Miami Herald - Sunday, December 4, 1994
Manny Garcia, Herald Staff Writer

Confide in someone and chances are you'll lose your job, apartment, friends and get ripped off by countless parasites offering miracle cures.

That's what happened to my friend Joey Leone. He lived with the virus for 10 years -- and got screwed at every turn.

* His boss fired him after Joey shared with her that he had AIDS. The boss claimed a lawyer told her the business would be liable if someone contracted the virus from Joey. "People are talking," she added.

* His parish priest told Joey he got what he deserved: God's punishment for being gay. Joey had gone to the priest seeking spiritual guidance after learning he carried the deadly virus.

* Con artists sold him pills, seaweed enemas, healing stones, ozone treatments. They all promised to keep him alive. Joey spent thousands and died emaciated Nov. 24, 1993. For the funeral, his mother dressed him in purple, his favorite color. He was 32.

*

World AIDS Day was Thursday, rsday, exactly 372 days after Joey died. There were speeches and AIDS marches. The media covered it. Money was raised. And the death toll continues to rise. There is no cure in sight.

Since Joey died, 980 people in Dade County have died from the disease. Since 1980, there have been 14,013 reported AIDS cases. Of those, 8,048 adults and 202 children have died. At the moment of death, the men, women and children don't need money or parades. They need to be held and loved.

Despite all the rhetoric of open-mindedness and equal rights, AIDS-phobia is as rampant as ever.

"AIDS is a modern-day equivalent of leprosy," a state appellate judge opined in a recent AIDS discrimination case. "AIDS, or suspicion of AIDS, can lead to discrimination in employment, education, housing and even medical treatment."

"You think they suspect?," Joey would ask his family, pulling up his purple pants, size 27. He once wore 31s.

Unlike millionaire athletes "Magic" Johnson or Arthur Ashe, to go public for most people means risking your life and livelihood. Joey knew he couldn't; it would have been financial suicide, the end of a successful cosmetology career. Many clients would have stopped going to him, falling victim to their irrational fear of catching AIDS. He knew it. I knew it.

*

For eight years I sold beauty supplies in South Florida and witnessed what even the rumor of AIDS could to do to a hair salon.

* A Coral Gables client spent $50,000 to remodel her salon after her top stylist died. Clients wanted the chairs re-upholstered, the wallpaper changed, the shampoo sinks ripped out of the wall and replaced.

* A Coconut Grove client refused a resignation offer from one of his top stylists. The stylist was dying of AIDS and wanted to quit, fearing his gaunt appearance and rapid weight loss would ruin his boss' business. The stylist died months later. The salon owner died within two years.

In eight years, I lost more than 50 clients to AIDS. My last year on the job, I mailed as many Thank You cards as I did sympathy cards.

But I was also blessed to meet dozens of gay and lesbian business owners. They never cared if I was heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual or riddled with AIDS. All they wanted was a good price for a bottle of Clairol hair color. Could we be that tolerant with them?

I doubt it.

"They get what they deserve," a grandmother from Connecticut once told me during a bus tour in San Francisco. She referred to them as "those people."

"What do you call a faggot in a wheelchair?" chortled the cretin bus driver as he turned onto Castro Street. "Roll-AIDS!"

Said Paul Crockett, a Miami Beach probate lawyer who represents AIDS victims in discrimination suits, "The treatment that people with HIV get on the street is brutal."

*

But before you go calling AIDS patients "faggots," think about their families.

Joey was the third of four children born to Sonny and Louise Leone, as Italian a family and blue-collar as you could meet.

Sonny Leone is a handyman. He sports a pack of Lucky Strikes tucked underneath the sleeve of his white T-shirt. He drinks Miller. His hands are rough and calloused from years of hard labor. Sonny comes from an era when men were taught never to cry.

Ask him about Joey and he will.

"Joey, he was special," Sonny says, his voice trailing off.

Louise Leone is the woman every kid who grew up in a broken home wished they had for a mother. She cooks, cleans, listens, cheers the Miami Dolphins and helps run a catering business, "The Purple Pepper."

Her voice is soft and soothing.

"I miss the nights him knocking on the door at 11 o'clock and saying 'Ma, you got something to eat,' " Louise says. "Everybody said it would get easier. It hasn't."

Before you get too comfortable and think this can't happen to you, that it's a gay thing, a junkie thing, drive down Biscayne Boulevard or Southwest Eighth Street. Watch the men who stop and pick up a male or female prostitute.

You think their wives know what they're doing or what they're bringing home?

"A good number of the people who patronize prostitutes are married men," said Miami police spokesman Angelo Bitsis.

A Dade County Health & Rehabilitative Services report indicates the biggest increase in AIDS cases are within adult heterosexuals.

*

Despite the repeated kicks, Joey remained upbeat and lived longer than most doctors thought. Why? Clean living. He rarely drank and stopped doing drugs. Joey changed his diet, switching to macrobiotic, home-made Italian and Thai food. He exercised religiously, dancing ballet.

He also had his moments of anger and rage. He fell in love with an Israeli dancer. Before they consummated their romance, Joey stopped and told his partner that he had AIDS. The relationship ended on the spot.

He was forgiving in a world where being gay and with AIDS is tantamount to being a witch in Salem. Joey complained little. I never knew he was that ill, or taking 37 pills a day before he died.

I still cry when I hear the Pet Shop Boys sing Go West, an idyllic song about gays and lesbians finding their own paradise in San Francisco. I think of Joey and how his life was a book that ended 30 chapters too early.

All he wanted was to meet a stable man and settle down and grow old holding hands. I hope that he is in a beautiful place where the boys who died of AIDS look like they did before they got sick. I hope he finally meets that good-looking partner he never had on Earth.

Joey deserves it.8 biography leone statistic

Manny Garcia is a Herald staff writer.

CAPTION: PHOTO Manny GARCIA, Sonny and Louise Leone with a picture of Joey (a)
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