” When I walked into the youth group meeting that Michael facilitates, he seemed to have this aura around him—a feeling of warmth and compassion.
Michael, 24, has been diagnosed for three years and has made it his mission to learn everything there is to know about HIV, and do everything he can to prevent HIV transmission. Right now he works at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
It might surprise you to learn that this cool, together guy has had such a turbulent life. In college, he lived with an abusive boyfriend. He moved to L.A., where he got involved with drugs and sold his body on the streets. He ended up living with a guy in West Hollywood who was addicted to crystal meth, an upper similar to speed. One day he decided he was done with that, but he had no place to go, no job, no money and no friends. “I was homeless, I was a druggie, I was a prostitute.”
He continued: “Before the test I was with a lot of people unprotected; I got so used to not using condoms that I just didn’t think about it—I didn’t like it.”
At 21, he found out
he had HIV
Michael got tested at age 21, because he felt sick. The test came back inconclusive, which meant that he had been recently infected. “I had priorities [before] but then my life got all f——d up; HIV just sort of shook things up,” Michael said. “Before I had HIV, when I was hooking and stuff I didn’t really value my life that much. So when I got HIV I wasn’t very surprised.”
When Michael told his ex-partners they all stopped talking to him.
“I was afraid because I didn’t think there was anyone else my age that had it,” Michael replied. “I was afraid of being alone, not of dying.”
But Michael is not alone. He is dating a guy named Anthony, who also has HIV.
“I don’t view HIV as a death sentence,” Michael said. “HIV is just something I have; it’s not something that’s going to consume me or change the way I live my life.””