I'm totally amazed on how fast 21 one years can just shoot by. I first found out I had the HIV virus in 1983 in Chicago. I was 26 and so naive. My partner had signed me up for a free medical exam for a drug company that was trying to develop the first mass distributed blood test for HIV. My partner Paul and I were part of a 600 participant group. Over the years that figure has dwindled to just me and him. It boggles the gay mind. At first I had am "oh well" attitude. Then as more and more of my friends, lovers and acquaintances were getting sick and dying, I started to get scared. I was self medicating at that time and wasn't really facing reality anyway. I had run away form my home state of Massachusetts when I was 21 to escape the shame of being homosexual, and had totally immersed myself into the gay subculture of Chicago's gay bar life.
I was dating Paul; a bartender at the time at Carol's Speakeasy, a gay bar and disco, and it was a world that was totally new and exciting to me. We had met when a mutual friend, Arthur, had asked me to participate in a bar league softball game. Just a Saturday afternoon in the park with the boys. I agreed and was placed on the Carol's Speakeasy Team. I was in the outfield and the opposing team had hit a pop fly. Paul and I both ran for it and knocked heads trying to catch the ball, and that's how we met.