Kingdom of the Sick 13

When my friends heard that my hospital room at the Weill Cornell
Medical Center had both a VCR and a DVD player, they started bringing me tapes and discs to watch during
the many weeks that I was due to be hospitalized for my first stem-cell transplant. These included
classics like Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder; cult favorites such as 1960′s Beat Girl (“Britain’s original bad girl rock ‘n’ roll movie”); and that old Roger Corman exploitation flick
The Trip, one of the first movies about hippies and acid. It wasn’t long before I was equipped
with my own miniature film library.

But despite the many great titles that I possessed, the movie I was most eager to see was Jonathan Caouette’s autobiographical documentary Tarnation, about his years growing up as a gay man in Texas with his schizophrenic mother and extraordinarily dysfunctional, mentally challenged family. It had opened at the New York Film Festival the week that I was admitted to Weill Cornell, and afterward a film-critic friend had given me a copy of the tape. Although I couldn’t wait to pop the film into my VCR, I decided to reserve the viewing for a very special occasion: the execution of my stem-cell transplant. I mean, what could be more auspicious?

Unlike what I’d expected, the transplant seemed a relatively simple procedure; it wasn’t painful, and I wasn’t drugged. Indeed, I remained fully conscious throughout;
it was quite similar to getting a blood transfusion. I lay in bed, tubes hanging from my right arm, and watched as the doctors hooked me up and started the process. Then, as stem cells coursed through my veins, I switched
on the much-anticipated tape, allowing Caouette’s saga to unfold in my hospital room.

I was riveted by what I saw, the extraordinary intensity of this shattering film. On one hand,
there was the identification that I felt with Caouette, how he’d endured the small-town repression
of Texas just as I had struggled with the pressures I’d experienced growing up gay in rural Ohio.

Caouette’s depiction of his mother and his other personal relationships also echoed in many
ways the agonizing discords I’d witnessed within my own brutally strife-torn family. And then
there were Caouette’s battles with depression and personal demons. These, too, mirrored what
I had known. It had been traumatic for both of us, yes. But in the end we had emerged whole, wounded
by our histories and yet, because of them, equipped with a crucial fortitude. More than anything,
Caouette’s story is a tale of survival.

Which is one of the things that helped me get through my first transplant. I remained hospitalized
for three weeks, attempting to conquer a usually fatal illness, mantle zone lymphoma. But having
seen Caouette’s beautiful film, I was forced to think about the past, how both he and I had overcome
obstacles that could have destroyed us. We’d won then. Now I was prepared to fight again.