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Brudnoy’s life lessons

BY TAMARA WIEDER

On October 24, every year since 1994, radio-talk-show host David Brudnoy has celebrated a birthday. But it’s a special kind of celebration, commemorating not the day of his birth, but the day he didn’t die. That’s because, back in the fall of 1994, Brudnoy very nearly lost his battle with AIDS — a battle that had begun in earnest with his diagnosis in 1988, but which very likely had been going on for almost a decade longer.

Since starting on combination-drug-therapy treatment, though, Brudnoy’s viral level has been undetectable — which is, in fact, the title of a documentary film that features Brudnoy. Jay Corcoran’s Undetectable follows six Boston residents living — and in many cases, struggling — with AIDS. The film screens at the Museum of Fine Arts December 1 in commemoration of World AIDS Day; Brudnoy will appear at the screening along with Corcoran and several of the film’s other subjects.

Q: What did you think of the movie?

A: It was a little hard to watch, in one sense, because I kept looking at myself and going, "Oh, yeuch!" And then I also said, "Well, why isn’t there more of me?" But I was touched by it. And of course it’s impossible as one of the participants not to be emotionally involved in it; I can’t look at it as "a movie." I look at it as my life over the last several years. So the objectivity is, I’m afraid, lost. But I think it’s edited beautifully; it gets the six of us pretty well, I think.

Q: How did you get involved? Did Jay approach you?

A: Actually, I’ll tell you who did first: it was George Mansour, who’s a booker for movies who I’ve known for many years. I thought, "Oh, George" — I’d just gone through nearly a year of all the television you can imagine, every network, New York Times, People, Oprah, everybody. He said, "No, this will be different; he’s a documentarian, and he’ll follow you around and get to see what it’s like, more than just a quick hit of a day or two or three, as the networks did. It could go on for a couple of years." I said, "A couple of years?" He said, "He’ll be unobtrusive." Well, I met him, liked him, and just found after a while that he was there at everything I was doing, on and off, and I found it very nice. He had approached other people along the way and had resisted getting "another gay white man," because there are so many of us who have AIDS, and then decided, after all, that up until very recently that was the predominant demographic of people with AIDS.

Q: Talk to me about being diagnosed with HIV.

A: It was 1988. I had had an ongoing, long flu-type thing, and a friend of mine who knew some of the AIDS people at Mass General said, "You know, you might as well get tested," and I said, "Oh, I don’t do the anal sex and so on; I couldn’t possibly get this," and he said, "It will not hurt to go." And I remember going, and I don’t remember where it was, but it was kind of cold and impersonal, and then they called me up a few weeks later and said, "Come on in," and they told me. That was the spring of 1988. And at that point, it just didn’t quite register, because I felt, by that point, fine. But it did lead to the beginning of treatment, which I did by seeing my doctor here periodically for blood tests, and then seeing a doctor in Washington about three, four times a year, and he did the more severe tests and prescribed, at that point, AZT and one or two other drugs. And that carried on from 1988 with no observable symptoms until 1993, when I began to develop pain in my feet, and that really led to the first awareness on my part that this was going to get ugly at some point. Of course, it did in mid and late 1994.

Q: How have your own attitudes about AIDS changed since you were first diagnosed?

A: For one, we now know that a lot of people — though not all, and certainly in the rest of the world, few — but a lot of people in the First World, at least, who have access to these drugs, can have a much-improved life experience, for however long. The fact that it can be a chronic thing — and we don’t have enough experience to know if it will be forever or if we’ll all ultimately succumb to it — but a chronic thing for a while, rather than a kind of ongoing horror, has made me urge more people to do two things: first of all, to get tested, and if HIV-positive, to start the drugs, even if they feel terrific, as I did, by the time I had the results of the test. And secondly, to keep contributing to research and help on it, because it isn’t over. [AIDS] has become a part of, but by no means a central part, of my existence. A lot of pills all day long, and a few other things; you just live with that. It’s not, in other words, a debility that has made my life just awful — it’s anything but.

Another thing, of course, is that I’ve learned that in many ways — and this will sound ridiculous, and if I’d heard this from anyone else a year ago, I would’ve laughed at it — one of the best things that ever happened to me in life was having this experience and realizing how I have been able, with it, to really improve in many ways my own sense of things. I’m much more grateful for existence, and I think much less prone to quick judgments about things and about people. You know, talk hosts have to be kind of edgy, and it goes with my natural tendency to be quick at reaction, and I’m a little sarcastic, and I think I’ve become more willing to listen and less concerned about whether I will always be correct on everything. I think that I don’t know as much today as I knew 10 years ago, before I had AIDS; I know less, and I think in that sense I’m a better person to be around, and less of a nuisance to people.

