The Gary Goldener Story

He was born Gary Goldener, but now lives under an assumed name, far from his hometown of Santa Rosa, California. Gary's life has been a series of 'firsts' that no one would want to lay claim to, but at the age of 35 he has finally reached a secure haven. As one of the longest-surviving AIDS sufferers in the world, Goldener has had the disease at least fifteen years, and possibly longer. Although he first showed symptoms of the disease in 1989, doctors estimate he was HIV positive for nine years prior to that. He has never taken any AIDS-related drugs; his entire health regimen has been based on holistic medicine and Chinese herb treatment, and he is, somehow, gradually becoming well again. How? They haven't figured that out, but have used him as a test subject in San Francisco, Dallas, and now Washington, D.C.

'Frank' isn't the only pseudonym Gary has used during his lifetime. For years he existed as 'Sandy', and it was Sandy who led him down the strange and winding road to AIDS.

***

Sandy was a call-girl, one of the best. Tall, blond and somewhere in her early twenties, Sandy could command several thousand dollars a night for one date. Sandy was also a drug courier; working for Chris, a major drug importer on the West Coast of California. Sandy was Chris' go-between with his connections -- she collected money, delivered drugs, picked-up contracts. Whatever else she did was her business, as far as Chris was concerned. He was no pimp...Sandy made her own dates and kept her own money.

In underground society, Sandy was a star. She had an ideal setup, and made a lot of money. None of Chris' business connections were going to abuse or stiff her -- if they did, they'd find themselves without the coke they obviously wanted and needed. Then one night, Sandy made a date with a man she picked up in a bar. She died, in the early hours of the morning, slashed to ribbons with the pieces of a broken hotel mirror.

The end of the life of Sandy the call-girl was the beginning of life for an adolescent boy named Gary Goldener who missed his family. Sandy's death left no evidence in the form of a body, because Sandy didn't exist, except in the mind of Gary, a fourteen-year-old boy; and Chris, a thirty-four-year-old drug dealer.

At the age of ten, Gary was seduced by a garage mechanic near his family's home in Santa Rosa. "It was at a gas station on the corner of Santa Rosa Avenue and Petaluma Hill Road. There was a guy who worked there, that I used to go down and talk to all the time, who was quite a bit older than me; seventeen or eighteen. I went down there one night; we were talking and one thing led to another. After it happened, he didn't return to work the next day."

Several weeks later, Gary was on his way to visit his aunt and uncle when he encountered Chris at the airport, returning from a drug-buying trip. Chris was thirty at the time. Gary, who was supposed to meet his aunt and uncle in the coffee shop, never arrived. Instead, he went home with Chris, and his parents were to spend the next five years searching for him in vain.

"Chris had just gotten back from New York. We started talking; one thing led to another, and the next thing I knew we were in his car, on the way to his apartment. Not once did he ask me what I was doing there, if I was waiting for anyone...when we got to his apartment we sat down on the couch, and...we became very close. I called my mom and dad, and was unable to get ahold of them. I realized they probably knew I'd never met my aunt and uncle, and were already looking for me. I never bothered to call them again. I explained the situation to Chris, and what I wanted to do. I wanted to do something important, to be on my

own -- to control my own life, to grow up. My parents were very strict. My mom and dad were well-to-do people, and they had an image to uphold. They expected all their children to uphold the same image. I figured I had already gone that far, so why turn back and embarrass my parents?

"Chris never hurt me, physically. Mentally, I was affected, but he never beat me. He always made sure that I had the best of clothes, that I ate well, that I had my own personal physician and regular checkups. He took the place of my father, and brought me up. I didn't care what people thought when they saw us together, because most people thought I was his little brother. The reality never occurred to anyone.

"Chris wasn't gay, in the least. Chris didn't hate women, he just never found one he could mold. A woman he could call his own. That's where Sandy came into it...

