Ryan White - My Own Story (27 page)

“Just give them a wave like you’re a rock star,” Matt advised.

We got to see Greg Louganis again—this time at his house. It’s high up in the hills around Malibu. The road up from the highway along the coast twists and curves like you wouldn’t believe! Greg’s house was very new, and he was still fixing it up. His garage was built to hang right out over the hillside. I wondered what an earthquake might do to it. His pool
was
earthquake proof. It said, “Custom Designed for Greg Louganis” right on the side.

“Ever need a house-sitter?” I asked Greg. The view all the way down to the beach was unbelievable. I was ready to live on a surfboard for the rest of my life.

Greg laughed. “Come by again on your next trip—even if I’m not in town. You can spend the day and enjoy yourselves.”

We took him up on it, and came back with my grandparents. I felt very comfortable here because I could get away from being watched all the time. No one stared at me. No one teased me about being a hotshot. No one bothered me at all. Celebrities needed the same things I did: peace and quiet and privacy. One thing I’d had because of AIDS was shingles. I got ichy, painful blisters which had left scars on my back. If I was in a bathing suit, I felt much more comfortable now at Greg’s pool then I ever would again on the beach in Florida.

I loved going to New York and California, and I was really happy that I could take Mom and Andrea and my grandparents and Heather. Sometimes Andrea even got to bring a skating friend. But the rest of the time, being well-known was more of a nuisance than something nice. Nobody at school ever bugged me about AIDS anymore, but I could tell that some kids were jealous of me, especially after the movie. Believe me, I
never
sit down in the cafeteria and start babbling about Greg’s view, or how I had been on Phil Donahue and then he’d phoned the other night, or the time Andrea and Heather and I went to the Hard Rock Cafe in New York and Cindy Lauper called us there to give us shopping tips. I never
try
to be anything but as normal as possible. I certainly don’t plan on spending all my time with celebrities, even though I’d love to move to California.

Charlie Sheen, Ryan, and Emilio Estevez on the set of the movie,
Men at Work,
1989.

Besides, I’m a strange kind of celebrity. Even when Heather and I are just hanging out at Pizza Hut in Noblesville, someone always recognizes me. Sometimes they come over and shake my hand and say something really nice. That’s great, even though shaking hands is not what I want to do most when I’m eating pizza. But sometimes people just gawk. When they stare at me, I remind myself that I’m acting normally, just going about my business. They’re the ones who are being weird. But sometimes I wonder what they’re expecting. If I were Elvis Presley, they’d want to tear my clothes off. But since I’m only Ryan White, they don’t know what they want from me.

Whenever Heather and I spotted anyone staring, we’d start laughing. “Maybe I should moon them,” I joked once. “Really give them something to look at.”

When we still lived in Kokomo, I got a great letter from Tina Yothers, who’s on
Family Ties.
She wrote me, “Because I am in show business a lot of people don’t like me either. You just have to be strong and don’t let people get you down.” She was talking about fame, but she’s right—it’s a good way to think about AIDS too.

If I suddenly stopped being famous, I’d be so happy! I’d never miss it. I’d rather be Mr. Anonymous and do whatever I wanted. That’s so much more fun. When we were staying in Los Angeles, Andrea, Heather, and I rode around in a limo taking pictures of each other making faces and fooling around. We had a big bunch of balloons trailing out the window. The other cars kept honking because our balloons were getting in their way. We drove over to Venice Beach where everyone does tricks and fancy skating on the boardwalk. Back at the hotel, Andrea skated and I skateboarded in the parking garage. No one bothered us.

“I’m jealous,” Heather said. She doesn’t skate—just runs.

“Hey, we want to enjoy this while it lasts,” I protested.

But I made it up to her. She woke up in the middle of the night in the hotel with a terrible toothache. We had to take her to a dentist who said she needed a root canal. I’ve never had much tooth trouble, but I do know that root canal stuff is supposed to be horrible and real painful. So I held Heather’s hand the whole time and talked to her.

