In a New Novel, Writer Keith McDermott Touches Down on the Despair of Living with AIDS and Lifts Off Into Healing

by Lester Strong

The year is 1995, and Gerald, an unemployed, forty-something New York actor, has accepted a job performing in a theater piece titled Rivers, Saints, Space, to be directed by world famous avant-garde director William Weiss as the premier event at a prestigious arts festival in Sicily. The problem is: Gerald has AIDS. Protease inhibitors are on the horizon, but more as a rumor of a “miracle cure” than anything else. Gerald’s had just about enough of miracle cures that kill rather than heal. He’s been sick for a number of years, and at death’s door more than once. He’s made out a will, designated a healthcare proxy, and arranged for the eventual cremation of his body. But Gerald also has three regrets: He’s never had a long-term lover, he probably won’t see the new millennium, and he’s never traveled outside the United States. His health may be precarious, but Sicily beckons as a way of assuaging at least one of his unmet needs.

So opens Keith McDermott’s debut novel Acqua Calda, a tour-de-force account of one individual’s journey from despair to ecstasy in the face of AIDS. Published earlier this year to glowing reviews, its author is no stranger to the world of acting. A long-term survivor of the New York stage—he starred with Richard Burton on Broadway in Peter Schaffer’s Equus, among other credits—he has also directed plays and appeared in a number of movies. Nor is McDermott a stranger to AIDS, being a long-term survivor of this disease that has greatly impacted his life both personally and professionally.

“Acqua Calda is fiction,” said McDermott when interviewed about the novel, “but it’s related to my experience. It’s about a gay, HIV-positive actor working on a theater piece in Sicily, and I’m a gay, HIV-positive actor who’s worked on a theater piece in Sicily. The fiction is in the details. I’m not Gerald. I’ve never been as sick as Gerald, and unlike him, I’ve had great long-term relationships. But I’ve seen the desperation of many people in the performing arts community who have AIDS. Not all actors are Hollywood stars. They struggle with their careers, living on little money in cheap, run-down apartments to make ends meet. When they get hit with AIDS, it’s rough going. Until protease inhibitors, AIDS usually meant they couldn’t work even if they were offered acting roles, and so had to go on public assistance. It’s so depressing. In the novel, I use the phrase ‘planet AIDS.’ My story memorializes that miserable locale from an actor’s point of view.”

Asked about the title of the novel, McDermott replied: “It’s a play on words. ‘Acqua calda’ literally means ‘hot water’ in Italian. But in Italy the phrase also refers to hot springs where people go to bathe away their aches and pains. Gerald finds himself in hot water, so to speak, because of AIDS. But he’s also taken to an acqua calda in Sicily by some of the Italian actors in the production. It’s a pivotal scene. He finds romance there in the arms of another actor, something he thought he’d never experience again. It’s the start of his regeneration.”

Gerald’s regeneration may begin with his visit to the hot springs, but it’s carried out mainly through his participation in the production of Rivers, Saints, Space. “Gerald starts the novel being very bitchy to a lot of people, uncomfortable with the hotel room he has to share with others in Sicily, out of sorts over his illness,” said McDermott during the interview. “But gradually, he starts to see things differently. Partly it’s the Italians who open him up to the great beauty in his life, but also his love of theater is rekindled. Theater is a place where he feels absolutely confident, and working on Rivers, Saints, Space helps free him from the feeling of being on his own death watch.”

Asked if there’s a spiritual element to the story, McDermott replied: “Definitely. By the end, Gerald has reconciled himself to death. Not that he’s going to die. Protease inhibitors are just around the corner. He may well live into the new millennium. He might even find himself in a long-term relationship. But he doesn’t know that. His final words in the book are Italian: ‘Signore, tu me colge en adore,’ which translate as ‘Lord, take me while I am in ecstasy.’ That’s a spiritual statement.”

In other words, far from dying, Gerald has come alive again.

Acqua Calda is a story for our time, for any time, with a simple but important message: Even in the face of AIDS and our own mortality, life can be worth living. Just find the things that make living feel worthwhile, and we’ve made our own kind of miracle.

Lester Strong is Special Projects Editor of A&U.

August 2005