It's a well-trod path by now, the road to best-seller status for the celebrity author: first the exclusive Barbara Walters confessional, then Larry King Live, then Oprah, then a multi-city tour for bookstore signings and interviews with the local media.
This time, it's Greg Louganis drawing the cameras and the crowds with his new tell-all, "Breaking the Surface" (Random House, $23), which has shot to the top of best-seller lists just two weeks after hitting the shelves.
But underneath the hyperactive, circus-like atmosphere of the modern-day book tour, there is a discomfiting aspect to this one, a sense of sadness that no amount of bright lights and big crowds can change.
The news of the book is that the legendary Olympic diver, regarded as the greatest of all time, has AIDS. And so there is this odd, unsettling mix of both commercialism and compassion, of selling and consoling, as the gentle, sweet-faced Mr. Louganis tours the country peddling his book even as he is dealing with the sad and sobering fact of his disease.
The tour brought him to Baltimore yesterday, for a fund-raiser that had been scheduled long before the AIDS revelation but only sold out after it. Some 500 people bought $35 tickets for the dinner at the Peabody Library last night, which benefited AIDS Action Baltimore, Johns Hopkins' Moore Clinic, which treats HIV-positive adults, and other AIDS organizations.
"The support is just overwhelming," Mr. Louganis exclaimed last night, running his hands through his salt-and-pepper hair and marveling at a festive crowd that was cheering and waving and yelling "We love you!" as he spoke from one of the library's balconies. "A lot of the time before I wrote the book, my life was about secrets. I felt I was living on an island without a telephone."
At every stop on the 16-city book tour, the deeply tanned Mr. Louganis has been swamped with overwhelming and often emotional crowds, more than 1,000 people at some locations. He seems genuinely touched by the outpouring of people who want to hug him, thank him and get photographed with him at the book signings -- and it's an activity, no matter how draining, he seems to welcome, more so than the media interviews that he has begun to limit. The book has sold far beyond expectations -- it's already into its seventh printing for a total of 255,000 copies.
"In doing the book tour . . . I realize everyone has a story," Mr. Louganis said, sharing a few with the Baltimore crowd: One man told him his father died the night before of AIDS-related complications, and the son promised him he'd stand in line to meet Mr. Louganis and offer support. One woman asked for his autograph for her dying son, hoping it would give him incentive to stay alive for another birthday.
At Borders in Rockville Thursday night, Mr. Louganis sat for more than three hours, patiently signing books, popping up and down from his seat to be photographed, waiting as nervous fans fumbled and dropped their cameras and books and listening as they whispered to him or gave him little presents. One woman gave him a tape by New Age musician Enya, explaining that it had helped her through some rough times.
"I have 27 friends who have had AIDS and he now makes 28," Vince Careatti said with a catch in his voice. "He's another friend with AIDS."
The Annandale, Va., man said he felt as if he knew Mr. Louganis, something you hear often as people struggle to explain why the news of his illness struck them so personally even though they'd never met him.
"It broke my heart," said Roni Lavache of Silver Spring, as she waited in line for his autograph.
The book is a frank and often moving account of Mr. Louganis' life. He made news by revealing that he was HIV-positive at the time of the 1988 Olympics, when during a dive he crashed into the board and bled into the pool.
Sympathetic themes
But beyond the revelations, the book contains numerous themes that have struck a chord with many readers: Mr. Louganis discusses his childhood as an adopted boy unsure of parental love, an adolescence of confused sexuality, a series of trouble-filled relationships, including a harrowingly abusive one in which he was raped at knifepoint by his partner, a lifelong struggle with addiction and, perhaps most touching, a reconciliation with his father after both learned they were suffering from fatal diseases.
"He somehow personifies something very important to people, as far as overcoming obstacles and doing so with grace and humility and just continuing to plug away," said Jed Mattes, the agent who developed Mr. Louganis' book. "If the book was only (( about the HIV revelation, it would not have been this explosive. It shows first and foremost the extraordinary place Greg holds in America's heart."
Gold medal-winning dives in 1984 and 1988 made Mr. Louganis, an Olympic athlete of breathtaking grace and precision, a national hero. His shy smile and slightly exotic handsomeness made him a heartthrob, among gays and straights alike.
While Mr. Louganis' homosexuality has long been one of those badly kept secrets in some circles, he didn't officially come out until last year during the Gay Games in New York. And, although he learned he was HIV-positive in 1988, Mr. Louganis kept that even more tightly guarded until the book was released.
It is that more than anything that has led to some grousing that Mr. Louganis waited to reveal his HIV status until he could capitalize on it with a book and media splash.
