#32 Vivian

Pushkin Jackie.

Hello, who calls it six thirty on Friday night?

Wait? Wait?

What?

I wanted to say one thing? Hello?

Yeah, you do you know that a new season of my show is starting?

I had no idea Listen.

I wanted to wash you great luck. Is this a kiss off?

Yeah?

From Gimblet Media.

I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight Today's episode Vivian right after the break. This story begins back before the quarantine, a time when people didn't start conversations with how are you holding up? During those innocent days. We started with the weather.

It was minus forty last week minus forty. My front door froze shut. I had to use like a hair dryer to get out of the house.

Vivian lives in Canada, and while I'm always happy to talk about Canada, white Horse is beautiful.

I once had an opportunity to go there.

It's not the reason why we're here. Vivian's reached out to talk about something that happened twenty five years ago that she still has questions about the death of her uncle Ellio.

I grew up in Winnipeg. There's like nothing that sexy about Winnipeg and my uncle it was like he had just like breathed off of like a film set, Like you wear this black leather jacket. He's like tight jeans, and he smoked cigarettes and he just emanated coolness. I don't really know how other to say it than he did. Yeah, this swagger.

Ellio lived in New York City. He was a journalist and had friends who were artists and writers. He gave Vivian her very first journal, which he still carries around to this day. In Vivian's memory, there was a lightness about Elio. Everything was always for a laugh, Like the time they were back visiting their family in Brazil and Elo had Vivian and her brother full dozens of paper airplanes.

He was staying on the ninth or tenth floor of this apartment building and it was like this really beautiful sunny day and we like walked out onto the balcony and just like shot off like one hundred of these airplanes into the sunshine. It felt like electric and so like free.

On the inside of Vivian's arm is a tattoo of a paper airplane. It's there to remind her of the freedom and lightness she felt that day. It's there to remind her of Elli Oh. November seventh, nineteen ninety two, Vivian was nine years old. It was her brother's birthday and the family was heading out to celebrate when the phone rang. It was Elyo's roommate, a man named Marcello.

And Marcello just said straight up like Elu had a seizure that's related to AIDS and he's sick, and that was how the family found out that one that he was gay, in too, that he had AIDS.

Ellio was in his mid thirties and had never told his family he was gay. In fact, he often spoke of wanting to find a wife and settle down. Over the next few years, the illness advanced rapidly, so Vivian's family planned out visit. Vivian remembers one trip in particular, her dad packed her and her brother into the car to drive from Winnipeg to New York, a twenty five hour road trip to.

My dad's little Honda Civic with no air conditioning.

This is Vivian's brother, Eduardo. He's three years older than Vivian and has clearer memories from the trip down.

It was like hottest summer on record.

Along the way.

We had to stop in convenience stores and supermarkets just to cool off.

Eduardo says. His father brought along a video camera and entered ELO's tiny apartment on Lafayette Street already rolling. Elio was lying prone on the couch, not wanting to be recorded.

She turned his head from us, kind of pulling the blanket off over his sighs his head and being like embarrassed at how he looked.

Elio was thin and frail and hooked up to IV tubes. Vivian's grandparents had flown in from South Paulo. Watch them with their son.

I remember them not touching him because presumably they were afraid to get sick. And I remember thinking that was like really just like really weird and really sad. The family didn't really help. They didn't help, like when when Ali was sick. I guess my dad's conception of health thing was like, oh, I'm going to bring the kids for like five days and we'll come visit. But no one like stopped their lives to like come look after him.

While the family paid for all of Elio's medical bills, the person who actually did stop his life did come look after Eli. Oh was the man who made the phone call that November day in nineteen ninety two. Marcello has almost no memories of Marcello, and Eduardo's memories are vague, Marcello moving about the apartment, always in the background, referred to by ellioh only as a friend. Growing up, the

And I think part of it is because, you know, unlike an aunt, like say Ellie was heterosexual, on dating a woman, his partner would have been introduced in that way, like, oh, well this is your aunt or this is a more important person in your life.

Right, Elliot couldn't say, hey, this is your uncle exactly.

But in some ways, you know, even though it sounds really weird, it's like he is kind of my uncle.

Hmmm, I don't think it sounds that weird.

I mean it's sort of like, you know, if things had been different, if your uncle had married him, you guys would have had a formal connection, and instead there isn't exactly a name for him, and as a result, you've lost that person who was so good to your uncle.

Yeah, exactly. It was obviously so like shamed in my family that you know, we couldn't even call ell you gay.

The wound Vivian feels over the injustice or family did to Elioh has only grown deeper over the years as she's become better able to put herself in her uncle's shoes.

I didn't really clue into being attracted to women until I was like twenty early twenties. I couldn't let myself even think about that because seeing how the family like treated my uncle, like, I'm sure it left this message with me, you know that it wasn't a good thing. This month I turned thirty seven, I turned thirty seven, which is the same year that my uncle passed away.

