Breaking the Surface (34 page)

With the settlement signed, the only thing left to do was go through the contents of the house. That was cordial, too, except that we didn’t always agree on how we should divide things up. Tom tried to claim half ownership of everything. His belief was that we had a common-law marriage and we should split everything fifty-fifty, including things that I’d paid for, gifts that had been given specifically to me, and things I’d owned before we met. For example, my mother had given me a gold coin that had been given to her by her father. It was a family heirloom, but Tom claimed that he owned half of it. There were posters of me. He wanted half of those. I had a stack of T-shirts that I designed in Korea. He wanted half of those. He wanted a piece of everything.

I really don’t think it was the money at this point that motivated Tom. He was mad at me, and the only way he could get back at me was to fight over property. He thought he could hurt me, but most of the things didn’t mean very much to me. I just wanted to get it over with, and I was very willing to compromise.

A few months after we signed the settlement, Tom moved into the new place I’d bought for him. He’d picked out a condo in Dana Point, around two hours south of my house in Malibu. As soon as he was out of the Malibu house, I drove up to see what kind of condition he’d left it in. It was strange walking into the house. Other than a lot of dust and some new stains on the carpeting, everything looked okay. But it felt so empty. It wasn’t the blank spaces where Tom’s furniture had been that made it feel that way—it just felt like a sad and empty place. Standing in the middle of the living room, I felt terrible that this was what had become of my relationship with Tom. I also felt a twinge of guilt for forcing him to move out. Tom was sick. How could I have forced him out of his home?

I went downstairs and walked, through the bedroom, out to the pool. I walked around the deck, and something wasn’t right. At first I couldn’t figure it out, and then I realized something was missing. On the steps down into the pool there had been a ceramic tile that read “Especially designed for Greg Louganis by California Pools and Spas.” It had the company logo on it, and it had been put in by the people who built the pool. The tile was gone. Tom had chipped it out. And then I glanced up and noticed there was toilet paper in the pool, and something in the water. Tom had defecated in the pool.

Not long after I moved back into the house, Tom asked to come by with his sister to pick up a few large plants that he’d left behind. I was terrified of seeing him, but Steven was at the house doing some remodeling work, so at least I wouldn’t have to face Tom alone.

He didn’t say what time he was coming by, so of course the moment I made a quick run to the grocery, he drove up. When I pulled into the driveway and saw the truck, my heart started racing. It wasn’t even a truck I recognized, but I knew it had to be Tom’s. When I got down the hill, I saw Tom and his sister loading his plants into the truck. I drove right past them and pulled up in front of the house.

I walked into the house and asked Steven what had happened. He told me that Tom had pushed his way in, demanding to be allowed inside. Steven tried to keep him from getting in, but Tom just pushed him aside. Steven thought it best to let him get his plants and go. I knew how Tom bullied people, so I imagined that he’d been really awful to Steven.

I was very angry and went right to Tom and said, “I need to talk to you.” He asked me what I wanted, and I said, “This is my house. Don’t go barging in yelling at people. If you need something, talk to them and treat them with respect.” I sounded pretty confident, but my heart was pounding outside my chest. Tom still scared me, even though he looked awful.

I said what I had to and went back into the house with Steven, who had followed me out. As soon as we were inside, I sank to the floor and wept. Mostly, I cried because it hurt me to see Tom that way. After all I’d been through with him, I still cared about Tom and he was clearly sick. He’d lost a lot of weight and was gaunt. It also looked like he’d been having some kind of infusion. I could tell from the Band-Aid on his arm and the black-and-blue marks.

What was especially upsetting about seeing Tom was that I could see myself in him. Tom was clearly dying, and my turn was next. I was crying for what had happened to us, for everything that went so wrong.

I never saw Tom again after that, but I got notes from him periodically. Most of them were just cards with one of his nasty pet names for me written on it. One time he sent a pack of cigarettes, knowing full well how hard it was for me to stay away from them. The last note I got from him was over a payment he hadn’t received on time. It was a sort of “Dear Moron” card where he took a slap at me for writing in my own zip code on the address instead of his, which was why the payment got there late. He told me that I needed to get my act together.

My knee-jerk reaction when I read that note was to feel bad, as if I’d done something stupid again. But then I realized that I wasn’t so stupid. I’d left him, hadn’t I? It was probably the smartest thing I’d ever done.

B
ECOMING FRIENDS WITH MY FATHER
wasn’t something that happened overnight, and it took a lot of work on my part. I really had to push myself on him. I would hug and kiss him when we said hello or good-bye, which is something we never did before. He was a little reserved at first, but he came around. After a while, he’d occasionally come up to me and give
me
a big hug and a kiss. I’d pull away thinking, Is this my father?

It wasn’t just that I pushed the relationship. The fact that we were both at similar points in our lives, facing our mortality, not really knowing how much longer we had to live, gave us some very powerful common ground. In the past, diving was the one thing we could talk about. There wasn’t much to say about diving anymore, but now we could talk about his cancer and my HIV. We became sort of like two old men sitting on a park bench talking about their aches and pains, but a lot more serious.

