Michael Stewart still remembers the moment he learned of AIDS, when he read the New York Times story about a rare cancer attacking gay men in New York and California. It was the summer of 1981, and Stewart, then 27, was enjoying the waning era of sexual liberation and the burgeoning movement of gay rights.
“The radical sexual outlaw thinking of the time was, there’s no reason for us to pattern our lifestyles after these ridiculous heterosexual people who get married and have children and have monogamous relationships,” he said. “We can have sex with whoever we want and have loving relationships with whom we choose. And it doesn’t mean we have to be monogamous.”
Today Stewart has the look of an English professor and the dry humor of someone unfiltered and raw. As a young man, he pursued a degree in journalism at San Jose State University. But he spent more time in San Francisco's gay bars than he did in classrooms. He never finished school. A year after first reading about the rare cancers striking gay men, Stewart began losing friends. First it was Lewis, a lawyer from Atlanta. Then Walter, a pharmacist in D.C. Later he lost Jack, an aeronautical engineer; then Nicky. Then Larry.
At first people weren't sure how HIV was transmitted. They avoided sharing toothbrushes, hair brushes, forks and drinking glasses.
“It was all very mysterious. We didn’t know what was happening,” he said. “There was a lot of hysteria; there were wacky theories, like, 'it was the CIA getting all the gay people.'"
Stewart would go into gay clubs and regulars began to disappear. Then he fell in love. Kevin was 28, with gray hair and clear blue eyes. Like Stewart, he worked in the emerging field of computers. Stewart let drop his fast-flying life of free love.
“It was a wonderful, unbelievable experience,” Stewart said. “We have this magical relationship. For the first time in my life I thought, ‘I can do this. I can have a monogamous relationship.'"
After dating for a few months, they talked about combining finances and hunted for condos.
A test came out for HIV in 1985, but men didn’t rush to get one.
“I talked to my friends, and the question was, ‘Do we test, or not test?’” he said. “If you test positive, there’s nothing you can do about it. The only thing to do was wear condoms. And so we were wrapping ourselves in latex.”
But Kevin did get tested, found out he was didn’t have the virus, and asked Stewart to get the test, too. Stewart’s doctor performed the tests, coding the results without patient names to protect patients from insurers who dropped coverage for people who tested positive for the virus. But before agreeing, he asked Stewart, “Are you ready to handle what happens if you’re positive?”
Stewart wasn’t thinking that far ahead.
“Kevin wanted me to test, so I would do whatever Kevin wanted,” Stewart remembers today. “Everyone hoped they didn’t have it, but we all knew it was a real possibility.”
A week later the doctor called him back in and gave him the news — Stewart had HIV. The doctor told Stewart about therapy, support groups, HIV services, but Stewart was in a fog. “He was talking and talking but I’m not hearing anything,” he said. Stewart read the news. Among people diagnosed with HIV, 70 percent died within 18 months.
That night he sat down with Kevin at a neighborhood bar. “I don’t know what this means for you and I, or what’s going to happen,” he said. “You don’t have to stay with me.”
Kevin told Stewart he didn’t love him anymore. Then he walked Stewart to his car and kissed him good-bye, on the cheek.
Stewart tried to go on with normal life. But he would cry all the way to work, then plaster on a smile. When he walked into the office, he thought somehow they would know. He finally went to see a therapist his doctor recommended.
“You know something that everybody knows, but they refuse to acknowledge: You are going to die,” she told Stewart. “That’s the way of the world. You don’t know when or how. But now you can choose how you want to live the rest of your life.”
Stewart joined a support group for people newly diagnosed as HIV positive, where they discussed how to date, disclose their status, secure a power-of-attorney, pay off debts and prepare to die. One man had been kicked out of his house. Another was disowned by his parents. “We’re all sitting around, we’ve got AIDS,” Stewart said. “We’re wondering, 'Who is going to love us, and what do we do now?'”
