, which was a three hour ferry ride away. It would be much harder for the press to find me there while at the same time being close enough to everything I was familiar with, all the things and all the places I didn't want to leave, most importantly my friends. That wasn't good enough, wasn't far enough. I had to go where no one knew me, a place where I could start a new life, miles away from who I use to be. I wasn't happy about it, but he had been so good to me for so long, had picked me up when I was down for the count too many times to mention, he didn't deserve the fear of being up against the threat I had become. It was a frightening prospect for both of us. In sixteen years I hadn't done a lot to show my gratitude, I had been selfish and demanding, irrational, drunk, obnoxious, disrespectful and unpredictable. I owed him this one thing and I knew it. His personal assistant flew out the next day to make all the arrangements. I would need my passport along with whatever I could carry to start my new life. Clothes, toiletries and a huge list of things I couldn't get in Costa Rica. By January of 1994 I had been doing Heroin for three years. There had been three very serious overdoses, one just a few days before I left. The struggle I had deciding where to go had become overwhelmingly influenced by the fact that I was shooting Heroin. My first idea, surprise of surprises, was Amsterdam! I had to consider my addiction. I was terrified of finding myself all alone in a strange city with no Heroin connection. I just couldn't deal with withdrawing, the physical fallout was so extreme, so devestating that I would do whatever I could to avoid it. Amsterdam made sense because of the liberal laws and the public attitude towards drugs and drug addiction. They'd always been on the cutting edge of treatment, tolerance and compassion. After a lot of thought I decided to go somewhere that would make it impossible or at least really difficult to score Heroin. I knew what it had done to me, to my life and to the few people who had cared about me. At the top of that list was William. He deserved a break. My last night in Vancouver was also the last time I ever did Heroin. I spent the days leading up to my departure shopping like mad, trying to cover all the angles as quickly as possible so I could get on that plane and let everyone breath a sigh of relief. I checked into the beautiful Sylvia Hotel on English Bay where I spent my very last night in Canada doing my very last hit of Heroin, and I haven't touched it since. As the plane left the ground there was a feeling of relief I suppose, I thought I was doing the right thing, on the right path, headed for something good. I had always cared about living a meaningful life, of leaving the planet a better place than it was when I found it. Just because I had been a collosal failure didn't mean I had no concept of what was right, of what mattered. I cared so much about people, even though from the outside it appeared as if my life was being lived to satify no one else but myself, it wasn't true. I had come out to my parents on a Saturday morning in 1977, when I was 14. Two days later they had me commited to a mental hospital. And I mean hospital, not a clinic or a retreat, a One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest hospital. The first chance I had I took off. I found myself on the streets of New York at 14 years old, homeless, hungry, cold and alone. And I've never looked back. I've been on my own ever since, so the perception that I've been nothing but self indulgent, clueless about the world, about humanity and about what really matters on this planet, in this lifetime, is far from true. By the time I found myself on a plane headed for an uncertain future in Costa Rica, I had become a veteran of fear and survival. I had crawled from so much wreckage so many times I thought there was nothing I couldn't get through, nothing I couldn't face. Then I got to Costa Rica. Holy shit bejesus, was I in for the shock of my life. I have no idea how or why I wasn't buried there. The streets of New York at 14 years old were child's play compared to what went down in Costa Rica. Oy vey, if I hadn't lived it myself there's no way I ever would have believed it. (I can't deal with editing right now, and this is really for my benefit anyway. If someone actually does read this please excuse the mistakes. I know how to spell, just not without spellcheck!)
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