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Jeff, 1995.
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Jeff
July 7, 1995
He returned and eventually said, "Honey... can't I take you to the hospital? You're not getting better, you need to do something." So, my mom came and took me to the emergency room. I had previously been arrested for prostitution and hadn't appeared in court so they sent me to county hospital. Juvenile hall was right across the parking lot. They brought me right in there.
I could receive medical attention in custody, but they were afraid if I was admitted into the hospital I would bolt. Five days later when I saw the judge, she took one look at me and said, "He doesn't deserve to be in jail, he's not going to make it there. Send him home, he has to put on some weight." That was just before my 18th birthday.
I started having a relationship with a man in Los Angeles. He said, "You have to do something, either get a job and pay rent or go to school." So, I started going to City College and working with him. He was making videos and porno films. I did camera work, editing, and sales and marketing until I got my retroactive disability check. Then I moved out on my own and I got into another relationship... We tried moving in together and that didn't work out, so I decided to move up here to San Francisco.
The first clinic I went to was the Mission health clinic. That serves a lot of IV drug users, a lot of undocumented immigrants. I started going because I had my second major progression, Shingles. Herpes hibernates in chicken pox. It stays in your bloodstream and when you have a compromised immune system it comes out. It pries open all of your nerve endings on the surface of the skin following the major nerve trails on your body. I got it on my face; you can see the scars. I lost hair; I lost skin. It's like having herpes but big scabs covering half of your face. My eyes became so painfully sensitive to light that I had to be in a dark room all the time. I couldn't work, I was in extreme pain, but they knew what it was that I had, and how to treat it. My personal experience with the medical establishment has been fairly good. They want to help, they know that I'm a good guy, and they want me to live and prosper. Strangely enough, I think this illness has done a lot of good things in the gay community and I also think that it helped further our cause. People rally around us because HIV has truly touched all communities.
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