So I had to prepare myself mentally for that. So that's what I did.

I flew to Puerto Rico. I had lost a lot of weight, so I made sure to wear a lot of baggy clothes to try to cover my illness. I was really concerned about how they were going to take it. They're extremely religious, Christian fundamentalists, so I knew that was an issue. It was an issue of me being gay. I didn't know what to expect. I prepared myself mentally, just in case I was going get some rejection. Then the day came, and I sat in my parent's living room; my mom was in the kitchen. I looked at my dad, and I said "Dad, I need to speak to both of you. It's very serious." He called my mom, and my mom just kind of ignored him, she didn't want to come. They knew something was gonna be up [laughs].

My dad raised his voice, and said to my mom to come, that I had to speak to them. OK, so the three of us were sitting in the living room, and I told them that I had AIDS. I told them I was taking some medications.

My dad is what I like to call a true macho Puerto Rican man, who I've never seen cry. He ran into his bedroom, crying -- like, really, really crying. And I ran after him. I grabbed him and he put his head on my shoulder and we both cried. To my amazement, they accepted me immediately. I thought they were going to put away the spoons, the cups, because I've heard horror stories from other people. But no, from day one, they accepted me, and they were there for me. So, I've been very blessed, with having a very supportive family.

What would you advise others to do, when they're disclosing their status to their family or loved ones?

It's really individualized, because I've met so many people in different types of situations. I've known of people with families that completely shunned them and do not speak to them anymore. So I'm very blessed to come from a very loving family. It's easy for me to tell everyone, because I was lucky to have that support.

What I recommend someone do is to really seek some professional help. See a therapist, a counselor, who could sit down and really guide you and prepare you for whatever happens. It's a very individual decision. You need to be ready to expose yourself to telling some people about your status because some people react differently. I've had many, I even lost friends, people who I thought were my friends, but once they knew of my diagnosis they completely stopped talking to me, even within the gay community, which was my biggest shock. But it happens.

... and who is the one that extended his hand to me and said, "Look, I live in San Francisco. San Francisco has these great agencies, has this great program for gay and HIV-positive people, so you're more than welcome to come over."

It turned out well. He was the right person. You picked the right person.

Exactly! I've known my friend for five years and I told him, "You're like my little angel, you know?"

In Islam, we believe that if you're a true Muslim, God takes care of your problems before they come to you. It's funny because I've known him for five years, and it's like, "OK, when I met you, I met you for a reason. God knew what was going to happen, so he put you there as my little angel."

I think when you're positive you're like, "I need support. I feel lonely," because that happened to me. When I tested HIV positive I felt lonely and deserted. I felt really bad inside. There was this pain that wouldn't go away. It was this permanent pain in my heart that was making me so sad, making me so depressed. Within the same week of me being diagnosed, I was like, "I need to tell someone. I cannot handle this on my own."

If you have a true friend, I think your mind, your instinct, will tell you, "I strongly believe this is the right person that I can talk to." Once that instinct tells you this is the guy you should talk to, then you analyze them.

I remember I considered: "What are the negative and positive results of me disclosing to my friend Ramsey?" I thought about it, and there really would have been no negative outcome if I were to tell Ramsey, because throughout the five years that I've known him, he's been an excellent, excellent friend.

Automatically, when I thought about telling someone because I needed someone's support, he was the first person who popped into my head. I only had positive outcomes by telling him. When I analyzed the situation, I had more positive outcomes than negative outcomes. That's pretty much how I did it.

I think at that time, that's all I needed. I needed to see that -- even though I had this dreaded disease that everyone was saying was so terrible, and only bad people got -- I could still get some affection, care or concern from somebody else.

My family has been supportive, my parents and brothers and sisters. They were the first people who were excited when I started doing this work, and they have followed me -- especially my dad, almost as closely with this as when I played football, and kept my articles and ... I've been very fortunate to have that support from my family.

With friends and, in particular, sexual relationships, it's been tough. I've always been a little shy and to myself, despite the fact that I played sports and everything. So finding out my status at that age, in college, already a little withdrawn -- it shut me down a lot. A lot of the normal social development that I would have had through my whole 20s never happened.

I find myself now where I still feel like a little 18-year-old kid, shy and reluctant to talk with people, uncomfortable with meeting new people -- and then to put the whole, you know, "Is this someone I disclose to, do I even want to bother?" thing on it! So over time I've gone through a lot of scenarios where it just scared the hell out of me, and sometimes I just feel safer not dealing with anyone.

I've been in situations where someone, to prove that they still accept you, want to have sex right away. Like "Let's have sex!" just to prove that they're OK with it. No! That's not necessary -- just be you! I'm gonna be me, and just let things happen naturally.

