Larry
My Story

I'd like to say that my life is not my illness, but how I deal with it. Attitude is meeting their standards. I tried everything I could think of to win their approval, but whatever I did seemed to be wrong. I tried the perfect student approach. This did not work because I was constantly being compared to my brothers who were two years ahead of me. Living under the shadow of my two brothers was a strain on me because I never was good enough to reach their level of perfection. My parents slighted my accomplishments because they felt I did not have it as hard being in first grade.

Team sports did not work for me either. Though I loved track and swimming, my family did not think these made the right image. Football and Little League were more acceptable. The problem with that was that my lack of coordination was put on display for all to see. The self consciousness and constant taunts from the local kids were inevitable. I used to live in terror of making the wrong move because I knew the name calling and sense of failure that came with it. The stress and hopelessness I lived with was enormous and I needed a crutch to function. This led me to the church.

Now, I had always had a very strong faith in God. It seemed to me that there was no other answer for the world than a higher power. There was also something very comforting about knowing that there was something out there running things that had a perfect plan for me. It was the one place I felt growing up I could go to and not be judged. I thought.

There were also a lot of things that I found confusing about their behavior though. As much as an anchor church was to me, I could never figure out the dogma nor could I figure out the smiling parishioner's faces on Sunday while they back stabbed on Monday.

My Life Before and After HIV

I am not sure why I am writing this. My life in five-thousand words or less would make a great movie of the week with all of its drama, but it is not really who I am today. As a matter of fact I can say that before my diagnosis in December 1994 my life was in many areas out of control. It was by learning my status and through the guidance of friends at Open Door Clinic and my partner of fifteen years that I was able to regain manageability. In a strange way my HIV saved my life, as it gave me ability to focus on me and my life and what I needed to do for me.

Where I came from looks were not the main thing; they were the only thing. I was taught from an early age the importance of appearance. Everything my family did was to keep the look of respectability. They did a pretty good job of it too. Outwardly we had the required look. The house was on the right side of town. There were two new cars in the drive. We were church members and belonged to a country club. Our shopping was done at all the right stores. Everything was perfect looking, but looks were deceiving.

The people in my hometown did not look past the image or the money. To them money meant virtue. If you looked the part then you were the part. Money was a blessing from God as a reward to leading an exemplary life. Issues like mental illness, violence, substance abuse, incest and religious fanaticism did not exist in these good homes. Of course, having not read Emily Post, my parents were clueless about this and these became the main components of my upbringing .

As I grew I often found myself trying to conform to their image of what I should be. At times, my family were both impressive and terrifying. I was very aware of the consequences of not understanding what was being said about me. I didn't have long to wait to find out my answer.

It was early spring when I was called to the front of the church that Sunday. I remember it because I used to get to walk home and not ride the bus to ceremonies. Before services I was asked to go into the pastor's office. My mom and several of the deacons were there waiting for me. I was a little frightened about what was going to happen. I could feel the knots in my stomach forming. I was asked several questions about my relationship with my oldest brother. I answered as truthfully as I knew how. Inwardly I knew things weren't as they should be and I told a parish counsel about the situation. I confided in him with the understanding that things weren't to go as far as our talk. Why he had told the pastor I have no idea. He did though, and my mom was immediately called. Naturally mom denied everything, and the pastor was told not to pay any attention to me because I was not too bright and had "serious emotional problems." I was the family's "charity case" and if the church would just tolerate the "lies" I told they would be most grateful. I was dismissed and told to wait in the rectory. I thought I was going to go home when they came for me and the whole incident would be forgotten. Instead I was lead to the front of the congregation where I was denounced from the pulpit as a heratic from satan who was making up lies about a fine local family.

From that time on I was to be viewed as a none person in the congregation who was not to be believed. In a town of only 10,000 people I may as well been tossed overboard at sea. The pastor had declared open season on me. My view of the church changed immediately from my safe haven to just another place where I would have to be ready for any attack. Never again would I make the mistake of trusting them. I still, however, needed something to help me survive. I knew that there was no safe place for me and anything I would do was going to be wrong, but I still needed to feel welcome. There had to be something out there.

This is not to say that I was without talents. I knew that I had some drawing ability and I was pretty creative with a pencil. I also learned how to make a pretty mean pecan sandy and chocolate chip cookie. Maybe I could use them to get some attention. I would bake and draw and was editor of our sixth grade newspaper in hopes of winning favor with my family or anyone who would respond. It worked to a degree. But all anyone would see is the ugly, needy little boy with mental problems who had to work twice as hard to get half as much and would never measure up no matter what I did. My attempts at being liked and accepted would all be for nothing. They had already made up their minds about me. All I could do was keep my head low and wait for the next salvo of attacks on me and pray that this set wouldn't hurt as bad. I could always look forward to tomorrow. Things would be better tomorrow.

