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Jeff, 1995.Jeff
July 7, 1995
We moved back to California, to Ventura County. My mom took me in the following month for an HIV test. She was raised in the medical community. Her mother was a graveyard shift ER nurse. She has a lot of stock in Western medicine, doctors never lie, they're the gods in white coats. The final time she brought a phlebotomy kit home from work and rather than making a big scene about it she just poked me while I was still asleep. I woke up when she was jamming the needle in my arm. That test came back sero-positive. It was March 1988 right before I turned 17. The family discussed it amongst themselves, my mother, my grandmother, and my uncle, before they told me. Then my mother started soaking up all this information and bombarding me with it. She was always concerned about what I was eating or how much rest I was getting. I was her mission, and it was too much.
The definition of a long-term survivor at that time was someone who had lived for 2 or more years with a diagnosis of PCP or KS. Basically, people weren't living. The infection rate was growing exponentially and there was a tremendous amount of hysteria. It was starting to affect inner cities and IV drug users; then people realized you could get it from your dentist. Remember Kimberly Burgalis and Ryan White got it from blood transfusions? When I sero-converted it was all bad news. My mom started taking me to UCLA for care, they said, "Enjoy life now because we don't know if you've got a year."
MW: How did you react to
that?
Jeff: I did the best I could to make it a reality. I left home again and I started tricking... I was a prostitute in San Diego... I started doing a lot of drugs and within a year I got very very sick. I lost track of days or nights, how long I slept, how long I'd been sick.
A friend gave me a mattress and some blankets. He was leaving town so he brought me over a portable TV, and some food. Before he left he stood up in church and asked people to drop by and check in on me, cook for me, to make sure I had food, to stroke me with a cold washcloth... and, wipe my butt. I was afraid to seek medical care because there was a warrant for my arrest.
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