Oral History Program Dale Lewis Johnson Interviewed by acquaintances, Matt and Kathy July 2010 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dale Lewis Johnson Interviewed by acquaintances Matt and Kathy July 2010 Copyright © 2010 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber and Davis County Communities Oral History Collection includes interviews of citizens from several different walks of life. These interviews were conducted by Stewart Library personnel, Weber State University faculty and students, and other members of the community. The histories cover various topics and chronicle the personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Dale Lewis Johnson, an oral history by acquaintances Matt and Kathy, July 2010, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Dale Lewis Johnson July 2010 1 Abstract: This is an interview between Dale Lewis Johnson, referred to as Lewis, and two of his acquaintances, Matt and Kathy. The interview took place in July of 2010, just prior to his passing, and includes stories from his personal life as well as his theories on relationships. M: So how did you end up in Los Angeles? Maybe we should start with your immaculate birth. L: I’d been in a two year relationship in Salt Lake. When it ended, I basically had a nervous breakdown. I destroyed this man’s life: I reported him to the IRS even though he hadn’t done anything, I outed him to his family and I got him fired from his job. I made his life so bad that he moved to Texas just to get out of here. I was very vengeful back then. I wanted to get out of Utah. I figured Utah was part of my problem as far as the guilt of being gay and stuff. My sister was going down to Phoenix to trucking school, and I went with her down there. It was at that time that I really started drinking heavy. My sister was drinking heavy, and they couldn’t keep a job. They’d finally had enough and decided to come back to Utah, but I refused. I was never coming back to Utah. So they left and I found myself homeless. I found a halfway house where I could live. You either had to go door to door asking for money, or you had to have a job and pay. I happened to have a job. I worked as a cocktail waiter in a bar. The guy who ran the house was a mean guy. He dealt drugs, and had the guys that stayed in the house go out on his drug runs for him. If you didn’t do what he said, he’d just kick you out. Well, 2 he made the mistake of giving me and one of the other guys in the house $900 to go pay the mortgage on the house. We had the good idea to take that money and get out of Phoenix. So we took that $900 and went to LA. We drank it all away and within two days, we didn’t have any more money. We got in a fight. He thought I was hiding the money, and I thought he was hiding the money. We just spent it all, so we went our own ways. That’s how I found myself homeless in LA. The only thing I had was the clothes on my back. At that point I tried prostitution. I was still kind of a naïve Mormon boy, so that really didn’t work well. I ended up pawning the Movado watch I had for fifteen bucks, and that got me into a bath house, that also served a buffet dinner. So I had a place to sleep for the night and dinner. I met a guy who worked in there, and he offered me a place to stay. I ended up falling in love with him. He got me a job in the movie industry, which I worked at for the next eleven years. He is also the one who introduced me to drugs. When I was involved in drugs, I never felt safe in the house, so I spent a lot of time on the streets. Survival on the street has a lot to do with the image you portray. So that’s when I really started to take on that gangster look – the shaved head, the whatever to fit in. I was known as Dale up until that point. My family still knows me today as Dale, not Lewis. But Dale was too “white” for Los Angeles, so I changed my name to my middle name, which is Lewis, and started going by that. I kept that name. M: That’s really interesting. What did you do in the film industry? 3 L: I worked for a prop company that rented props to movie studios. I worked in the drapery department, and so I made drapery and bedspreads and stuff for movies and TV. I really enjoyed that time. M: That’s really cool. Can you come make drapes for my house? L: I could. When I came to Utah, I set up shop, but I was spoiled working in the movie industry where you get paid sixty bucks an hour, and they bring you and tell you exactly what they need. Here, people don’t know what they want, they want you to go shopping with them for fabric, even if you make it they don’t like it… and they don’t want to pay you anything, so I ended up selling most of my machines. M: What happened to the guy you fell in love with? L: We spent two years together. Then, in 1988 is when I was diagnosed with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. He was diagnosed at the same time. I knew, from reading a book that was given to me by Louise L. Hay, You Can Heal Your Life, that I needed to change my life if I wanted to live. That meant everything. I needed to quit doing the drugs, I needed to quit the drinking – all of that. He did not want to do that, and I could not stay living with him, with him doing it and me not, so I left him. Within six months, he died. I had a lot of guilt about that for a long time. I was not able to be there for him. I since then, though, have talked to him in spirit, and everything’s okay. M: When did you realize that the book by Louise Hay was actually working and that Human Immunodeficiency Virus was manageable? 4 L: You know, when I was diagnosed, it was a death sentence. They didn’t give you any hope. That’s why I really started to follow my intuition. I really started becoming aware of it, and what I was getting was, do not take the drugs, do not listen to the doctors. And so I didn’t. In my lifetime, I have been to a hundred doctors that I have fired, because they basically told me, if you don’t do what we say, you’re going to die. And I told them, I’m not coming back to you. I honestly believe today that early on, the drugs they gave, which was Azidothymidine, they gave in a high enough dose that it killed more people than the AIDS. