“I still remember the sleek elegance of his Porsche when I saw it parked outside Numbers restaurant in West Hollywood. I remember feeling relaxed when I climbed into the passenger seat, knowing we were headed to a fancy hotel to be together on the Sunset Strip. It was a night of curiosity and fun. It was the night I met Dack Rambo. . In the mid 1980s I was a personal escort. I ran an advertisement in a National Gay Mens Magazine, “The Advocate”. It read “Long Beach Fox 5’ 10” slim muscular build, 8 ½ cut”. I received hundreds of calls and met men from all walks of life. I met politicians, priests, actors, electricians, movie moguls, military men and many others. Most of them, I remember fondly and there are others I wish I could forget. . One man I’ll never forget was Dack. When I got the call, I had never heard of him. Having been a hustler, prostitute, escort, personal counselor, or whatever you’d call me, I could assess people very quickly. My ability to keep a roof over my head depended on it. Listening to Dack on the phone for the first time, I heard an intelligent, kind and cocky guy who was also a bit naïve’. He wanted to see me, we negotiated a price and I immediately drove from my apartment in Long Beach to meet him at Numbers in West Hollywood. . Upon arrival, I noticed how handsome he was. And yet, he was paying me for sex. He sure didn’t have to pay anyone but I’d met many men and women who lived their lives this way. I didn’t know who he was but there was never a dull moment in our conversation. He told me he was an actor on the television series Dallas. I had never seen one episode. I thought of myself as an intellectual whore and a silly television series like Dallas didn’t interest me. . But Dack was an intellectual too. On that first night we laughed about how he wanted to do Shakespeare but he needed to pay his bills. I learned a lot about him that first night. He was a hard working actor who had been in the business since he was a kid. Though I had lost many friends to AIDS, I learned about another kind of loss from Dack. He was still visibly upset by the death of his identical twin brother Orman.
Orman had died in a car accident in the late 1960s. Dack and I bonded over loss.
The sex that night took a back seat to conversation. Though we were burning rubber in bed, neither one of us could stop talking. We were both bisexual and we both felt the world didn’t understand us. I knew we had a bond. He was so nice, I felt guilty about asking for payment. So I fell asleep forgetting about it. Still, the bottom line for me was payment and to my pleasant surprise, I woke up with more money on the nightstand than we initially agreed upon. The man knew the direct path to my heart. Generosity and kindness. I had a love affair with those two attributes in those days.
That night sealed the deal on a friendship that lasted until he died of AIDS in 1994. Although Dack called me only a few times to have dinner together before he told the world he was HIV positive, I was his listener, his dinner companion and his partner in loss.
We always met at the French Quarter restaurant on Santa Monica Blvd and though often he had tears in his eyes, he also laughed and smiled through the pain. That’s what we do. When we’re going through hell, we keep going because it’s the only way out.
Dack, when others as famous as you hid their diagnosis, you bravely shared yours with the world. You changed the world by being honest. You were kind and you made me feel special when we were together. The world was cruel to you when it took Orman away. It was cruel again when you were diagnosed with HIV. But you left a legacy of courage and a body of work that we can all re-experience thanks to today’s technology. And the moments we laughed about life I will always cherish. Though AIDS stole you from us, I’ll always remember your love for acting and your love for your brother. Thank you for being my friend.” — by Shawn Mayotte
