AIDS: A Love Story

AIDS: A Love Story
Part Two of a Two Part Series
by Lisa Woerly

"Today, 33.6 million people are estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS. Of these, 32.4 million are adults. 14.8 million are women, and 1.2 million are children under the age of fifteen."

I used to lecture my friend Paul about AIDS and how his lifestyle choices were not healthy. He knew what AIDS could do to a person, but Paul could not or would not change his destructive ways. Paul and I met in the seventh grade. He had a genius-level IQ, but he was also saddled with an intense mental instability that was diagnosed as schizophrenia after his first suicide attempt at the age of fifteen. He self-medicated with every drug you could possibly imagine since grade school; nothing could stop the voices inside of his head. He had a lot of trouble dealing with his homosexuality. Paul felt ridiculed and persecuted for his lifestyle, but I believe that a lot of those feelings were exacerbated by his mental illness. He felt that he should be punished for being gay, and when no one else would hurt him he would hurt himself.

Paul was my little lost puppy that needed rescuing. I watched over him throughout high school and I constantly harped on him to stop taking so many drugs. But he never listened. He'd laugh and run away from me. But I was also guilty of enabling him. Once, he ran out of money to get more drugs and so he sold me dozens of his albums. I knew what he was going to do with money, but I bought the albums anyway.

When we were both seventeen, I started to hear rumors about Paul selling himself for drug money and I confronted him on it. I lectured him about safe sex and using condoms, but all he could do was nervously laugh and run away. After high school, Paul moved down to Atlanta. His letters to me detailed phantom classes and a non-existent job; I think my constant lecturing had finally pushed him to the point where he no longer felt comfortable sharing the truth with me. But I found out that he had escalated his destructive lifestyle in the relative anonymity of Atlanta. He earned his keep as a "companion" to a wealthy businessman and he was dabbling with heroin. The businessman supposedly "sold" Paul to his friends for sex parties. Paul was playing Russian Roulette with his life, but I don't think he really cared.

This seedy lifestyle continued on for several years. I rarely had any contact with Paul during the late eighties. Keeping track of his most recent phone number was nearly impossible, and when I could get my hands on his latest number my messages would go unanswered.

"Women are becoming increasingly affected by HIV. Approximately 46%, or 14.8 million, of the 32.4 million adults living with HIV or AIDS worldwide are women."

But one day in the early nineties, out of the blue, I got a call from him. He had relocated to Minneapolis and was struggling to get his life back. He had gone through rehab, he was religiously taking his schizophrenia medication, and he was holding down a factory job. Paul sounded like a brand new person. He told me that he regretted his past and that he felt like he had wasted his life. He apologized to me for all those times he had ran away from my good intentions.

We ended the phone call on great terms and promised to stay in touch. I was excited and happy for Paul's change. Maybe at long last he could find the inner peace he had been searching for since his life began. I told mutual friends about his call and how proud I was of him?he was off drugs, he was working a respectable job, and his rampant promiscuity had ceased.

Paul stayed clean for about six months. Then the rumors started filtering down again. He was back on drugs, he was working the streets again, sometimes he slept in a city park--I heard all of the stories and unfortunately I knew deep down that they were true. It was only a matter of time before he would contract HIV, if he hadn't already. I didn't want to give up on him, but it came to the point where I felt like I had to wash my hands of him. Paul was never going to get better; he was too self-destructive.

"The overwhelming majority of people with HIV--some 95% of the global total--now live in the developing world."

I ran into him one afternoon in 1995. He was back in our Illinois hometown for a visit over the long Memorial Day weekend and so was I. He looked like death warmed over. He sounded weary of living. I didn't press him for details, but he did tell me that he was living a quiet life and rarely went outside. I think he came back to our hometown one last time to say goodbye.

It was staggeringly obvious that promiscuous sex and shared needles had finally rendered its death sentence. Paul was on the downhill slide and he was descending fast. It broke my heart to see him like that, but I also knew that it was his fate arriving for him. He refused to change his lifestyle, and now, at the age of twenty eight, he was staring down his grave.

Paul died just weeks after I ran into him. I blame no one but Paul for his early death from AIDS. He insisted on playing with fire and it eventually did him in. But I still love him. He had a generous and fun spirit; unfortunately, he just didn't know how to love himself. He was educated enough to know what behavior increased his chances of contracting HIV, and yet he did those things anyway. I only wish I could have proven to him just how valuable he was to this world.

All quoted statistics are attributed to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).