Michael Kearns has died six days before his planned return to the Celebration Theatre

Michael Kearns saying “Hey!” (Photo by Karen Ocamb)

Michael Kearns is one of those friends who, even after a decade of distance, was always just a phone call away.

Michael died on Monday night, Oct. 5. He was 76. No details or cause of death have been released, but apparently Michael had not been in the best of health.

In a condolence note to the LGBTQ+ community on Facebook, Celebration Theatre posted: “At Celebration, Michael is perhaps most remembered for his production of Robert Chesley’s JERKER. In fact, Michael was due to appear this Sunday (National Coming Out Day) in our Circa: Queer Histories Festival event “Art in the Revolution: Queer Theatre in 1982 and Today”—where he was to reprise selections from the play alongside his longtime friend and colleague Joe Gill.”

Today, a stunned gay theatre and AIDS activism world is mourning the loss of the ubiquitous and creative artist who helped so many, literally touched so many, and probably died not knowing how beloved he really was.

I met Michael Kearns in late 1989. I was a new nobody freelancer at Frontiers Magazine, and Michael called because apparently no one was interested in this new play he’d written. Someone warned me that it was probably all about gay sex and I might not like it. But it was also about AIDS, and that had become my life since 1984. So, I went to his show. Intimacies changed my life.

Michael Kearns / (publicity photo courtesy Kearns)

I don’t remember the location or what happened before or after. What I remember is watching Michael Kearns standing onstage, twirling this red scarf like a magical matador ushering us into his world of six characters as Darien Martus’ score quietly seeped into my bloodstream. These were not people from my world – and yet, their poverty of the soul, their angry loneliness, their reality-shy desperation for love and recognition felt like my world, too, even though I professed to myself that I was none of these things. And, given my pre-sobriety shenanigans, I was gratefully HIV-negative.

I went backstage and confessed I was too mesmerized to talk then. So we met for lunch at the French Market Place in West Hollywood and laughed and swooned with sudden enlightenment and shared story after story for hours. We were both born in January, 16 days apart – he was older. We were both in a 12 Step program. He liked to gossip; I was an old-school journalist. We really fell for each other through our mutual commitment to do what we could to fight AIDS.

Michael confessed that he wasn’t really the Happy Hustler, though he played one in real life – and I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. I knew people in AA and people with AIDS had their own language, but as someone who came out late, I had no idea what gay and lesbian-speak was.

Michael Kearns in Dream Man (Photo courtesy Kearns)

I confess that even though I’d heard enough gay sex stories through AA 9^th Steps, I blushed as he explained Jerker and Dream Man – which Mark S. King says is really based on him and interviews he gave Michael’s theatrical partner, playwright James Carroll Pickett.

Michael Kearns and Jim Pickett at Highways (Photo Karen Ocamb)

That’s when things got intensely intellectual and nuanced, as in Queen of Angels, which was luckily staged at Highways Performance Space – headed up by the brilliant and lovely Tim Miller – where I could go outside and catch my breath trying to figure out the Hero’s Journey.

But as extraordinary as Michael’s writing was and as riveted as I was by his acting – I still have the T-shirt featuring his performance in Charles Ludlam‘s Camille at Highways – I was a political reporter, so I had to find ways to cover him for his activism, as well as his art. Cue Artists Confronting AIDS, which Michael co-founded with Jim Pickett.

AIDS/US II cast (Photo courtesy Alison Arngrim)

“The initial concept of AIDS/US was truly shocking: putting people who had the disease, many of whom were not well, on stage—live—to tell their stories. There were audience members who feared catching the disease from the performers,” Michael said.

Michael became a major source for journalists when explosive stories hit the news – like the death of actor Brad Davis. The 41-year-old star of the film Midnight Express died of AIDS on Sept. 8, 1991. He kept his health conditions secret for six years so he could continue to work and support his wife and child.

Two days after his death, his widow, casting director Susan Bluestein, gave the Los Angeles Times Davis’ book proposal about his struggle to work in Hollywood while secretly having AIDS. The proposal turned into an open letter charging the industry with hypocrisy, homophobia, and AIDSphobia.

Michael felt the crisis would be cathartic, serving as a “real turning point” that could yield jobs. And it served as an opportunity for him to come out as being HIV/positive.

On Sept. 16, Michael told NBC correspondent Faith Daniels that he was HIV positive.

