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bonfire-at-the-crossroads · 5 years

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Rutger Hauer has passed, and is on his way through the stars, toward the shoulder of Orion and the Tannhauser Gate.

He gave himself to the world of film and created characters which will continue to inspire the people lucky enough to share in the dreams he left behind.

I wrote this a couple years ago - and maybe it��s time to look at it again.

Thank you Mr Hauer for leaving this place a little brighter for your having been here.

Good journey, peace at last.....

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January 8, 2016

It's Roy Batty's birthday.

Ridley Scott's 1982 movie - Blade Runner - cast Rutgers Hauer as the renegade Replicant in search of his maker.

The film was a brilliant adaptation of Philip K Dick's "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?"

Roy and a small group of Nexus-6 Replicants, have stolen an off-world transport, killed the crew, and returned to earth - in an attempt to coerce their designer to extend their programmed four-year lifespan. January 8, 2016 was the day of Roy's inception, and also the day his genetic coding has scheduled him for death.

He is being hunted by Harrison Ford, as hired-gun Deckard - a Blade Runner - paid to track and kill escaped Replicants.

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In 1982 - the idea of the year 2016 was a mind-numbing distance away.

"The Future" was a place where anything was possible, and our wildest dreams would come true.

It seems like yesterday.

And yet, when I started thinking about the world I inhabited in '82, and where I've washed up on the shores of 2016 - it's been quite an extended sea voyage.

I was married to somebody else.

We walked into town to the little movie theater on Central Avenue, and as we moved to our seats, were told by the usher ( yeah, that's right - there were still ushers ) -"You shouldn't even bother with this movie. It stinks. Four people at the last show actually asked for their money back."

We loved it.

Minds were blown - and we went back two more times, bringing friends.

That Christmas Eve - I had a small stroke. I was 26.

At the time, I was more worried about how the news would affect my husband - and did not fully appreciate my own predicament. He overheard the doctor on the phone making arrangements for what was then, the only echocardiogram machine in the New York area.

"Is that about you?" He asked. I nodded.

My husband passed out cold on the waiting room floor.

I survived. Had test after test after test, and slowly got my left side back under my own control.

Time passed.

We tried for the baby - and a series of horrors led to the loss of pregnancy, and culminated with a 3:00 AM visit to the emergency room.

The husband was so upset - he left me by the hospital entrance, and drove home.

When he inevitably decided that he needed "space" and wanted to "take a break" -(clearly, his office-affair had nothing to do with this decision ) - I used the time to take a good long look at the marriage.

When he came back three months later - I was not the girl he had walked out on.

The world had changed, and so had the locks.

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I moved into the West Village with a girlfriend. It was awkward having a roommate after having a husband, home, and mortgage - but I made it work.

An unusual boyfriend followed, and several years of actors, artists, and cabaret performers filled my days and nights.

It was Manhattan in the '80's. There were nights out spent dancing at the clubs til dawn.

The Met was open late on Friday nights, and my group of fellow oddballs wandered the museum halls every week for over a year.

Art and illustration was my livelihood. I knew everyone in the Village ( at least by sight) and was completely comfortable in my element.

But my friends got sick.

And my friends started dying.

AIDS ravaged the world.

The Village was ground zero, and everyone was terrified. We didn't know where it was coming from, didn't know how to cope with the skeletal friend, the friend covered with sarcoma blotches - was it the end of the world?

In many ways - yes. It was.

The best, brightest, most talented people on earth were dying out - and all I could do was hold hands at the bedside, and attend memorial services.

There was a three month period when I went to a service EVERY SINGLE WEEK.

My dearest friend, Bruce - I never even knew when he was well. We were fellow illustrators, and spent hours a day with phone cocked between shoulder and ear - talking while we drew in our separate studios. He was in Chelsea, I was on the corner of Perry and West Fourth.

We brought children's books to life, and loved the work.

As AIDS ravaged his body, he needed to take long naps in the afternoons. His fever would spike uncontrollably - he called it "Shake and Bakes."

He fussed over the ugly sarcoma lesions which appeared on his arms and hands - he found a theatrical makeup which he swore would cover them up so that nobody would know.

Everybody pretended that it worked.

"Well, my sweet darling angel - I took a shower this morning, and guess what? I watched all my hair go down the drain."

Some medication he was taking, combined with what may have been a chemotherapy cocktail - took every hair on his head.

He entered the shower - with.

Exited - without.

He had been told this might be a possibility, and had already purchased a wig from a professional Broadway wig-maker.

It was awful looking, but we continued to pretend.