“You think this is bad,” I said. “Your birthday’s coming. We’re really going to give you a toothache.” Heather’s birthday is in November. I always take her to Ben & Jerry’s. She has mint chocolate chip, and I have Cookies ’n Cream.

When we got back to Cicero, Heather had to have dental surgery all over again because the dentist in L.A. had messed up. I sent her notes while she was sick, just to let her know she wasn’t missing anything at school. “Yearbook’s about the only thing worth coming for,” I’d tell her. And I’d sign off, “Totally bored but in a good mood.”

I never let trips get in the way of stuff I had to do for school. I didn’t want to ask my teachers to make exceptions for me—ever. Hamilton Heights has a program where you can be a teacher’s assistant. I helped Mrs. Schwartz, my science teacher, with a biology class. Sometimes I took attendance, or I helped give quizzes, or I did Xeroxing for her. If I couldn’t be around, I always let her know. If I was away and missed quizzes in my own classes, I always made them up, even if I had to take two or three at once. I was on the honor roll now. I wanted to stay there. And I couldn’t wait to take auto mechanics.

Andrea had some good times because I got so much attention, but she didn’t like it either. Andrea’s modest. She would never tell you about her skating trophies. She doesn’t even keep some of them in her room. She never gossips. She hates it if people get critical or make fun of anyone behind their back. She’ll jump in with something nice about them.

Now everyone at school knew Andrea from the movie. She had almost as much fun making it as I had. But after it was broadcast, she got several letters telling her she sounded real spoiled. How could she think about roller skating when her brother was going to die? It wasn’t just letters. Kids even said to me sometimes, “Boy, your sister sounds like a brat.” It really upset me.

They didn’t understand how much skating kept Andrea going, even though I was sick. Skating gave her some time alone with Mom. It helped her get away for a while from “that issue,” as she calls AIDS. I certainly didn’t blame her. I was glad Greg Louganis had gone to one of her workouts. He had been real worried about Andrea back when she’d had to stop skating, and later continued to follow her progress.

“I’m going to encourage you, not give you advice,” he told her. “Keep it up. Enjoy it. Do it for yourself.”

So I was really glad when Andrea and her skating partner, Scott, did their routine for the whole school. I knew she’d be back at the nationals soon. Now she wouldn’t be just Ryan White’s sister full-time, forever. Anyhow, sometimes I couldn’t believe she
was
my sister, she was looking so good. She’d started letting her hair grow while we were in North Carolina working on the movie, and now she’d gotten it permed. She was no tomboy, and she wasn’t quite so interested in squirting you with trick ketchup bottles anymore.

Even Steve noticed the transformation and he loved to tease Andrea about it.

“How come your hair’s all messy?” he’d laugh.

Steve and I were always visiting and entering car shows. He had his Mustang and I had mine—I had traded in my Chevy for a new black and gray Mustang. I spent hours studying
Mustang Monthly
and
Wheels and Deals.
That’s a trading paper that tells you what you need to soup up and modernize your car. I’d started daydreaming about going to school in California to learn to be a race-car driver. I could do that in the summer. Then I wouldn’t have to wait until after college to head west.

“I think you have enough to worry about just buying gas,” Mom told me.

“You can tell the men from the boys by the price of their toys,” I said.

“He’s sixteen, Jeanne,” Steve said. “At his age I was car-crazy too. I used to drag race.”

“Well, Ryan,” Mom said, “I can’t stop you—but I can sure try.”

One day after school started I was driving out of the Pizza Hut parking lot in Tipton—another place Heather and I stopped by all the time. Tipton is a big cruising town. All of a sudden a kid waved me down. I knew John Huffman to say hello to at school—but that was all. He was a junior who lived in Cicero.

“Can you give me a ride home?” he asked me. “My car door fell off.”

Well, his car was a red Mustang, so I said okay. I think that was the start of a great friendship. On the way to his house John told me his dad and his older brothers were all incredibly into cars. His dad even had a ’68 Mustang—a real prize. They had all the Ford motor books and read the same magazines I did. When I dropped him off, John asked if I’d come back and take him to pick up parts while his car was in the shop.

