Newsday from New York, New York • 142

ADVICE Cookie Vittorio COOKIE VITTORIO from Page 5 DEAR ABBY people loved. Vittorio Scarpati was transferred to the Cabrini hospice. He wouldnt die before she came back from Provincetown, says Yablonsky. She couldnt talk, so the phone calls stopped. He couldnt draw anymore.

The last time I visited him, he said, Im dying. Please dont go. He died Sept. 14, the day after Mueller came back from Provincetown. The day of the funeral she could still talk a little bit, says Yablonsky.

"She communicated by writing on a steno pad We talked about the show at Artists Space, about how we could get some ofher writing into it. The day after the funeral, she stopped talking: She looked at the wedding picture, then put it away and never looked at it again, says Yablonsky. She wouldnt cry, wouldnt get angry. She lived in another world. I dont know whether it was the tumor, or grief.

She wouldnt let herself get sad. She had to take care of Max. Once that was taken care of the lawyers, the will and so on she was ready to die. Her friends tried to get her a private nurse, but she dismissed them all. And Sharon Niesp and John Heys wound up doing most of the nursing.

She wanted to die at home, John Heys says. "We wanted to respect her wishes. They had had plenty of experience in taking care of rick friends. Ive watched a lot of friends die, says Sharon Niesp. There are a couple of them out there now I cant do much for except get depressed about.

"Some people die with anger. Some with a sense of acceptance. Some have thought, Maybe I can carry some of the things Ive learned into the next life. Cookie just couldnt believe it was without a purpose. She used to talk about that even before she got rick.

Itwasraretyeasytakingcareofherathome. One of the most horrible things was the time we had to leave her in the emergency room, Heys says. We knew there would be no beds, because there are so many AIDS patients. Finally, though, on Nov. 9, when she was becoming more irrational, with difficulty eliminating bodily wastes, her breathing becoming dangerously, heavily congested, they decided, that they could no longer care for her, and took her to the hospital.

They didnt have any beds, but somehow one became available at 5 p.m., says It was horrible to see how hard riie had to work just to breathe, says Yablonsky. "Max was wonderful, says Heys. "He stood there until the next afternoon, just stroking her hair, and her arm, and her hand. She died that day. Their friends gave a party at MK, to raise money for Max, who wants to go to college and study architecture.

A few days later, they gathered at her funeral. A couple of weeks after that, there was a reading on two consecutive nights at Artists Space not solely for Cookie and Vittorio, but for all the artists that we have lost to AIDS. Their presence was palpable. David Wojnarowicz gave his reading wearing a Reagan mask. He had met Cookie Mueller and Vittorio Scarpati, he said later, shortly after both had been diagnosed with AIDS, at a dinner arranged by Richard Hell.

I found them to be extraordinary. I dont think Ive ever met two warmer people. I live a fairly isolated life its rare for me to feel connected to people. With these people, I felt very open and connected immediately. Wqjnarowicz is the artist with AIDS whose essqy in the Artists Space catalog more precisely, three paragraphs in what is otherwise a very personal essay prompted the new head of the National Endowment for the Arts to withdraw funding from the exhibit and then, after a public outcry, to restore it but only for the artwork, not for the catalog.

The extraordinary attention on those few coins from the general public," Wqjnarowicz believes, completely overlooked the purpose of the show. Nan Goldin, the curator, said she had organized the exhibit, in part, as a way to say goodbye but also asa way to celebrate survival. I feel my own recent recovery from addiction, and that of many of my friends, is directly related to AIDS, she said. We are no longer playing with death it is real and amongus, and not at all glamorous. We have been forced to make survival, recovery and healing our priorities as individuals and as a community.

Bob Holman dedicated a poem to Cookie Mueller. She was the essence ofvitality and also irony, he said later. Vitality and irony are not qualities that sit well with death at an early age." Gary Indiana read from his novel, a passage suffused with anxiety over who will get AIM next. Ill always remember the time Cookie had just come from a memorial service and I had just finished a memorial reading he said later. We decided we were going to become professional mourners.

Our motto would be, You die, we cry. Or it could be You croak, we joke. I remember we kept on bringing it up to a number of people. They all thought it was in terrible taste. II of her friends, her writing improved, had more depth, became more philosophical.

They were completely unaffected, says Richard Hell, without any interested in ev-. cry body and everything Once they gat married, they did everything together, says Yablonsky. "Including get rick. He was diagnosed before she was; both of them had. had a bout of the AIDS pneumonia within a year after their marriage.

We dont know how they got it Yablonsky says. Who knows? They both were exposed. But however they contracted AIDS, say their friends, they were determined to treat it as little more than an occasional, albeit increasingly frequent, inconvenience. Robert Mapplethorpe was an Yablonsky says of their mutual friend, the well-known photographer whose work started the recent brouhaha over arts funding He was on AZT. He had made up his mind he wasnt going to die of AIDS.

Right up to the end he was working. She adopted that attitude. She wasnt going to die of AIDS. She stopped smoking she stopped taking drugs, she stopped drinking, except for beer, John Heys says. He stopped drinking, and tried to stop smoking Linda Yablonsky says.

They didnt give up. But they didnt go for treatment, which I found realty weird. The disease wasnt who they were, says Richard Hell. It was just something that happened to them. It wasn't their identity.

They didnt want to give it any more weight than it insisted on imposing on them. They continued having a nightlife, Mueller continued to write vigorously each taking time out for the various illnesses with which they were struck. For a time, they shared a hospital room at Cabrini Medical Center. She put up her own curtains, brought in photographs, paintings, her own pillows. She ate her own food cranberry juice, garlic, raw vegetables and wore her own clothes, including her elaborate jewelry.

