Quitman was always in my heart and on my mind. Had I paid more attention a few weeks earlier when Quitman told me the doctor had found nodules on his neck, I would have understood the real reason he felt he needed to be in San Francisco, which had become a mecca for HIV research and treatment. Throughout the next few years, he was in and out of the hospital, very ill, and he was deeply depressed. I remember calling him to tell him how well things were going with a series I was working on, Crosstown, but he was not in the mood. He didn’t want to hear about how I was doing all the things he had dreamed of doing, which now, we both knew, he would never do. I tried to raise Quitman’s mood. Changing subjects, I began to regale him with stories of all the guys I’d been dating in Hollywood. He cut me off: “Stop it, Jenifer. I don’t want to hear about all the sex you’re having.” I was so sad for him and for myself. I didn’t know what to say.
I was working hard and looked forward to the still-almost-daily “silent” phone call from Quitman. God, how I loved him. We laughed and cried together as always. Around Christmastime, I remember discussing the death of Sylvester, the gay disco music icon, at only age forty-one. A couple of days later, we repeated the call, but this time it was Max Robinson, the first African American anchor of a national news program, cut down at age forty-nine.
One morning in early January, the bedside phone jarred me awake at 3 a.m. Quitman spoke slowly, the fear in his voice nearly palpable. “I’m in the hospital, Jen. I’m sick. This time I thing I’m real sick.”
My friend Beverly Heath drove most of the nearly eight hours it took to reach the hospital in Oakland. The nurse told me not to touch or hug Quitman; confusion still remained about how the HIV virus was spread. I entered the dimly lit room where Quitman lay still in the bed. This Adonis, this god, whose body could leap as high as Mount Everest, lay there, covered in purple lesions.
I stepped forward and touched Quitman’s face and took his hand. He whispered, “Oh, Jen, you’re the first person to touch me without wearing gloves in two years.” I held myself together long enough to laugh and joke with Quitman a little.
The nurses would not allow me to stay in the room for more than a few minutes. By the time I got to the parking lot, I was falling apart. I saw red. Then I saw black, because all I could see was death. In the car, I screamed, clutching my chest and banging the dashboard. I asked Beverly to drive to a liquor store, where I walked around like I was shopping for shoes. My eyes fell on a bottle of Wild Turkey, which I had never heard of but bought anyway. Back in the car, I turned the bottle up and chugged the burning liquid, needing to erase the image of my friend rotting to death.
As we drove to the home of Beverly’s friends, where we would spend the night, Beverly said, “You’re grieving, Jenifer, and I understand, baby, but there’s something more. Something’s wrong.”
I was too distraught to make much conversation with the lovely couple who were opening their home to us. As Beverly stirred the gumbo dinner, I dialed the kitchen wall phone to call Mark and Bobby to tell them about Quitman. But before I could even say a word, Mark blurted, “Jenny, I’m glad it’s you. Clyde Vinson died.” Clyde had been my acting coach a few years earlier in New York.
It was all too much. I collapsed to the floor and crawled under the kitchen table, holding myself in a ball and sobbing into my knees. Beverly calmly looked down at me as she continued to stir with the long wooden spoon.
BEVERLY
[gently]
What are you doing under the table, Jenny?
ME
[looking up and screaming]
I don’t know! Don’t leave me! Just don’t leave me!
BEVERLY
[a bit less gently]
Jenny, get your ass up off this floor!
ME
I can’t! I can’t move, Beverly!
BEVERLY
Jenny, you’ve got to listen to me baby. Something is going on with you. Really, this is more than sadness about Quitman. You need to get professional help with this. You need to talk to somebody.
ME
[starting to gain composure]
Really? You think it will help me?
BEVERLY
I know it will. There’s no greater journey than the journey within.
Quitman’s illness, and the near-constant news of another friend stricken by AIDS, caused me to channel my grief into many AIDS causes. Over the years, I launched at least a dozen AIDS Walks and performed at numerous fundraisers. No doubt there has been progress on the AIDS front, but it saddens me that many people, gay and straight, continue to get the disease. The struggle isn’t over.
EIGHT
HOLLYWOOD NOT SWINGING
My friend Louis St. Louis, who has been truly important to my career, came through for me in a big way. Louis was well-connected in showbiz circles and invited agents from William Morris to Don’t Tell Mama to see my one-woman show, How I Spent My Summer Vacation. And, yes! The biggest talent agency in the business signed me immediately! Finally! My big break!
In short order, William Morris arranged auditions for a Broadway show, a couple of movies, and a screen test for Bonnie Timmermann, who at the time was the casting director for Universal. But I didn’t get cast in anything. After I auditioned for Grind, a Broadway-bound musical starring Ben Vereen, the director, Hal Prince, commented I was “too powerful to be real.” (This feedback actually made me smile.)
My early days with William Morris underscored my persistent dilemma of not fitting into a marketable box. I was too unconventional, not “commercial” enough. One of my William Morris agents, Greg Mullins, told me I needed to be “more glamorous.” What the fuck did he mean by that?
The agency sent me on several auditions for roles that I knew could take my career to the next level. I auditioned for the role of Shug in the movie The Color Purple. I was hugely disappointed that Reuben Cannon, the casting director, felt I was too young. It was sort of nice to hear that because in show business having large breasts usually means they cast you as characters that are ten years older than your age.
Then came the audition for Saturday Night Live. In its ten seasons on the air, SNL had featured only one African American woman, an actress named Yvonne Hudson. Excitement does not describe how I felt. This could be it: an opportunity to show my versatility, vocal ability, comedic timing, and charisma. Nora Dunn was auditioning that same day. I must have done well, because a day or so later, I got a call back and met the show’s creator, Lorne Michaels. Then a few days later, my agent Lucy Aceto called to tell me, with great compassion, that I had not gotten SNL.
If one real test of a person’s mental health is their ability to experience rejection and great disappointment, then, not surprisingly, I failed the test. I fell apart. I staggered to Sheep Meadow in Central Park. As soon as I got there, I dropped to my knees, sobbing, and fell face-first into the grass. Damn, that hurt. I lost control of my body, shaking, writhing, and crying out. I lay there and cried until nightfall.
By morning, my sorrow had turned to rage. I stormed the few blocks to the William Morris building on 55th Street, blew past the secretary, and burst into Lucy’s office. Pounding on her desk, screaming and shouting blindly, I blamed the agency for misguiding me. I know I scared the shit out of everyone in the nearby offices. I was lucky William Morris didn’t drop me on the spot.