"We live in what can be called a commodity culture," says Neil Alperstein, a professor of popular culture at Loyola College. "It's the nature of things that not just everything is for sale, but everybody is for sale."
It's part of the atmosphere of self-disclosure that permeates the media today, Mr. Alperstein says, whether it's assumedly average people airing their dirty laundry on TV talk shows or celebrities speaking openly about dysfunctional childhoods or tours through the Betty Ford clinic.
"There's a synergy amongst and between all those media," he said.
Mr. Louganis' supporters decry the notion that he has cynically calculated his revelation to make a buck and bask in the limelight.
"This man is HIV-positive. This is not a career move," Mr. Mattes said.
He said Mr. Louganis simply wanted to control the way his story came out, an understandable desire in this age of tabloid journalism.
Telling his whole story
"Greg's concern, the reason he wrote the book, was so that the entire scope of his life was out there," Mr. Mattes said. "It was coordinated so that the media couldn't take his HIV status as his whole life story."
The desire to keep Mr. Louganis' illness secret made for some delicate handling: Mr. Mattes knew the revelation would help sell the book to publishers, but at the same time didn't want word to leak out in the gossip-filled industry. In the end, Random House made a strong bid for the book, even without knowing Mr. Louganis' HIV status.
"When we were first approached, it was just going to be the coming-out story," said Mitchell Ivers, an editor at Random House. "Here was someone who had achieved so much even while keeping so many things secret. Whatever he lived through was going to be a very powerful story."
Keeping the news about Mr. Louganis' illness secret meant there wasn't a groundswell of anticipation, at least early on, for his book. In fact, Random House, based on early orders from bookstores, ordered a mere 45,000-copy first printing despite the fact that comparable books by Magic Johnson and the late Arthur Ashe, two legendary athletes also struck by AIDS, had sold well. Mr. Johnson's "My Life" was on the New York Times best-seller list 10 weeks; Mr. Ashe's "Days of Grace" 16.
And their stories are not entirely comparable: Mr. Johnson has said he believes he contracted HIV through heterosexual sex, while Mr. Ashe got it from a blood transfusion. There was some feeling that Mr. Louganis, as a gay man, might not be embraced by mainstream America.
Now it's obvious he has been for the most part, though there have been reports of death threats, and security arrangements have been made at his various appearances.
Mr. Louganis' friends and collaborators are protective of him for other reasons. They worry about the rigors, both physical and emotional, of the book tour. While he enjoys meeting his fans, he's less inclined to speak to reporters, having heard the same questions over and over again in each new city. And he misses his dogs -- he raises and shows Great Danes -- back home in Malibu.
"I could be home with my dogs cuddled up in front of the TV," Mr. Louganis said with a laugh after his Peabody Library appearance. "But this is important. I've learned I"m not battling this alone."
The book has been selling out in both general interest and gay bookstores. Locally, Borders in Towson sold out of its first shipment of 60 copies and has re-ordered; Lambda Rising, a gay bookstore in downtown Baltimore, similarly sold out its first 50 copies.
Worthy of praise
Rather than being criticized for marketing his story, Mr. Louganis should be praised for furthering the public discourse, AIDS educators say.
"We haven't done enough of a marketing job on HIV and AIDS," said Dr. Alfred Saah, an epidemiologist with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. "It's awfully difficult to condemn or indict him for coming out and publishing a book."
Mr. Louganis began collaborating on his autobiography with author and former TV producer Eric Marcus, whom he met through mutual friends, about a year ago. After a lifetime of keeping secrets, working on the book was like opening a spigot.
"When I started working with him, he could not talk about these things in public, he could barely talk about it to me in private," said Mr. Marcus, whose books include an oral history of the gay rights movement.
Mr. Marcus also thought he would be working on a book about a stellar athlete who decided in his mid-30s to finally come out of the closet. "I thought it would be this happy story," he said.
Instead, in the first of what would become 60 hours worth of taped interviews, Mr. Louganis revealed his lover had died of AIDS and he too was HIV positive. "I knelt down by the chair he was sitting in, and we had our first cry together. It was hardly the last one," Mr. Marcus said.
His friends say coming out has lifted a great burden from him. And, indeed, at his appearances, he comes across as a happy person: Wearing a pink triangle earring on his right ear and a dangling gold one on his left, Mr. Louganis was full of smiles at his Maryland appearances. He is asked about messages to the youth of America, about what else he'll do to increase public awareness.
"You learn and you grow. Life's a journey," he said. "And I've had a pretty incredible journey."