The room filled up with flowers, with balloons, and always with people. They held court, Sharon Nicsp recalls. There were always eleven people there so many people, you had to get out for air. There was no room for the pole on which her intravenous bag hung. She would take off the IV bag, stick the pole under the bed, and hang the bag on her ponytail.

They never slept, they never got any rest, says Yablonsky. There was a party in their room every night. She was released after about 10 days. He would be tli ere for nine months. both of his lungs are collapsed, a complication of bouts with the pneumonia specific to AIDS, Mueller wrote in the introduction to the book of his cartoons.

Hes attached by tubes to two machines called pneumo thorax suction pumps' Bubbling with water like tropical fish aquariums, these strange looking dear plastic machines drain the excessive fluid from his lungs while also inflating them, thus keeping him breathing. Out of sheer boredom with the time passing, Vit-. torio asked for pens and pads to draw Indeed, one of those drawings was of himself, in pajama bottoms and slippers, and tubes running from his chest to two fish tanks. An octopus is escaping out of one of the tanks. Even the doctors were incredulous at this mans strength of will, Cookie Mueller wrote.

They told me that most other -patients in similar circumstances would have given up after two months. There was a one-man show of his Jesus Christ at a meeting of the Hemlock Society; a monk surrounded by butterflies; a self-portrait of a man opening his shirt and revealing, as Mueller wrote, no wounds, no scars from incisions, no tubes that connect him to long pumps, there instead, pouring from Vittorios chest, comes soothing light, Hie radiance of gold, the warmth of a compassionate spirit like solar flares from his solar plexus. By late summer, they were both in bad shape. Scar-. pati, in the hospital, could no longer draw.

Mueller, on vacation with Sharon Niesp in Provincetown, had suddenly lost much of her speech, become paralyzed on her right side, unable to see out ofher right eye, hear out of her right ear or move her right leg. She continued to try to communicate at first, by scribbling notes, having Sharon Niesp be the go-between on the telephone. There must be a reason, Niesp says, why she had to leave this world without being able to communicate, when her whole life was dedicated to communicating. It wasnt shocking to see her, though half her body, including her face, couldnt move and she was so skinny she looked like someone else and she had some sores, Richard Hell would write later in his notebook. It wasnt shocking because it was still her a tremendous, spectacular person who I and a lot of other DEAR ABBY: Sly wife end I have a 14-year-old daughter, Jane, who is well-mannered and does very well in school.

For the most part, Jane is as responsible as a 14-year-old can be. Jane very recently started dating John, a 17-year-old high school senior who seems to be a nice guy. Our neighbors told us he comes from a nice family. Bpwiim of Janes age, and their age difference, my wife and I thought it best that when John and Jane date, it should be with groups of people (other couples). The problem is that John and his family are going away for a five-day vacation and Jane was invited to join them.

Maybe Im old-faBh-ioned, but even though his parents will be there, the situation doesnt feel right to me. I have seen Jane come home twice (after being with John) in tears because she was afraid he was going to dump her and now she wants to go away with him. My wife and I are quietly fighting about this, because she Bees no real problem with Jane going on a five-day vacation with John and his parents. Ill take my lumps, Abby; please tell me if you think my daughter is too immature for this situation or am Frankly Confused DEAR CONFUSED: You say the neighbors told you that John comes from a nice family, which indicates that you have never met them. Maybe Im old-fashioned, too, but I wouldnt send my 14-year-old daughter off on a five-day vacation with a young man and his parents unless I knew the parents.

The situation might be as kosher as Manischewitz but it doesnt "feel right to me, either. DEAR ABBY: I have read you for years and know that you do a lot of good, but please stay out of the wildlife field. Obviously you do not understand that everything lives on something else. Its a cruel world. Birds and animals were put on this earth to be used by man not abused; used and this includes killing and eating.

If you eat filet mignon, some big, brown-eyed animal must give up his life. If you like chicken, some chicken was killed for you. For those who say, Well then. Ill be a vegetarian all plants are living things. Wild geese mate for life.

(They have a better track record than we humans have.) Canada geese in captivity live for 80 years. Today, there are more Canada geese on the continent of North America than ever before. You should see them walking the streets of Rochester, (The citizens are rick of the mess they make.) I am a retired special agent for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and when I first came to Iowa in 1953, they were having their first deer hunting season in years.

Now they have deer in every county. Last year, Iowa harvested nearly 100,000 dear. The farmers were complaining that the deer were eating their crops! You dont hear any Bambi stories in Iowa. God bless you, Abby, for your compassion for animals, but please be realistic. Its a cruel world for wildlife, but thats the way God made it.

Wesley S. Newcomb, Matlacha, Fla. DEAR WESLEY: I bow to your superior knowledge of wildlife as it applies to wild geese and deer. Hereafter Ill stick to humans, who tend to get caught up in a wild lifestyle that mortal men (and women) are heir to. DEAR ABBY: This is in response to the letter regarding physicians who hire unskilled personnel to perform nursing functions when they should hire property trained nurses (your words).

Abby, dear, dogs are trained. Nurses are educated. A Student in New Jersey II Abbys favorite family recipes are included in her new cookbooklet. Send your name and address, plus check or money order for $3.50 to: Abbys Cookbooklet, New York Newsday, 780 Third New York, N. Y.

10017. Postage is included. 20PART II NY NEWSOAY, THURSDAY, JANUARY 4, 1990.