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I believe that. So I really learned, as far as being sick and that, the only time I had fear was when I went against what my intuition told me. I was always fine if I followed what I felt inside. M: That’s interesting. That’s always an interesting process, that kind of finding out, you know, how your intuition guides you and that type of stuff. Can you think of any very specific things that happened during that period of time, besides the doctors, where you realized the power of that intuition? L: Nothing I can really think of right off. That was really where my focus was at the time. To answer another part of your question though, it wasn’t until I’d been HIV positive for ten years that I...I spent the first ten years of being HIV positive waiting to die. After ten years I kind of realized I just wasted ten years waiting to die. It was time to start living. M: It’s something weird when you feel that, ‘Oh really? There is life?’ you know, kind of thing. L: Yeah it doesn’t end. 5 M: I’ve noticed that with forgiveness, which you’ve talked about before, usually with that, in realizing that it is an illusion. Usually there’s a point where you start to feel, not only intuition, but love flowing through you. When did you first start feeling that? L: You know, that really happened slowly over time. I’ll tell you my biggest breakthroughs with that were when I’d come back to Utah. I’d gotten sober and I’d gotten really sick at the time. They’d actually come out to LA and brought me back to die. Never thought I’d live for a month because of the drugs and the alcohol. (I had got back into that.) I’d started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and I watched people at these meetings and I saw people that seemed to genuinely care about other people and I didn’t. I didn’t care about anybody but myself, honestly. But I liked that and I wanted to be that way, so I started asking in my prayers to care more about other people. What happened was that I started to notice the newcomers in meetings come in. They’d be scared and they’d be hurting and then you’d only see them maybe once or twice and then you wouldn’t see them again. It was actually Dawn, who came into a meeting as a newcomer and I still was so introverted and quiet I couldn’t reach out to help even though it was really starting to pull on my heart. I tried to introduce myself to her and did the best I could. She came into a meeting one time and she really reached out for help and I couldn’t do anything because I was so self-conscious about myself. She left and I didn’t see her again for like three months. It was at that point that I just said to myself, I cannot, cannot allow my being unsure about myself get in the way anymore with helping 6 people. Almost instantly that being introverted and quiet, that I prayed to be taken away my entire life, was gone. My whole life opened up and changed because I first stopped worrying about me and my focus changed towards other people. That changed everything in my life. M: Wow. That’s cool. Kind of brings me to the next one which was: what’s the most beautiful thing you’ve experienced so far? What’s the most beautiful experience you’ve had? L: I can’t really think of one particular thing, but overall I would just simply have to say the love that I have for people is the most beautiful thing there is. It’s the most important thing for me. M: That’s the most important for everybody. L: What’s that? M: I said it’s the most important for everybody. L: Yeah. M: What do you experience, and I know you can’t really put it into words. I know there’s been several times when I’ve been with you and when other people have been with you where that experience of the body drops away. I know it can’t be described, but can you try? What’s it like? L: I’ve had a lot of that in almost two years, simply because again the body’s not been put in place to be here. I don’t know. I would describe it as a freedom of certainly not being tied down to the body or the restraints of the body or the pain of the body. In a way it’s a relief. It’s freedom. M: Do you go any place? 7 L: No, I know I do, but I don’t really remember a lot of where I go. I’ve had a few instances. I had one instance, and this was a couple years ago, where I had gotten pneumonia and was in the hospital, really sick. I saw my mom and my sister who passed away and I also had the experience of people on the other side and the absolute joy and bliss of those who were there. The only way I can relate it is it’s like little kids playing ring around the rosie, just happy and innocent and pure. Then I also got the feeling, that grand admiration they have for us who chose to come here and what we’re doing. I really thought that, since not everyone had the courage to come here and so a great, just, admiration for what we do. At that same time I had the impression of standing in front of the Creator and Him asking me if I was ready to come home. M: But you decided to stick around for a little bit longer? L: I did. At the time I was not in a good place mentally and I didn’t really give an answer. I didn’t know. I guess I decided to stick around. M: I wanted to know your take on relationships, especially romantic and just what you learned from them--having relationships. I know you’ve been in love a couple of times, we’ve talked before. I kind of wanted to know since it’s a thing that it seems like we’re all concerned with all the time, at least some of us. What’s your take on that kind of refrain from this other context? L: It’s concerned me, not any different than anyone else. I long to be in a relationship, though I do understand, today, that is simply symbolic of my wanting to be home with my Creator. My relationship with Robert, when it ended, he basically came to me and told me he wanted out. It was a surprise to me. By that 8 point in my life I understood that it wasn’t all about me, and I realized that even though he was the one that wanted out, after eighteen years, it was going to be just as hard for him as it was for me. So I put all of my effort into how I could help him transition out of this easily. I’ll tell you, that made all the difference in the world. We are still best friends today. With me being sick, he calls me every day, he comes and sees me. We never had one single fight or argument in our breakup, not over anything. I mean the breakup was the truly beautiful thing. So, I guess what that taught me about relationships, and I believed this even before, is that relationships are the perfect place to work on our defects of character because they bring it right to the