San Francisco, California
Positive since 1985

I got infected in the late ’70s or early ’80s, back when bathhouses were popular in San Francisco. I moved to San Francisco in January 1979 to work for San Francisco Victoriana, a home restoration and molding manufacturing company started by three Vietnam vets. In 1976, I had gone to an infertility clinic and learned that I had no gametes in my gonads, 47, XXY sex chromosomes, a low testosterone level and a very high level of FSH [a hormone]. The condition is called Klinefelter syndrome. Because I had complained about a low sex drive, my endocrinologist prescribed 300 mg of testosterone to be administered into my glutes, alternating cheeks every two weeks. I wasn’t offered any counseling or told I would be going through puberty again in my 30s. I felt like a freak since I had never heard of this. I got real horny for the first time and enjoyed my many San Franciscan hideaways.

I joined the Central YMCA in 1990 and started to work out by lifting weights. My physiology was rapidly changing. I cruised many men at the gym and had numerous hookups over the next decade. But I knew something was wrong.

So many friends, acquaintances and neighbors disappeared from my life. I was in the cohort study at San Francisco General Hospital, which conducted interviews with sexually active gay and bisexual men in late 1983 about our sexual histories.

When the antibody test came out in 1985, I didn’t want to know the result. I waited until the next year to find out. I had been meeting up with and dating a woman from my college days. I wanted to protect her, and when the result came back positive, I ended our four-year affair. I didn’t want to be a detriment to her life, and I prepared to die.

I had 200 T-cells, shingles and bacterial pneumonia. Somehow, I rallied, and my HIV doctor put me on a low dose of AZT. I think it was because of that low dose that I’m still alive. I continued to work until 1994, when I could barely walk due to the peripheral neuropathy burning up my feet.

In 1995, after I went on state disability, I learned that Klinefelter syndrome is an intersex condition. I had always felt caught between the sexes/genders without knowing why. The Intersex Society of North America helped me understand myself better. I had enlarged breasts and nipples because of my hypogonadism. They started to diminish in size after 20 years of testosterone injections. I still had some breast tissue surrounding my three-fourth-inch f nipples sticking outward from my tight T-shirts. I often wondered if that’s why people would stare at me.

Or did people stare at me because of my extreme height? When people ask me how tall I am, I say, “Seven feet in shoes.” I guess I’m a giant. I’m always the tallest person around. My HIV-negative husband has been an incredible support throughout my journey of medical trials and DNA transformations. He never did anything sexually that would put him at risk.

We had a “life partnership” ceremony in a redwood grove in Saratoga, California, on September 23, 1990. A rabbi friend officiated, and we had 40 guests. I can still hear my mother saying, “This isn’t a wedding, is it?” When we told her that she and my father would be getting an invitation to our ceremony, I don’t think either of them knew how to deal with this situation. My dad never congratulated us. My mother gave us a teapot from Macy’s.

I kept all my HIV appointments and took many different combinations of antiretroviral medications starting in 1989. Years later my T-cells fell below 200, and my blood glucose went above 250. I was expecting the AIDS diagnosis but not the diabetes one. Today, both are on a back burner. I am managing my infection with my current three-pill regimen of Epzicom, Viramune ER and Tivicay. Thank God for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, health insurance and my husband’s city pension. My partner and I officially got married in Mayor Newsom’s private city hall office with six friends in attendance on September 30, 2008. It was during the five-month period in California before Proposition 8 was halted.

I will be 70 on my next birthday. I never thought I would live to be 50, and here I am, almost 20 years later. I’ve known my husband more than half my life now. In 2009, we were filmed for a New Zealand TV documentary called Intersexion. Two years later, it was reformatted for a film festival, and it was shown at the Roxie Theater in the Mission District during Frameline’s 2013 Film Festival. It has won many awards around the globe. During Pride Month in 2008, I received a KQED/Kaiser Permanente Local Hero award for my intersex community volunteer activism.

Five years ago, when a very dear friend died of liver failure at Maitri hospice, all his belongings came to be stored in our garage. His mother was the executor of the will but had gone back to her home in Georgia. My friend also had AIDS and had been taking his medications. It was hepatitis C that killed his liver. We met at the Welcome Home Restaurant on Castro Street back on October 13, 1994 on his 30th birthday. I was 47 years his senior, but he liked older men, especially bear types. I was newly on disability and just looking for friendship, since so many of my friends had died. But Keith had other ideas, and at our second meeting a month or so later, he enticed me back to my home to be seduced. He had Thursdays off and worked part-time at Joe Boxer and in the men’s department at Macy’s.

He called every Thursday morning to see what I was doing, and we would meet up to swap blowjobs, go on a hike or just talk. He said he didn’t date married men when he noticed my wedding ring, but that didn’t stop us from continuing a “friends with benefits” relationship. Am I fickle?

Turns out my partner had met Keith six months earlier on a behind-the-scenes tour of The Westin St. Francis Hotel. They exchanged phone numbers, but nothing ever came of it, mainly because they are both bottoms. That first night Keith came home with me, he recognized the picture of my husband on the wall. Some people might frown upon these arrangements, but my husband said he wanted an “open relationship” when I moved in with him in 1979.

I was with Keith in the hospice when he stopped breathing. I washed his body with cinnamon water. I helped dress him and set him up in bed with a chin strap to keep his mouth closed. The staff and aides came in and surrounded us with their presence in total Buddhist quiet. He was way too young to die. I haven’t gotten over this loss, and I miss my boyfriend very much. We shared many things that my husband wasn’t able to give me, and we all got along. I got pretty depressed at losing my boyfriend and lover. Gin, edible cannabis, anti-anxiety pills, sleeping pills and a suicide note landed me in a psych ward thanks to 9-1-1 and my partner who found me. A year later, we finally sat down and defined what was meant by an “open relationship.”

What adjectives best describe you?
Generous. Kind. Compassionate.

What is your greatest achievement?

Surviving HIV for over 30 years.

What is your greatest regret?

Having more close friends and better relationships with my two brothers.


What keeps you up at night?

Writing my memoirs.

If you could change one thing about living with HIV, what would it be?

To not have it.

What is the best advice you ever received?

Go into education and teaching others.

What person in the HIV/AIDS community do you most admire?

All the transgender and intersex people who are infected and dealing with different shame and stigma issues.

What drives you to do what you do?

The need for social justice on many LGBTIQ issues.

What is your motto?

Be kind to others.

If you had to evacuate your house immediately, what is the one thing you would grab on the way out?

My tuxedo cat, Domino.

If you could be any animal, what would you be?

A butterfly.