The following monologue was part of a show I did about AIDS in 1986. The show, "Miss Alice and other heroes," won an award and much critical acclaim. Since this Thursday, December 1 is World AIDS Day, I thought I'd offer it as a reminder of how it was 25 years ago.

Tony 

by Tommi Avicolli Mecca

c 1986

Have you ever felt so helpless you couldn’t even cry? You wanted to scream, but you knew that if you really let you go, you’d never stop screaming.

I have this chair in my room, My housemates know that when I’m sitting here, don’t bother me. I’m been sitting in this chair a lot lately.

I went to see Tony today. He didn’t recognize me at first. Hell, I don’t think he recognized me at all. 

The nurses are getting better. They’re still leaving his food out of reach, but at least it’s in his room. I came to see him the other day and there was his tray lying outside his door. I marched right over to that nurse’s station and I said, “What the hell’s that food tray doing outside his room?”

The nurses were afraid to go into his room.

His family’s no better. Tony called his brother, the reverend whatever-his-name-is, and asked him to talk to their mother about visiting him. The good reverend said, “We talked it over, and we don’t think it’s appropriate for the family to go there.”

I don’t get it. I thought I did. I’ve sat here so many nights and I’ve said to myself, “Shit, they’re just ignorant bastards, write them off.”

But I can’t. Tony can’t.  Oh, he jokes about it all the time. He calls himself “the leper,” but it takes its toll. Sometimes when I hold him, I know he’s not trembling from the fever.

We grew up together, Tony and me. He knew I was queer before I did. Hell, I knew what he was the first time I laid eyes on that little queen. We double dated for the senior prom, it was the only way we got through that ordeal. After graduation, he went off to college in Boston. I stayed here in Philly.

We ran into each other a few years later at a gay dance at St. Mary’s. He had dropped out of school. Our first “public event” together was the 1973 gay pride march in New York, that was the year Bette Midler showed up and sang, “Oooh ya got ta have friends…”

Tony worshipped Bette Midler. He bought all of her records. He even went to see her at the tubs. Sometimes at parties he'd do his impersonation of her. Once we put water balloons filled with cold water in his shirt. He’s up there carrying on, singing, “Come on and listen to the lullaby of Broadway…” And I ran up and stuck the balloons with a pin and the water spilled all over him...he could’ve killed me.

His mother said, “It’s a good thing your father’s not alive cause he’d die of embarrassment right now.” Tony said, “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, I caught a virus.”

“It’s the way ya got it, Tony.”

“I’m proud of the way I got it, loving men. None of us knew this thing was here, it’s not like we did it on purpose.”

Do you know his friend Ryan won’t even come to see him? He said that Tony shouldn’t’ve been tricking around so much.

When I saw him today, he must be 90 pounds, and he used to lift weights. I used to joke about him being a clone. He’d say, “Hey, don’t knock success, honey.”

He wants me to help him die. I promised that if it ever came to this, I’d do it. But I can’t. I can’t do it. 

Forgive me, Tony, and please, just die soon.