Stewart, whose viral load remained low, chose to work. By then, most of his close friends and former boyfriends were either dead or dying. People from the support group began dying, too. “I stopped having relationships with anybody. I became totally isolated. I no longer had any real friends,” he said. “I had a thousand excuses to avoid making friends. Still to this day, it’s difficult for me because everyone I know died. And I can’t get over that.”
A recession hit in 2008, and Stewart lost his sales job. He soon lost his house and blew through his savings. His T-cell count began to drop from a healthy level of more than 600, despite medications. His only option was to move in with his brother’s family, on a three-acre farm in Iowa.
But Stewart soon fixed his attention on the farm’s abandoned barns: They had wide beams, strong enough to support his weight. Stewart had decided it was time to die. He practiced fastening the noose and landed on a specific date in April. Two days before he was planning to kill himself, Stewart, who had nursing a cold that developed into a violent case of pneumocystis pneumonia. His brother and his wife forced him into a car and rushed him to a local emergency room, which in turn drove him by ambulance to the University of Iowa Hospital.
When he woke up, he cursed. His T-cell count was 58 and his viral load was astronomical. “Why am I alive,” he asked himself. “Nobody survives those kinds of numbers.”
He began to recover, enough for a social worker to help him apply for disability. Stewart had long dreamed of living in the Northwest and decided, if he wasn’t going to die, this was his chance. So he climbed aboard a train destined for Portland. He secured a cheap basement apartment, then sought out Multnomah County’s HIV Health Center. He asked to see Paul Denouden, a doctor his California provider had recommended should he ever land in Oregon.
The clinic provided Stewart with a case manager, who helped him secure an affordable bus pass and health insurance, and encouraged him to join the clinic’s patient advisory council. Stewart also joined the advisory council for Cascade Aids Project and began volunteering at Our House, a residential care center for low-income people living with HIV and AIDS.
“I love going to Our House. It’s the most meaningful work I’ve done,” he said. He serves meals, washes dishes and talks with residents. It’s the only intimacy he’s allowed himself in nearly 30 years.
“For just a few moments, we have this very powerful, tender sharing moment,” he said. And then that moment is over. He goes home, safe from any real risk of friendship. But people still an effort to reach out and connect, including his boss at the Party Spot, a party supply store in Aloha.
“I had gone through a year of hiring people, and they either never showed up or just had all kinds of issues,” said Eric Brandt, owner of the Party Spot. “It was right around that time Michael’s application showed up.”
Stewart needed a part-time job to supplement his monthly disability payments. The nearby party store was hiring. He had been to the shop’s website, which highlighted “family values,” so Stewart assumed that as a gay man with HIV, he didn’t think they would consider him. But he submitted a resume anyway, complete with his volunteer work within the HIV community.
“I did appreciate the honesty. I had several situations of dishonest people,” Brandt said. “I thought, ‘You know this guy is really honest.’” Brandt had relatives who were gay, and although he knew little about HIV other than what he learned growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, he needed a reliable employee.
Stewart started on an evening shift, helping customers, counting out the till and locking up shop. But mild cognitive impairments caused by years of fighting the HIV virus mean he struggles with seemingly simple assignments, such as counting back change or balancing sales at the end of the night. He will sometimes freeze while performing some task, prompting Brandt to keep a close watch. Stewart has often offered to quit, worried he’ll forgot to lock the door or make some other mistake that could damage the store.
“I almost would rather something bad happen with the store than with him. I’d rather deal with the mistakes than hurt him,” Brant said. “My employees and my customers are the reason I have a business. It makes my work easier when I have a staff I can trust and that I like.”
Brandt said he’s learned a lot from Stewart, about living with HIV, about how to support someone who struggles with so much grief. One afternoon Stewart momentarily forgot what was happening as he was providing a customer with her change. Feeling embarrassed and scared about what was happening to his mind, he walked back into the balloon aisle and began to weep. Brandt came out of the office to comfort him.
“I don’t like to see my employees upset,” he told Stewart. “I don’t like to see my friends upset.”
That made Stewart sob even harder.
“I can’t have friends,” he said. “Everyone has died who has been my friend.”
