FOUR FACES OF AIDS

For The Sick And Dying, A Loving Spoonful

In the earliest days, before drug cocktails were invented, Fernando
Castillo tended to sick friends the old-school way.

Inside his modest San Francisco flat, the Mexican immigrant took in
seven friends with AIDS -- men who had no place to go. Castillo used
his skills as a chef to concoct individualized recipes loaded with
nutrients. Chicken soup was a staple.

When his friends were afflicted with mouth sores and could no longer
chew certain foods, Castillo would puree his dishes and lovingly
spoon them into the men's mouths.

"Doing this, I was able to nurture them the best that I could,"
Castillo, 55, said. To deal with the grief of losing his friends --
all seven died in his home -- Castillo went on to create recipes for
Project Open Hand, which has served and delivered meals to people
with AIDS since 1985.

In the midst of his work -- which really became his life -- Castillo
learned in 1996 that he, too, had the disease.

"I never thought about me," he said. "It may sound corny, but I
didn't have time. I was feeling strong. I was feeling healthy."

He was also in a 10-year relationship in which he did not use
condoms. Few people did back then, he said.

When his lover apologized just before he died, "I said, 'It's nothing
to be sorry about. We didn't know then. There's nobody to blame.' "

Castillo thinks he's been infected for nearly 25 years. He said many
drug therapies did not work for him, but he knew how to stay healthy.

"I am a very positive person. I don't let things get me down," he
said. "I help people as much as I can. I don't think about my disease
constantly."

And he listens to his body.

"I feed myself very well, sleep very well, have a positive group of
friends. And more than anything, I have to understand we are here,
the people who have survived, for a reason -- to communicate to a new
generation that what we didn't know then, they know now. That they
have tools to protect themselves." -- Yomi S. Wronge

BOB REED

He finally stopped 'playing with matches'

When a 20-something Bob Reed left his small Idaho town in 1982 for
the liberated gay scene in San Francisco, he found a free-love
society pulsing through the discos, bathhouses and sex clubs.

In those carefree days, sexually transmitted diseases were an
afterthought, said Reed, 50, of Saratoga. "If you got an STD, you
took a pill and you were fine," he said.

But soon everyone around him started to get really sick. Funerals
became the new gathering places, and a horrified Reed felt the world shift.

"It was like, 'Oh, my God'," Reed said of that early time when AIDS
began killing thousands of gay men.

"By the time the word was out, I was positive. I had been infected. I
thought I was going to die."

That was in 1984. The single father felt immeasurable guilt and shame
when he considered what his diagnosis would mean for his son, then
just a first-grader.

"My first reaction was I had been playing with matches and I set the
house on fire and couldn't do anything about it."

Convinced that he had a stopwatch running on his life, Reed gave up
risky sex but refused to stop partying.

"For the first couple of years, the attitude was eat, drink and be
merry because tomorrow we're all going to die."

Today, Reed thrives on a combination of "miracle" drugs. He said his
son, now 27, grew up fine. And he recently celebrated a 14th
anniversary with his life partner.

Since retiring from nursing, Reed stays active in HIV prevention
organizations. He said it's hard on him to watch as the disease
continues to grab hold of young lives.

"No matter what we do, people are still going to have sex, and some
of it is going to be unprotected. It's human nature.

"Knowing that doesn't mean you throw away the people that do get
infected. You teach them and help them and try to make sure they are
not spreading HIV to somebody else." -- Yomi S. Wronge

LIZABETH BATES

Single mother caught off guard

Lizabeth Bates was so sure her HIV test would come back negative that
she took her 12-year-old daughter along to get the results. That 1993
trip to the Oakland clinic was meant to be a pit stop on a fun girls'
day out shopping.

"When you heard about HIV and AIDS back then, it was usually white
gay men," said Bates, 53, an African-American who got tested at the
urging of her doctor because she was having recurring yeast infections.

A single mother of two, Bates said that in 1990 she began a casual
affair with a man who later turned out to be HIV positive. They never
used protection, and Bates never imagined the consequences would be so grave.

"I got my daughter, got back on the bus and went home," Bates said of
the crushing day she was diagnosed. "I kept it from her for about a year."

That night, she went to a 12-step meeting and opened her heart.

"I said I was an alcoholic and just tested positive and I was
scared," she said. "I was kind of embarrassed because I was in my 30s
and should have known better."

Now Bates talks openly about her disease to anyone who will listen.
Her message is that AIDS is 100 percent preventable; had she
negotiated condom use with her partner, her life would be far different today.

Women, particularly African-Americans, are a fast-growing AIDS
population. Bates sees herself in so many of the clients that walk
through the doors of WORLD, Women Organized To Respond to Life
Threatening Disease, the Oakland program where she works to prevent
HIV/AIDS patients from falling through medical cracks.

"It sometimes makes me angry," she said of the alarming rates of new
infections among women. "I think a lot of people are still thinking
of this as a gay white disease and trusting their husbands, trusting
their boyfriends. I think people are walking around infected and
don't even know it." -- Yomi S. Wronge

'D'ANDRE' GONZALES

Old drug habit clouded his judgment

At 24, Andrew "D'Andre" Gonzales is younger than AIDS itself. He
belongs to a generation of young people besieged with admonitions to
practice safe sex and use condoms, but the messages didn't stick.

Maybe it was the drugs.

"I knew I was going to get it. I was living a life of risk and not
caring," Gonzales said in an interview at Bay Positives, a San
Francisco drop-in center for HIV-positive youths.

The San Jose native, diagnosed with HIV in 2001, used crystal meth
and the club drug ecstasy during an adolescence so turbulent that his
parents placed him in a residential program for out-of-control teens.
He knew what could happen if he had unprotected sex with men, he
said, but the drugs wrecked his judgment.

Although Gonzales kicked his drug habit three years ago, he is still
struggling to put his life in order. He jumps from couch to couch in
San Francisco, after a falling-out with an older man he was living
with. He said the man flushed his AIDS drugs down the toilet a few
weeks ago, and he's gone without them ever since.

Some nights he stays in a shelter. He spends his days in support
groups, at the occasional job, and on the streets. Gonzales hopes to
get admitted to a Tenderloin youth program where he could get an
apartment and regular medical treatment, and maybe finish high school.

"I wouldn't say I'm homeless," Gonzales said, "but I'm damn near close."

Remarkably, after being hospitalized with a severely weakened immune
system, Gonzales says the level of virus in his body has dropped to
the point it can no longer be detected. Without health insurance, his
medical care has been inconsistent, cobbled together from irregular
visits to the emergency room and AIDS clinic.

It's hard for him to keep a job, but he hopes one day to be a chef --
when he has more money, perhaps, and health insurance, and doesn't
experience get dizzy spells and other side effects from AIDS drugs.

"Now I see younger kids doing what I was doing. If I could take it
back, I would," Gonzales said. "But there's no use sitting here and
feeling sorry for myself."