The Last Picture

Sara Selva Ortiz Medrano

A_1

Angelo: Let me show you… This is Thanksgiving, good times… 

Yeah… 

This is up in Maine… This is our last summer in Maine together… That’s the house we used to rent… 

SARA_1

Angelo Benevento keeps some of his favorite pictures in his wallet. In a small plastic folder. They are all more than 30 years old. 

A_1b

Angelo: This is us… 

Angelo: He had a nice smile… Yes, he looks happy

SARA_2

And in all of them… Angelo is with his partner, Joseph Caputo. 

A_1c

Angelo: 5.40. That’s a march in Washington, I took this one of him. He always like this picture.. Yes, he liked it? Yeah, he loved it. 

SARA_3

In the world that contains his wallet… Time stopped in the late nineties, when Joseph was still alive. Angelo is now 75. But it looks like the life he had after that time doesn’t really count. As if it doesn’t deserve a place in this folder. 

A_1d

Angelo: 3.40. This is the first one… This is the Christmas party? Yes, yes

SARA_4

One can easily draw a timeline of their relationship by looking at these pictures. 

Their story is there. 

And it started in 1981. 

With the first one.

[MUSIC STARTS] 

A_1e

Angelo: And that was our first date. Our first picture together. 

Sara: You look really, really happy

Angelo: He is cute, right? 

That’s our first time in Maine, this is us, again I never liked hair… 

SARA_5

This is True Stories in Sound. I’m Sara Selva. 

[THE CONVERSATION FADES AND THE MUSIC ENDS]

SARA_6

In September of 1981, Angelo was about to start a new job at a telephone company. 

A_2

Angelo: 1:04 So I’m there early. I got there like, maybe 8:30, and I see this guy coming down the aisle and I said, oh my God, oh my God. 

SARA_7

It was Joseph. 

A_3

Angelo: [00:01:57]  Oh, like, I knew him.

SARA_8

Angelo sat next to him. And two months later… They were dating. 

A_4

Our first day was Christmas, Christmas 1981. We went to a Christmas party. The phone company, you know, Christmas party… Oh, this is nice. And I even got a picture of it. Yeah, yeah. Somebody took it off me and him and I had to track the woman down. She was in the building department. She liked me to death. I said, do you get that picture? Yeah. Come on. Yeah. I kept on asking and asking, so I got it.

SARA_9

He got it. And he carries the picture with him. They are both looking at the camera. Both wearing a white shirt and glasses. Both with a big smile. Angelo was 32. Joseph, 26. 

As they got to know each other, they realized how different they were. Angelo, a guy with an attitude, he says. Joseph, quite the opposite. 

A_5

[00:05:38] I was the evil one. Joseph was a saint. Saint. Never said bad things about anybody, never yelled at anything, you know. And I used to get upset. You know, I got upset that he didn’t get upset. 

SARA_10

Angelo got upset if he held the door for someone and the person didn’t say thank you. Joseph calmed him down. Why do you care? he would say. Angelo always ordered the same dish at the same Italian restaurant. Joseph tried the whole menu. Angelo liked his routine at work. Joseph, a photographer, felt trapped.

A_6

[01:14:54]  It was putting a chain around a lion near the computer. He hated it. Me, you can put five chains on me. I like that.

SARA_11

The office was in midtown Manhattan… So they often went to Greenwich Village. The year they met, 1981, was also the year they started hearing stories about a new, mysterious virus. Nobody knew much about it. A few headlines appeared in some newspapers. A strange cancer, they said. A rare form of pneumonia affecting the gay community. 

[MUSIC STARTS]

Together, Joseph and Angelo watched the situation unfold. 

Soon… The virus was no longer just a virus. 

It was an epidemic.

Archive – A mystery disease, known as the gay plague, is becoming an epidemic unprecedented in the history of American medicine.

By 1983, it had killed more than 800 people in New York City alone. 

