Greg Harris, Chicago, Illinois

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44-YEAR-OLD GAY MALE, TESTED POSITIVE IN 1988 · HELPED FOUND OPEN HAND, SERVED AS PRESIDENT FOR THREE TERMS, NAMED OPEN HAND'S INDIVIDUAL OFTHE YEAR IN 1999 · HELPED ESTABLISH THE AIDS WALK $ MAYOR RICHARD M. DALEY'S POINT MAN FOR THE LANDMARK, CONTROVERSIAL NORTH HALSTED STREETSCAPE PROJECT · ALDERMAN MARY ANNE SMITH'S CHIEF OF STAFF SINCE 1991 · INTHE MIDST OFA LONG STRUGGLE WITH ALCOHOL ABUSE

"I took care of everyone else in the world, but never did a thing for myself. I was out there being cheerful, brave, thrifty, clean, reverent, strong, you know, helping people who've just been diagnosed. Saying you need to talk to your therapist openly about it, you need to be open with your friends, you need to share your feelings. Giving all this advice to people, which was the good and the right thing to say, and doing absolutely none of it for myself."

"Soon my life sort of became a grind of working all day in politics and advocacy, spending nights and weekends at community and political events doing policy and advocacy, while my personal life drained away. I was getting very little sustenance personally. I didn't do anything that was fun, and also the effects, between advanced HIV disease and all these drugs, you know, made it very hard to even spontaneously go out and do anything. I had diarrhea that was so bad, I couldn't, for many years, go out of the house without having to take special medication and waiting for an hour for the diarrhea to subside. And then I knew I had five hours from the time I had taken the pill to the time it wore off. The idea of going and doing fun things just totally disappeared. I stopped doing them. I was just never available. I was always busy when people invited me to do things. I'd say, 'I can't do it, I'm tired,' I mean, just the shame involved in that. And often at work and in less public places the drug did wear off in the middle of stuff and it wasn't too nice. I'd have to excuse myself from meetings. I kept my beeper on silent so that I could look at it and say, 'Oh, I just got paged,' run home, take a shower; change my pants and come back to work and never let on. Stressful. Never dealt with it, never said a word. I was slowly sinking into this little pit. I hate to use the word -despair -but sadness, despair; that's what it was. And after two years of sobriety, just recently I relapsed again. I'd been told that I'd failed the last, at the time, existing protease
inhibitor; that there really wasn't much else that could be done. So I had all those health issues, and I would talk about it with people, but I would just make it a declarative sentence. 'Well, guess what my doctor told me,' and then cheerfully move on to another topic, and never dealt with the fear or the anxiety or any of those things. People thought, 'What a guy! What an inspiration!"' "I would come home and inspire myself with wiskey, until I didn't have to think about those feelings anymore, until passing out."

"So once again, I was cheerfully back in detox Jand suddenly realized that I have to do for myself, as a person living with AIDS and as a person who is a substance abuser; all the things I do for other people. It's too convenient a crutch. I look at what I do in the community certainly as good things, but it is as much a mood altering substance for me as alcohol and drugs. Running out and dealing
with everyone else's problems, and stuffing my own feelings, is just as dangerous because it's escape, it's oblivion, it's a way to avoid dealing with what's going on with me. It's a high, absolutely. The constant activity, the constant outward-directed stuff, even toward really good causes, does help you stay away from yourself and your own issues."

"It's always been important to me to present this image of- I think this dates back to being a gay child, you know, especially a sexually aCtive one in my young teens - of wanting to be the best little boy in the world, and project this great image so my parents would be proud of me, and my teacher would be proud of me, because I had this dirty, shameful secret. After 44 years, I'm still doing that in every part of my life. The image I project has got to be the strong, wonderful guy who's got everything in order and at the same time, falling apart inside. And putting myself in a box, because to admit that would be to shatter the image. And that's what I've got to learn to deal with. The image is nothing more than an image, and if I can't hold myself together; then even if I want to be of help t.o other people, and
I still do, I'm not going to be too much use lying here on this couch with a bottle of Jack and a cat."

"This is one of the last few really shameful secrets that I have -that I am a sort of scared, frightened, anxiety-ridden kid, you know, who's worried about dying -that's trying to dd good, trying to be of help to others, that's also got to admit for the first time that I have to be of some help to myself. You can bring other people comfort, and strength, and hope and all those things, but if you don't have them yourself, then your own life isn't going to be too worth living."

Reprinted with permission from the Faces of AIDS Project and the Chicago Department of Public Health. For more information on this project please contact Jim Pickett.