December 1990 David's Funeral

It was nearly Christmas so I went to Wichita Falls. I remember going with my Mom to shop and breaking into tears in the middle of a department store. Returned to Dallas. Mother had written something nice about David so I thought I would read it at the service. It was held at a church at the corner of Mockingbird & Inwood. Everytime I drive by there I still think about him. On the day of the service it was sunny and cold. I got up to read the paper. I almost got to the end but before I did I completely lost it and walked back to my seat. So many people crowded into the small chapel. I was a little embarrassed but it happens I guess.
A lot of what I learned from David Hayes remains with me today. I don't think I would be near as strong a person had I not met him. It will be nineteen years this December 2009 that David died.

Summer 1990 Meeting Peter

One night I was out at the Village Station on Cedar Springs, and in almost the same way I met David, I met Peter Nilsson. I was walking out and he was going in. We saw each other before he went inside and we said hellos. A few seconds later he came out of the exit door I had my eyes fixed on. We laughed and talked and looked for his friend Annika who he had lost inside the club earlier. We searched inside and out until we decided to sit on the curb in front of the club and get to know each other. Surely she would find us there. Peter was from Sweden, which I knew very little about. I wondered how many guys over in Sweden looked like Peter because he was smokin' hot. Blonde hair, blue eyes, awesome body and tan. His accent was so unlike anyone I had ever heard. Being from the Falls, with only one stamp in the pages of my passport, I thought his accent was so sexy. We talked about the exact location of Sweden on a map and the exact location of Wichita Falls on a map. Peter's friend Annika came out of the club finally and they had their reunion. They spoke Swedish to one another until he introduced us. Annika looked me over good with a protective glare. She was blonde as well with a thick mane of hair down her back. She was beautiful. Modelesque. I agreed to ride to Denton with them. Peter was attending UNT studying to be a doctor and Annika was visiting for a few months from Sweden. I had a tape of some new slow beat music I was into in my pocket. We drove with windows down in the cool night air down interstate 35 towards Denton. I remember the tape having "I Wish It Would Rain Down" by Jackie Moore. It was a remake that was formerly done by Phil Collins. It had the popular "Soul II Soul" beat everybody was using in dance music at the time. We had a lot of laughs getting to know each other and the three of us started hanging out all the time. Annika and Peter would act so crazy and speak in Swedish a lot so I would laugh at them as they danced some weird looking dance. Then they would fall down laughing. A few weeks went by. One night we went out to Trash Disco at Club A. Annika was burning girls with cigarettes that pushed her or were rude to her. When they would get passed her a bit she would calmly place the cherry between their shoulder blades. I know it's mean but these girls were always royal bitches so I couldn't help but laugh my ass off. They would say ouch or scream or just turn around and glare. Annika would just stare them coldly in the face and say, "Oh, sorry." I finally suggested we go back to my place before a riot broke out. Once we were back there David came down. He seemed to be feeling better and was very social. He and Annika and Peter hit it off very well. I was happy about that. Mary and Frank came down and joined us too. At daybreak someone (most likely Peter) suggested we all go on a picnic down by Turtle Creek. David was excited about that because he was wanting give Peter and I haircuts and loved the idea of cutting our hair outside by the creek. So he went down to his place to get all the barber stuff and we packed up a blanket and other picnic stuff. After picking up wine and food from the grocery store we headed to the creek. It was so beautiful that morning. David was more excited than I had seen him in a long time and he looked great as well. He reminded me of a kid at Christmas he was having so much fun. He brought a chair and all the necessary hair cutting supplies complete with spray bottle of water and a cape. We got our hair cuts while talking about everything from religion to RuPaul. We had a great time and Peter and Annika loved David. I remember after Annika had gotten to know David and became aware of his HIV status she came to me and wanted to know if David was OK. I told her that I'd seen him get sick and overcome it so many times but I didn't know how well or sick he really was. She got tears in her eyes and said, "I hope he is ok, I'm so afraid for him." I was surprised to see so much sensitivity from Annika. I was used to a much more guarded Annika but I was glad to see she had a big heart after all. We all got really close that summer and had some amazing nights partying and laughing. We usually stayed up playing music and talking well past dawn. Annika got so attached to being here in the US and decided she wanted to move here. We got this crazy idea to get married so she could legally move here. We decided to put it off until her next trip over in the spring. It was sad when she left. That's the thing with long trips, everybody gets so attached that it is harder to say goodbye.

