TJ was my first Gay friend. Well- TJ never said he was Gay, and I never gave it any thought. After all we were friends up through 4th grade, when he left my school. I won?t go in to why, in retrospect I imagined that he was Gay (nothing untoward, just a bit to 1970s campy to be recalled), but it came as absolutely no surprise to me when I found him online recently- on one of those pain-in-the-virtual-ass (anti-) social networking sites.

That ubiquitous set of tubes we call the World Wide Web is really good for finding people you have lost track of over the years. TJ is one of those folks. We were really close friends, he left my school and we never really crossed paths again.

Boy did we come close thought. First off, he graduated from the high school less than a mile up the road from my house- even becoming friends with an ex of mine. Then he spent years here in San Francisco- at the same time I was here, albeit living a more hard scrabbled life than me.

Well, I tracked him down online and even signed up for the site just to reach out to him. His first reaction: HOLY CRAP! Then we got down to sharing stories. His is interesting- graduated high school, went to college, tried living in NYC, spent time in SF homeless and reaping the sexual benefits of being young, and blonde in SF.

He also got HIV when he came home back east and was in a monogamous relationship. Funny how that can happen sometimes.

It is weird to find out an old friend has HIV. Of course, I never want anyone to deal with this stupid virus. It sucks. But, I confess I felt an instant and strong connection to him because of it. I found another friend of mine on the same site, someone I spent more of my childhood hanging out with, but as adults we don?t have that much to talk about. TJ and I do.

I will get back to ?content? blogging in short order. There are some really interesting things happening in the world of HIV, and I will spend some time going over them. In the meantime, if you care to read a kind of glum assessment of the state of things check out the following link.


https://www.poz.com/article/project-inform-leader-hiv-hepatitis-c-advocacy-likely-close