I've recently told people that the main reason that I started using methamphetamine was my 1987 intentional infection with HIV. I was a star athlete in high school. Didn't smoke a cigarette until I was 35 years old. I kept myself in tremendous shape and really had no need for something like it. Then I got infected with HIV and the conversion process from negative to positive was horrendous. I had to drop out of college for a semester...move home...find out I had HIV....and try to find enough energy to get out of bed for more than 5 minutes a day. I could not feel better...and I could not feel much worse.
This, again, was in 1987, when finding out that you were positive meant death within 3 month to 6 years...you were going to wither away, with horrible cancers, and everyone was going to know that you were a homosexual. Terrible...and I had just completed my first year of college. I wrongly assumed that my only sexual experience to that date caused the infection...one time and out! I lived with that belief for almost twenty years. The conversion process from negative to positive is not often talked about enough. It's misunderstood...but the victim, somewhere in the back of their mind, knows what is happening...you lose your light, your energy, your appetite for food...your you! After about three months of constant care, your immune system finally kick in over the "Blue Widow strain" and you begin to make it through a half a day, three quarters of a day, then a full day. Then two days...then three...then a week, but in the back of your mind and your family's, you know that doom is pending. It's a lot for a 19 year old college sophomore to handle...it was really hard.
Somewhere along the line I stopped being myself and I became extremely cautious...I think it was a combination of being stalked by what I call now, "The Sex/HIV police"'; private citizens whom somehow knew this horrible secret about you and were telling everyone else. At that point only my close family knew anything...my mom, dad and sister. They were the only ones that needed to know...I wasn't about to infect someone else. I dropped completely out of my fraternity...I didn't want them to be embarrassed by me or my status....and I became a man without a purpose, so I set myself some milestones. First, graduate from college...then...die. I discovered that meth, made me feel like the pre-positive Kevin...the one that never had a care in the world...I still wasn't going out to have sex with people and a relationship was based solely on friendship...no sex. Wasn't in the cards for me.
Meth made me feel alive while it was killing me inside...I hope that helps someone out there...but one thing I will say is this. Although the circumstance was the infection, the cause was always me. I did the drug...it was my responsibility...nobody forced me...I did it...I own it. Me.
Now I know that it was through no fault of my own that I was infected and people want to know if that makes me mad. I will reserve my answer save this, it really doesn't matter once you are positive how you got that way because you aren't really searching for the reason, you are searching for the cure. Saving that emotion for a different time would seem to give more purpose to your life than tracking down the bitch. How you got that way is more of a "parent thing", I've found. Moms, dads, sisters and brothers, friends and relatives are much better suited for this kind of task. The victim of an intentional infection needs to focus on getting and staying well...too much negativity is what Laurie does...I come from a different place all together. I'd rather the parents of these victims take on the "anger" aspect so that I can focus on making the victims stronger.
The meth addiction came and went and came again with me as the time passed by and I wasn't dead. Why wasn't I dead? My friends died. My tennis partners died. My best friend died...everyone died but me. Survivor's remorse is almost as bad as death itself...so many great men and women...so little reason. I needed to get past that too.
Now, I'm not going to die...I'm HIV undetectable and I call this "An Early Thaw". You recall that "Aidan Quinn" movie "An Early Frost" in the late 80's where Quinn is infected by a partner which forces him to admit he's gay and dying? Too young to die...an early frost, but what happens when the disease is manageable? That "Early Frost" I expected turned into Spring again...an early thaw...that poses a whole lot more questions than answers for a guy like me or Christopher. What to do now? What is the Lazarus effect for someone living in America with talent, education, mid forties...and a stalker whom didn't succeed in killing him? Same problem...whole different circumstance. No longer can Laurie blame her infection or her disease on me...it isn't possible...nor is her impending death with AIDS or her brothers...it is her decision to remain viral full, if she is...and the impending doom is still hers. So all that crime she committed thinking she wasn't going to live is here to stay...what to do with Lizzie Borden? That's society's question.
The answer certainly isn't to allow her to find another way. Hep C? A Super virus? It would seem to me that God kept me here because I communicate to others better than most. I handle the constant negativity with grace and education. I'm not going to stay afraid of the ghost of remote neural monitoring...I'm going to find a way to get rid of it. It's been my entire life, I want to know what life is without it. That's most of your "America"; it isn't mine. What's it like to have privacy? I wouldn't know. I'm a reality star without any pay and all the drama. I was reality television long before Survivor or the Amazing Race....people have been up in my business before I even had a business and they took far more than they ever gave. In fact I don't know of more than a hand full of anything good that ever came from this technology but I've got a warehouse full of bad to share. I really can't point to more than a car ride home or an offer to help that came from this system...the rest was simple and pure horror and negativity.
Who am I to talk about Laurie and Brian's thirty year victimization of the gay community? I'm number two or three on their list of 500 or more victims in our area...the others didn't make it so I'm number one of the living. That makes me the expert. She's getting worse everyone...she's losing her control and that makes her psychotic...you need to do something about this drain on society before she strikes with another dangerous virus or gun...it is her nature to hurt and kill....take that ability away from her and her brother. It's the most important thing we can do.
