Mario Bergner:  

Hellow Dear Old Friends, I thought I should write you all and come out of the closet within the closet. For all of you who thought I was gay, you were right, so of. Let me explain. After graduation I went to UWM to study acting, and eventually ended up in the Theatre Program at NYU. I stayed at NYU for one year, during which time I came out of the closet and declared myself gay. I even became involved in gay political theatre in NYC. Very intersting stuff. I left the NYU program to become a voice and speech teacher, as well as a working actor (at one point I was cast in a movie of the week starring Melissa Gilbert of "Little House"). In between acting jobs, I taught at Boston University (where Michael Chiklis was one of my students) and at Carnegie-Mellon (where Ethan Hawke was one of my students). Somewhere in the mix of all this, I realized that the end of the road for a gay man was a meaningless longing for youth and good sex. I wanted more from life than that. Moreover, at age 24 I had eleven symptoms of AIDS, two major immunity breakdowns and landed in Boston City Hospital in 1983. Back then, AIDS was not yet called HIV and still called opportunitistic infection. I was about to be diagnosed with pre-AIDS (that isn't done anymore)because my T-cells were so low, so I called out to God in prayer. Now, I had met God in the Roman Catholic Church through some great Nuns in Milwuakee when I was a kid. Then I had a born-again experience at a Leighton Ford Crusade when I was 14. But, if you remember, the mid-70's, it was the era of the Moral Majority (Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell) and their campaign warning America about the evil gay monsters out there. Or at least that is how the media reported them. OK, so I went to college and met all these really great gay people. None of whom were sexual monsters. So, the conflict between being gay and being a Christian erupted on my sick bed...Expand for more