To say I felt sucker-punched would be an understatement. The room went silent except for a few nervous coughs and the sound of people of comfortable means shifting their weight in uncomfortable seats. Tommy noticed it all, and continued.
“When you think about it, each of you has achieved no small measure of success: mastery in your chosen field, financial security, and material wealth. It makes sense that you would work, some of you very hard, to maintain your current lives and lifestyles. But here’s the worrisome part: if you’re not willing to risk change, you may just end up passing on an opportunity for something even better in your lives. It’s called ‘guarding the treasure.’ And in working hard to keep everything the way it is, you may wake up, not too long from now, and wonder what could have been.”
It felt as if Tommy was talking to me and me alone. Despite feeling professionally and personally restless, I was fending off new opportunities, afraid of outcomes that I couldn’t predict. I had reached the point where, if there were no guarantees, I felt there was too much to risk. So, the treasure stayed intact, but new possibilities stayed out of reach.
I left the conference somewhat shaken, but Tommy had planted a seed. I returned to Chicago intent on playing “what if?” at work and in my personal life as well. Carlo and Fannie were enthusiastic, but concerned that this broad consideration of possibilities could mean my leaving Chicago. I began to realize that, besides Chicago, Carlo and Fannie were treasures worth guarding, too. Losing what we’d only recently regained raised the risk factor of any bold moves.
My first professional “what if” moment came about a month after the conference, when, for the fourth time in as many presentations, we caved at the first sign of a client’s initial displeasure with our creative work.
Geno Martini, a smart, handsome, and talented man five years my junior and my creative partner and art director, maintained a professional smile in the meeting, but shook his head as we returned to my office. “What happened to everybody’s balls?” he asked. “I’m included in this, Drew. I sat there and nodded like a toy dog in the back window of one of their new Mustangs.”
It seemed like no one was willing to defend our ideas anymore. The idea of conflict with the very people who paid our salaries had been lost. Good ad concepts that deserved to be championed were dying quiet deaths.
Geno and I paired well, had similar creative taste, and compatible personalities. We had produced both edgy and results-driven creative that had sold a lot of product for our early clients. We also made the agency a lot of money, and advanced our careers and professional reputations. Geno had been one of the original creative forces at the agency when there were just ten of us in cramped offices in a trendy but marginal area miles from the upscale offices of our competitors.
Geno was also one of three gay men at the agency who were out. He was happily partnered, had just bought his first apartment downtown, and was comfortable in his own skin. A talented producer named Ernie Marx and I were the other two.
It became increasingly clear that we weren’t losing our creative edge, but somewhere along the way had stopped defending our work. The point was driven home when, in an ad presentation with our largest client, the Midwestern Ford Dealers Association, we found ourselves agreeing to a fundamental change in a campaign. The association’s chairman announced that the featured spokesperson needed to be an older, curmudgeonly man in suspenders, because “my wife gets a kick out of that type.” Never mind that the featured vehicle was the newly minted Mustang, targeted to men under thirty-five.
We diplomatically suggested testing the premise. Despite the fact that the idea of having your grandfather pitch your next sports car failed miserably in focus groups, the executive team sided with the chairman’s wife. The client was pleased. We force-fit a loveable, older character into the campaign. It failed, and the creative team took the fall. Besides making my team the scapegoat, it made for demoralizing work.
After the Mustang debacle, I was worried that Geno might quit. As I often did, I walked with him after a pizza lunch at DiMarco’s, commiserated over what felt like a significant creative setback, and bummed a cigarette when he pulled out his Marlboros. I grinned sheepishly and promised to buy him a pack. We walked without talking for a while, neither really ready to return to our offices.
Geno broke the silence. “You realize, of course, that if we keep turning out this crap, eventually our reputations, or what’s left of them, will go to shit. I miss our offices on Canal Street. They were small, we weren’t making much, but it sure seemed more fun than what we’re doing now.”
I had no reply. I felt the same way.
That summer proved to be unbearably hot. The heat curtailed the hikes that Fannie, Carlo, and I had enjoyed on cooler spring weekends. We continued to hold our weekly game night, which provided Fannie a venue to play matchmaker. She announced that four months was plenty of time to grieve my previous relationship and proceeded to audition eligible gay men who worked at her publisher’s, her art studio, her Pilates classes, and even at the oncology department at Hope Memorial.
She would invite her favorites to game night with no warning. She ignored my protests, and I actually did end up dating a sweet man named Frank who had edited Fannie’s first book. This new and pleasant connection eventually fizzled, a casualty of his ramped-up workload, the heat, and a heart that turned out to be not ready for vulnerability just yet.
I hadn’t seen Fannie or Carlo for almost a month when we finally got together in mid-July. I arrived late, and while waiting for our table at Café Annie, I began a diatribe about the heat, our clients, the Mustang debacle, and the gentle ending with Frank. Carlo and Fannie were politely interested but clearly distracted. When I stopped my monologue and asked, Carlo shared their news. “It’s back. And it looks bad.”
Fannie’s cancer had spread. She would begin more aggressive treatment as soon as her white blood cell count recovered from the previous round of chemo. Fannie tried to lighten the moment. “Well, whattaya gonna do?” I was silent and stunned as we were led to our table overlooking the river, watching the lights on the water and feeling part of my treasure being threatened.
Two weeks after my sobering dinner with Carlo and Fannie, Geno, who never missed work, called and asked for me to cover his part of our preliminary presentation to Gap Kids. It was important, as we were one of the first Chicago agencies to get a presentation with them. “You ok?” I asked. He explained that he couldn’t shake a cold and that his partner, Curtis, was making him go to his GP for a check-up. No wasn’t an option.
I hung up the phone, and my mind started to race. Is Geno sick? In gay circles in those days, “sick” was ominous code for HIV, which had finally been given a name to replace “gay plague” but had been granted no significant funding to pursue protocols that might slow its spread. In 1989, AIDS was not only unmanageable, but for most, it was not survivable. On the heels of Fannie’s recent setback, I wasn’t prepared to lose Geno, a good friend and colleague.
It seemed that no amount of guarding would stave off the losses that became inevitable by late September.
My mind often travelled back to the conference, Tommy’s elfin smile and references to treasure and taking chances. Some treasure. Can’t even hold onto it when I’m not taking any chances.
Fannie’s aggressive chemo combo had little if any effect on her tumors. Back in the hospital, she found her white cell count dangerously low, leaving her open to all manner of infections. To make matters worse, save Carlo, her visitors were limited to talking with her through a glass barricade equipped with microphones. Ever the comic, Fannie greeted me each time with the same vaudevillian joke, “So how do ya like my prison? Pull up a chair.”
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