Justice: 8. More Than "The Sex Thing"
Then the Kendrick incident happened. It felt like a bunch of stuff was brewing but my take on it was, “Why run? Who is this guy?” Kendrick evidently went to C.A.N., so they got interested in taking Angelo down too. The ironic part is that Angelo is the one that invited Kendrick around in the first place. He was sharing with him and had Yasminia go work for him and that was basically the beginning of the whole mess. Anyway, because of the nudity in class (when minors were there), and because of some situations with the IRS and the INS and his licensing… Angelo was really unprepared for such intense scrutiny. So he had a lot of the new kids in the Buddha Field tailing Kendrick, break into his car, ready to assault him physically… it was getting out of hand. It kept snowballing out of control, and finally Angelo felt so threatened by it that he hiked his skirts and left. He got so paranoid… because he is so afraid of persecution…. That he’ll be asked to account for his actions… with people that could never understand his magnitude. So he became a little bit like a scared, trapped animal. He’s probably got some legitimate diagnosable mental illness, but I’m not qualified to diagnose him. All I know is what I saw. And when I say he was paranoid… he didn’t even tell us where we were going or for how long. He just said we were leaving. I don’t remember how much prep time we had… but not much. Martina had already flipped out by then, so it was just me getting him around from Point A to Point B. I got him packed up, somebody else was taking care of the money part… we just stopped by the Sumac house to grab a shitload of money out of the safe. We each had a one little bag of our own. Angelo had all of his shit and we left LA. We couldn’t tell anyone we were leaving, not even people in the group. Not Pépé Leputois, nobody. Nobody could know we were leaving. We just left. Little did I know I’d never see LA again. I had no idea.
The only reason I even knew where we were going was because Xena set up the itinerary. But Angelo was losing it. To me, he was going crazy. In a lunatic way. And something was broken. My respect for him was pretty much gone by now… I was only interested in keeping this going to protect the lifestyle and the group… everybody’s life. I think I lost respect for him after the sex started happening. You’ve got to understand, it was just not good for me at all. It was me on my knees sucking him off -- forever. And him sitting in his chair and then on the weekends it would be the full f.ck. One night he had me go out on
He was constantly sharing with me about why I shouldn’t be with Pépé Leputois. And I would think, “OK, I’ll try and I’ll work on it.” But even then, I’d try to listen to his satsang and listen for little loopholes to where it made sense that it would be OK for me to be with him.” He says this, but I can read it this way and it’s OK if you look at it this way… it can even be necessary or whatever… he’s growing and I’m growing and it’s beautiful. So anyway, I was with Pépé Leputois and I sucked him off. And Angelo must have found out somehow because he asked me about it. I never lied about anything to him so I told him what happened and he went berserk. He went berserk. He’s such a freak about his body already -- and the fact that he knew I had just f.cked him the weekend before. Remember, no one really knew anything about AIDS at that time. They were thinking you could get it from mosquito bites and sneezes. Angelo freaked out. Especially, we were watching all the weird public access TV in LA, where all these people were professing that they knew what was happening with AIDS. That condoms couldn’t stop it… it was like trying to stop a breeze with a screen door… it doesn’t do anything. And Angelo was such a hypochondriac anyway. Well when he finds out he might have been exposed to the virus, he turns into this veiny, red-faced screaming monster. And then he immediately demanded that I get down on my knees right there and suck him off. (pause) Usually I get really upset when I talk about this, but right now I feel like laughing. “Get down and suck my dick. AAAAUUUGGGHHHH. DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’VE DONE??? DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’VE DONE???” Like a weapon. Like “just in case you didn’t get it, now you will.” That’s what it felt like.
In my head I’m thinking, “You f.cking lunatic.” I was running low on respect for him before that, but at that point inside, it added to the scale. I mean, look at that. Just put yourself there. You know? I had just been told that I had been exposed to the virus and do I even pause for one moment to worry about myself? No. Not for one second. Pépé Leputois and I were young and in love. And if that’s what happened, then that’s what happened. I go to him and say, “Is it true that you’re HIV positive?” and he said, “Yeah.” And I couldn’t be upset with him or anything. He was so fragile and suppressed. But he got reamed too. Angelo let both of us have it. Totally. The ironic thing is that Pépé Leputois didn’t know why it was such a big deal. He didn’t know anything was going on between me and Angelo. Just like I didn’t know if anything was happening between the two of them. It wasn’t something you talked about. That was the nature of it. No one talked.