How do you decide whether to disclose your HIV status to someone?

Ideally, I want to be able to disclose, and to have the person on the other end accept me. But in reality -- and this might be my own rationalizing -- there's always something that we're not really comfortable about. It could be our eating habits or what our favorite TV show is or something that happened in our past that we feel less than comfortable revealing, so it's the same way on the surface.

It's interesting now that, because of my job, in a lot of cases people already know I'm HIV positive before I get there. It's completely different, though, when I meet somebody one-on-one and they have no idea who I am -- and it scares me to death. It just goes to a point of "Do I feel comfortable with this person?" Of course, there's a certain level of comfort and timing that has to happen where you just say, "OK, now! This is it!"

What is the best response you have ever gotten from telling someone?

The best response is when it's not a big deal. I don't want to say, "I'm HIV positive", and then all of a sudden it's like, "Ohhhhh!" and all this caring -- I just want it to be that I'm still Larry. I know there are probably things that go on in the other person's mind, questions that arise, but it's best when they treat me just the same.

What is the worst response?

There was a time when there was someone I really liked, more or less from a distance. But people, when they find out -- and sometimes it's a passive disclosure, where we might get in a roundabout conversation or they might see an article about me -- I purposely just wait to see what their reaction is gonna be. You have people who, literally, leave skid marks -- you never hear from them again. They don't want to have anything to do with you. I don't care how confident I am with myself; I never get used to that.

How do you deal when that happens?

I would be lying if I said I'm not disappointed or my feelings are not hurt at the very least, but you carry it and you move on and you wait for it to wear off. No matter how bad it feels, I know it will pass. I think that's one reason why I stay active and work and do so many things, because then things tend to rotate out of my head a lot faster.

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... for you to tell them that you are HIV positive. But if you are going to be intimate, then you definitely have to tell them you're positive. It depends on you. If you like this person and you think they're educated enough, you should tell them.

People notice here that I'm positive because of the kind of work I do, because I've done campaigns. They even have an intervention tool and I'm a participant on it. It's really cool. But if you were in a regular place and it's not necessary for you to disclose, why would you disclose?

What's your experience been?

I worked in the corporate world before I was with the [Miami-Dade County] Health Department and it was nothing related to HIV. I never told them because it has nothing to do [with my job] -- if I'm a receptionist, why am I going to tell them that I'm HIV positive? It's not like they're going to get it from the phone. You've got to educate yourself and know what type of risk you're putting people in. If you think you're putting people at risk, you should disclose it if that's what you want to do.

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She hugged me and then we cried together and then at the end of all this drama she told me, "I've been HIV positive for ten years. I just never told you.

I just didn't know how to feel. I really didn't know. She said, "Finally I meet somebody who's as comfortable with it as I am!" I'm like, "If you were that comfortable with it, why didn't you tell me years ago about this whole thing?" Her answer was that she was afraid to scare me off.

"Son, I love you. We'll get through this." A soldier, true to his heart. You know, a soldier with compassion: "We'll get through this, son. What do we need to do?"

I have disclosed to people and have gotten the big hug and big kiss. If I were to say something, it's that when someone does make a disclosure, we can tell if it's a sincere, compassionate hug, or if it's ... Sometimes, the response, when you tell somebody and disclose to somebody: "I'm so sorry."

I don't want you to be sorry. It actually wasn't your fault, to be sorry. I don't know if people say that because of lack of words, and stuff like that. Just be supportive.

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But all of them, they said, "No matter what, Raven, we will still love you and you will always be our friend."

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If you surround yourself with real friends, your family who really loves you -- or you hope loves you -- you can be yourself and be honest.

You are going to have to build that little wall up because you know you're going to have one or two people who come out and turn their back on you. That hurts more than them making fun of you; the fact that they drop you and don't talk to you hurts more than anything.

If you can be honest with yourself and you're comfortable, I think everybody should just be able to say, "Yes, I am positive," if asked the question. I wouldn't just go up to somebody and tell them, "Yes, I'm HIV positive."

You do it with care and with people you trust.

People you trust. Yes, you have to be careful who you tell. Even nowadays -- I don't care what anybody says -- you see MTV putting out ads and the Logo channel putting out ads about HIV/AIDS. They look normal and they're over here saying "Yes, I have it. Yes, I've had it for this many years and I'm a normal person and everything."

But in the real world, it doesn't work that way. If it didn't work that way in the medical field when I was working at the hospital -- where I had to be careful and not tell anybody -- how can the outside world that doesn't have any medical background be able to be compassionate or empathetic toward somebody who is sick?

I have always been independent. I have always been on my own, done whatever I needed to do. I'm not the kind of person that calls home every day. All of a sudden, I was faced with something, for the first time in my life, that I felt kind of afraid and unequipped. I was thrown into a tailspin. So I reverted back to, "Mom-my!"

