Introduction
While growing up in the well-protected area of Alexandria Virginia, AIDS was never a real concern for me. I attended the same private school for fourteen years and graduated in a class of a hundred and twenty. We would occasionally talk about AIDS in class or see it in the newspaper but it never crossed my mind more than once.
The word AIDS was something I would see in health class under a list of many other STDs and STIs. It was in my A.P. Environmental Science Class as a reason why Africa needed better education. AIDS was the committee that a politician was chairman of on Capitol Hill. It was what the children had on the infomercial we were supposed to send them twelve cents a day. AIDS was very common among gay men and the poor and uneducated. AIDS, I thought, was not a problem for me.
Then, a week before graduation, a peer who had graduated in 2004 passed away from AIDS. Jevon Dickinson who was a phenomenal athlete, actor, and singer who had contracted AIDS his freshmen year from MSM. The world seemed a bit larger that day. My small, worry-free bubble came crashing down. AIDS was a problem not only in Alexandria, but also in my private school. It had crept down my hallways and into our fields. AIDS was no longer just a word. It was real.