Me, as Marcela did.

Yeah, yeah, I don't even know him, like I can't even remember like a visual of him, and yet like I feel very connected to this person. I want to find Marcello and I want to tell him thank you for looking after Elu for that huge sacrifice that he made, and I think I want to let him know that I have spent, you know, so much time like thinking about him.

After the break the search for Marcelo, I don't have much to begin my search for Marcelo. Vivian remembers that back when he was living with elioh Marcelo worked as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art, but I can't find any record of his employment. When Vivian told me about Elio's old group of artist friends, though, she singled out one artist by name, a very famous usical composer. And while the composer's number isn't readily available,

I seek sorry, sorry, sorry, be okay, give me a second to turn on gear on my side.

Sure, okay, okay.

You never want to bother the people you admire, but in the back of your mind you think, okay, maybe someday, in an emergency, I might be entitled to a favor, and then you ask them to write a preface to your experimental novella published by a small Canadian press, and then you ask them to introduce you at your book launch that's only attended by seven people. This is how I felt phoning up to chop yet another branch from

Keep going.

Do you know who I'm talking about?

I assume you mean Philip.

Being something of a storyteller, the mention of Philip prompts Irah to tell the story of when he and his wife vacationed with Philip and his girlfriend in Italy.

He was finishing up at one of his operas and he had an electric piano brought in and they were in a bedroom like down the hall from us, and so we would be woken up by him composing, which is crazy.

And you were doing vocal warm ups, well he.

Was, Yeah, I was just practicing staying over and over.

Stay with us, Stay with us, stay stay with us. Irah promises to reach out to Philip on my behalf to see if he still has Marcella's phone number. Hey, before you go, can I share with you a little knock knock joke?

Sure?

Knock knock, who's there? Knock knock?

Who's there? Knock knock?

Who's there?

Knock knock?

Who's there?

Philip Glass?

Yeah, I know that one.

I'm sure he knows that one too, Do you think so?

I mean, that's like, can I just say, like, that's a level of fame that you or I cannot even aspire to to have.

A knock knock joke named after you? Who gets that? Who gets that?

You know?

Who gets that banana?

A week later, Ira writes back, Philip doesn't have anything, which is to say, Ira concludes at the end of his email, knock knock, who's there? Not Philip Glass? And so the search continues. Vivian's dad, Jacques, doesn't have a current number for Marcello. The last time he saw him was five years after Elio died. Still feeling guilty about the circumstances surrounding his brother's death, Jacques had sought Marcello out. I felt that the only person who could absolve me,

It's it's complicated, it's very complicated.

It's just really it's a complicated history.

Marcelo unravels it for me, beginning at the same place Vivian did November of nineteen ninety two. It was the morning after Bill Clinton was elected.

We're sitting in a coffee shop reading the results of the elections, and I had a grandma's seizure right in front of me.

They rushed to a nearby hospital, where tests were performed, and for the next few days Marcelo walked around in a stupor. When they received the official diagnosis, Marcello picked up the phone and made the call to Vivian's house. The learning that Elio had AIDS was devastating. The disease itself was all too familiar in New York City. By that year, nineteen ninety two, AIDS had become the leading cause of death in American men aged twenty five to forty four.

You remember in the nineties an eight as you would see people gone, can the sheikshare?

You know?

And so that was sort of like a certain look. However handsome he was, he got that look. He had lost control of his bomb movements.

He was in diapers, he was blind, he was I'm sorry.

Marcello was in his late twenties when it became Leo's full time nurse. Ellio was sick for three years, and just months before the AIDS cocktail became widely available.

He died very beautifully. He died very peacefully.

In those last moments. It was a beautiful night. There was this blue sky, and there's stars and a crescent moon. And as we looked up the sky, this airplane sort of crisscrossed took the moon.

As Marcello speaks, I'm reminded of Ellio in Brazil flying paper planes off the balcony.

And we waved at Alu and then we said goodbye, and then he passed.

True to Jacques's telling, Marcello was angry with the family's behavior, especially during the last days of Elio's life. That's when things grew complicated. The family had set aside funds so Marcelo could pay for the embalming. It had to happen as soon as Elo died before the body could be sent to Brazil.

For burial.

When Marcelo knew Eleo only had a day or two left, in the midst of so many other worries and so much sadness, he phoned Eleo's middle brother, Vivian's uncle, so arrangements could be made, but Vivian's uncle didn't believe him, insisting Elyo had more time The.

Day before he was dying. You know, I said, listen, I need your guys to release the money because this is going to happen. And he suggested that I was trying to talk at the money, and I lost it at that moment.

That's just when Baalistic.