surface. The person we live with is the person that we’re the most who we are, that we put up one of those fronts for. So that is the best place to fine tune who we want to be. M: I think I’ll let Kathy ask you some of the other questions that are up on the board. I think she might be, she doesn’t really look antsy, but she might be antsy to get to talk to you a little bit. K: Have I told you lately that I love you? L: Yes, you have. K: Okay. L: Have I told you, I love you? K: Yes, you have. A little bit louder. We’re having a moment right now. Alright, there are a couple of things. When I ask you about this taping I’m sure there’s some common statements that you could make to all four million people that want to come see you, and want to hear what you have to say, and they’re hungry to 9 have that information and you know that that’s true. So are there some common things that are coming up for you as you think about what you want to say today? L: Well, first, I want everyone to know that I am okay. I am perfectly at peace with what’s going on for me today. You know I’ve already been telling some people some things to try to help them. One of them is, it’s time to take responsibility for your own feelings and stop blaming other people for how you feel. One thing is, you guys are throwing this party for me, and as I’m thinking about people to invite, one problem I ran across is there are several people I’m going to invite who don’t get along. So for a minute I had this conflict, do I invite both of them or not? I’m going to invite them and not worry about it, but the thing that is sad is that we carry those kinds of feelings about people and may not want to be in the same room with them. That’s not what life is about, at all. I would just like to see everyone just love each other and get along. Take responsibility for yourself and then you won’t hate anyone--you won’t be angry at anyone. K: That’s an interesting statement. Take responsibility for yourself. So you’re suggesting then that I have some freedom of choice and some decision making about what it is I think I feel and the meaning I give to that. Is that what I hear you say? L: You have all of it. It is all up to you. K: So if I get my feelings hurt, it’s because of a meaning I gave to somebody, is that what I’m hearing? L: Exactly. Exactly. 10 K: So in taking responsibility, what would that look like? Because you got a lot of folks here that are gonna hear that but they don’t know how to do that. What would be the process that you found to be… L: You know, one thing is, I have worked with some people to help them through this process. One of them is first letting them understand perception, and usually I go to the internet, and I go to YouTube, and there’s a piece that is on perception. You count people playing basketball, and with each team, how many times they pass the ball. In the middle of this they have a moon-walking bear that goes across the stage. Nobody sees that because they’re counting the ball. And so as I point that out to them, it’s that we see what we’re looking for. It’s our perception, and so with that in mind, we can never think that what we believe to be true is true. Our perception is very faulty. K: So, in a world this complex, people are confused. Some people are ornery, some people are selfish, some people are all of those things. We’re all gonna run in to those things. What’s your counsel? L: Again, what my experience is, what I find for me, as I approach that today in my life, is when I return it with love, it dissolves any conflict. I don’t have conflicts with people and I even have been asked to come in as a mediator between two people who want to kill each other. I simply bring love into the situation and they end up giving each other a hug afterwards, because that’s all it needs is love. I don’t, it’s funny, people purposely do not swear around me just because they, I don’t know, they instinctively know that I don’t swear. People don’t gossip in front 11 of me and so simply by approaching my life with love that stuff disappears. Even if it is there, I don’t see it. K: Yeah, because some of us actually do swear like sailors in front of you. L: I don’t, I never, I don’t even know. It’s not my perception. K: Bringing it that way, when we’re worried about…you know, in Christian Miracles, it says that fear of God is the most insane belief mankind ever created. And our Older Brother says that God does not see our weaknesses, our sins, or whatever. How would you relate that to your experience? L: Well, you know, I don’t have to do as much anymore. For about a year, I practiced recognizing that when I come in contact with somebody the mind automatically starts to run down this list of judgments about that person. What I would do first is, I would watch how my mind worked when I was out in nature because it doesn’t do that, it doesn’t judge a tree, it doesn’t judge a stream, other than seeing it as beautiful. I simply took the way I looked at nature and put that in the way I saw people. I cut out the judgment. Then you could see just the beauty that is there. K: So if I heard you right, what you’re saying is, when I allow everything just to be what it is without my projecting on to it, then I get to see the beauty of what it can be or who they can be? Right? Is that what I’m hearing you say? L: Yep. K: That’s kind of cool. One of the comments you made to me a long time ago, not too long after we first met, you talked about when we first met that there was a response in you that caused you to feel uncomfortable. We all have times where 12 we run into situations and people that we think are not where we are or living on a different level that we can’t relate to, or all of those things, and so we tend to withdraw from that. What I heard you say earlier was talking about when I bring love to it. What happens when you bring love to it, no matter who you meet--who they are, where they are, what position in life they have, whatever. How do you experience that? L: I experience it--I think, the same thing back. Whatever I put out is what I get back. K: And it doesn’t matter who it’s with, right? So, what I thought I heard you say when you were talking to Matt was, it overcomes every objection, every block that I have about communing with someone else--regardless of whether they make me feel insecure or whether I wonder if I’m good enough or whether I wonder if they’re good enough. L: