The person who dreamed of AIDS

On May’s three, the Moscow City Duma discussed the problem of the spread of HIV in Moscow and came to the conclusion that the topic of AIDS is the Western information war against Russia, and the best way to protect itself from the virus is monogamy and spiritual scrapers. It seems that Russian deputies know very little about what is generally HIV and where it comes from. In order not to be like deputies, we begin a series of publications dedicated to HIV, AIDS and the fight against them. Today, in Suicide of the Day, the story of a man who was infected has survived, but he regretted this all his life.

Steve Crown was a good artist and a pleasant person: one of those New York gays, friendly and neat, who are always busy with something in the afternoon, and at night they drink exquisite cocktails in bars. Until the evening, he was engaged in his endless freelanes: edited texts, wrote small advertising articles. The constant work in the office did not suit him, he always felt restless and at the same time free and could not sit still. He liked to carry out orders at home, in a cafe, in the park. But, despite his restlessness, Steve was very pedantic. Of all his works, the beloved was in the publishing house that issues guides: he needed to perform a fact. Steve could have been sitting over the cards for hours and not to check if there was a small cafe that the author writes about on this street in an unfamiliar city, and whether it is still called this and not otherwise.

But if he was just a cheerful guy, a good interlocutor and an intelligent worker, they would never write about him in necrologists - these qualities are not enough to write about you after your death in newspapers. On September sixteenth, 2013, the New York Daily News came out with the heading : "A man who did not take AIDS committed suicide at sixty-six years."

1.

As a teenager, Steve realized that he was different from his friends. On weekends, he most liked to go shopping and buy bright sweaters and shirts, which other guys considered “non -zhi” and strange. All walls in his room were hung with reproductions of paintings by impressionists. It was the beginning of the 60s, the sexual revolution was only born: the first gay magazines were already sold, but it was still impossible to admit to friends that you read them. Steve - a smart, beautiful and very narcissistic guy - met the girls at parties and invited them to dates so that no one suspected anything, but his sexual partners were men. Everything changed in 1965: Steve moved to one of the regions of Manhattan, where there was a theater or club on every street, students went to anti -war demonstrations, and at night they danced and drank as much as enough strength. Each neighbor could get hold of a brand, and everyone who had hid their orientation before, being here-in the center of New York in the midst of a sexual revolution-finally could live the way they wanted. Steve painted the walls of his room in an acid-green color, and his guests, going there, immediately lit up from the smoke of marijuana. He began to draw a lot - not classic landscapes, as before, but abstract and bold canvases, and they even began to write about him in fashion magazines for artists. He spent seven years in euphoria-it seemed to him that he plunged into some utopian world, and this happiness would be eternal.

In 1975, Jerry appeared - thin and muscular, he looked like the "Jewish version of the Arab prince." At least, it immediately seemed to Steve. It was a quiet and shy guy, next to the noisy and self -confident Steve, he at first even looked funny. But together they went to listen to Montserrat Caballe in Carnegie Hall and held their hands during concerts, and when Stephen fell ill with hepatitis, Jerry nursed him and did not leave for a minute, although by that time they met only a few weeks. Once soon afterwards, Steve burst into an apartment to his father - he sang, danced around the room and said that he had met his love. Seeing how happy his son was, his father only smiled:

“Well, I hope I will ever meet her. Or with him. "

When Jerry suddenly became very ill in 1981, no one paid much attention to this. Everyone thought it was an ordinary cold. The doctors all over America had already stood on their ears by that time, but ordinary townspeople had not yet understood what was happening, and the disease did not even have a name.

2.

In the fall of 1980, the American doctor Michael Gottlib was called to a patient dying of lung inflammation. The patient coughed strongly and complained about chest pain, but, having conducted a full examination, the doctor found out that the cause of the most severe disease was a completely harmless microorganism that would not even kill a baby. It turned out that the patient has completely absent cells that should fight microbes and infections. It was not possible to save him. Puzzled, Michael Gottlib began to make inquiries among his colleagues: it turned out that he was not the first to encounter such a paradox. Once, Gottlib met a private doctor Joyl Weisman, who said that for several years young people who suffer from severe diseases caused by absolutely harmless microorganisms have come to him for several years. By 1981, one hundred and seven cases of such immunodeficiency were already registered in the United States - this began the world's first AIDS epidemic. Among the patients were ninety -five homosexuals, and at first the doctors called an incomprehensible disease "immunodeficiency of homosexuals." Only a year later it became clear that the virus can transmit to anyone, regardless of sexual orientation and lifestyle, and gays are not to blame for the first outbreak of the disease - they simply suffered before others.

By 1982, Jerry was already blind into one eye, and his whole body was covered with spots from the Caposhi sarcoma. Steve looked after him, but he realized that he could not save his friend - everyone knew that there was no medicine for the new virus yet and was not expected. He watched Jerry turn into his eyes into an sixty -year -old old man, and did not know where to go. Panic and anger rolled at him in turn. There were many doctors in the Steve family, and since childhood he got used to that any medical problem can be solved if you turn to the right person. But this time nothing acted. In March, Jerry died, and his parents, who never approved the sexual orientation of his son and treated Steve with contempt and distrust, did not even tell him where his guy was buried.

