Ruby’s Rap

by Ruby Comer

Terry Wolverton

With my overnight garment bag on one arm and my lizard-skin-lined makeup case in the other, I head off to attend the Smith College Sorority Sister’s Slumber at an alum’s pad in Santa Barbara. Yes, my dears, I was a Smithie and would have graduated if not for that unfortunate incident with a doe-eyed psychology professor. But that’s another story. My gal pals and I have managed to stay in touch and once a year whoop it up for one glorious night. The theme tonight is classic movie stars, and we’re all dressing like our favorite femme fatale. Since I have these broad, stately shoulders, it’s no great stretch to figure out who I’m playing–Miss Joan Crawford! When I arrive, the girls are watching the new DVD of Mildred Pierce (lots of spiffy extras). Quite unexpectedly, one of my old sorority sisters in a Bette Davis get-up approaches me to introduce her cousin, Terry, who turns out to be a rather fascinating person.

Terry Wolverton, forty-eight, has taught creative writing for over twenty years. She initiated and conducted a writing workshop in the late eighties for people living with AIDS. It ran for nine years, and some of her students’ works were included in the two-volume book Blood Whispers: L.A. Writers on AIDS. She is the author of four books, with her most recent being Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman’s Building (nominated for a Lambda award). Her upcoming work, Embers, a novel-in-poems, will be published this fall. Besides writing, Terry has toured the United States as a performance artist.

Terry and I hole up in the kitchen for a chitchat, as the voice of Eve Arden is heard on the tellie urging Joan Crawford to disown her snobby daughter, Ann Blyth: "Veda’s convinced me that alligators have the right idea. They eat their young."

Ruby Comer: [Laughing] Love that Eve Arden! Terry, tell me about the workshop.

Terry Wolverton: Ah, that work was as beneficial to me as it was to anyone who participated. At the time, AIDS was considered a death sentence, so, because they were contemplating their mortality, they looked everything in the face and weren’t running from it. There was no issue we didn’t address. That was their courage; their heart. My job was to make a place where it was safe to do that.

Did you have any outstanding students?

Two, yes. One of them, Gil Cuadros was a very talented writer. He came to me in the beginning–his lover had just died of AIDS–and he had been given an ARC diagnosis. He had been told that he had six months to live, though he went on to live for eight more years and died in 1996. He always said that it was his writing that kept him alive. He produced this extraordinary book, City of God, and I introduced him to my literary agent who placed the book with a publisher. He was able to live to see his book in print. Sadly, another talented student was not so fortunate. Michael Niemoeller wrote Stone Made Flesh [but died before it was] eventually published by my company, Silverton Books.

I can tell that you’re so passionate about your students, this class, and your work.

I am! It’s a dual thing when you teach writing. On the one hand, people are opening their souls and that’s an unfolding process. And at the same time you watch them gain skills with which to express that opening in more and more refined and artful ways. It’s thrilling to watch. There’s no greater blessing. How can I not be passionate about it?

You lost students during this period. How did you deal with that loss?

My belief system is that we are all eternal. We transition from life through death to something else; maybe we are recycled back into another life. It’s not an ending. It’s a change of form. This helps me.

I like that.

I’ve been very saddened by my students passing. In some cases, it’s been a great relief to them and I was able to feel happy about the end to their suffering. Also, I cling to this idea of continuity, and in very real ways I am still connected to them.

Why did the writing class end?

Once the cocktail was made widely available, I found that students stopped being drawn to this workshop. My guess would be that once the prospect of life was more available that they wanted to deal with just their lives. They wanted to stop identifying as people with HIV, or that they identified differently. So the need to come together and process was lessened. Maybe.

What are you doing now?

I teach writing workshops, but now with a different focus.

As Terry and I wind down, we hear a new voice in the living room–"Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night." It’s Bette Davis in All About Eve, so the two of us rejoin the cat party.

Ruby Comer is an independent journalist from the Midwest who is happy to call Hollywood her home away from home. Reach her by e-mail at MsRubyComer@aol.com.

June 2003