Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of articles dealing with personal narratives and perspectives focused on HIV/AIDS; it is Mrs. Billings’s second article for the set. For more information on this particular series of articles, please read the editor’s introduction here.
The first time I ever had to learn to pay a bill happened somewhere in my mid-thirties. Learning and teaching, for me, were ideas; they were never very far from the bottom of any of my lists. And before I realized I had a responsibility to others, I did what I could: I did what I needed and what I thought was best for me. Before then I was homeless for a while, I was a prostitute, I was a drug dealer, and I lip synched to everyone from Barbra Streisand to Jerry Lewis. I’d go to the opening of a letter if the price was right. And during that time, during the times of feast or famine, I worked. I held down a job. I may not have been invited to the best parties at the best nightclubs with the best people, but I worked. I liked being independent and I liked feeling a tinge of responsibility. Even as a hooker.
Actually, especially as a hooker.
As I became more and more of a working actor, I got better and better gigs and eventually slipped into the all beautiful world Actor’s Equity, the national union for professional actors. At the time, it merely meant status to me. I put myself on par with Ethel Barrymore and Rip Taylor: I had officially made it.
And then I was diagnosed with AIDS. I was diagnosed at a time when there was really nothing to be done except max out my credit cards and keep working. So that’s what I did. Then the medications came… And I kept working… And my union told me I had health insurance.. And I kept working… And I was able to buy the meds… And I fell in love… And I got married… And I kept living… And I kept working. Throughout that awful, amazing, horrible, incredible time, as friends of mine died month after month, and I survived for some unknown reason,
I was able to breathe on the planet because I had someone who loved me, and that changed me viscerally. We ate and lived and I was able to afford the ability to save my own life. I worked for years to make this happen.
Then, two years ago, I lost my health insurance. It’s not really something I talk about all that much because, for me, there’s a sense of shame attached to that. I’ve made some movies and guest starred on a couple of TV shows, and I now belong to SAG, which is the union for TV and movie people. But if you don’t work for a period of time, you lose your insurance. That’s show business.
No one will cover me because I have AIDS and I make too much money (thank God) and in order to qualify for State help you have to be homeless. Which I was, but am not. And when I was, they denied me because I was homeless. Oh, the irony.
Luckily there still remains empathy for our community and I waddled down to the Los Angeles AIDS Health Care Center where they got me a doctor and all the HIV meds I needed. This isn’t something I want to hang on to for long since after all, I’ve worked my entire life and it takes more than a virus to keep me in bed. It’s simply not in my nature. I won’t allow it to be. I’m not saying I’m made of steel; I’m not saying I’m invincible; I’m not saying that I don’t weep for myself. But I am saying it doesn’t last long. I shatter and then I try and re-piece it all back.
I’m in school right now at California State University working on getting my master’s degree in my one and only passion: my Art. This is taking up my time as well as my spirit. It swallows me whole and consequently,
I am completely and utterly obsessed with learning. I can’t seem to stop. It’s a drug that’s more powerful than any I’ve ever swallowed, snorted or shot up my arm. It has me, and it has me in a profound way.
Since all of that is true and because I’m in it for the next two years, it may be a while before I can gather enough TV hours to get my health insurance back. So in the meantime, my new adorable doctor with the Marilyn Monroe voice and the twinkly blue eyes is comforting me and treating me with kindness and grace. I feel beyond blessed and extremely grateful.
Yesterday I went to the CVS to pick up some antibiotics for this nasty cold I’m coming down with. When you have this disease and you catch a cold, it could very well be the last cold you ever get. It is habit: when a virus sneaks up on me, I attack it — fervently. The woman with the white coat and long braided hair asked me my name.
‘Billings,’ I said sounding more like Elaine Stritch than Elaine Stritch.
She searched through the bags in the ‘B’ pile and appeared with a frown and holding a small bag in her hand. ‘You have no insurance?’ she asked, that frown still plastered on her face.
‘I don’t.’
‘Okay. Do you know how much this medication costs?’
‘I don’t,’ I answered shaking a little.
‘t’s $147.
I stood there frozen for a moment. I couldn’t believe what she had just said to me.
‘Does it come with strippers?’ We laughed and I wrote a check, and took careful hold of my very expensive, possibly life-saving drugs.
This is my life for a while until things change — and they will change, they always do. I’m married to a marvel of a woman and my best friend since 1978. I have friends that know how to handle my temper and my ego when it charges out of control. And I believe in something bigger than myself that has a hand in this little path we’ve drawn out together. I’m okay.
I don’t need sympathy. I don’t want sympathy. I also don’t need to turn on my TV and see my fellow Americans praising an idea that if someone is terminally ill, and has no way to pay for treatment, that we celebrate his demise. I don’t need to see that, when I am at the mercy of my own financial windfall.
I make too much money for this thing, yet not enough for that thing. But if this cold gets worse and continues and I need hospital care, and I turn to the doctors to tell them I have no health insurance, I don’t need to hear someone in the back room of the ER applauding his decision to kick me out of the lobby.
I take full responsibility for my disease. I take full reasonableness for my heroin use. I take full responsibility for the people I slept with. I know how I got into this money landslide. And without relinquishing one iota of blame, the fact that we invested in an economy that was headed for certain doom had a lot to do with our eventual need to dig our way out of a very dark and very deep hole. And we’re doing it. Things are looking up. Things are brighter and things are coming back together. Our lives turned into a bit of broken jigsaw puzzle for a while, but we’re figuring out how to put the sky back where it belongs.
As we do this, as I heal and as I pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars just to stay alive, I don’t want to hear the people of my country cheer Republican politicians who tell me I should have thought about this earlier and that it’s my own responsibility to think ahead. And according to most of this radical, dehumanizing Tea Party, and most of the players at the last Republican debate, I’m really on my own here.
If I die, I die. I just need to be quiet about it and do it as quickly as possible. After all, people need jobs.
So for now, I’ll do what I have to do: I’ll keep working and living and teaching and learning and trying to do my Art for anyone who’ll receive it. I Want — right now. I’m in a Wanting Mood — right now — and quite simply, I don’t have time to die. It’s not on my schedule. And for my other fellow Americans who are ill with whatever it is they’re ill with, and they’re time, like mine, is limited, we have to shut out the noise of people on the Right who aren’t able right now to open their hearts wide enough to hear the call of mercy. We have to be loud in our dissension and clear in our outcome.
We cannot let the voices of the few outweigh the dreams of the many.
Everyone deserves to live a life that’s full and rich and everyone should take the hand of someone else as we all glide kicking and screaming toward the same ending of everyone’s unique and gorgeous stories. If we don’t, if we keep applauding death instead of celebrating life, what is it we’re learning?
And more importantly, what is it we’re teaching?