Is the Answer Within Each of Us?

My Thursday Night Musing

I’ve been thinking about Tom Penscheff.

When I was a young girl my mom took some odd jobs for extra money after our sister died, mostly through connections she had with the Catholic church. I don’t remember if Dorothy Penscheff was someone she knew from before or whether Mom just saw an ad for a cleaning lady on the Church bulletin board. But she took me to Dorothy’s house many times with her.

Dorothy was widowed after her husband Bob got cancer and she had a big house in Toledo’s south end with more knick knacks and trinkets than could ever be dusted. She’d show them off to me and tell me what flea market or swap meet she had purchased each one at and how great of a deal she’d gotten on it. Her collection of trinkets I suppose was her small joy in life and sometimes Mom would drive her to swap meets. She lived alone and was kind to me but I could tell that she was very lonely.

The kindness changed when her son Tom came back from New York City. I knew Dorothy had four grown children, two sons and two daughters. She bragged about her daughters achievements but was tight lipped on her sons, except to say that they were both gay and that it was an abomination to God.

Tom came back because he had AIDS. This was the late 1980’s or so and perhaps he had nowhere else to go. Or perhaps he was simply screaming for his mother to accept him for the way that he was.

Dorothy, meanwhile, might as well have put up a banner on the front of her house that said “My son is paying the wages for his sins with AIDS!” with some bible quote from Leviticus. She was upfront about her son’s condition to the point of gloating and taking on the victim role herself. Because two people were now living in the house and her son was indeed sick Dorothy wanted my Mom to do housecleaning ever more frequently, from once per month to sometimes twice per week. I went along especially as my Mother became overwhelmed and she’d sometimes pay me $5 or $10 from her meager wages to take on some odd job like cleaning the upstairs toilet. Somehow I fell into cleaning Tom’s bedroom on a regular basis.

Tom was a sensitive type who was almost stereotypically an effeminate gay man, complete with a lispy voice and waving downward hand movements. He had been an artist in NYC and he showed me some of his work. There were evocative, sprinting figures who were locked in lustful poses which were made with wide brushes of ink. They left a lot to the imagination, including often the gender of the participants, and I thought he had skill. Later I showed him some of my own artwork. He thought I was very talented and encouraged me to continue with it.

At first he had a male friend I am almost certain was his lover who visited him and managed his many prescriptions. I became progressively less worried about catching HIV the more time I was around them. Dorothy didn’t seem sick and nor did Tom’s friend. Now his mother engaged in a few browbeating fights with her son over how he was supposed to keep his food in the refrigerator on one specific shelf so that it didn’t come in contact with hers. Tom shot back that this was ridiculous with freezer meals and produce. His mother mentioned how he was lucky she had taken him back at all.

Somehow even though Tom was dying it became more about Dorothy as time went on. The house seemed like a Hellscape.

Tom quietly wasted away with less visitors as time progressed. He talked to me often while I was cleaning. I think he was just extremely lonely and since I didn’t have any friends at school either I understood him completely. I could sense a big brother overtone to him sometimes and he talked about his little sisters. The idea that he ever had, would have or could have had a sexual interest in me was absurd. It was absolutely not built into his DNA or life story to be anything but gay. To me he was still a child of God.

One day he was sprinted off to the hospital and then he was gone. I doubt Tom got so much as a hug or even acknowledgment that she loved him from his own mother. The contagion myth was in full swing by then.

I don’t recall ever telling anyone at school about him, not that I had much in the way of friends to tell anyways. Dorothy had warned me that I should not touch her son or make any physical contact with him, but I really didn’t need to be told that. AIDS hysteria was nearing a breaking point but to most of my classmates it was the hobgoblin outside. Dorothy lived on the other side of town so no neighborhood or neighborhood church gossip would reach their ears. Nobody in Toledo seemed to know anybody who had AIDS personally or who died from it.

Well I did.

Why the Official AIDS Story is a Complete Crock

Now I have no idea what Tom actually died of, or what type of prescriptions he was taking. I do know that they didn’t make him better and he seemed to get progressively worse. But in all of this trauma and judgement, could it be that the answer lies within ourselves and always has?

My random musing for a world that seems to have lost compassion…

This is my Thursday night…

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