Because we knew that our time was limited, the hours we shared seemed much more precious. We talked on the phone at least twice a week, and if he was going in for chemotherapy or some other kind of treatment, we talked more often than that. I went down to see him, especially when he was in the hospital, and on occasion he would come up to Malibu and stay at the house with Steven and me, which was great. He’d hang out at the house and he’d go to Oxnard to visit his sisters. We’d talk about the dogs—he was very impressed with my dogs—we talked about what was going on with U.S. Diving, and he’d share with me what was going on at the National Boat Owners Association, which he was involved with.

Throughout 1990 he got progressively worse, and by Easter he was talking about how it was time to start getting his ducks in a row. One of the things he told me was that he was setting aside twenty thousand dollars to go specifically toward my medical expenses, which he knew I’d been paying out of pocket. He said, “I’ve put a Keogh-IRA in your name. I know how much money you have going out for your medications, and this is the least I can do.” My father was always a good provider; that was the one way he felt comfortable being there for me. I was moved by his concern and his desire to take care of me.

Dad managed to keep a pretty good attitude through the summer, but by the fall, all the doctor visits and the chemotherapy were beginning to wear him down. He got very negative about the whole thing. I tried to get him to see how important the treatments were, to have a more positive attitude and to get more involved in decisions about his care. But my father wasn’t interested. He left it all up to the doctors, which was frustrating for me, because I was much more active in my treatment. To get through the Olympics, I had had to be. There was no way I could passively let the doctors make all the decisions for me. I had to be aware of the impact each of the drugs had on me, and we adjusted my medications so they didn’t hurt my performance. Even after the Olympics, I stayed involved with my treatment.

Studies show that patients who are involved with their treatment and things like support groups live longer and with a better quality of life. But my father didn’t really care. After he came back from seeing his doctors, I’d ask him, “What did they say? What do they want to do? What are your options?” My questions only upset him and made him even more anxious when he realized how much he hadn’t listened to what they’d said. I wanted to go with him to the doctor so that there would be two sets of ears listening, but he didn’t want me to interfere. As he got weaker, our roles began to reverse and I became the parent. It was an odd feeling for both of us. At first he resisted, but over time, he gave in and just accepted that he would have to let me care for him.

I think part of why my father didn’t take a greater interest in his treatment was that he felt he’d already lived his life. He’d reared his kids and achieved a certain amount of financial success. It wasn’t like my situation, where I was facing HIV before I was even thirty. He was ready to toss in the towel, but I was just starting to fight.

As his cancer spread, it started affecting his memory, and occasionally he’d get confused. One time, my cousin Paul called me, very upset. He said, “Where the hell are you? Why aren’t you down here? You told your father you were coming down to see him.” I had just gotten back from a trip, which my father knew about, but he was confused.

As Dad’s condition got worse, we had a conversation about how if things got really bad, I wanted him to move up to Malibu to stay with me. He would be closer to his sisters and to his nephews, and Steven and I could look after him. My father wasn’t enthusiastic about that idea. He didn’t want to be a burden. My sister told me that Dad told her he didn’t want to move in because I was living with a man, but he never said that to me. I’d like to think my sister misunderstood him.

By November he was doing pretty badly and he had to go into the hospital again. It turned out that he had something seriously wrong with his intestines and he had to have a colostomy. Recovering from the surgery wasn’t the worst of it. Before he went in, he’d already been having trouble with his leg, and they did an X-ray of his left femur. The cancer had spread to his bones and the femur was very thin. He had radiation treatments, but he wasn’t able to put any weight on the leg because they were afraid the bone would fracture, which meant he had to be in bed most of the time.

In the middle of all of this, I got a call from one of Tom’s friends saying that Tom wasn’t doing well and that it looked bad. I decided to send him flowers, and in the note I wrote, “I forgive you. Love, Greg.” By that time I’d gotten over the anger and rage I felt for Tom. I’d found a sense of peace and I wished that for him. I could have been extremely angry and bitter, but I wasn’t. Some of what Tom did to me was evil, but that didn’t mean he was an evil person. It was just unfortunate that I was the recipient of Tom’s anger and evil behavior.

I heard from friends that Tom was touched by the gesture. He died a few days later. I debated whether or not to go to Tom’s memorial service. Would it be a slap in the face to him if I went? Would it be a slap in the face if I didn’t go? Finally, I decided not to go. I didn’t feel that it was appropriate.

When I told my dad that Tom had died, he said that he deserved it. I told him that nobody deserved that. Tom did some terrible things, but that didn’t mean he deserved to die.

Soon after Tom died, my father was transferred to a convalescent home, where he was able to get the round-the-clock care that he needed. He was really sick, and there was no way he could take care of himself at home. The doctors were saying that he would probably die there, but I wanted to bring him up to Malibu. Between his sisters and nephews and Steven and me, there were plenty of people to look after him.

My father didn’t like that idea. He decided that he wanted to go to my condo in Dana Point, which was empty now that Tom was gone. Dana Point is north of San Diego, which meant he would be a little closer to Oxnard, where his sisters lived. So his friends and family from both places could see him. It was especially important to him that he be near his grandchildren—Despina was married with three kids by this time—and they were near San Diego.