It's day four of Viracept for Sherri Lewis. "I've had a surge of energy that is unbelievable," says Lewis, whose recent CD4 count of 230 and viral load of 100,000 convinced her that it was cocktail hour.

Lewis tested positive in 1987 as part of the blood work required for a marriage license. That union didn't last long, but she's been with her current, HIV negative beau for five years. "It's not a health worry," she says of their serodiscordance, "just an emotional worry."

Lewis' one-woman show, Life Is a Beach, recently finished a critically acclaimed run in Boston. "Because I'm an artist, I put my AIDS activism in that framework," she says. The result -- an odyssey through Lewis' 43 years, from her nights as a singer in New York City's early '80s club scene through her days of drug addiction -- raised more than $3,000 for local AIDS organizations.