The family had left Marcello the burden of caring for elioh and now on top of that, they were accusing him of theft. Marcello knew he wouldn't be welcomed as a part of Elio's family, and so he did not attend the funeral in Brazil. He would later learn from

She looks like al a lot.

She looks like you a lot.

She looks like of all the kids, she is the one who looks like him a lot.

She looks like him.

That's incredible.

By the end of our call, Marcelo has agreed to meet Vivian in New York, where you can introduce her to the people and places Elio loved best. Coming up after the break, Vivian and Marcello stay with us, Stay with us, Stay with us, Stay with us.

Stay with us.

So we would shop on these blocks on Broadway because there are designtic source vintage clothing.

So this is this is are we walked around here.

Vivian has flown to New York to deliver a thank you that's twenty five years overdue, and Marcelo has his own agenda to introduce Vivian to the real Elio. And so we're in the village on a tour through l life. Marcelo points out their favorite hans and tells Vivian about Eleo's career as a journalist, the time he profiled the Beat poet Alan Ginsberg showing up for the interview. Eleo found Ginsburg in the midst of writing a poem.

Alan Gisberg starts yelling at him, saying, you interrupt the moment of inspiration.

This poem is gone. It's gone, gone, gone.

I won't remember a thing anymore. Held.

Marcello also takes Vivian to meet some of Ello's old friends.

You must be the niece, how are you?

Ruth was a well respected New York tattoo artist in the seventies and eighties. Nowadays, her work is exhibited all over the world. Her apartment is where Eleo's New York memorial was held.

It was another aide's death. It was another terrible, terrible loss, and everybody here had experienced it or nurses, somebody, you know. To the end, I mean as young people as people in the thirties.

Right, So you're very lucky anywhere, very lucky you didn't get.

Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic that you didn't.

The irony had said, twenty five years we'll talk about a virus, and twenty five years later, celebrating out of here, we are talk about a virus again.

It's early March twenty twenty, a few days after the first confirmed case of COVID nineteen in New York. It's that one weird week when we thought bumping elbows would solve everything. In fact, here we are on a social call, playing it quote safe by eating the snacks Ruth made from individually prepared bulls. Just days later, schools across the city would be closed, Restaurants, stores and offices all shut.

With a conga line announcing the conga around this apartment.

Well, all these good looking guys in one room. You know, it wasn't going to stay sad for two.

It was the best funeral ever anywhere.

I remember being drunk and stoned.

We also pay a visit to Ken, an artist and an old boyfriend of Ellio's. The artist's life has been good to Ken. He looks far younger than his seventy five years.

You haven't seen the clothes off.

Gravity tends to do very nasty things to budys.

Ken tells us about the trip he and Elio took to Mexico early on in their relationship. Ken had been going through a phase at the time where he was wearing green contact lenses. Elio had never seen Ken without them. I would always tell Ken how much he loved his beautiful green eyes.

I said, shit, how am I going to tell him that these beautiful green eyes are fake?

So I decided I'm not going to tell him. What the hell?

So we go to Mexico and I got something in my eyes and they started bleeding.

We have to go to a hospital. We got to the clinic.

The guy patched my eyes up, said you'll be blind for twenty four hours. So the next day I took the patches off, and then Eliot's looking at me and he.

Goes, oh my god. I said, what he said, your eyes changed color?

So I tell this is perfect.

I looked in the mirror and said, oh my god, they did. So that ended that.

I don't know if he ever found out.

Elliot melted everybody down that he met.

He was so charming. I never met anyone you couldn't be mad at him. I tried so hard to be mad at him so many times, and you couldn't be mad at him.

Ken directs his gaze at Vivianne.

You're lucky, You're lucky to have had an uncle like Elleo.

Vivian is basking in Ken's praise of her uncle. The room feels warm and friendly until Ken opens his mouth again.

I have to say his family.

Was horrible, Ken says his but he is still looking at Vivianne. He might as well have said your your family was horrible. Ken is being honest, but it sucks the air out of the room.

Truly horrible. It was shocking to me. It was really shocking to me. When his mother came. She was so cold and so distant from l e Oh.

I know, of course, Vivian knows. It's why she's here. Come on this way, Vivian, Marcelo and I are at my office all day long. Marcello's been playing to her guide to Eleo's old life. But I want him and Vivian to get a chance to connect one on one.

Sit down, Okay, sit here, yeah, thank you.

Marcello sits on the couch, knees pressed together. Vivian is seated across from him in an armchair, hands tucked between her thighs. She's been waiting all day, all day, and twenty five years for the chance to thank Marcello, and so she stumbles her way forward, beginning with the ways in which her family let Elo down.

I feel like the family, I feel like there was like kind of like this like internalized shame. I don't know, It's like that side of the family couldn't really see past that that he was gay, and that was like that lasting memory was like that shape.

Yeah, but I also feel like.