The things that would become my salvation would come in 1970. The outside cures would come in that year for me and I would find the acceptance I always longed for. In that year something strange started to happen to me. Hair began to grow in places that there was never any before. The clothes I used to wear didn't fit right anymore. The squeaky voice that sounded like Minnie Mouse on helium started to get deeper. People began to notice me. Albeit not for what I wanted them to notice, but they did notice. They noticed in quite a public way too. Swim classes at junior high school, which were required, did nothing to help either. If anything it made matters worse because we had to change at the pool and it became public knowledge that parts of me were not in keeping with my small stature, if you get my drift. It became the lunchroom conversation and I was scared to death. I was getting noticed but for the one thing that I didn' t want to have noticed at all.

I remember feeling sick about having to go to school in the morning. It became a place of torture for me. I remember crying all the way to school because I wanted now to be left alone and not even noticed but knew that was never going to happen. I knew I was never going to be liked and had even accepted that. Why I couldn't be left alone was beyond me. My only chance at any kind of happiness was in my jeans and I was made very aware of that. But would I use it became the issue. It all seemed a condensending kind of acceptance to me. I was good enough for a quick slap and tickle but not good enough for friendship or even to be seen with in public. Using sex as a way to get noticed almost seemed like letting my enemies be right. I would not let that happen. I swore to that. Later on that year came the second and probably the most critical find of my life.

In November of that year my Aunt Verona died. She was probably my favorite aunt who took care of us boys when my mom was unable to look after us due to her mental state. She was probably the only person in my early life whom I loved that I felt even liked me back. When I was with her I felt that I was safe. There was going to be no beatings for no apparent reason. I would be encouraged in my artwork and could draw what I wanted to without criticism. I could eat as much as wanted to without worrying about getting fat and humiliated for being too skinny.

I didn't have to work to gain her approval because I felt I already had it. I used to fantasize that when she went back home to Indiana she would take me too. The morning of her funeral I was dressed up in my blue blazer and grey pants and driven to a relative's house. I was told that I should go upstairs and when it was time to go they would send for me. Several hours later they came and told me that I was not going to be allowed to go to the funeral because I was too young and Verona being my dad's sister she was not really related to me. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to attend the funeral. I would however be allowed to go to the wake. If I behaved. Now this was always a mysterious concept for me because as much as appropriate behavior was stressed by my dad, nobody ever bothered to say that this is right and this is wrong behavior. There was always a great deal of guesswork involved. I was lucky in this instance though because I could watch the adults and do what they were doing. One of the things they did was they were pouring themselves drinks in tall fancy glasses and putting straws and fruit on them.

So I went to the bar, poured myself a Pepsi in a fancy glass, put on a cherry and straw and to a ten year old's way of thinking, I was now behaving right. And somewhere between trying to hide my grief, helping the ladies in the kitchen and babysitting duties, I lost track of my drink and picked up someone elses. To this day I have no idea what was in that drink, but I never forgot what that drink did for me. For the first time in my life being the perfect, appropriate little boy was fun. It didn't seem like hard work at all that time. Even my dad who had made a career out of not noticing me had commented on how well I behaved. Now for me to say that I became a ten year old slut won't be entirely correct. I feel that those incidents set me up for what was to come mentally, but my next drink wouldn't come for another three years. In the ensuing time between, the best way to sum it up is to say that mom got crazier, dad got drunker and I became so quiet it was considered an event that I said anything.

The family's business interests were going strong and it was decided that we should leave small town Illinois and move to a more suitable home in the then big city of Peoria. Now up until this time I had never even seen a person of color up close but was full of the stories of how blacks were out to get whites and never to trust them because they were dangerous. The year we arrived in Peoria, so did school bussing, and I was sent to inner city Peoria Central. One day after school while waiting for the bus I was surrounded by five very large, very dark boys. And when I was handed a bottle I was more scared not to take a drink.

God only knew how they were going to react. So for my second drink I chug-a-lugged a bottle of cheep Annie Green Springs wine, the kind that has never seen a grape in its life, and was immediately adopted. I became the soul brother's token honkey: Their man from Mercedes mountain. I thought it was because they liked me. What they liked was watching a fourteen year old white suburbanite get drunk. The money that I almost immediately started borrowing from my parents didn't hurt either. At that time drinking managed to take a very repressed self conscious kid and after a few belts, turned me into Carmen Miranda. I was mouthy and animated and really didn't care what kind of attention I was drawing. The soul brothers didn't feel the same because they stopped hanging around me no matter how much money I could get them, because they were afraid of police or school attention. I was unceremoniously kicked to the curb. But I needed the alcohol, not to function physically, but to just be around people. I was physiologically hooked. I needed to find a way to get alcohol, and I knew better than to steal my dad's.