He slipped farther away, and was hospitalized on a closed floor reserved for AIDS patients.

I visited every single day.

I brought tiny gifts, saved up stories to make him laugh - and built my day around spending time with him.

His family wouldn't come and see him. Friends did their best, but simply couldn't be with him when push had finally come down to shove.

I remember shouting at his brother on the pay phone in the hospital hallway "I can't make this better. I'm not allowed to make decisions for his care, because I'm not a family member. He is dying, and you need to be here."

He wasn't.

I held Bru's hand, and wiped his forehead. I asked the nurse to turn up his oxygen because he was struggling and begging for air. "It's as high as it will go." she said - and even though it was time for all visitors to leave, she said I could stay.

The day before, he had spent time with a priest who had given him what I now believe was last rites. He seemed comforted, and we said what needed to be said.

"You know Bru....I will ALWAYS love you."

He smiled and said. "I know. And I will always love you too."

He took his last breath a little before midnight.

I closed his eyes.

Twenty seven years have passed since that night.

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The unusual boyfriend fell victim to his own silliness. He convinced himself that another woman was sending him messages about being attracted to him - and he needed "some space" to explore the magic.

He did.

She didn't

And I was magically single again.

As 1990 dawned - the Internet had not been invented.

The cell phone - wasn't.

Video rental stores were visited daily, and made money hand-over-fist.

Blonde, Madonna, and all that wonderful 80's music that my kids now think is divine - were the sounds of the decade.

And I didn't quite trust CD's.....

Times Square was just beginning to shed the peep shows and adult movie houses.

It was gritty, and how I loved it.

July 4th of 1990 I found myself eating in the diner downstairs from my apartment on the corner of 14th St and Seventh Avenue.

It was empty.

I ate my bluefish dinner and went back upstairs to the drawing board.

One single red rocket cleared the rooftops and the stars rained down.

I was bored.

Decided to place a personal ad in The Village Voice. "Looking for an interesting conversation over a cup of coffee....." and some other minor nonsense.

Over 350 people responded in the three days I checked the answering machine.

"I've never answered a personal ad," said the voice on the phone."I live with a grey cat. And I'm reading DUNE. Maybe you could call me, and we'll get a cup of coffee?"

On our third date, he never went back home.

"You know what? It's getting kind of silly to keep paying for an apartment to keep my cat in...."

"So what are you saying?" I asked. "Are you asking to officIally move in here?"

" Nope. Let's get married. It'll be fun. I'm not exactly getting younger - either are you. Why not?"

"It'll either work - or it won't. What's the reason that we shouldn't at least TRY?"

He talked me into it.

Brian and I were married in the Cathedral of St John the Divine, three months after our first date. Twenty five years ago, last October.

Babies happened. Three in a row. "Irish triplets" as my obstetrician called them.

Quinn.

Morgan.

Maddie.

They were (and are ) the three finest people I have ever known - and are the center of my soul.

Brian and I survived critical fulcrum points where the smallest waver would have plunged all of us into hell.

We stared death in the face - death blinked, and looked away,

more than once.

We walked away from alcoholism.

Left cigarettes behind,

Did battle with depression,

and kept walking....

We've skated on the thinnest of financial ice for YEARS.

We've worked and worked and worked some more - and it was never going to be enough to keep the ship afloat.

The kids, as we've laughed over the years have "Never missed a meal."

Nothing was easy, but our youngest will be the third to graduate from college in the Spring. Yes, there are loans to be paid - and we'll do everything we can to help them gain traction in their lives.

About a year and a half ago we took a good hard look at where the road was leading us. Our ability to maintain the income necessary to support our lives in Westchester county, in a big house with a big mortgage - huge utility bills, and a dwindling job market - we came up with a plan.

The bank was unhappy with our syncopated mortgage payment schedule - and really wanted their house back. Things were sliding downhill, and we simply couldn't stop it.

"Let's take the money from my last free-lance job, and buy a house in Ireland."

Found one.

And did.

Sold the house in Westchester.

Packed up everything we could.

Got on the plane.

And here we are.

January 8th, 2016, and it's 1982 all over again.

The Replicant is out of time.

He sits high on the rooftops above the city, rain is pouring from the black skies - and Roy Batty,- in his last moment of life - knows what it is to be fully human.

"I've seen things, you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."

We all go through the motions. We get out of bed every day, and do our best to keep our lives and our families moving forward.

We work.

And plan.

And strive for happiness.

I'm no Roy - but I too, have seen things that will pass away with me when I go.

I, too, have learned what it is to be fully, and completely - human.

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