The Love That Almost Killed Me… and the Illness That Saved My Life

The doctor said my life was about to change…

… as if I’d hoped to stay the same all my life. Slowly crawling back from the brink of death, nobody could understand why I was so happy.

Nine months before, I arrived in that tiny mountain town, to begin a year-long national touring contract with a brilliant classical repertory theatre.

The plays were Romeo and Juliet, in which I wore my beard a natural brown; All’s Well That Ends Well, in which I painted my beard grey; and The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont, a meta-theatrical clown show full of modern musical theater jokes. I painted my beard blue.

I’d figured a Shakespeare company would acquaint me with earnest, poetic-types, and — fingers crossed — at least a couple other gay guys… Instead, I was stuck in a van for eight hours a day with a bunch of football bros who talked about nothing but fantasy football… Not a gay guy in sight!

I never categorized the tension as homophobic per se. People just had to get used to me. At that age, I was always rushing barefoot into fields alight with fireflies, arms outstretched like Maria Von Trapp. I was so hungry for life. I suppose folks had a hard time believing my disposition was sincere.

But it often left me feeling like I must have done something wrong.

So whenever we got off the road and came back to the tiny mountain town, I’d make friends in the community. A young woman who owned the vibrant little poetry-cafe at the end of the road invited me to dinner one night… to meet her friend Malcolm, a sweet-looking tech-nerd with high cheekbones and Harry Potter glasses.

After dinner, he and I wandered down the road, climbed up into a tree and gazed at the moonlight. It was one of the most romantic nights of my life… until he broke the news he was too heartbroken about his ex-boyfriend to start something new.

I’d never even had a boyfriend! I was 23, and all the heteronormative films about high school sweethearts had me convinced I was falling behind. By that point, everyone I was attracted to turned out to be straight. This sweet, handsome, single gay man felt like a unicorn! I just couldn’t let him go.

That Christmas, my parents came to town, and I told them about Malcolm. It was ostensibly my “coming out!” I’d told my father I was gay back in high school, and it was so inconsequential I decided I’d just tell my mom when there was someone in my life she should meet. She didn’t bat an eye about his gender, she was just so happy I was finally seeing someone.

But were we seeing each other? It was more like a “situationship”. He’d kiss me one night, then push me away the next. He’d cry in my arms, and I’d wipe his tears and wonder why I wasn’t good enough for him. Whatever prevented us from being together — I was convinced it was my fault.

People struggle understanding Shakespeare… But if you do his plays long enough, it’s overwhelming how these centuries-old verses become the best way to describe what’s going on in your life. Juliet says —

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, / My love as deep; the more I give to thee, / The more I have, for both are infinite…

I thought my capacity for love was so unending, and the act of loving was so much its own reward, the more I gave the more I’d feel… But of course, what actually happened was I threw my heart away and got nothing in return. In All’s Well That Ends Well, Helena says:

… I know I love in vain, strive against hope; / Yet in this captious and intenible sieve / I still pour in the waters of my love / And lack not to lose still…

I had way too much scarcity-mentality to believe I’d ever meet another unicorn. And I was way too much of a people-pleaser to realize Malcolm’s pain had nothing to do with me. At the time, I just felt like there must be something terribly wrong with me… and it was literally making me sick.

Back on the road, at a rundown motel, a sand-papery texture developed on my tongue, so coarse and fowl, I could barely chew my food. I figured after bellowing Shakespeare in dusty gyms all over the country, I must have just misused my voice somehow. I’d drink ginger tea, and wait for it to go away.

Before long, I was sipping water every minute so my gums wouldn’t seize. As we drove across state-lines, I desperately had to pee. Hours away from a rest stop, I was whimpering like an injured puppy, my bladder on the brink of exploding. Finally, an actor tossed me an empty soda bottle, I covered myself with a winter coat, and they blasted music and sprayed perfume to mask the sound and smell of piss…This happened more than once.

There was a scene in All’s Well where my character was on stage for a long time with nothing to say. One night, I felt my gums go numb and my whole mouth clamp shut. When my cue finally came, I did what I could to speak through the tension, sounding like a toothless old man! The character was an old man, so it kind of worked… but the other actor looked terrified.