That is when I discovered Detwilder Park. One of the brothers told me that at the park there were men who would buy booze and give cash in exchange for certain favors. I thought about this for a long time and after much consideration decided that it wasn't really that much different from what was really going on at home so off I went to the park in search of men with big bucks and no scruples. To me it was the kind of acceptance I never knew before
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Sure it was in the long term not what I needed and I hated every minute of the actual deed that I had to do to get the alcohol, but I also had a sense of value there too. I knew that maybe I didn't have any friends at school and I was worthless to my parents, but I knew that I was worth at least twenty bucks or more to the johns. I often got more depending on what I was willing to do. I hated the way I was viewed by clients but I could always have a few laughs at their expense. They were just as bad as the people in the town I was coming from. Hypercritical and self centered to the max, they deserved every bit of scorn I felt for them. As long as they were buying, I could tolerate them. Besides I would soon have a bottle or two to take the edge off any anger I had over what we had done
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At this time in my life my daily routine had degenerated into up in the morning, get my five brothers off to school, get mom's head out of the oven, sober dad up for work, clean things up for the maid and then off I would go to the park. By this time I had dropped out of high school. After a day's work at the park I would then take my earnings and lock myself in my room and drink myself into oblivian. Then I would repeat the process again when the alcohol ran out. Alcohol worked for me because it gave me the ability to do what I felt was necessary and then it helped me to forget what I had done because it was not what I wanted to do in the first place.

By now things in my parents marriage had disintegrated to a point that nobody was being fooled anymore. The facade that they had so painstakingly tried to maintain had cracked. When they divorced in 1978 mom had moved us back to her girlhood home of Fairbury, a town of only 3,200 in the central part of the state. If I had been an immoral heretic the first time in small town Illinois, this time around I was deemed as being down right psychotic. I would try my hardest to make things easier on mom to make up for any trouble I had caused in the marriage. I went back to school, joined the track team and even stopped drinking; I would earn at least one parent's love yet I vowed. This lasted all of six weeks when my mom had a complete mental breakdown and was recommitted. I quickly dropped out of school to take a job at a local steak house and held a part time job at a 711. I worked sometime thirteen hour days to be sure that there was a place for mom to come back to and to take care of my two little brothers.

When mom came out of the home again six weeks later, she had on her arm a man she had met while in treatment. A patient, not a doctor. I immediately took a dislike to Wilhiem and had no trouble saying so. I felt that as long as he followed her home and he made her happy she could keep him. Then they announced their plans to fix me. Now to my way of thinking, I had at this time no problems and with this duo track record I had visions of being given a frontal lobotomy on thedining room table. I had no plans on being part of this. I did the only thing I knew to do. I made amends with my dad just long enough to have him sign the paperwork to enlist me in the navy at seventeen. I left home on the same day as mom's wedding as a way of making sure they knew why I was leaving home.

After boot camp I attended an A school for training in Dam Neck, Virginia. I had never been away from home and was for the first time out of my family's sphere of influence. I was overwhelmed, but I knew how to fix that. A couple of shots and I would be able to handle the world. Since the base had only an officer's club, I did most of my drinking in the city of Norfolk. It was here that I discovered a little bar called the Paddock, the first gay bar I had been in.

I really hadn't been looking for a gay bar but when I came in around 8 pm that Saturday I was the only one there. At ten the place had started to bore me, but a group of men came in and asked me to make up a fourth in a game of team pool. I at first was going to say no until I saw who they were going to pair me with. David was a pre-med student at a local college from Louisiana and was definitely not the type of guy I would have sought out. He was just too good looking to me, and when he followed me around the bar all night, I found the whole thing rather perplexing. Surely he couldn't have wanted to spend any time with me! I would be too much of a let down for him. When he asked me to come over to his place after closing, I was shocked. The whole idea of being with a guy as attractive as him just never entered my mind. I must have been putting off something to make him believe I was going to say yes. That was it. He thought I was easy.

Since he was a rather big step up from the guys I would meet at the park, I decided I would accompany him. After all, he did buy the beers and as I said, he was just so dang cute. Besides, I would be going to my duty station in three weeks anyway. If anything should come of this I had an out. The escape hatch was always within running distance if I needed it. It was a great surprise that I was called into the office of my P.O. the next Monday. It seems I had drawn the attention of the teacher there for my inability to test well in class. He recommended that I see someone at Oceania naval base. I knew exactly what they were recommending; a physiologist. They thought I was crazy! I was pretty angry about that, but I was outranked by the P.O. And besides, my job was on the line. If I failed to go, I was going to be sent back to Illinois! That would have been akin to making all the people who had such a good time at my expense right. I had no choice. Going home to Illinois was something I was not going to do!!!

