Several days ago, I was at one of the neighborhood bars with a couple of friends, both older than me. I was at the bar talking to one, while the other was talking to another guy who couldn't have been older than thirty. When he was done talking to this guy, he came back over to us and said, "What an asshole."

"What'd he do?" I asked.

"He's twenty-eight, he's HIV-positive and he doesn't have a problem with barebacking," he said, and ordered another drink.

The next half hour was a recounting of how lucky one had been not to have ever contracted HIV, how they both lived through the beginning of the AIDS hysteria, and how they had seen their friends die one by one back when they were back in Las Vegas or England, how all their friends from that time are dead. How one had been to so many funerals that he stopped going, couldn't keep going to them. They talked about the other guy, the twenty-eight-year-old, how he didn't have to live through that, how he didn't understand what he had gotten into, what he could get others into. "They don't think anything of it nowadays," one of my friends said. "Now they've got drugs to fight it and so they think it's okay to get it. How stupid. What a fucking idiot."

"They figure the cocktail will keep them alive, but when it stops working..."

Eventually, they noticed the joyless expression on my face, and one of them said, "We're sorry, we're depressing you."

"No, it's alright," I said. "I want to hear this. I should know our history."

I grew up getting the facts about HIV, its effects and how it's transmitted. No one in my family had contracted HIV, none of my friends were positive. It seemed to me that there was no reason anyone should have to get HIV if they were careful.

Guys like the one back at the bar piss me off. I have no idea what he's thinking, how many he could hurt with his recklessness. I don't understand how someone my age could have that kind of attitude. Those who went before us and lived through the beginning of the AIDS epidemic had to see their friends and loved ones die quickly, sometimes just a couple months after being diagnosed. My generation has the benefit of hindsight. But now, some people think it's no big thing to be HIV-positive, even hip? I can't even wrap my head around it.

I have friends now who have HIV, who are on the drug cocktail. These are brilliant people, artists and dreamers, who could get sick and fade away. I would feel the loss if Bill passed on. I don't want to see Scott die. I've just made these friends in the last couple years, just met these incredible people. I don't want to lose them now, now when I've just gained a family.

I told my friends all of this.

One of them reached out and took me by the back of my neck. Before pulling me into a hug, he said, "We know. That's why we want you to hear all this. We don't want to lose you, either."