Q: I was just reading an old interview that [Phoenix editor] Peter Kadzis did with you in which you said that you believe in discrimination, but irrelevant discrimination bothers you. Is discrimination against people with AIDS relevant or irrelevant?

A: If you’re looking for a basketball team, it’s relevant to discriminate against midgets, and if you’re looking for people who are able to get through small tunnels, it’s better not to hire 300-pound people. That’s what I mean by "relevant." "Irrelevant" is taking into account the ingredients that do not impinge. In other words, gender, for 99 out of 100 jobs, is irrelevant. Color is totally irrelevant. Religion is, sexual orientation is. Physical disability is in most cases, but it wouldn’t be in others. As an example, if a person was very weak, from AIDS or from cancer, to expect that person to be on your marathon-running team, as opposed to someone who’s at the peak of health, would be a relevant discrimination: you’re not strong enough to do it. Keeping people from renting an apartment or getting a job because of a physical condition or because of a handicap is preposterous, and that’s why we favor societal improvements that open the doors of access. A lot of people assume that the word "discrimination" automatically is bad. We all discriminate on the basis of whatever our values or wants are. But irrelevant discriminations are what our society has been, I think, well deservedly working to eliminate. I think very few people are as terrified, as bigoted, as blind to things as they were. Not that it’s all over, by any means — if it was all over, we wouldn’t have Matthew Shepard crucified on a fence. But we’re considerably improved from when I was a kid, I can tell you that.

Q: Your virus level is still undetectable?

A: Yes. As a matter of fact, I just talked to my doctor today, because I have a little rash on my arm; I just want to go over this afternoon and see what it is. He said, "It’s probably nothing." He’d done my tests about two weeks ago and everything was still undetectable. I’m, I think, the one of the six of us that has been almost entirely consistently undetectable.

Q: Being undetectable for this long, how do you avoid living in fear of getting sick again?

A: Well, for one thing, living in fear is so counterintuitive to me, and so counterproductive. I couldn’t function the way I do if I spent every day worrying. When I do get a sore throat or a little rash, I wonder, what is it? It could be nothing other than a reaction to the weather, the sudden coldness. I just wonder how long it can go on, because I’m now kind of the miracle child around here, I mean, I’m the guy that’s been infected longest of all these people. I was probably infected, the doctors think, in the very early ’80s, or even the late ’70s. So the question is, how long can I continue to be in what I regard as remarkable health? I have not missed a day of work in two years, and not because I have been throwing myself at it when I have a high fever; I just have been healthy. Knock on wood, that will continue. But fear is not there with me.

The one thing I don’t want, and I don’t know if I could handle, is that slow, grinding, miserable, debilitating decline. Right now, when people say, "Isn’t taking all those pills a bother? Isn’t needing a lot of rest a bother?" I say, "What’s the alternative? I take a pill or I die." So to me it’s not a problem, it’s not fear, it’s not annoyance, it’s not a bother. It’s just as common as a woman putting on makeup. Pills are my makeup. It takes a few minutes more a day than a healthy guy. And I don’t think that that leads either to resentment or, at least in my case, to fear. I’m not fearing it. I’ve always quoted Woody Allen’s wonderful aphorism: "It’s not that I’m afraid of dying; I just don’t want to be there when it happens." By which I mean that I’d much prefer to have a piano fall on my head when I’m walking down the street than go through all that stuff. But we have no choice. We really don’t. I have, I think, a fabulous life. I think fear would come from feeling that there’s no one that cares, or that I’ve made no dent in the world. I have a big ego; I like making a dent. I take great pleasure in demonstrating that I can mean something. The whole phenomenon of being in the light of day is, for me, a very important one. I feel no fear in my life. I really don’t.

Undetectable screens at the Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue, in Boston, on Saturday, December 1, at noon, 1:30, and 3 p.m. as part of World AIDS Day. The screenings are free and open to the public. Immediately following the 3 p.m. screening, filmmaker Jay Corcoran will take part in an open discussion with David Brudnoy, Dr. Lisa Hirschhorn, and three of the other Bostonians chronicled in the film. Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com

Issue Date: November 22 - 29, 2001

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