“I felt that not one more HIV-infected actor or anyone else should die in shame,” Michael told me for an article in the Sept. 19, 1991 issue of the Bay Area Reporter. “I’m doing this for all people with HIV. HIV is nothing to be ashamed of. For me to remain silent indicates shame or fear on some level. Taking my cue from Brad Davis, I couldn’t remain silent.”

He added: “This is really revolutionary what’s going on. There’s no way I can’t be a part of it.”

And he was. “There seems to be this expectation that Hollywood should be more evolved than the rest of the world. But Hollywood is less evolved. They focus on the lowest common denominator, particularly in television, which assumes the viewer is homophobic, racist, sexist, and stupid.”

Michael Kearns gives Sir Ian McKellen an award from the Victory Fund (Photo Karen Ocamb)

Michael blamed “the relative invisibility of gay themes in Hollywood’s film and TV product, as well as the lack of openly gay actors, let alone openly HIV-positive ones–on ‘self-hatred’ by gays in the industry who are ‘closeted,’” The Times reported.

Michael eventually came out about his 1983 unprotected sexual encounter with actor Rock Hudson, which he was certain resulted in him contracting HIV/AIDS. And, of course, that resulted in another play about homophobia and art.

“Rock was a classic victim,” Michael, tagged as “the only openly gay actor in Hollywood,” told the LA Times in 1992. “He was a victim of this town, of alcohol, of his looks, of the system, of his own publicity. In many ways he was the opposite of me.”

Michael also noted how little had changed after Brad Davis’ AIDS death. “I felt a deep kinship with Brad,” he said of disclosing his own HIV status. “Then the media comes to me, and I’m saying the same things I said six years ago with Rock. Nothing’s changed. There’s been fund-raising and consciousness-raising by heterosexual female stars, but the more subtle, insidious fear has increased.”

Being HIV positive, Michael said in 1992, before the miracle drugs, “makes me prioritize things. And I’ve never been low on the passion scale. Has it made me more passionate to know that my days may be numbered, that there may not be many more opening nights? Of course! So, yes, part of it is good. It’s no different than anyone who has an incredible obstacle and makes something beautiful out of it.”

But Hollywood is still “a scalding cauldron of collusion,” Michael told me.

“What’s troubling is that a number of Hollywood powerbrokers treat homosexuality as a ‘sin’ or ‘immoral’ or an ‘abnormality’ that somehow is to be hidden; they categorize it as a career killer which could result in a loss of box office billing or revenue,” he said. “But they have skin in the game (usually financial), so they collude. They lie, betray, falsify; they are the immoral ones.”

When actor Kevin Spacey was “trolling the halls at Burke Williams, camouflaging himself by putting the hood of his bathrobe up over his head, he was not exactly embracing his gayness,” Michael said. “And when he got in the massage room, alone with the masseur, Spacey insisted on positioning himself for something other than a ‘legit massage.’ Is that harassment? It occurred enough times, according to my very reliable source, that he was thrown out of the West Hollywood location and relegated to Santa Monica (where there were more issues reported). Even in this case, Spacey was being protected by moving him rather than really confronting this issue. Collusion.”

There’s so much more to consider about Michael Kearns – like his love for Philip Juwig. I attended their casual wedding and went to Sherman Oaks Medical Center with Michael before Philip died in 1992.

Michael Kearns with baby Tia/Katherine (Photo by Karen Ocamb)

And I talked with him a lot about his desire to be a father. A lot of his friends, including me, thought it would be virtually impossible for a single, gay, HIV positive man to be “allowed” to adopt. But he did. And he was so happy with his little baby Tia that he brought her to Paul Monette’s memorial at the Directors Guild to show her off. It was close to a spiritual full-circle moment.

Over the years, I became a news editor and had my own blog – LGBT POV – and always tried to make space for Michael’s contributions. One about his daughter Tia – who renamed herself Katherine – is the essay “Bloodless but not Loveless,” which is part of a larger collection entitled What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding On To, and Letting Go of Their Daughters, edited by Andrea N. Richesin.

Michael Kearns and Katherine Kearns (Photo by Karen Ocamb)

“You are my family,” Tia/Katherine says. She reminds me of the many individuals—gay, straight, young, old, black, white, rich, poor—who have helped me raise her since she and I embarked on this journey together.”

This is what I’ll remember: for Michael Kearns, it’s always been about love. And a good laugh.

Michael Kearns saying “Hey!” (Photo by Karen Ocamb)

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