When I was with the doctor, I must admit that he was professional and made me feel at ease. When he asked me to talk about my family I resisted at first. After the third meeting with him, I began to open up about my family and the incest, the beatings and how I was treated by other people in town. I thought maybe something would be done. I was relieved it was finally going to be done. When the final report was filed by him I was floored. I was branded a pathological liar! He hadn't believed a word I had said after I tried my hardest to be honest with him. That tore it! I had to prove him wrong, so I got real good real fast. I stopped drinking and went to night sessions for tutoring. I did extra duty to make sure I had the assignments down. To get into my rate I had to have a composite score of 65. With some doing, I scored 65.3. I had just barely made it! But I didn't get the choice of a station. Whatever was left was where I was going. I thought I was going to be in heaven when I was told San Diego. I didn't care that it was an aircraft carrier. All I knew was that I had proven my point.

I was right and the doctor was wrong! My worth was vindicated. So it went for the next fifteen years. The drinking, numerous sexual partners and the feeling that things weren't what they should be. Inwardly I knew things could be better, but just didn't know how to do it. I tried numerous times to get the guidance I needed. It wasn't in the navy, California, on the east coast, or in the many straight and gay relationships I had to make myself feel accepted. I knew I was in trouble when the alcohol stopped working for me. What used to make me feel warm and able to cope with anything had now turned against me.

Now I found myself unable to do anything but drink and feel sorry for myself. Now I couldn't function without something from the outside to buffer me. I finally for the last time checked into rehab in Manchester, New Hampshire. I had finally surrendered to my drinking! I had not surrendered to needing to be validated from the outside, however. My life was still unmanageable because I still wanted to be accepted. I still wanted attention. For me, the only way that was left now that I was dry was with a relationship. I immediately found a man who was three years sober and let myself be carried away. When I caught him in bed with my sponsor in my own apartment after a trip home, the relationship I was in and obviously he wasn't ended. I couldn't go to A.A. meetings there I thought because my sponsor was very much respected in meetings. It was going to be his word against mine. I took decisive action. I decided to go home immediately.

After causing some majoy turmoil in my life with my geographic cure, I found my way to Elgin with the person who would become my partner until today. Finally, I had someone to like me without strings attached. Things went from good to better. I had found two good jobs, had a car and there was money in the bank. Things were finally right. When I had developed a cough, it was something I didn't think about. Things were going too well. It would go away in time.

My denial kept me from seeking treatment. When my cough became worse and kept me from breathing, I drove myself to the ER after work. The diagnosis was of no surprise. I had pneumonia. After further tests my HIV was found. I had went down to 100 pounds and couldn't hold food. My muscle were jely and I couldn't walk. After two weeks the doctors decided to send me home because there was nothing that could be done. They sent me home and it was there where I had my initial meeting with Open Door. I really don't recall too much about that time because of the pills I was on. I was seen by two women from there, and an intake was done to determind my needs. They found me a Personal Assistant to help with domestic duties and found me a pair of doctors who changed my medications to something more suitable to me. In time I was able to walk again. My weight had gone back up to 140 pounds and I was even able to return to work at the restaurant I was at part time. Probably the most important thing that was done for me was they helped me be able to take responsibility for my own HIV recovery. The services that were provided to me by Open Door helped me by allowing me to find my own way of living with HIV and to not care so much about how others would see my infection. The counseling and financial services I received from Open Door took so much of the stress off of my life that for the first time in my life I felt safe enough to try to be my own person and not the person people always told me I was. I am fully capable of living my life with HIV because I have not only the safety net I have always wanted but also have taken my HIV out of the moral plain. I am not a bad person who is going to be judged by my past but a sick person who is asking for help. In an ironic way my HIV has saved my life by making me responsible for my life for the first time ever. I have learned how to take responsibility for my own recovery and have learned that no matter how alone and helpless I feel, I can always turn to the resourses at Open Door for the answers that I will need to come to a sound decision for me.

In closing I would like to say that my life is not my illness, but how I deal with it. Attitude is everything in dealing with my HIV. I am no longer a victim of AIDS, but a survivor. In many ways I feel that I am more fortunate than many people and have been given a great deal that I would have never known had I not been diagnosed.

Because time has been given back to me, I have learned to be more appreciative of it. I no longer have to hide away and hope that I will not be noticed. If anything I have tried my hardest to be noticed, because I have over forty years to make up for. And thanks to Open Door Clinic, my partner for fifteen years, and the many doctors and friends I have made through them I am finally free to have the life I was supposed to have. For that I am grateful, because this life is not a spectator sport. I feel you can either live with your HIV or let it kill you. My choice is to live whether anyone approves of my choices or not, because for the first time in my life, life is about me. For me it is not my situations anymore. It is about my responses, about how others would see my infection. The counseling and financial services I received from Open Door took so much of the stress off of my life that for the first time in my life I felt safe enough to be my own person.

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