Yep. K: So, just bring love to it? L: Yep. K: Thanks. L: See, I think the hardest part with that is we get so concerned with how we look, or how we appear, or people are going to judge us, that that’s when we put up the walls. If I feel inferior to you then I’m going to find ways to make you look inferior. But if we let all that go, if we just approach it with love…I had to get to a point in my life where I just had to say, it doesn’t matter how I look. It doesn’t 13 matter how I appear in front of other people. That doesn’t matter. What matters is how I treat other people and what I do to help other people. K: So it’s kind of a new twist on the Popeye principle? L: What’s the Popeye principle? K: “I am one of them.” [quoting Popeye] L: “I am one of them.” [quoting Popeye] K: And just bringing them up assuming that everyone else is Popeye too. L: Yep. K: Cool. I kind of like that. But we may call it the Lewis Popeye Principle. Okay, so, you have gone through almost all the kinds of experiences that most people would fear. I could never do that. That would be awful. How do you come back? There is a resiliency and an aspect of you that as you know, in the beginning, you undermined yourself and sabotaged yourself so you experienced some of those kinds of things. But then there was the comeback, and the comeback, and the comeback, and then dealing with having the courage to say goodbye to someone you really love, choosing to love yourself more. Those are some of the principles that I’d like you to talk about--where you found that courage, that resiliency to deal with things that most of us will never ever have to. L: Well, you know, at first I’d have to say, and I think this is true for all of us, that if we knew what we were going to experience ahead of time, we wouldn’t be able to fathom being able to do it. But we simply take each day as it comes and one day at a time we can walk through it. It doesn’t mean that we don’t cry. It doesn’t mean that we don’t back away from life at times. I’ve certainly had times where I 14 just needed to isolate away because I just couldn’t deal with what was going on. There have been times where I’ve been done with life. I’ve said this is enough. But overall, I think I love life. I’m grateful for every experience that I’ve had. Later on in life, going through hard times, I’m able to realize that early life, I’m grateful for those experiences, even though at the moment I may not see the positive in it. If I wait around long enough, I will. K: So taking it one day at a time, sometimes we don’t see the big picture. There’s always a big picture for us? L: Yes. That’s the other thing--realizing that as bad as something may look, we’re not seeing the whole picture. We’re not getting it all. K: I like what you said but I still want to go back to this idea. When you were hitting those walls, being diagnosed with the death sentence at the time, and that’s what everybody considered it at the time, having long term relationships end, those big, big things, what do you think the trigger was to go from being upset, or fearing or not wanting to do this anymore--those statements that go through your head. What was that trigger, do you think, for you? L: Part of it is the fact that I’m very, very stubborn. I’m never wrong. Those two things really play a huge part. It’s like when I was homeless. I never saw being homeless as being a fault of mine. I was proud that I could take care of myself on the street. Today, I see how absurd that is, but with my ego and my stubbornness, I was able to block out any responsibility. I blamed my circumstances on the world and everyone in it and would be proud of myself for going through it. I don’t know if that answers it. 15 K: Sure. Were there any moments in all of those experiences where you thought to yourself, there’s got to be another way? L: Certainly. Yes. I think as a kid from as early as I can remember up to age twenty-two, I pleaded and cried, I literally cried, every night for God to change my world, for God to change me, to change who I was. It never happened. At twenty-two I gave up that my prayers were ever going to be answered. I always wanted something better, but it just didn’t seem like anything better would be possible. Of course, it did all change. But again, it only changed when it became useful for me to help other people, like being introverted and quiet. That’s when it made sense to plead with God to change, and it never did, but when I needed it to change so I could help other people, it happened almost automatically. K: Now would you say that part of that went from pleading and maybe you meant it and maybe you didn’t, to in the moment with Dawn, when you were blowing it, to change? You were willing to deal with a better way to express yourself? L: Yes. K: So there’s a little bit of willingness and I guess that happens when you’re stubborn, willingness comes a little harder than when you’re not. That willingness to accept what may be available to us. I spent some time…oh, I remember what I want to say. I want to ask you about your book. L: Okay. K: I want to ask you what made you decide to write a book? L: Well, I actually have three books I’m writing. One is a fiction, and one is a self-help book and then the autobiography. The autobiography is the last one that I 16 started, but probably is going to be the first one that I finish. The reason that I started writing that was, I wanted to give hope to people who maybe were in a place in their life where they think that things can’t be better. I could say that this was what my life was like and this is how that changed. Basically it’s a book about giving hope to other people. K: Nice. So tell me about your other two books. L: One is a fiction and it’s a…the first part of it is based around a true thing that happened. It takes place up at the monastery in Huntsville. I was staying up there a couple days overnight. Just me, and I’d taken up two other guys with me. We were the only ones in the building except for this one man who was dressed all in black, very sunken in eyes, sunken in cheeks and not friendly at all. So we’re sitting down in the library like eleven o’clock at night and we hear these footsteps. We stopped talking and the footsteps stopped. So we start talking again and the footsteps start. We stopped and the footsteps stopped. So that was kind of freaking us out. This guy dressed in black, we finally went in to