Lesbian Dancing After The Show: An Improviser's Non Improvised Life

My New Low Hanging Balls & The AIDS Scare

The idea of Promiscuity was never a thing with me in 1986. When I was in Geese Theatre I was only with one person: The Man Almost Twenty Years My Senior.

That was pretty much it. Any other interest was thwarted pretty fast by him. All Hippy Open Relationships were fine...as long as it was him who was "open."

I get a phone call from The Man Almost Twenty Years My Senior around three months after I left Geese Company. It seemed he was still concerned about my well-being.

He really wasn't. He wanted to find some way to never see me in a solid relationship.

Word had gotten out that I was happy. Performing in this new company called Fooglewoogle. Staying with my brand new boyfriend in the back of a comic book store before we found our own place to live. Watching Josephine Baker movies and reading this horribly drawn indie comic book called "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," which was so badly drawn and written that I said to Hans: This is the stupidest book in on the planet. Who the hell would buy this shit?

Who knew? Who knew, then?

Eating string cheese, cheap wine and creating bits for ourselves in bed. Going out and dancing, hanging out with new friends and doing the Wacky Make 'Em Ups (a term I officially hate) at bars all around the city. Just having a wonderful 80's time.

I'm sure all that talk about me being damaged goods and how I would be unhappy and untouched for the rest of my life was killing him inside.

He calls me out of the blue. It was that Conversation of the Times that would make you immediately cry:

Him: Landry!

Me: Yes. What do you want?

Him: Telling you I might be HIV Positive. You need to get tested.

...And waterworks. 1986 Waterworks on the phone. I was horrified.

Me: How the hell do you think you are HIV Positive?

He tells me he fooled around with another male company member. A member who was HIV Positive. This is where all of it now started to make me laugh. He'd fucked anything with a hole, male or female, but I was only fucking him and now I might be HIV Positive. I was laughing and crying. It was all so funny to me.

My heart was telling me what I assumed about him: He's just a neurotic hypochondriac. He probably fooled around without intercourse with this company member as he was more on the straight side of the Bisexual spectrum, and when he found out the guy was diagnosed HIV Positive, his hypochondriac tendencies kicked in.

It went farther than this. Much further, in my mind. He finally regales me with the nice kicker to it all in the hopes that I would never be in a relationship and this would end three months of happy:

You better tell 'Hansy Boy' to get tested too.

He said it with the sort of inflection that would only come out of a crazy woman pretending she was pregnant by the married man who stopped boinking her.

But this was something a little more insidious. This was about the worst epidemic to hit the world, and there was very little information about it. Then, it was still considered a drug addict/gay disease. Then, there were still jokes about the diet pill that went out of business because it was named AYDS.

He was not only messing with our relationship, he was at that point, claiming myself and Hans just might die because of him. I'm sure he was thinking to himself, Try to be happy NOW.