Ryan White - My Own Story (25 page)

I had to make my acting debut first, though. On the morning when I was supposed to do my part, I got a big surprise outside the hotel. There was a white stretch limo waiting for me at the curb. The limo had a TV and a bar, and it was full of balloons! The whole crew had rented it to take me to the set. When I rolled up, we opened all the limo doors, and balloons came flying out. Everyone applauded.

Russ, our transportation coordinator, said, “You’ve treated us with respect. So we wanted to show some for you.”

Lukas and I put on those awful hospital pajamas that I never will wear. Then the wardrobe and prop people taped fake IVs on both of us. The tape was too tight, so we actually got bruises on our arms. Our hands started swelling up, just the way they tend to do when you have a real IV.

I had had a fever blister on my lower lip all week. Mom and I had been slaving away, putting all kinds of medication on it every hour on the hour. It had finally dried up just in time before I did my scene. Then the makeup people decided I needed three
fake
fever blisters! Not as cool as Alyssa’s fake hickey!

I gave Lukas some pointers on talking back to Dr. Kleiman about the feeding tube. “Yell it out, man. Say
‘No way!’ ”
I told him, “You don’t want that thing in you
ever.”

Our scene went well. It was funny to hear Lukas lecturing me about my bad attitude, but I managed to keep on dragging my feet and being Chad. Afterward, everyone on the set gave me a standing ovation. It was so nice, I was embarrassed.

It felt even better when Lukas told me, “I’ve never worked with anyone as good as you their first time.”

But soon I had to give the last order on my AD T-shirt: “That’s a Wrap! Let’s Party!” A wrap means you’re done shooting. After the wrap party, you can go home. We were all done in four weeks. It had happened so fast!

The party was in the hotel’s basement bar, of course. Where else? I danced with Annette, and when it got late and most people had left, the crew slipped me a beer.

“Your eyes are getting rounder and rounder,” Doug told me.

I just took a few sips. I think alcohol tastes like what it looks like. But standing there holding a beer, I was really part of the whole gang. I had so much energy I stayed up all night.

The next morning I was real sad. We went around and said good-bye to everyone. They gave Mom a bunch of stuff from our movie house. The beautiful crocheted tablecloth from the movie is on our dining room table right now. I got to take home the Hollywood Herbie. He ended up outliving the real Herbie. Judith Light gave Andrea a little gold skate on a necklace and I got a gold cross.

All our new friends would be off working on another movie somewhere, but we had to go home. Andrea and I were due at school. Well, I thought, I just gotta find a way to do this again. At least I know what to look forward to now.

It was especially hard to say good-bye to Annette and Kurek. I told Annette I’d call her next time we visited Los Angeles. In Kurek’s scene in the movie, you can’t see that he always wears one earring. Sometimes it’s a classy-looking gold ring. Sometimes it’s a dangling plastic skeleton or a painted wooden parrot. I’d asked Kurek if he’d take me to get my ear pierced like his. I wasn’t planning on changing my earring. I really wanted to wear a diamond stud all the time.

“Fine,” said Kurek. He found a jeweler in Statesville who said fine too. But John Herzfeld squashed our plan. I was going to have to give TV interviews about the movie. John didn’t want anyone in Kokomo spotting my earring and saying, “See, I told you he was gay. There’s the proof.”

We went back home, and I started my sophomore year without an earring. I gave a lot of interviews and I never did pierce my ear. One day I was working behind the counter in Maui Surf and Sports when John and Doug drove up.

They’d brought a very small crew—just about a half-dozen people—to get the shots of Kokomo and Indianapolis that you see at the very beginning of the movie. We had a mini-reunion. They hung out for a while and admired the merchandise. I recommended some Oakleys.

After their van pulled away, I started sorting some T-shirts from California that John Riser carried. I really liked those shirts. Each one had the company’s logo, a black and white yin-yang symbol. John had told me that it meant there was some evil in every good, and some good in every evil.