A_8

[00:27:18] It kind of got worse after that. Because the virus was hitting everybody now and it was more in the news

Archive – It’s mysterious, it’s deadly, and it’s battling medical science 

SARA_12

Angelo began volunteering at a hospital in Hell’s Kitchen. He visited patients. To talk to them. To read them the Bible, sometimes. To feed them. He watched strangers get thinner and thinner. He saw them die alone. With no friends. No relatives. He organized their memorials. Their parents didn’t come, so he had to send their ashes to their families. 

He says now… that although he didn’t know it at the time, it was all a way of preparing himself for what was about to hit him. 

[MUSIC ENDS]

A_9

[00:18:20] Well, in those days, we went for tests. So they took your blood stuff, and they didn’t want to know your name and number. They just. They just gave you a number. And they’ll contact us, you know, by letters, you know. 

SARA_13

In 1986, Angelo and Joseph got tested… And while they waited for their results… They went on a trip to northern Italy. To Venice, Florence, Milan. 

A_10

Great time. Spent two weeks. Beautiful. [00:19:58] We come back to our apartments, and we go, he’s looking at the mail. And in those days, you know, you had your camera and you clicked it. The camera, you know, one of those, fast, Instamatic cameras.

SARA_14

Angelo had one more picture in the roll. Just one. 

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I said, what am I going to do with this? Joseph, hold on… click.

[MUSIC] Seaweed

FADE IN, under – Minimal, not sad, two instruments, low bass, no melody, atmospheric synth,  

SARA_15

In the picture, Joseph is wearing a striped blue shirt. He has a postcard in one hand. A closed envelope, in the other. 

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And then he read it. 

So the last picture I have on that roll was him opening up the letter that he was infected with HIV. 

I came out negative, but his letter said that. 

Now it hit home

[MUSIC] 

A_13

[01:18:45] I told him. I’m here. Not that he didn’t want me to stay, but he would understand if I had to go. And I looked at him. I said, no, that’s fine. You are not going to go alone with this.  

09:00 So then I joined the Gay Men’s Health Crisis because I said, no one’s helping anybody here. So I got to learn.

So I had to teach myself, train myself. I went to training class. 

SARA_16

The Gay Men’s Health Crisis had something called a buddy program. Volunteers were paired with patients. They visited them at home, went shopping for them, took care of their bills. Went for walks when they could. Stayed by their bedside when they couldn’t. 

He had dozens of patients. 

The first one was Thomas… 

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[00:23:22]  Tall guy. Six one, six two. 

SARA_17

Then, Jean Claude, the french hairdresser… 

A_15

[00:56:03] And we would have picnics, you know, and he would always get strawberries with sugar.

SARA_18

The one who died in his arms on a Saturday morning… 

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He had such pretty blue eyes, blond hair and pretty blue eyes.

SARA_19

Or Ray, with his dark hair…

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He was handsome. Even in death, that bitch. Even in death, aggg. Not fair. 

[MUSIC ENDS]

SARA_20

Angelo kept volunteering. And for some years, Joseph did it too. He took pictures of patients. He documented the crisis. They started the day together at the office. And ended it together. They waited for each other, walked to their favorite restaurant, and always sat at the same table. The one in the corner. 

But as the years passed… Joseph became more fragile. He couldn’t do his job anymore. And so Angelo started coming to the office earlier and did Joseph’s work. He would leave the papers on his desk, before he arrived, so no one could notice what was going on. They stopped going to their restaurant, stopped going to the village. 

In 1993, Angelo got a promotion. He had to move to a different office. Joseph couldn’t keep his job without Angelo’s help… And he retired. All that Angelo had prepared himself for… had come. 

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[00:25:34] Now it affects you. I mean, you know, I can help Joseph Bombardier, Jean Claude Girard, Thomas Harvey. I could help those people… They are, you know, just people. Joseph is my partner. So now I had to be a doctor. I had to be a social worker. I had to be his spokesman. I had to clean him, dress him, bathe him…

SARA_21

Angelo realized… he wasn’t prepared. 