the kitchen to get some coffee and he’s standing in there, it’s eleven o’clock at night, with the small kitchen light on, reading a book. So he was really freaking us out now. So that fiction book, that’s kind of how it starts. It’s about me being up at the monastery and running in to this man. It goes on to where this man ends up. What I do is I turn this book into a thing where the monks actually have more power. They’re able to live five hundred years, six hundred years. They’re able to walk on water, all that stuff. To keep away from persecution, that’s how 17 monasteries were started, where they could be out and away. So it goes along those lines. K: Nice. I like it. L: Thanks. K: Will this be ready? L: I don’t know. I have to finish the other one first, which I am working on, so. K: Alright, so tell me about the self-help book. I’m going to need that, you know. L: You know, it’s funny, I started that long before I ever started going to the course. The chapters I have written go right along with the course. K: Interesting how that works, huh? L: It’s really...one chapter is really about perception. It’s really about, I’ve been blessed to be able to work with literally hundreds of people to overcome addiction and help them in their lives and that. So it’s based on what I’ve learned in helping other people. It’s about perception, how we see the world, taking responsibility for ourselves. I learned early on, first part of my life I was a victim, but as long as you’re a victim, you give up all your rights and you give up all your power. You are a victim, but that’s your choice. So it’s a matter of simply choosing not to be a victim anymore. K: Now that victim word is a big word. L: Yes. K: What do you see in your life as the primary perpetrator of your victimizing. L: Me. K: Really? You think a lot of people would be surprised at that answer? 18 L: I’m sure they would. I used to say to, like with Dawn, I used to tell Dawn this when I was working with her. She’s the one, the woman that I worked with. I would tell her that if you’re angry, you’re wrong and it would make her so mad. I met a lot of people that I would say that to, and they would just get very frustrated and mad. If you’re angry, you’re wrong. K: So, let’s see. I get mad and that should tell me I’m wrong, because when I’m mad I’m really wrong. I could see that that was a problem. What did you do when they reacted to this? L: I just chuckle. I’ve certainly been there. I understand where they’re coming from but it certainly left them thinking too, to try and figure out what I meant by that. K: You’re an incredible example to so many. What simply is my job in this place? L: To forgive and love. K: Every day? L: Yes. The way I look at it is, we can learn as much as we want to learn. We can learn by studying the course. We can learn all of that. But if we can’t forgive and love then it will never do us any good. We can have healing powers, all the intuition in the world, but if we can’t forgive and love, it’s meaningless. K: So, my job is to forgive. Who am I forgiving? L: Everything. K: Everything? L: Everything that you see as being wrong, or that upsets you, or that makes you angry. K: Okay, I can do that except for that one thing. 19 L: That’s probably the most important thing you’re working with. K: Okay, so there’s no withholding, is there? L: No. K: When you started practicing that, see I find it pretty remarkable that an eighteen year relationship, a partner that I love and want to spend the rest of my life with, walks in the door and says I can’t do this anymore. What triggered your paradigm, everything you expected to have happen, with that one change, changed everything. What was the trigger for you, the moment, the process that took you to a place of I am just going to love them? L: I think it started before that moment. Over the last eleven years, I had started to not just see my side of what’s happening, but try to see the other person’s side. To realize that in any story there’s two sides. Two people are getting divorced, there’s two very different sides. It’s really a matter of okay, I know what my beliefs are, but what is the other person thinking? What is the other person going through? I started to learn that before the eighteen year relationship ended. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t have moments where I didn’t feel some anger that you know, I was twenty-seven when I got into this relationship and now I’m forty-eight, and now because you want out, I’m alone, and I expected to be with someone the rest of my life. I did have some of that, but at the same time, I admired him for having the courage. Our relationship wasn’t that good. We’d grown somewhat apart and I admired him for having the courage. I wouldn’t, because I had made a commitment that I was in the relationship for life. I don’t care how bad it would have gotten. I would have never 20 left it. So he did us both a favor. He had the courage to do that. I admire him because the first part of the relationship he never had that self-esteem. I walked all over him in that relationship and I hurt him really bad, and he would never have been able to say enough. For him to come to a place where he could say I don’t want this anymore, good for him. Good for him, and that his self-esteem has grown that much. K: You hear me rail about nice people all the time. Part of nice people is that sometimes, what you’re talking about, really is the most loving way to deal with that situation. A lot of people would have thought, just out of the blue, that’s not nice. Nice would have been any variety of things that we go through in terms of inside out and over, to try to come up with a story to justify what we do. Tell me about your idea of what it is to be an authentic human being rather than a nice human being. L: I would tell you that I have been a nice human being, the kind you’re talking about. I’ve done that. My nature is to be nice so that people will like me. I admit that. One of the things I learned a few years ago was, because I used to have such resentments against people and what I finally figured out was part of my resentment was simply because I felt like I was being forced to do things that I didn’t want to. The fact was, I didn’t have the courage to say no. Once I learned how to say no, then I didn’t have resentments with people. If I don’t want to do something, I just tell them ‘no I don’t want to.’ That kind of helped me get away from being a nice person. I can be more honest with what I’m thinking. I’ve said no to people and they’d be like, “Well, why? Are you mad at me?” I’d say simply, 21 ‘no, I just don’t want to. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether I like you or not. I just don’t want to do what you’re asking me to do.’ The other thing that I really tried to do later on in my life is to be as transparent as possible. I have no secrets. I would tell you anything at all that you want to know about me. I try to live that way so that what you see is what you get. If I do that, then again, it’s not about getting people to like me. It’s just the way I am. How can I help you? K: So Popeye had it right after all? Eat your vegetables and be honest. L: Yep. K: That’s a good thing. Let’s talk about this graduation thing. L: Okay. K: That’s the ultimate fear for most people. Obviously a lot people do it with grace. There’s a difference though in how I watched you. It’s that you look it straight in the face. I find that courageous--to be able to look it straight in the face and ask your higher-self the truth about things. Would you tell us how that feels? I would like, you know me, I’m a big person about wanting to throw closet doors open and let’s bring these subjects out into the light. Let’s talk about that. L: You know, I have to tell you that early on, when I was diagnosed, I did have some periods of some real fear. I’ve had enough time to talk to my higher-self and the spirit, and to work all that out. I have such strong conviction that it doesn’t end here, that there’s more than just this. In some ways I’m actually excited to be experiencing what is coming up. The only downside to that is the people around me. I can see they’re really struggling and hurting because of it. 22 K: I know you said what I want them to know is, “I’m okay.” L: Yes. K: That’s important. The honesty, if we’re going to be genuine, the honesty about how we feel is, I’ll speak for me because that’s more true, ‘what in the hell am I supposed to do without you?’ L: I hear that. I hear that. My partner, Robert, just yesterday he was on the phone with me and he was crying. He still calls me for advice. He called me yesterday morning and he’s been fighting with a mechanic who supposedly fixed his car for five hundred bucks and it didn’t get fixed. He’s been thinking of taking him to court and all this other stuff. He called me yesterday morning and said what should I do? I told him, I said you know, if it was me, I would let it go. I said it’s just not worth the anxiety, the stress, and the anger that it brings you. And so he did. He agreed to do that. He had been holding on to a tool that they left in his truck as hostage or whatever. He said, “should I take that back?” I said yeah, that’s what you should do is take that back. So he did all of that and yesterday he ended up, his four wheel drive that he needed to get fixed would have been six hundred dollars only cost eighty-five dollars, his truck passed inspection and a couple of other things. He called me up and he’s like, “You can’t leave. What am I going do without you? Who am I going to turn to for answers? Who’s going help me? I’ll be all alone if you leave.” I hear that from my sister, and I hear that from Dawn and I hear that from other people. K: There’s a whole bunch more around you thinking that, but they don’t say it. What can you say to them? 23 L: I have a nephew and niece who were having a hard time also and I had my sister tell them to come over so that I could talk to them. Basically what I told them was why I’m okay. For them to experience this experience, be aware of it, and to find the joy in my life rather than the pain of me dying. I told them, ‘I won’t be gone. You just won’t be able to see me. I’ll still be around.’ K: They may see you once they understand the end. L: Yes. That’s true. My sister Lori, she says that she wanted a sign. What she wants is a triple rainbow. I said, ‘couldn’t you make it any easier?’ K: Okay, that’s fair enough. I may come up with one or two myself. I had a friend that we said when we get to the other side, call us and about six or eight hours after she passed, one of things we all discovered, at her service was, every single one of our cell phones went off from her number, all at about the same time. It’s so true and she was so joyous about it. She came to see, before she’d actually absolutely left her body, she came in and plopped down on the couch and my granddaughter could see her and was looking at her. Her response to me was, “I am released. I am so happy.” Then she said, “Don’t be too long.” You hook up with her. She is one party animal. L: What’s her name? K: Jeannie. L: Jeannie. Okay, you’ve talked about her before. K: Yeah. I’ve already told her to meet you. L: Okay. 24 K: So, what are we supposed to do without you? I mean, let’s deal with this. It’s about me. L: Well, okay. What I would say is, I understand the loss and I understand the longing and the hurt, but that doesn’t mean that everything in your life stops. It only stops if you decide it’s going to stop. You still can go on. You still can…you know, Robert who goes, “What am I gonna do without you?” Well, you know what, you lived twenty-seven years before you ever met me and it was fine. It’s been fine the last two years that we’ve been separated. K: So there will be some who use your moving on as an excuse to drink again, as an excuse to be depressed. What do you want them to know and how can they honor you? Because the truth is, sometimes we feel like our grief, and our pain, and our self-sabotage has to be, we measure it with how much we love you. Look in the camera and tell them how they can honor you. L: If you love me, you will remember me for who I am and you’ll smile and you’ll laugh and you’ll have joy. You’ll remember the funny times and the good times, if you love me. It’s not about being sad. It’s not about beating yourself up and thinking you have to live on daily with the pain. If you love me, you’ll embrace life and joy. You’ll take whatever lessons I may have been able to help you learn and you’ll use them to be happy. K: When in doubt they can say “What would Lewis say?” Right? L: Yep. K: What would Lewis say and what does Lewis usually say when they’re in doubt? L: I don’t know. 25 K: You don’t know? You don’t say I love you if you do this? L: Oh yeah. K: Buck up. Take responsibility. L: Yeah. K: You know, that whole vato scene of yours, I find that can be a pretty good spiritual threat. The vato you will come kick their back sides. [vato is either a Mexican word for “dude” or “man” or Chicago slang for ‘homie.’ Vato is also the title of a song by Snoop Dogg] L: Yeah! Except that most of them know me and so that’s not really a threat. That vato scene is only good on people who don’t know me. I get that all the time. It’s like, “When I first met you, I was really scared of you, but then I learned real fast that you were just a sweetheart.” K: I think you can be a sweetheart and get very serious. L: Oh, if I’m serious, people usually cry. If I’m serious they know that something’s wrong. K: You could say just because I’m not in the physical, doesn’t mean that I won’t know if you’re lying to yourself? L: Yep. K: And it doesn’t mean that I can’t come and kick your proverbial, spiritual butt and you’ll know it, if you don’t remember who you are. L: Yeah. K: I think I just helped you create a threat. No, it’s not a threat, it’s a promise. L: Yeah. 26 K: Let’s talk about…we talked a little bit about your niece and nephew and we’ve talked a little bit about your sister. Is there anything specific you want to say to other family members or to the people that have been family in the heart? L: As far as my family, the one thing that really sticks out is, in spite of the life I’ve had, I never ever felt judgment from them. All I ever felt was love. I never felt like they were shaking their head, judging me doing what I was doing, whether I was involved in drugs, or whatever. They were just always there to save me when I needed to be saved or help me. For a large part of my life I had no self-esteem. I think it was really their being able to see past whatever was going on and still love me that helped me to go through those things. K: I think it’s natural to review and wonder, have regret that maybe I didn’t do enough, I didn’t love enough, I didn’t help enough, whatever ‘enoughs’ I didn’t do. What would you say to your loved ones who felt that? L: As far as for me, what I didn’t do? K: No, no. When they’re wondering. L: You know what, I cannot even express how blessed I am in my life for my family and all the other people that have been in my life. I truly believe that I have got to be one of the luckiest people in this world. K: I think you’re right. L: I have it all. I truly am blessed. K: Yes, you are. I want to address your dad specifically because to a parent it feels unnatural to outlive your child. I don’t care who you are as a parent or how old everybody is. There is this feeling that I should have protected or there’s this 27 frustration that comes from what feels like an unnatural process. What do you want your dad to know? L: My father, he’s already said to me, he’s lost a daughter. I had a sister who committed suicide a few years back. He’s already said to me several times, a parent is not supposed to outlast their kid, outlive their kids. When my sister passed away I remember looking at him. He went from being sixty-five years old to ninety-five years old, just how hard that was for him. I think even today there’s a little bit of denial about what’s going on. I can’t know what he’s going through. I’m not a parent. I don’t know what that would be like. I do want him to know that I love him and the intent was that I was going to stay here in Utah to take care of him as he got older. It just hasn’t worked that way. K: I have a feeling there may have been a contract between you. So let’s talk a minute about how meaningful it’s been to you to have your dad walk this process with you. L: Me and my dad, I’ve been back to Utah with my father for the last eleven years, and we have become best friends in that eleven years. We help each other. Neither one of us have a memory, but I can fill in his memory and he can fill in mine. So both of us together make up one person, kind of. We walk about the same speed. He’s one of my best friends. I love him. I can’t imagine him not being here for me at this time in my life. Even now he’s always coming into the bedroom, “Do you need anything? Do you need anything?” All the time he’s so concerned about can he do anything. Just knowing he’s there is enough. K: There’s something about having that kind of fatherly…you feel safer, don’t you? 28 L: Yes. K: This process is about safer and free-er because he’s been there. L: Yes. K: Well, I think I’ve about covered everything I wanted to ask. What about you? Is there anything more you want to add? Any messages you want to send? L: We’ve covered just about everything I can think of too. I’m getting ready to have a new experience. I don’t want you guys to hurry to get there but I’ll be excited when you do come. K: I’m excited for you. I’m jealous. Grand adventure. L: And again, for all the people that I love and care about, just love each other. There’s nothing else that I would like to say. Just for the people that I love to love each other. K: And that would honor you? L: Yes. K: We’ll do our best. But don’t expect us to wait too long. L: To wait what? K: Here too long while you’re off having a party without us. L: I’m sure you’ll come when you’re supposed to. K: Well, that’s probably true. I love you. L: I love you too. I appreciate all the help that you’ve given me. K: Are you guys satisfied with that? Is there anything you wanted? Hey, I do want to ask you a couple of things. If when you’re there, God says he needs a lift, tell me the funniest story that happened to you. 29 L: I’ll tell you one of the funniest. Me and my family were in Puerto Vallarta and we were going to dinner at this restaurant in this old hotel. It was on the top floor. They just had one elevator that was really slow. I had to go to the bathroom really bad so by the time we get up to the restaurant I decided, well, I’m in front, but I decided that when the hostess takes us to the table, I’m just going to watch and vere off and go, because I needed to go. So that’s what I did. I get up to the urinal, I turn around and the whole family is standing behind me. Lori is right behind me and she’s like “What are we doing in the bathroom?” They all followed me! K: I think that’s what everybody’s worried about. We just kind of follow you wherever you go. L: I don’t know what the hostess thought when she turned around and there’s no one there! [laughter from everyone in the