I remembered how Jill Stewart had felt about our trip to Washington. Some good things had happened—definitely. Jill and I had gotten to talk to the President’s Commission, and my family and I had had a great time helping make a movie about what had happened to us. If enough people saw it, maybe other kids with AIDS, kids I’d never know, would be treated better. All this because of something bad—my AIDS.

Besides, I’d had another great job. Now I knew I was good at something besides being sick. I looked out the front window after the movie van. I thought, There go the best days of my life.

Ryan in his room wearing one of his favorite surf shirts.

6

Going to a Better Place

“H
ow do you feel knowing you’ll never have sex?”

I’m at Boys Town, my first time out answering kids’ questions about AIDS. Right away they hit me with this. I’ve gotten it before, and it’s sure the one I hate the most. It’s the worst. It makes me wish the floor would open up and swallow me. I always find a way around a straight answer.

Boys Town is a home in Nebraska for kids who have no one to take care of them properly. Maybe you’ve seen the famous old movie about it on late night TV. Right now girls live at Boys Town too—and some of them have come out to hear me. So I feel even more embarrassed.

After Jill and I went to Washington, I started getting two, maybe three offers to speak every week. I couldn’t go everywhere, or I’d turn into a high school dropout. Anyway, I don’t speak. I can’t even write an English report, let alone a speech. So when I do have time to show up somewhere, I stand in front of a room and take questions.

At Boys Town, there were two rooms full of kids. When Mom and I got there, the priest in charge told me, “These are the kids who probably would have made trouble for you if you’d been at
their
school.” But they never ran out of things they wanted to ask me. They were fascinated. Finally we ran out of time.

I did say I’d give one speech—to the annual convention of the National Education Association in New Orleans. For one thing, I’d be speaking at the Superdome, where I.U. had won the National Basketball Championship the year before, in 1987. Then there was the fact that I’d be talking to about 10,000 teachers. They could help hundreds of thousands more kids understand AIDS. It was a big chance, so I said yes. Besides, people run around with a lot of misconceptions about AIDS, but the biggest one is that you can’t do anything except lie in a hospital bed. I wanted those teachers to see that you can do a lot of things. I do.

Ryan answers questions at Boys Town, 1988.

Ryan gets a hug from a Boys Town resident, 1988.

Instead of a new speech, I ended up saying in New Orleans pretty much what I’d told the President’s Commission on AIDS. I was a major hit. The teachers gave me a standing ovation that never seemed to end. I nearly fell over backward! I wasn’t sure what to say or do.

Afterward, the NEA wanted me to talk to some reporters and then take Mom and me to a fancy restaurant. But that much attention is irritating. At least I think so. I get real tired of answering questions all the time, even for a good cause. I don’t care about fancy food. I prefer my privacy. So I asked to be excused from the restaurant and walked around the French Quarter on my own for a while. The French Quarter is the oldest part of the city, and it’s where you go to hear New Orleans jazz. It was a hot July night, so there were crowds of people doing the same thing I was. All the jazz bars and clubs along the old streets keep their doors open, and some musicians stay on the sidewalk and play. So even if you’re just standing outside, you can hear music everywhere. That was the best part of the trip—strolling around, and then picking up Mom and stopping at Burger King on the way back to our hotel.

After the teachers in New Orleans, I realized that even though kids may listen to me more than adults do, they’re harder to talk to. I don’t think they realize how much they stare. They’re so curious they don’t care. You know the look—“There he is—he’s got
AIDS.”
And sometimes once kids find out who I am, they have a problem with me that they didn’t before. When I walk into a classroom, some of them look at me with their eyes out on stalks practically. Like, “I can’t believe he’s
the one.
I just passed this kid on the stairs!”

After I start talking, though, they begin to think, Hey, this guy does the same things I do. He likes to skateboard and he likes to watch TV and he loves cars. That makes him not so different from me.

I let them know I don’t feel like I’m anybody special. I admit—I got a D in English my freshman year. That makes me about as average as you can get.

The other tough part about going public is how stupid a lot of people are! They never bother to put themselves in a sick person’s predicament. The mean ones think, AIDS is not gonna get
me
—meanwhile, let’s get all of
them.

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and Ryan, 1989.