But with me it wasn’t just the sex. Angelo wanted all my attention… he was in love with me. For a while there, he thought I was “the one.” He was saying stuff to me like, “You’re my Arjuna. You’re the one. I’m going to turn all this over to you. You have these special gifts.” The whole story. But for me -- who can’t hear Happy Birthday -- it just went in one ear and out the other. Somebody else might get into a whole power play with that. Me? It was just… What. Eh. Ver.
I know people say they didn’t know all this was going on – but I say they did. Or they’re numb. Are they trying to say they didn’t see what was going on with Quentin? And that I wasn’t the next Quentin? Think about it. How could you NOT see that? I always thought everybody knew. And I’m pretty sure they did. It’s not like they didn’t notice the attention I was getting. A lot of people were really jealous of that. I’m seeing now I could have been wrong, but that was my reality at the time.
And when the sex thing started to happen, I wasn’t alright with it. And I even told Angelo that… which, for me, was really ballsy. You don’t know how bad it had to be for me to say something to him about it back then. I wasn’t that guy. I couldn’t open my mouth. But one day, Angelo and I were driving in the car and then just out of my mouth comes, “Listen, I’m not OK with the physical part. The sex part.” And he said, “You better watch it or you’re gonna turn me off.” And I said, “I didn’t know I was here to turn you on.” And I said it kind of indignantly. And then there was silence in the car. And that’s all that was ever said about it. But it didn’t stop. And something in me,… it gave me a little peace just to know that he knew where I stood with it… because it was like, “I can outdo you in will power… suck your dick, who cares? Just know I hate your f.ckin guts.” The hate-your-guts part he didn’t know about but he was so clueless. One day, we were at the gym. And he could see I was all bummed out.. and he pointed to my reflection in a chrome weight and said, “Look… you’re not a monster” And in my head at the time, I remember that’s exactly what I had been thinking. That HE was a f.cking monster. But he was clueless to that. He thought I was just in my mind about something else… it couldn’t be him… he thought he was the catch of the catch. Like, “Of course you love me.”
I thought I was telling Angelo how I felt. But I guess it was too subtle or something. I was… when you don’t know who you are or what’s going on with you.. you have a blank face and anyone can throw anything on you. I was like a deer in the headlights. I was 27 or so when this all started. All this stuff was coming at me. I was just blank and he was projecting on me. He honestly thought we were going to be like Romeo and Romeo. But that was never it from my side. I never thought he was my boyfriend or anything. It took years for him to catch on. He had such a high image of himself (as the one everybody wants) that he couldn’t fathom that I didn’t want him. I wasn’t turned on by him. Nothing about him did that for me. I was just doing service. Doing what I was told to do. And that’s it. Never was I turned on by him. Did I care about him in that way? No. Did I want to make sure he was OK? Yes! Absolutely. But is it because as a person I liked him? No. It’s just in me to want to take care of people. You know what I mean? That’s how it was growing up… I was totally indifferent to my parents, I didn’t really like my siblings… but it fell on me to keep it all together. I did it because it was in front of me. So this was all very familiar.
It’s not like I was a “healthy gay out-of-the-closet” man to begin with, you know? I was out for maybe a year and then the whole AIDS thing started. And back then, there wasn’t really any such thing as being a “healthy out” man. It was – at best – “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.” And secretive. I had one two year relationship and that was it. I was totally unprepared for anything like this. But at the same time that I was 100% disgusted with Angelo, I still cared about him. I was worried he wouldn’t be OK if I left. Like seeing a little bird and feeling like if you don’t take care of it, it’ll die. And that’s kind of the way I felt with him. You just get so caught up in that other persons needs that you lose yourself in that. That becomes who you are. Who I am is being the one that someone needs so much everything will fall apart without me. And that’s what I got out of it.
I’m much more careful with that now. That quality I know I have. It was the thing that made me feel complete. Somebody I work with calls it my “Saint Francis Thing”. I thought I was supposed to be Saint Francis. Not consciously. But I had picked up the thought that I was supposed to live like a saint. And suffer. And do things you don’t want to do. And take care of people you don’t like… That’s what saints do. And that’s what I thought spirituality was. Suffering basically. And I think that’s part of the perfect plan. “OK, if you think that’s it and you’re not going to believe it until you’ve tasted every drop of it… then we can get on with it… if there’s any life left.” I’m very lucky that there was.