"Chris used his mom and dad's business as a cover, for dealing coke. And we're not talking grams, we're not talking ounces...we're talking pounds, rocks...he had one refrigerator full, from the top to the bottom, of zip-lock baggies of coke. I was always told to never touch it, or he would beat the shit outta me. If I was ever offered any, I was to refuse it. What Chris said to me was God's word, and he said it would kill me.

"Chris went out and bought me clothes -- I'm not talking K-Mart stuff; I'm talking Rodeo Drive shopping. When I looked in the mirror, Gary was gone. For the next seven years, I was Sandy. I was twenty-two years old; I had a birth certificate, driver's license...I was a woman. I was eleven-and-a-half, going on twelve. I was 5'7"; and at that time, with all the help I had, I could make myself look like anyone. I'm sure it sounds unbelievable, but if you saw the pictures...

"Chris would get a call from one of his clients, and when I went to meet the contact, I'd know there was either going to be money or a contract exchanged, or something passed-over. I was there to make certain it was done. Sex didn't come into it unless the person wanted it. Eventually, he might discover I was a man, but not necessarily. There are certain things you can do, that a call-boy is taught to do. With me, no one ever saw me with the lights on; and no one ever did anything to me -- I always did it to them. I wouldn't let them touch me...graphic sex would have to be anal. I told them that I wasn't on the pill; they didn't have a condom, and I wasn't going to risk getting pregnant. The way it was worked out on my body, they couldn't tell. I made sure their hands never moved. I can't say they never found out, but when they did, the evening was over. By that time, the guy was usually looped anyway. A lot of the men I encountered were so sexually aroused by that time that they didn't care.

"When I was thirteen, I wanted to contact my mom and dad and let them know that at least I was alive. Chris made it very clear that it wouldn't work; they wouldn't want me back and they wouldn't want anything to do with me. He also told me that he loved me and couldn't live without me. As far as my 'call' job, and hustling, I could do whatever I wanted to do. If I wanted to quit, I could and he wouldn't pressure me. If I didn't want to have anything more to do with his business, he wouldn't pressure me there, either -- just as long as I didn't leave.

"I had two calls that night. I did the first one; the second was one that Chris didn't know about. I made the appointment myself; I felt that I was mature enough, and it was my own business. I thought I could pick out the good ones from the bad ones. He was one of a couple who found out that I was a boy, and took it totally the wrong way. Before I could move or do anything, he had me tied down to the bed and gagged. He went into the bathroom and broke the mirror -- then he came back and started to cut me up. The people in the next room heard the mirror break, and called the manager. The manager started banging on the door, and the guy went out the window. I thought for sure I was gonna be dead. I thought, 'Sandy, you really picked a fine one this time...this is the last time you'll ever think of your mom and dad. It's over.

"That was when I finally made up my mind, it wasn't for me anymore. But a whole year passed, before I decided I really had to go home. I told Chris I wanted to start telling people goodbye and getting ready to leave, because in a month, I'd be gone. He told me if I left, he'd die. He said, 'You came into my life when you were just a child, and I raised you. Now I understand what your parents must have felt.' That was when I realized what they must have gone through.

"We were in Los Angeles when it happened. Christmas Eve came, and I was ready...I was gonna go; I couldn't wait. I went downstairs, and I told him I was going to leave. He pulled a gun from behind his back and shot himself. I honestly didn't think the gun was loaded, and I didn't think he'd pull the trigger. The neighbors called the police; and I was literally in shock to think that he was gone. Before the police got there, he told me that he loved me, and he was sorry for what he had done to me. Before he died, he told me he didn't think the gun was loaded...one of us had loaded it, and forgotten that we had."

Gary went back to his parents house in Santa Rosa, and a grueling year in a private mental hospital. He never returned to prostitution, or to life as a woman. Though he said he wouldn't have worked as a call-boy if AIDS was as prevalent then as it is now, he admitted he has a large number of friends who still work as streetwalkers and call-boys in San Francisco...and he believes the majority of them have been exposed to the AIDS virus; perhaps half are actively afflicted with the disease.