room] K: Oh, let’s ask some other questions then. If you had to, they said, who was the most profound person you ever met or a meeting that you had with somebody that was maybe one of the most profound? Is there a situation that happened to you that was a total surprise that…? L: I don’t know about a total surprise, but I did just recently in San Diego, I was able to meet Louise L. Hay who wrote that book, You Can Heal Your Life, and tell her personally what that book had meant to me. K: How did you feel about that? L: I felt good that I was able to let her know how her book impacted my life. It was that book that I really believe allowed me to live twenty-two years with AIDS. It 30 was that book that started to change the way I thought. I stopped seeing myself as a victim and realized that I was responsible for whatever was happening in my life. K: Which, then, you turned around and taught others. That book was like the rock on the pond that you slipped on the pond and fell over. L: Yep. K: Pretty remarkable. L: Yep. K: If there was one thing, and I know you’ve done a lot of work on this, and sometimes it’s the silliest of things, but if there is one thing that you could go back in your life and change? L: I have the tendency to say that I wouldn’t change anything but I guess the two things I would change are, the way I destroyed my first partner’s life. The other, which he’s totally aware of, but Robert, cheating on him and doing it so blatantly and openly right in front of him and hurting him. I would change that. K: So let’s talk about that. Would you change it when you think about it because you regretted the impact that that had on them, or now does it expand into more than that? L: I’m not quite sure what you’re asking, but let me tell you, my belief and what I’ve tried to do over that last eleven years. I spent the first thirty-eight years of my life going through this wreckage and damage. Eleven years ago I decided to try and clean up the damage that I’d done the best I could and start adding positive to it, so, in that sense, yeah. 31 K: I guess I was fishing. Let me try that again. I think there’s a couple processes that we go through. I would have preferred not to have caused carnage for someone else and then it gets to that place where, I would have preferred to have projected myself better. L: Oh no, not the second one. It really was about, I wish I would not have hurt him. It’s not important how that makes me look. The fact that I sit here and talk about it. I’m not ashamed of it. I certainly regret that I caused him hurt. K: There’s going to be people who watch this that are not going to understand the difference between regret and shame. Right? L: Yes. K: Will you talk to me just a minute about how you distinguish the difference? L: Shame is seeing myself less than a person. Regret is simply not putting a judgment on who I am, but wishing the circumstances would have been better. K: How do you get to that place? For somebody who has all these things in their life that they’re beating themselves up over? L: I absolutely hated who I was for the better part of my life. Absolutely hated and was ashamed of who I was and ashamed of these types of things. What I have learned is that guilt or shame serves no purpose. It has no positive aspect at all. It does nothing for the person to beat themselves up over something they’ve done. It only adds to. It’s kind of like taking a bad situation and making it worse. K: So the whole idea of penance? L: I don’t, for me or for anyone else, I believe that we do the best that we can with what we have. Good or bad. That’s one of the reasons that it’s easy to not judge 32 other people because we all are living our life the best we can with what we have. As far as that goes and everything that we do, I think our contracts are made ahead of time with people, even to hurt them. K: So the process then is when you realize that maybe I did the best I could and now I realize there was maybe a better way to do it. What’s that process for you? L: It’s a matter of being honest with yourself and not justifying it. To take responsibility for your life and your actions. Part of our life experience is to experience who we are, not to get to a place where we can know who we are or remember who we are. K: Well, we could go on forever but I think we’ll end it there. The following is Dale Lewis Johnson’s personal message about his party. I have been to a lot of funerals and memorial services in my life, and I always think how nice it would be to have had this when the person was still alive. It seems that the only time a person can get everybody that they care about all in one place at one time is after they have passed from this life. I know that most of that is to help them deal with their perceived loss, and that’s okay. I feel truly blessed that I have had some notice that my time here in a physical body is drawing to a close, and what an honor it is for me to be able to participate in the mourning process of those that I love and that I know love me. The intent of my life, at least in the last eleven years, has been about helping others on their 33 journey through this life experience. It is a joy for me to know that I can do that up until the end. This party is not about saying goodbye as much as it is a celebration of the gift we have had of being a part of each others’ lives. The time here is short for all of us, but has more meaning than we realize most of the time. It is about how our life affects every other life on the planet. I don’t see death as an ending as much as I consider it to be a continuation of life without the limitations of this life. We become free of the limitations of the body. The body works great when it works, but when it doesn’t, it can become one of our greatest limitations. The body is also one of the greatest contributors that helps us to see ourselves as separate from everyone else, and alone. It also takes almost all of our energy just to be okay in the way of needing money, a roof over our head, clothes, and friends, and we won’t even go into how much time we spend trying to fulfill the body’s need for intimacy. Laying down the physical body simply frees us from all of that. I do want you to understand though, that even with all of those limitations I have absolutely loved this life. It is because of this that I know that once we lay the body down, it will only continue to get better.