Each World AIDS Day, I read this poem and remember Tim. D.O.A. BY TIM DLUGOS “You knew who I was when I walked in the door. You thought that I was dead. Well, I am dead. A man can walk and talk and even breathe and still be dead.” Edmond O’Brien is perspiring and chewing up the scenery in my favorite film noir, D.O.A. I can’t stop watching, can’t stop relating. When I walked down Columbus to Endicott last night to pick up Tor’s new novel, I felt the eyes of every Puerto Rican teen, crackhead, yuppie couple focus on my cane and makeup. “You’re dead,” they seemed to say in chorus. Somewhere in a dark bar years ago, I picked up “luminous poisoning.” My eyes glowed as I sipped my drink. After that, there was no cure, no turning back. I had to find out what was gnawing at my gut. The hardest part’s not even the physical effects: stumbling like a drunk (Edmond O’Brien was one of Hollywood’s most active lushes) through Forties sets, alternating sweats and fevers, reptilian spots on face and scalp. It’s having to say goodbye like the scene where soundtrack violins go crazy as O’Brien gives his last embrace to his girlfriend-cum-Girl Friday, Paula, played by Pamela Britton. They’re filmdom’s least likely lovers—the squat and jowly alkie and the homely fundamentally talentless actress who would hit the height of her fame as the pillhead- acting landlady on My Favorite Martian fifteen years in the future. I don’t have fifteen years, and neither does Edmond O’Brien. He has just enough time to tell Paula how much he loves her, then to drive off in a convertible for the showdown with his killer. I’d like to have a showdown too, if I could figure out which pistol-packing brilliantined and ruthless villain in a hound’s-tooth overcoat took my life. Lust, addiction, being in the wrong place at the wrong time? That’s not the whole story. Absolute fidelity to the truth of what I felt, open to the moment, and in every case a kind of love: all of the above brought me to this tottering self-conscious state—pneumonia, emaciation, grisly cancer, no future, heart of gold, passionate engagement with a great B film, a glorious summer afternoon in which to pick up the ripest plum tomatoes of the year and prosciutto for the feast I’ll cook tonight for the man I love, phone calls from my friends and a walk to the park, ignoring stares, to clear my head. A day like any, like no other. Not so bad for the dead.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 14:28:16 +0000
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