1989-1990 Depression and HIV test

My Apartment at the "Alamo" was #206. It was a room divided by curtains (from ceiling to floor) that David had inherited from the Starck Club. My bed and three windows were on the other side of the curtains with the living area, turntables and wall of records in the front by the entrance. On the left was the kitchen and bathroom. Very small but that didn't stop me from having people over and playing music. Many nights most of my neighbors (and whoever else happened to be around) would pile into my efficiency apartment to talk about various subjects, listen to new music from the record pool, get ready to go out and never make it, stay up all night and then pretend we hadn't been up all night but whatever we did we always managed to laugh a lot. I guess with all that was going on in the world around us everything seemed dark and so did the future. We didn't even know if we had a future. AIDS seemed to be taking so many people and it was starting to be more and more people we knew. How would we survive this scary disease? Depression was setting into the deepest, unexplored parts of my soul. I tried to stay upbeat and busy. It wasn't working anymore and I couldn't stop coughing. Is it coming? Am I getting sick? For the next two months or so I fought depression and mild flu like symptoms. Then Christmas 1989. I drove home to Wichita Falls still feeling down. I had my bishon frise, Cloudy, with me. We slept most of the time at my parents on the couch watching TV. Cloudy would sleep on his back between my arm and the side of my belly. I always felt a little better when I went to sleep with him. Safe for some reason, as if he could protect me. LOL. I don't remember too much about being there that Christmas but as I was leaving my Mom handed me a cassette tape that had belonged to my grandmother, Bop. I looked at the cassette called optimism and thought I would give it a try on the way home. I listened to the tape front and back all the way back to Dallas. I was alone, except for Cloudy, so I really concentrated on listening to the recording. One side was ocean waves that supposedly had subliminal effects and the other side was a man talking about taking deep breaths and imagining you are looking up at the sky. Stuff like that. I know this sounds so crazy but I when I got home something seemed odd or different but I couldn't put my finger on it so I went to sleep. The next morning I woke up and realized I wasn't sick anymore. Better than that I wasn't depressed either. At first I thought, "Oh don't get too excited it will probably be back later in the day." Days went by and I never got depressed feeling or felt sick. Then weeks. Then one day I remembered the cassette and wondered if that could have been how I suddenly felt well. I had really been sceptical of metaphysics/hypnotism/subliminal healing or anything like that but the experience definitely was enough to open my mind to it. A few months later I got up enough nerve to go get an HIV test. I either was positive or negative and I needed to know. I had been running away from reality for too long. Frank and I planned to be each other's support and get tested in Wichita Falls. Actually I asked Frank to go with me and he said he would get tested too. We drove down one afternoon to Wichita Falls to the flower shop where my Mom worked. When I got there and saw her I started crying. She told me it would be ok. I wondered how she could have came to that determination. I didn't see any way it could turn out OK. Mother drove us there to the health clinic. The nurse took my blood and said, "Thank you, your results will be available by phone in a few days." I was stunned to find out that we would not be getting the results immediately. I was relieved. I felt better. It was done..............not so much. Weeks turned into months and I still had not called in to get my results.

David's Will

Once I got moved into "The Alamo" Mary XTC moved in down the hall (back from Wichita Falls again), Brooke H across the hall, Frank next door, David at the end of the hall, Paul Haggard (Mary's producer from OK) also moved in. So we all lived up there and watched out for one another. It was a party ongoing. David had a new roommate by this time named Patty. He met her at Toni & Guy. That is where he got a job once he realized he was well enough to work. As the months passed though, David's health deteriorated significantly. He was getting really thin and had a cancer growth in his mouth the size of a walnut. He was real short of breath and had a hard time getting up stairs. I went to the hospital with him a couple of times and met a couple of his doctors. They were really nice and seemed to like him a lot which came as no surprise since everyone loved David. One day on the way home from somewhere David asked if he could talk to me for a minute. So I pulled his car into the back parking lot of our apartment complex and turned off the ignition. He said he didn't want to hurt me but he had something he wanted to tell me. I said, "What is it?" He then told me he didn't know how long he could continue hanging on with his health declining. He said that feeling the way he did was not "living" anyway and that he'd decided that he was going to take his own life. I started crying and thought about trying to talk him out of it. Then I remembered how strong willed he was and just told him I didn't want him to do it. Then he asked if I would go to the Resource Center and sign his Will so that I would get all of his belongings whenever this happened. We went a few days later and he brought it out to the car and I signed it.