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"My Compulsive Search for Love", AIDS Monologues
by Will Heimbach

My first memory is of being two, standing in the kitchen of our row home, in front of a big brown split-level refrigerator. My mom and I were holding each other as we cried, seeking understanding and comfort after our dog Cinders was killed by a car. My dad sat at a desk with his back to us in the next room. I could see his dark silhouette cast from the florescent lamp as he pretended to not see or feel our grief. I wanted him to hold and join us in our tears. Instead, he sat there in silence.

Although my dad has never been good at hearing or expressing emotion, he is both a good man and a good father. After he and my mother divorced, the time I spent with him was the safest and most joy filled of my childhood and adolescence. Each summer I anticipated our big trip to the Jersey Shore. Our daily routine of crabbing, riding bikes on the boardwalk, body surfing in the ocean and eating lunch on the beach were sensuous highlights. So too, was my hidden anticipation of lying on our blanket and watching with fascination the pier of amusement rides and the college lifeguards. As I grew older, the lifeguards increasingly won my attention. Even as a young boy, I knew I mustn’t get caught watching them. Before I understood the complexity of love or sex, I felt a longing to be in the presence of their masculine wholesome good looks and their power to rescue and save lives.

My mother and new stepfather Don moved us from Pennsylvania to Rhode Island, where living in a small New England town, felt cold and lonely to me. My sister Kim and I became each other’s closest allies and friends, spending many adventuresome hours exploring the woods around our house, while inside our home my stepfather started sneaking into my bedroom to molest me.

I was 7 the first time he sat on the edge of my twin bed and gently placed me across his lap, where I could see up close the stubble of his beard and smell his stale grown up breath. He unzipped my pants and with his calloused hands began to masturbate me. I was instantaneously flooded with the hot rush of fear, excitement, sadness and confusion, as well as a primal and intense desire to please him. This potent cocktail of emotion and physical sensation would become an addictive recipe of desire I would seek out and attempt to recreate with other men. I believe in that moment I began my compulsive search for love.

I was hungry for his approval and attention, which he staunchly withheld from me. Lying on his lap was the closest I had ever been to him. My fear that God would surely punish me, and the burn of guilt and shame in my belly became the weekly cost of being special to him. My mother walked into my bedroom one night and witnessed his perversion for little boys. His explanation was that he was teaching me about sex.

Our love/hate incestuous relationship lasted 13 years. No matter where we were or who was around, he would find me. Despite all the time and energy expended in the hunt for ritualized sex, we were never able to share any healthy or loving intimacy. He would demand and receive my body; in exchange I hoped he would be kind to me. The reality was that after each perpetration, he grew distant and I became more isolated and locked away in my private world of fantasy and sleep.

My chest hurts as I still struggle to grasp why he would not stop when I begged him to, why he threatened me after my mother discovered our secret, and why I was 20 years old before I mustered all my strength and courage to confront him with the warning never to touch me again.

I learned from Don the power that my body carries to seduce and be seduced. I also learned the power of passivity. Just recently have I shed the skin of victim and begun to stand squarely accountable and responsible for who I am.

Despite my fear of men, they were the objects of my desire. I put to play my acquired skills and became a hunter on the prowl for a masculine man who could be a daddy. With much desperation, I looked for the safety and healing of a man’s strong arms. My hunting weapons were my body and the promise of a hot fuck.

To alleviate the emotional pain, which was becoming harder to repress, I compulsively sought relief in lusty glances, groping hands, deep kisses and the powerful thrust of naked male bodies. After the sex, the familiar cloak of guilt and regret covered me even more tightly.

It was Houston where I found my long-term companion, Mr. HIV. We married in a bathhouse with alcohol and poppers. In my search for what I thought I wanted and needed, I acted out the shit I felt deep inside. In the desire for a sense of control, I drank, drugged and had sex with more men than I want to remember. Sex became a driving force because it was the only thing I believed I was good at and felt safe in giving. With each encounter my biggest fear was that if the man could really see who I was, he would be shocked and repulsed. I also didn’t have the self worth to request or require safe sex, so after a year of anxiously asking my doctor to test me, he finally consented. November 1986 he delivered to me my positive test results.

In that sterile white office, HIV physically manifested all the dis-ease and shame I had carried inside of me for so long. I made a pact with the virus, he could live inside my body as long as he never assumed control of my health, and so far he has honored the agreement. Too many others weren’t so fortunate. Helplessly watching a community of good and loving men die left me terrified and numb with grief.

Now please here me when I tell you all was not gloom and doom. This boy knows how to have fun. For instance, I had a frightfully good time entering a slave auction for Jesus at a leather bar. Yes…. I was raised Southern Baptist which is where I first experienced S&M. However, this was a fundraiser for my Methodist church’s AIDS ministry. I figured I could serve God and have the chance to be bought by a hunk at the same time.

After 16 years in Houston, I realized I had to change if I was to grow into emotional and spiritual health. New Mexico called and I listened.
My path here is one of faith and allowing myself to move into intimate relationships without fear.

My stepfather died one year ago, and an amazing shift is occurring within me. I have an increasing sense of freedom from his grasp. I worried for most of my life how I would feel when he died. What I feel now is relief.

It’s ironic, that in the year of his death and the loss of any opportunity to heal and get closure with one another, I am given a most precious gift. I’m now back in the place I was at 2, standing in the kitchen, wanting to be held and comforted. And what’s different, is that I now know comfort will not be found in a man’s arms. My serenity comes from my connection and unconditional love for myself, my sisters and brothers and my Higher Power.

Consistently, I have the choice to abandon myself, or to show up with heart and integrity and be the man I am created to be. It is a moment-to-moment process of making mistakes and learning to think, feel and behave in new and healthy ways, free of my inner critic and self-loathing. 

I give daily thanks to loving spirit, caring health providers, my therapist Chad who teaches me to hold compassion for myself, and a host of beautiful friends who mirror light and love to me. I have come to a most grateful place of beating the odds. I am more than surviving, I am thriving baby! Here in Santa Fe and in quiet places of my heart I have come home.

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