A documentary performance, Once Removed follows Paul William Kruse’s growing up and coming out, against the story of his mother’s cousin, who the family lost to AIDS in 1993. The audio play will premiere at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival.

Once Removed

Written by Paul William Kruse

There is a bright orange rotary phone in the basement of the house where Paul grew up. It’s installed on a wall near a bookshelf full of photo albums. In the back of one of these albums, there is a picture of a family of blonde Minnesotans taken some time in the late seventies or early eighties. They’re sitting on a deck next to a picnic table. The sun is shining down on them. It looks like they just had lunch. Paul’s mom tells him that these are the Mayne siblings, her cousins. She likes to say all their names together: Jim, John, Jane, Jeff, Joe, Jerome, and Jake. Everyone is in this picture, except Jeff. Paul can’t stop thinking about Jeff Mayne. As far as he knows, Jeff and him are the only members of their extended family who are gay. They never met. Jeff left his home in Minnesota in his twenties, moved to LA, contracted HIV/AIDS, and then moved back to Minnesota to live with his mother, Paul’s Great-Aunt Dolores. He died in her house at the age of 31 in 1993. Paul wonders if his mother was thinking about Jeff, when he came out to her. He and his mom have come a long way, but it was hard. Telling her that he was gay felt like telling her that he was sick. He’s not sick. He’s lucky. But because the only stories we’ve heard about gay men were stories like Jeff’s. Paul felt like telling her that he was a gay man that first time was him telling her two things: I will leave, and I will die. Paul wonders what Jeff would say to him, if he was still alive.