In 1989 Gary was diagnosed HIV positive. He had never been tested before, until he decided to begin the series of operations that would turn him permanently into Sandy, into a woman. That dream died, but another was born. In 1992 he received a settlement from a lawsuit brought against Carl's Jr. restaurants, for wrongful dismissal. He had been working as a Shift Manager when they discovered he was HIV positive, and fired him. The cast never went to court, and Gary settled with them for $100,000. This happened as follows, provided by attorney record:

On April 17, 1991 the first employer-related AIDS discrimination suit was filed in Sonoma County. The suit was filed by a native of Santa Rosa, a man from an affluent family, against Carl's Jr. Restaurants, Inc. Gary Goldener had been working for Carl's Jr. as a Shift Manager, and had worked for the company since 1987. In mid-1989 Goldener was diagnosed HIV positive, and took a 30-day medical leave starting July 3, 1989. On August 5th he returned to work, but after a 12-hour shift he began to feel ill -- dizzy, nauseous and faint, and left for home. Two days he later telephoned Alan Moak, then manager of the restaurant, to check on his schedule. He was informed that he had been terminated.

The circumstances of Goldener's termination were suspicious. Moak had discovered the supposedly confidential information that Goldener was HIV positive, and left his personnel file open to the incriminating document, in full view on his desk, for the rest of the employees to see. According to Goldener, Moak had "expressed great hostility and animosity" towards him.

In addition to the charge of illegal dismissal, part of Goldener's suit centered on the denial of disability medical benefits to which he was entitled. According to Patty Parks, a spokeswoman at Carl's Jr. corporate headquarters in Anaheim, Goldener was fired because he didn't show up for work as scheduled. For two years previous to his diagnosis, however, there was apparently no problem with his work record. According to Dr. Robert Benjamin, director of the communicable diseases bureau for Alameda County, the only people who are restricted by law from food-handling jobs are those with intestinal tract and airborne- transmittable diseases such as tuberculosis and hepatitis.

Goldener's original suit was for $500,000. It was scheduled to go to court in October of 1991, but was settled shortly before the court date for 'an undisclosed amount'. According to a source close to Goldener (who has been prohibited by the settlement from discussing the suit or the amount he received) Carl's Jr. settled for the entire amount rather than go to court. By the time the case was settled, Alan Moak was no longer working for Carl's Jr.

Several AIDS-related illnesses nearly killed Gary during the early 1990's, but then he miraculously began to go into remission. He began doing volunteer work for Sonoma County Social Services, and it was then he discovered a plot between three county workers that resulted in the death of an elderly, wealthy woman. After exposing the perpetrators Gary was declared officially dead, and he now lives in another state under federal protection and an assumed name.

Gary was 'married' first to his male lover in Hawaii, where same-sex marriages are legal, and after the removal of his spleen and a liver transplant, he remains one of the longest-living AIDS survivors in the world. He lived in Washington, D.C. with his 'husband', a high-level government employee, and ran a government-sponsored AIDS support group, the same job he held in Texas. Of this life now he told me in 1994,

"Jim and I have been together four years, and we'll be together forever. I don't know what I'm doing right, but my life has finally come full-circle. I've found happiness, and I'm trying to bring it to others. Whatever I was in the past, I'm a new man now -- and happy to be one."

But Gary's story didn't end with Jim, or in Washington, D.C. He has returned to California, where he lives with his wife and baby under an assumed name. Yes, you read that right...Gary's second marriage was to a woman, whom he describes as 'the light of my life, my love, my star..." But how could a man with AIDS in good conscience father a baby, you're asking? His HIV count dropped so low in 1996 that he was given the diagnosis of being AIDS-free. His baby is, too.

Where will Gary Goldener's life lead him now? How is he, and where is he? I don't know, and neither does anyone else. Gary Goldener is legally dead, and the person he has become could be living next door to any one of us. We'd be lucky to have him for a neighbor, since he's one of the sweetest men I've ever known. A kiss to you, Gary, wherever you are now...