A_20

[01:10:16]  So Joseph knew he was dying. Yeah. You know, he knew. I knew, he knew. And that’s what was so hard. I knew he knew that I knew, you know, and to go to watch somebody go through that, you know, knowing it’s going to be the end. 

SARA_22

Joseph probably knew that his 40th birthday was his last one. 

That the holidays of the winter of 1994 were his last ones. 

[MUSIC]

A_21

[00:47:55]  It was in Sarasota, Florida. We were snowbirds.

He was really thin. And we go down there and, you know, people look at you.

We went swimming together and there were families, maybe four couples with kids, so we went swimming together, true story, and they all got out. Maybe five minutes, we were the only ones in the pool. We were the only ones out there swimming. 

[MUSIC]

SARA_23

In May, 1995, one day after Mother’s Day, Angelo decided to take Joseph to the hospital. He spent his last three months there. 

A_22

So at the beginning was, okay, you know, like you and I, you know, I would pick them, bring the food over. We sit down, you know, in a lounge and have dinner, you know, so towards the end when he got really, really thin, it got more difficult. I mean, he was out of it, so, I knew he didn’t care, you know? He was just waiting.

SARA_24

Angelo slept with him everyday. There was a cot in the room for him. But he slept on the bed, hugging Joseph.

A_23

We slept together like this and he probably would have killed me. We would have killed me. Get off! And I started and I started laughing like, oh, if he was, if he had his strength, he would kick my ass

SARA_25

One of those nights, Angelo took a picture of the two of them. The last one.

[01:07:49] So, I took the pictures, and he was so thin. So thin. But I needed that.

[01:10:15] Because I have our first pictures together at Christmas. I have that, so I needed the last picture. 

SARA_26

In the photograph, they are both wearing pajamas from the hospital. Joseph is lying on the bed. Angelo is beside him. He is wearing white plastic gloves and is holding Joseph’s hand. They are both smiling. 

The morning after that picture Angelo, as he used to, cleaned everything up. Made Joseph look good for his mother. And went to the office. 

A_25

[01:38:35]  I would say goodbye. I was looked around, you know, kiss them before I left. You know, what was there was not Joseph, so, the mother came in, so then I got to my office.

And within 45 minutes, the mother called me.

PAUSE

And that’s when he passed. And I think he waited for me to go, so he didn’t die in front of me. You know, they always say you pick it when you go. So I closed my system, I went over to my supervisor and I said, “well, I’m leaving, I’m a gay man… And my partner…” And I wanted them to tell me that I can’t go, because I would tell them off. 

So by the time I got there, he was dead 15 minutes. I don’t want to be too morbid, but I told his brother Steven was also there. You know, I said, Steven, can I have some time with Joseph? He goes, yeah. I closed the door, and then I went back to bed with Joseph. Just remembering the time we had together.

SARA_27

That was 28 years ago. Angelo hasn’t had a partner since.

[MUSIC] 

A_26

Yeah 28 years. That guy and I laugh… I said we were only together 14 so I could have two Joes. After that, 14 and 14 is 28. I could have been, you know, with somebody, you know.

Nobody knows the favorite ice cream I like. Nobody knows the favorite restaurants I like, nobody knows what movies I don’t go to.

SARA_28

He still remembers Joseph’s phone number. 

A_27

7187936370. That’s just that’s his number in his studio apartment. I remember that because I dialed every day. 

SARA_29

Angelo… Framed the photograph of Joseph holding the envelope with his HIV test results. 

A_28

It’s on my table with candles, you know, kind of a deal that’s, you know, because it changed your lives, you know. 

SARA_30

He keeps that picture there, at home. But he carries other memories with him. In his wallet. 

Between the photos, in that little plastic folder, there is something else. A piece of paper. It’s getting orange. The obituary he wrote for the New York Times in 1995.

Will miss your beautiful smile, your soft-spoken voice and, most of all, the gentleness I felt being in your presence. Will think of you often; will miss you a lot. 

I love you, my friend. 

Always,

Angelo