Advance Praise
“This is a story that needs to be told and Tom Glenn is the author to tell it. He is a skilled writer who uses his unique experience to tell a dual love story. One is the story of a straight man caring for a gay man dying of AIDS. There are scenes that will break your heart while they affirm that we humans are capable of profound love. The second love story is between a father and his daughter and the power of forgiveness. Glenn is a writer who can accomplish the greatest task of the art: he will take you to another world and keep you there and, in the end, you will know something and feel something you did not know or feel before you picked up this book. This is a book you will remember. Tom Glenn is a hell of a writer.”
—Larry Matthews, author of the Dave Haggard thriller series and Take a Rifle from a Dead Man
“In No-Accounts, Tom Glenn has created a small village inside a big city. It’s peopled by ordinary folks who find themselves trapped in an era that gives no quarter, closed in with emotions that are always intense and always present. Everyone has to look grievous situations square in the face: how the shallowest selfishness has the direst consequences; how fear cuts to the bone; coping with love in all its variousness; stripping away prejudgments about “the other;” helping a total stranger go to his slow end; accepting one’s own human mistakes and limitations; agonizing from wrongs wrought upon the people one loves and then trying desperately to forgive oneself. These men and women will get to you—you’ll simultaneously condemn them out-of-hand, be utterly in awe of them, and hope you’re fortunate enough to have their courage if you ever have the need. And Glenn does all this without a trace of mawkishness, weaving deep wisdom through the whole. Quite simply, it’s awesome writing. Do yourself a huge favor—read No-Accounts. When you’re finished, you’ll know the human family almost better than your own.”
—Grady Smith, author of Blood Chit
“Tom Glenn’s No-Accounts is a novel of deep and meaningful compassion. Well-crafted prose and page-turning dialogue carry this story, but at the heart of it is sincere benevolence. In a world where charity often comes in quick, tax-deductible credit-card swipes, Tom Glenn reminds readers that reaching out and touching others in a personal way can be one of life’s most enriching experiences.”
—Eric D. Goodman, author of Tracks
“Tom Glenn lived his novel seven times as a volunteer assisting HIV infected men to die. This is fiction taken from life written by a hero who accompanied the terminally ill as far as any mortal could, devoting himself body and soul to their comfort and helping them make their exit with dignity. It is one man’s story of committing unconditionally to another. A love story like no other, it is uplifting and wrenching and rewarding beyond measure.”
—Juris Jurjevics, author of The Trudeau Vector and Red Flags
No-Accounts
No-Accounts
Tom Glenn
Baltimore, Maryland
Copyright © 2014 by Tom Glenn
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-62720-008-0
E-book ISBN:978-1-62720-009-7
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission from the publisher (except by reviewers who may quote brief passages).
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
Cover and Internal Design by Alexander Namin
Published by Apprentice House
Apprentice House
Communication Department
Loyola University Maryland
4501 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21210
410.617.5265
410.617.2198 (fax)
www.ApprenticeHouse.com [email protected]
Author’s Note
Too many people have contributed to the writing of this book for me to acknowledge them all. The seeds of the story came from my years in the 1980s working with AIDS patients under the auspices of the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, D.C. The clinic’s training, support, and spirit made me understand the nature of the battle against AIDS and inspired me join in the effort. The manuscript went through intensive review in three different critique groups. I am especially grateful to Mary Eccles, a fine writer of children’s books, and Ellen Kwatnoski, Author of Still Life With Aftershocks, a novel about the struggle of a woman to cope with the illness of her brother dying of AIDS. Su Patterson was of invaluable assistance in the final edit, and the staff and students of Apprentice House touched me with their sincerity, expertise, and hard work.
No-Accounts sprang from my horror at society’s and the medical establishment’s withdrawal from people dying of AIDS in the mid-1980s. Fear of the disease resulted in those who could have helped pulling back from patients; some men literally died on the street because family, friends, nurses, and doctors were terrified to touch them. I couldn’t tolerate that, so with the consent of my wife, I volunteered to be a buddy, a sort of caretaker-cum-nurse to gay men with AIDS. At the time, we didn’t know how AIDS was transmitted, so we had no idea of how much danger we were in. It didn’t matter. The work was too important to let risk stand in the way.
We buddies did everything for our patients, even administering medications and giving injections, because there was no one else to do it. As the only straight man working with staff and volunteers in a gay clinic, my biases and stereotypes about homosexuality melted away as I watched the self-sacrifice and courage of gay men fighting a fatal disease. I went through seven patients in five years before I simply could not face yet another death. For a while I worked with the homeless and finally became a hospice volunteer. The searing experiences from those years of volunteering were the raw material from which the story of No-Accounts is drawn.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the men and women who fought so hard to stem the AIDS epidemic. Their courage and determination permanently changed me.
Seek not to reward goodness,
For goodness is beyond reward.
—Hàn Hsīng
Part I
Dying Queer
Chapter 1
Male Bonding
Dying wouldn’t be so awful if he could find Johnny’s mother. He could almost see her through the gray twilight. She’d be tall and elegant and wise. He’d tell her the truth—that he’d known the risks and Johnny hadn’t. He’d take full responsibility. She’d cry a little, thank him for his candor. She’d take him in her arms. Then the gnawing inside of him, like vermin chewing his entrails, would stop. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he’d be at ease. He’d face his father. Nice goin’, son. You done good. Peter had done good? No, that wasn’t right. Goodness is beyond reward.
And he’d be up front with Joey and Ron and Kirk and the whole crowd. Maybe even with Billy. Peter could see him through the fog, that fat-ass phony, fake from his ten-gallon hat and studded belt to the hand-tooled boots on heels that gave him an extra inch making him all of five-ten. Myopic eyes blinking behind contact lenses, paunch distending his flannel shirt, buck teeth shining red in the light of the neon over the bar.