Marcello interrupts Vivian before she can get very far, but almost immediately trails off. He looks down at his hands in his lap and adjusts his feet on the carpet. When he speaks again, he speaks softly.

I feel compelled to say something. It would be simplistic to say that just because the family didn't accept his being gay, this difficulty is not all on your family side. That was also Elia's inability to be who he was fully really yeah.

Yeah.

According to Marcello, Eleo never fully embraced his own gay identity and so was never honest with the family about who he was.

He was gay, had a partner for ten years, you know, he was HIV positive, So all of that sort of came out for the family side and the worst possible way. So there's a lot here of broken trust.

Marcello's own family knew he was gay by the time he was in his late teens, knew that Eleo wasn't just a roommate. Marcello had been wanting Eleo to be more transparent with his family for years. Instead, when the family was around, Marcello says, Elo made him feel like a mistress, like he had to disappear. So as much as the family didn't acknowledge Marcello, Eleo didn't acknowledge Marcello

But made aue this ray of light.

Being joyful also made him more difficult to pin down and taking responsibility and ownership for things that you do as you become a grin up. So I want to sort of take a bit of the weight from your family. Just there's a little bit on his side as well.

There was his.

Own like internal internals, paral boughs. So I think there's the dartful value, and there's the chicken Alio. There is all of this a sort of wrapped and this fantastic human being, you know, and he's just a person.

I think I relate to maybe the chicken val. Like in my early twenties, like I started dating women and it was something that I shared with my dad and my brother. My mom was actually like going through some difficult stuff like in my twenties, And to be honest, she actually still doesn't know, but I guess she soon.

Well, yes, listen, if you have white stuff, it's faster than you. But if you address it, it's a way of connecting, connecting.

Marcella was encouraging Vivian to not hide who she is the way Alio did until he got sick.

He's softened, He softened you know.

I it might sound a little sanctimonious or piles on my part, you know, but I loved him throughout, thick and thin, and when he got sick, he allowed me to love him in a way that he couldn't before.

We really.

We're a couple in a way that we had never been before.

From Marcelo, those last days offered some of his happiest memories of their relationship. Dying allowed Elio to finally grow up.

Sometimes he would hallucinate and he would go to parties in his hand. I remember this one that was a party by the Russian embassy, and he was talking about all the people he was meeting at the Russian embassy, and he was in bed and he would do.

This Marcello minds smoking a cigarette.

But in that state. I remember one moment that is the most precious moment of all days before he died, I said to him, I love you, and he was he had no cognition, his smile like year to year, and I never forgot that.

So I love.

Him very very very much, and he loved me back. And I had doubts from time to time, but in that moment I felt it, do you want.

To commit.

I feel like not a lot of people would go to that length, you know, I mean my family didn't. But like I even wonder, like.

Vivian struggles for the right words for the first time during the trip, She's trying to put herself not in Elio's shoes, but in Marcello's if.

The rules were reversed, Like, do you think Elie would have done that for you?

It's all as a question for me, ALA's ask that I don't know. I don't know.

The fact that you like moved in and took care of him is it's it is really incredible in it. I think it just shows like how compassionate and like how loving of a person you are that you were able to do that. So yeah, thank you, thank you.

I didn't expect to feel the wam feeling right now. That held a grudge for a while, and I was proud of the grudge. I was proud of being spurned, and I think I grew attached to that.

I held that.

As a kind of a badge of honor in a way, and I don't anymore. Also, I'm ready to receive it. I don't think I was so thank you. I really really appreciate that there's a poem by John Ashberry which I'm going to completely destroy and bustardize. But there's an image that I really love. He says, Somewhere someone is running desperately towards you, and I have this image of you, like.

Not desperately, but sort of.

Like when slow. I feel that too, because of you know, the nature of everything that had happened. It was like I didn't get that opportunity to have you, as you know, an uncle in my life. So can I claim you as my uncle?

Okay?

All right?

Twenty five years ago it had been Marcelo asking to be let into the family, but now it's Vivian who's doing the asking. Marcelo moves forward to embrace her. In the end, Vivian receives an uncle as amazing as the one she always imagined.

Remember you were I need?

Did a girl?

Remember your her was blondish?

Would you like to remember your tiny.

Now that the fernures returning to its good will home, Now that the last month's rent is skating with the damaged bottle.

Take this moment to deserve.

If we mess him and we tied felt for far from the Thames at Acid and leave.

This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Stevie Lane along with me Jonathan Goldstein. Our senior producer is Khalila Holt. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg, Caitlin Kenny, mime, O'Donnell Lydia Polgreen, Rayhan Harmansey, Nobille Chalmpott, and Jackie Cohen. Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions, Michael Hurst, Hailey Shaw, and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on our website, Gimbletmedia dot.

Com slash Heavyweight.

Our theme song is by the Weaker Than's courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email us at Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com. We'll be back with the new episode next week.

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