An Anniversary

Yesterday my first friend told me he’s HIV+. I am very lucky in the fact that were about one generation after the one that was most devastated by AIDS.

He has been positive for almost five years and has only been sick once. Like most people who are positive and don’t know it he found out he had HIV after getting sick. At the time he was so sick his doctor told him he should make some “arrangements”. That was around Christmas 2001.

He and I used to date when I live in LA. Our relationship didn’t last more than seven months. He had been tested so he knows he wasn’t positive when we were dating and thinks he knows how he got infected. Over the years we have remained friends, even tough we only see each other every other year we talk regularly.

After he told me and assured me he has only been sick that once in 2001 I didn’t know what to say. Selfishly I felt a little hurt that he didn’t tell me when this happened almost five years ago, but he reminded that I was keeping my distance from him at the time. He had lied to me about the death of a guy he was dating that lived out of state, when he finally came clean about it I didn’t take it so well. He tried to tell me while he was here in the spring but it just didn’t happen. With the five-year anniversary coming up he wanted to tell more people.

Looking back on it the things he said to me when we started talking again take on a different meaning. I was training for the 2002 AIDS Ride and got stuck at Zuma Beach in Malibu 25 miles form my car that was parked in Santa Monica. A spoke on my back wheel broke warping the tired making it impossible to ride the bike that far. I called him to ask him if he would come and me pick me up and take me back to my car. When he got there we loaded my car back into the back of this Trooper.

“I am glad we’re still friends and help each other out,” he told me.

“Yeah me too.”