After that we started cruising together. Just about every town in Indiana has a cruising strip. Around here, Noblesville is
the
place to show off your car on Saturday night. But Cicero does have its own strip, between the Dairy Queen and the bank. John and I’d pile Andrea and Heather and John’s girlfriend, Dee Laux, into our cars and take off to see who we could see and what they were driving. Then we’d go down to Castleton to catch a movie or some salsa and chips.

I went by the Huffmans’ as much as I could. John’s bedroom was covered with performance stickers and posters for Mustangs and Oakleys. And he and his brothers and his dad all worked on their cars constantly. Whenever I stopped in, they might be looping a chain over a tree branch to haul an engine up into the air to repair it. I never knew what they might be getting ready to do next.

John was kind of a wild man, always collecting speeding tickets. I kept bugging him to slow down.

“You’re a worrywart,” he told me. “You drive fast enough when you get the chance.”

“Yeah, but I hardly ever drink!” I said. “I certainly don’t when I’m driving, and I won’t drive with someone who does.” I don’t know why people drink anyway.

One weekend Mom and Andrea were away at a meet, and John’s parents took a trip to Illinois. So John had an all-night party. Almost everyone stayed over, including me. Saturday morning I was sitting on the couch watching TV with a couple of girls. All of a sudden John’s parents pulled into the driveway. They’d come back early.

The girls screamed and ran into the garage to hide. Another kid rushed around hiding empty beer cans. But I sat still. When the Huffmans walked in, I smiled at them. What else could I do? They caught us. Thank goodness Mom never found out—until she read this!

I turned seventeen in December. In the spring John and I planned to go down to the Speedway in Indianapolis to watch the cars and drivers warm up for the Indy 500. Since that was a while off, we spent our time at electronics stores, looking at new stereos we wanted.

Then one day Michael Jackson called me. Wow! I didn’t know why he had, except maybe because he’s from Indiana too. He was in his car, he said.

“If I lose you, man, I’ll call you back,” he told me.

So I told him what I was doing, what movies I’d seen, what school was like, how John and I had been window-shopping for stereos—stuff I’d talk about to anyone. I said I was playing his albums. I liked “Man in the Mirror” the best. Michael’s not flaky or weird, like you read in those newspapers you can buy in the supermarket. He’s real quiet and soft-spoken. Sometimes he takes a while to say things. He’s just kind of gentle and peaceful. He was a nice new friend for me to have.

“Next time you’re in L.A., we’ll get together and have some good old fun,” he told me. Well, I couldn’t wait. But it was going to take us a while to get back to California.

Meanwhile life in Cicero was interesting. One day John came over and told me he’d broken up with Dee.

“That’s too bad,” I said. “She must be upset.”

John shrugged. “Yeah, I guess,” he said, looking away. He looked like he wished he hadn’t said a word.

So I called Dee, just to be friendly. “How’re you doing?” I asked her.

“Not too well,” she said. “I’m glad you called.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “Want to drive around for a while?”

“Sure!” she said. I think she was halfway hoping we’d run into John.

We went cruising quite a bit, just as we always had. Sometimes we saw John; sometimes we didn’t. Mostly we just hung out together. Business as usual.

“You know,” Dee said to me one time, “I never thought I’d see you anymore.”

“Why not?” I asked. I was real surprised.

“Well,” Dee said slowly, “John and I are broken up. You’re John’s friend.”

“So?” I said.

“When a guy breaks up with a girl, his friends usually stick with him, not her,” Dee explained.

“That’s dumb,” I said. “You’re my friend too. Why can’t I stick with both of you?”

We’d been close before, but we were a lot closer after that.

Spring was coming. Soon it would be May, which meant the prom, the greatest night of high school. Kids in Cicero look forward to it all year long. You may never get that dressed up again, your whole entire life.