Choosing Survival

"Swimming With The Polar Bears" was not the feel-good-save-the-planet pitch I expected to see as part of a recent Earth Day celebration. In fact the one-man show written and performed by Mel England, was anything but light and airy. It was instead a story about survival.

England, a twenty-year HIV and AIDS veteran, recently overcame a battle with cancer where he was faced yet again to fight for his right to live.

“I woke up in the I.C.U. at one point during the worst of my cancer treatment and had to ask myself am I ready to go? And I was like NO, I’m not willing to give up. It was then I made the decision to fight for my life no matter what.”

But this wasn’t the first time Mel England has had to face-off with The Reaper.

“Learning to survive has been a lifelong process. Being diagnosed at age 19 with HIV in 1989 was like a death sentence. The whole world was telling me I was going to die any second, and people were dying—many as a result of the early AIDS treatments like heavy doses of AZT. So rather than go that route I tried alternative approaches like macrobiotic eating and all forms of quote, ‘spiritual healing.’

“So I read a bunch of Louise Hay, moved to the Rockies, and bicycled up the side of a mountain every day chanting ‘I’m gonna live, I’m gonna live’.”

“How very little-engine-that-could of you” I said, “I’m inspired.”

“Yeah, well…” he said humbly, “It was all a little crazy when I look back on it now, but I’m still here to talk about it so I guess it worked.”

“So what inspired you to write and perform your one-man show?” I asked.

“I was originally approached byThe State University of New York to see if I could perform a play about the environment, but I really couldn’t find any – which is sad in itself. So finally I proposed to create a piece of my own. They accepted and I was given a year to write and produce it. I sort of put it off till last summer and just as I was about to start writing, I was diagnosed with Squamous cell carcinoma as a result of HPV and it was heading for my colon! It’s the same cancer that Farah Fawcett just died of.”

“That must have put a cog in your creative wheels” I said, “How did it effect the development of your project?”

“As I was going through the radiation treatments I kept thinking about the show, because my deadline was approaching and all I had was the title. I don’t know if it was the Chemo or what, but I kept imagining Sarah Palin with a shotgun picking-off Polar Bears and stuff.”

We both laughed. Mel’s comfortable demeanor was taking our conversation from interview to interlude—extinguishing my getting-to-know-you jitters, and making me feel like a confidant.

“But when I sat down to write” he said pausing to remember, “I realized that there was no way I could do a solo show and not talk about my struggle with cancer and dealing with the idea of extinction and how that relates to the Polar Bears, and the planet, and humanities own threat of endangerment.”

“That’s a tall order” I remarked, “But then you must have given it hormones or something because it grew from a house-elf to a Hagrid soon thereafter, right?”

“To say the least” Mel said with a dry-witted smile, “Once I realized I was going to do a piece that included the cancer, I said ‘WOW, I can’t really do that and not talk about my journey as a 20-year AIDS survivor, and the show sort of organically unfolded in front of me.”

“Can we talk about your cancer for a second” I said, “Because I’m unclear how it relates to the HPV Virus.”

“HPV Virus causes genital warts” he began matter-of-factly, “I had them like 20 years ago—NOT fun. Anyway, you go have these things burned off and whatever, and don’t really think about it afterward—especially if they don’t come back. But HPV is a virus that lays dormant in the body and can eventually cause cervical cancer in women and colon cancer in men—which is the deadliest kind, and where mine was heading but they caught it in time.”

“But there’s a vaccine for HPV” I said.

 “That’s true, and they’ve been giving it to young girls for a while now as a preventative measure, but what they’ve recently realized is that they should also be giving it to young boys. The bottom line is people have to know about HPV—especially HIV positive people—because it can kill you.”

“So in your play, all the polar bears have genital warts?” I joked, trying to lighten our conversational mood.

“The play is about much more than saving Polar Bears” he said introspectively, “It’s a look into the survival of the planet as a whole and how we are the ones who can choose to make that happen or not.”

“On an exterior level one might think, ‘what the hell are we going to do, it’s hopeless and overwhelming.’

“So how do you choose to survive Mel?” I said, “I mean, what’s your process?”

“At every stage I’ve had reevaluations on what I should do. Whether it’s letting go of tangible things like smoking or drinking, or ridding my body of poisonous levels of AZT in the 90’s – or larger things like ‘how am I self-sabotaging and how am I getting side-tracked off the path towards my dreams whatever they may be.”

“For gay people I think there’s a lot of ingrained programming to stifle ourselves and suppress our sexuality in society. To lessen our potential merely because of the stigmas we’ve created for ourselves that we aren’t good enough.”

“What did you do with these reevaluations?” I asked, “I mean it’s one thing to come to an epiphany or two, but how did you incorporate them into your life?”

“I’ve had to do a complete 180 to realize that sexuality is a God-given good thing. That’s a HUGE shift when you‘ve grown up having people tell you sex is bad and something to be ashamed of.”

“I had to literally make peace with myself first and then go through the process of spiritual healing, and therapy, and recovery from substance abuse, and all that. I got connected to... however you want to call it, be it God, or the energy of the universe or what-have-you, and realize that there’s a purpose and a reason for me being here.”

“I thought I’d learned those lessons long ago but when I went through the cancer I had to explore if there was something in me that’s not wanting to be here.”

“What, like a hidden death wish?” I asked.

“Perhaps. You see, I came from a world where the future was scary, something bad would surely happen, and the other shoe was always about to drop. I was very much rooted in negative thinking.”

“That’s odd, because to me you seem so positive minded –no pun intended” I said, “How did you get off that scary planet?”

“Well, I had to clear out my negative thinking first, and fundamentally believe that the future is friendly, the world is a safe place, and that it IS possible to overcome our obstacles.

“In my case I had to decide to survive, and I think as a human species we also have to make that same decision. And we really don’t have time. Like, we have to do it NOW

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Based in New York City, Bradford Noble has been an international celebrity, fashion, and advertising photographer for 15 years. His first novel called, "Dating Bradford - A Memoir" is soon to be published. Still curious? Dive into his world!