During the first epidemic of AIDS, many Steve friends died, acquaintances and those with whom he had once met. After the death of Jerry, he understood that he had almost no chance to survive - in any case he became infected. But a year passed, another, and nothing happened to Steve. Now, when there was neither Jerry, nor many good friends, he was not even very afraid of death-he believed that he would meet them again when it ended. Steve carefully watched his well -being, waited intensely when the disease would reach him. It seemed unfair to him that friends were leaving one after another, and everything was still in order with him-sometimes he felt like a traitor. At parties, he joked gloomily: "I probably have some kind of superpower, I am invulnerable to AIDS." Steve did not even imagine how right he was.

Life in constant tension became unbearable, and he himself went to the doctors, having begun to go through different examinations one after another. It turned out that he really has HIV. But his body somehow coped with him. After conducting a lot of scientific research, in 1994 the doctors finally discovered that Steve's body has a small genetic mutation that allows him to resist the virus. In addition, in the future, perhaps this will help to come up with a drug that will save humanity from AIDS.

In the 90s, they talked about Steve in medical journals, once he was even shown in a documentary. Sometimes he felt like a hero - to those who were destined to save the planet from a terrible illness who had already killed hundreds of thousands of people by that time. It would now be the most logical for him to protect his health in order to remain useful for science as long as possible. But instead, on August 23, 2013 he took a fatal dose of medication. Before doing this, he compiled a list of all his bank accounts with passwords and finished editing his last guide. Those who saw him that day in the publishing house, then said that he was in a good mood.

3.

When it turned out that Steve's body does not allow HIV to develop in AIDS, for doctors this became a real salvation. He and several more people with the same mutation constantly participated in research, donated blood. Communicating with journalists, Steve said:

“Every human life is needed for some reason. Sometimes it even happens that she can save millions of other lives. ”

For a while, he even stopped suffering so much because of Jerry and the rest: interviews, research-he seemed to do this in memory of them. Their death was no longer so meaningless and stupid. In 2007, the company Pfizer received permission to use the drug Maravirikok - the world's first HIV medicine in tablets. It does not kill the virus, but prevents him from joining the cells of the human body. Subsequently, thanks to this drug, many people with HIV were able to survive relatively calmly until old age. Steve played far from the last role in the development of this drug.

But still, he gradually understood that the attention of journalists would never replace him with dead friends. He never admitted this, but from the side it seemed as if he was looking for death. In the 80s and 90s, when most people walked around the miles for AIDS patients, he came there every day as a volunteer and sometimes hinted to those friends who were still alive, that he would not mind if his body had lost his “superpower”. When the relatives said that God saved Steve, he only frowned. In 1989, he went on business to San Francisco, and just then a powerful earthquake happened there. While everyone was looking for refuge, he leaned out the window and shouted throughout the street:

"This is incredible!"

4.

Once Steve still managed to become happy again. Or almost happy. Tired of the television cameras, in 2006 he rented a house in Molden on Hudson - a small village away from the city. All the neighbors knew each other and were friends - it was a real neighboring community, which he quickly joined. He began to draw again, traveled with new friends and spent all his time with them. But in 2012, they decided to rebuild the village - the houses were in disrepair, and the residents were asked to move out. Steve was left completely alone again, and the fault for the fact that he was the only one of his company survived during the epidemic of the 80s, fell on him with renewed vigor. He had neither a life partner, nor a child, although he always dreamed of them. He escaped from AIDS, but old age came - sick bones, arrhythmia and everything else that usually happens to older people. There was nowhere to live - he was looking for an apartment for himself, but he did not like those that he could afford. In 2013, he went on a short trip to Europe, and then settled for the summer of a friend who left for three months and allowed Steve to use housing. Few knew about his problems - the sisters were aware that he was in the deepest depression, but the rest - neighbors, acquaintances, employers - thought that he was quite pleased with his life. He elegantly dressed, went to the bars, looked like a slightly half -hearted good -haired man who likes to read texts for guides.

On the fifteenth of August to the sixty -seventh birthday of Steve, there were thirteen days. Before the arrival of a friend who left him an apartment, two days. That morning he talked with a friend and said that in the evening he was going to get into the car and go in search of a new housing. The next day, at 6:45 a.m., a call entered the police: opposite one of the churches in Manhattan, a car was parked, a man is unconscious in the driver's seat. Arriving doctors immediately realized: the man is dead. Steve mixed tranquilizers with painkillers in such quantities that it was simply impossible to do this by mistake. From childhood, Steve believed in life after death - maybe he was so eager to meet his friends again that he simply could not wait. When he was found on August 16 in the car, he looked like a man who got comfortable and dozed off - the chair was thrown out, and the pierced legs lay on the dashboard. A smile froze on Steve's face.