I suffered from invincibility-syndrome. I’d heard all these “inspiring” tales of Richard Burton doing Hamlet with the flu, giving a brilliant performance and then vomiting in the wings. So I kept muscling through my symptoms as they got worse and worse. I was constantly dribbling pee. I wore day-old boxers with crusty stains, because I was too fatigued to do any laundry.

One night after a show, I puked in the green room sink. Horrified, I did my best to tidy up, then stumbled home and passed out on the couch. We had a student matinee of Romeo and Juliet the next morning, and I was supposed to be there at 9am for fight-call. But when I woke up, I couldn’t move.

The general manager — one of the football bros — came over, sat beside me with an uncharacteristically paternal warmth, and said he would take me to the hospital. Another actor jumped into my role as we sped to the ER.

After numerous tests, a nurse explained that my blood-sugar was spiking through the roof, which meant I had late-onset type 1 diabetes. They sent me to the ICU, and before I passed out, they explained that if I had waited an extra day to come to the hospital, I probably would have died.

…And then, believe it or not, the next few days were like a bedroom farce!

I awoke to a smiley nutritionist chirping about carbohydrates, with the faux-enthusiasm of a hungover grad student teaching toddlers the ABCs. This was followed by low-budget instructional videos where an actor dressed as a football coach asked the camera “So you have diabetes, eh? I bet you’re feeling scared, right?” and the camera nodded up and down.

I thought, “Hey, don’t speak for me!”

On day three, one of my testicles inflated like a water balloon, so they sent for a urologist who looked just like the grasshopper from “A Bug’s Life.” He sent me downstairs for a sonogram, and as the nurse massaged my testicle with pregnant-lady-belly-jelly, the doctor looked at the monitor and joked “It’s twins!” That was the vibe of the hospital — a fascinating panoply of kooky characters and situations, about which I was eternally amused.

And so I never understood people’s condolences. After two months plagued with uncertainty, suffering pain that nearly killed me, being in the hospital was a blessing. I was getting bed rest, my blood-sugar was coming back to normal, and I felt better than I had for as long as I could remember.

When the doctor said my life had changed… I couldn’t have been happier.

When I got out of bed and looked in the mirror for the first time in days, the face staring back at me was an old man, with unkempt hair and crumbs in his beard. I thought — why does “juvenile” diabetes make me look old? I had almost died, so maybe it was the specter of the man I almost never got to be? Or maybe it was a taunting reminder of just how long I’d have to live with these new daily habits of pricking my finger and counting carbs?

And then I figured it out…It was old-age make-up! We did All’s Well That Ends Well the night I puked in the green room, and I was too sick to wash the grey out of my beard before I fell asleep. I had sat in the hospital for four days wearing old-age make-up and nobody said a thing!

It took a few weeks for my muscles to wake up from four days in bed. But before long, I was bounding across the stage with youthful exuberance, and the cast was elated to see Maria Von Trapp was back to her usual self!

And in the afternoons before a show, I’d sit on my porch, gazing at the sun-drenched cobblestones, violet hyacinths and flitting butterflies, and think — there is nothing I need that I don’t already have.

When Malcolm finally texted “Hey I heard you were having a rough time, are you okay?” I realized I’d barely thought of him in weeks. My last night in town, my local friends threw a party, and he was just one among the crowd. I hugged him, happy to see him, but ready to let go. I walked home alone, drenched with gratitude. I packed a bag, with all my insulin, and caught a bus to New York… a city of unicorns!

Now, I wish I could say this was the last time my ambition ran me into the ground… the last time I agonized over not fitting in… the last time I fell in love too soon… I wish we only had to learn important lessons once…

No matter how many years go by, I’ll always be that wide-eyed barefoot kid — risking heartache for adventure’s sake. I still crave connection so much, I give strangers the power to hurt me. I still have such big dreams, I convince myself the life I have is not enough. I’m still learning the same lessons over and over… like lines in a play, a little more confidently each time.

They say “all the world’s a stage,” but thank God my life is not a Shakespeare play, where half the audience is mouthing the words along with me, and following along in the script, wagging their fingers if I drop a line…

Nobody’s waiting for me to get it right. I don’t have to be word perfect.