Alex Loved Madonna
This fellow fan and artist touched me — and many others — on his short, but very impactful, path in life
June 24, 2026
Several times in my life, after I have moved past a place where I was consistently interacting with a cherished friend, I’ve had this disturbing experience where I decide to Google them — only to discover they died many years before.
Playing catch-up, both factually and emotionally, is a vertigo-like experience that stays with me each time.
Alex Escarano was a guy I never met, but with whom I nonetheless bonded as a fellow Madonna fanatic. I became aware of the Cuban-born, Miami-based artist when his Tamara de Lempicka-inspired tributes to Madonna appeared in her fanzine Icon. Either I wrote to him or he wrote to me when I announced I was working on Encyclopedia Madonnica, a book on Madonna I first published in 1995 (and have updated ever since).
Alex was handsome and polite, but our correspondence was not flirty so much as it was an introduction to working with adults in the entertainment industry. I was licensing his creations to use in my book, and he would have been among the first few gay grown-ups with whom I did that.
I sent him the book when it came out, and I know he was thrilled to see his paintings in it, although I wish he had lived to see them beautifully reproduced in color someday — they are spectacular.
I discovered a few years ago that a fan in the NYC area owns a painting he made of Madonna as a mermaid, and I’m hopeful his family and others preserved as much of his output as possible.
But while Alex has been a sweet memory for me from time to time, I’m certain that Louise Palanker has thought of him far more often than I, and far more deeply. The founding co-host of Media Path, an indispensable podcast devoted to pop cultural reflections, she was Alex’s best friend in L.A. when both worked for Channel 11 at Metromedia Square (later Fox Television Center). They were young, ambitious writers who began to envision writing sitcoms together.
In the meantime, Alex was successfully writing and producing, including inventing the concept of the TV marathon. As much as he adored Madonna, he loved Lucy, and as such was overjoyed to write and direct the first I Love Lucy “Happy Birthday Lucy Marathons” beginning in 1983:
Still in his 20s, he must have been fanning out when he was invited to work directly with Lucille Ball in her home, as Louise describes in our recent chat about Alex — please listen to our conversation:
Not out at work, his progress was thwarted when he found out he was HIV positive, leading him to do some soul-searching and to return home to Miami.
There are aspects of his life I haven’t been able to nail down, but I know he remained gregarious and kind and had many friends — among them Pedro Zamora, who he met in 1993 at an AIDS support group. Alex was Pedro’s mentor, and even though he was unable to be forthcoming with all of his own friends about his HIV status, he recognized in Pedro a messenger with the potential to help millions by putting a human face on the virus.
It was Alex who filled out the paperwork pitching Pedro as a housemate on The Real World, and it was Alex who shot Pedro’s audition reel for MTV. Their special bond was reflected in part on the series, and was dramatized in the 2008 film Pedro, written by Dustin Lance Black and Paris Barclay, in which Alex was played by actor Roy Sanchez.
Who can forget the valuable conversations inspired by that season of the show, on which dreadful Puck called Pedro “AIDS boy” and glibly wore a swastika, and Rachel Campos (now the dreadful right-wing wife of Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy) initially distanced herself from Pedro, only to wind up bringing him home to meet her family?
The country’s youth watched Pedro assert himself as a person with a right to exist on that show, watched him grow sicker unexpectedly and found out on the night the last episode aired that Pedro had died at just 22.
That was 1994. Alex died less that three years later at 40.
Before he died, Alex devoted himself to his art and to making a positive impact on the world, including dressing up as Don Diego del Mar, a character he created who spent time urging Miami children to take conservationism seriously, including the clean-up of Biscayne Bay.
Through that and his direct and inspirational work with AIDS, Alex made the most of his short time, and is still remembered fondly today — by myself, by Louise and undoubtedly by others who I hope will find this post and leave their thoughts in the comments.
This Pride, I just wanted to take this beat to remember a wonderful guy whose good works and whose good spirit live on in the memories of so many.
If you remember Alex, please chime in.⚡️
The title of this post is an homage to Joe Jervis’s classic post “Ricky Loved Madonna.” I encourage you to read that one.