My birthday is the 31st of August. This was late September. I had just turned 38. Up until this diagnosis, my biggest panic was, oh, I'm approaching 40. Now, all of a sudden, I'm like, well, wait a minute. Will I even reach 40? All of a sudden now it was a goal and not something to be feared. I was like, wait a minute. I want to reach 40 now. Now I need to!

I called my mom and dad and I just cried to them. I said, "I don't know what to do. I don't know if I'm dying. I don't know what to do." They reassured me. My mom asked me if I had told my sisters, who all live in different states and countries. I said no, that they were the first people I called.

My mom said, "Can I call them? First, because it will help you. You won't have to keep saying all of this over and over and over again. But also because it will help me, because I need to say it over and over again. I need to process this. I need to get it into my head."

Your mother sounds amazing. Is she a therapist?

No, no. Just a really cool lady. So she said, "Can I call your sisters? Can I tell them? I need to ..." I think she needed to do what I was doing. I needed to call my family. I needed to get that reassurance. She needed that. She suddenly felt alone where she was, and she needed that reassurance. So she was like, "Can I call your sisters? Can I tell them? I need that bond. I need my daughters. I need my family. This is too much for me alone."

I said, "Yeah. Would you do that?" So one by one, she called my three sisters. Then, one by one, they called me. Since now they had been told, I didn't have to go through all that beginning, that, "Um, um, I have something to tell you."

They called, saying, "Mom just called. What can I do? What's going on? How are you?" Then I could just jump right into the emotional support.

Did you find that you got a lot of emotional support from them?

I did, and I still do. I get a lot of emotional support from my family. It took me quite a few years to tell cousins. My grandparents, I never told. They died not knowing. I couldn't do that.

Why didn't you tell them?

I guess I didn't want to disappoint them. I didn't want them to change what they -- not what they thought of me ... but I didn't want them to be afraid. I didn't want them to be afraid that I was going to die. I didn't want to disappoint them and change how they felt, and the relationship we had. I just couldn't deal with that.

After you told your family and your sisters found out, did you tell friends?

Yes. I told my closest childhood friends. I called them up, because they are in New York and in Florida -- the places I've lived, and where I grew up (in New York). So I called my childhood friends and I told them one by one. They were all very supportive. Then my friends out here ... I did a rather crazy thing.

First, my most intimate, closest friends: I, one by one, invited them to dinner. I would have them over for dinner at my house and I would cook a nice dinner, and we would sit down and talk. Then I would say, "I have something to tell you." And I told them. "I know you know that I have been very, very ill. Well, this is why. This is what it is."

Ironically, a dear couple that I invited over one night to disclose my AIDS diagnosis looked at me -- and I had known them, now, for five years -- looked at me and said, "Well, Shelley, then I guess it's time we disclose."

I said, "What are you talking about?"

They said, "We both have AIDS, also."

I did not know that. So, here we were. We had known each other. We were very close friends. Saw each other every week for five years. By my telling them that I had AIDS, they admitted that they both did, too.

It was weird. It was very weird. Because, now, they knew it for years and years. I had only found out for maybe a couple months.

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After my father died, it seemed like the end of the world. But I decided to go out and share my story. I decided to talk about awareness and maybe somebody will be touched by this, so it isn't all tragedy.

I got this invitation to go to Kentucky. They had a fundraiser gala for World AIDS Day last year. That was my first time to go up there and tell my story in public. I remember after I finished, everybody stood up and they remained standing there for a few minutes. They were clapping constantly.

I remember looking, and wondering, what is so special about this thing? I was overwhelmed; they had a standing ovation for me -- that was probably the only one that I can remember that was an over-the-top reaction. I thought, "Here I am, telling my business, right in front of people. I don't know how they're going to react." The outcome was remarkable. They were coming after that to talk to me and thank me for sharing my story and encouraging me.

The pastor from the community said, "People here, they're very uptight, and very conservative thinking about this disease. They have their way of thinking about the people who have this disease. You put a new face on it, and thank you. We want you to come back and speak to our church."

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"I can draw strength from you. You seem like a real strong person who don't take no stuff from nobody and I want to be like that."

What is the worst response?

The worst response I got was probably from the people of Baltimore. It's almost like an oxymoron to be black, gay and HIV positive in Baltimore. For some reason it just seemed like I was the only black gay person and then, on top of that, I was HIV positive and wasn't afraid to say it. So I have had people talk about me relentlessly, call me all kinds of names, spread rumors -- you know, "Don't talk to him, he got the package" -- block me on the computer, like they could get it through the computer. I just thought that was hilarious.

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