World Aids Day
To Those Who Care;
Today is a special day for me. March tenth will mark thirty-seven years that I have been HIV positive. I have never been in the hospital with an opportunistic HIV-related condition. I am a long-term non-progressor. On July eighth, Ninteen eigthy-six, I was knowingly infected by two men from Palm Springs, CA, while I was living in Missoula, and working as a bartender at the Duelin Dalton Saloon. At the time I was curious about my sexual orientation, and these men,, whom I met at a party at Bill Summers and Gary Holt of Missoula earlier that day, invited me to stop by after the bar closed . It was a choice that I would never regret, since I am here today writing this blog, and I would not be the compassionate man i am.
I never regret anything....except leaving Clarence Smelcer behinid in Anchorage but that's a whole blog that deservers it's own title.
These men drugged me with MDMA and repeatedly administered amyl nitrate, and raped me. This was not a consentual act but I figured that since I chose to take the drug and drink their whiskey, that I get what I deserve.
OMG, I thought. How do I tell Kathy this? Hungover and squatting over a log to shit my g.i. tract out like entrails of a gutted mule deer, I felt just aweful for the man float trip down the Alberton Gorge of the Clark's Fork of the Columbia River, west of Missoula. Professional rafting company, regulation life preservers, and having grown up on a lake and having my lifeguard certification, I knew how to swim.
John Hedrick of Palm Springs did not know how to swim. we came up to a 'tumbleweed' or 'catcher's mitt' and the front of the raft where I was flanking right, John in the center, and another man Matt was on the left front of the raft when the stern hit the water at a ninety degree angle, dumping us and our paddles out. As I swam to the swirling raft, I got pulled under by the undertow and my feet were gripping the sandy bottom as I pushed up to the light. I was sent badck to the bottom and thats when I resigned myself to God. I just let my muscles relax, and I floated in the inverted crucifi position with my ankles crossed tightly. The heel of john's right foot hit me in the forehead and that was the last time I saw John alive.
When I was expelled to the surface, I could not believe how long I was underwater. Two to thrree minutes according to the remaining three men in the raft. The raft was now downstream and I had to negotiate class IV rapids to reach the sand bar where they were. Once they pulled me in, johns paddle and life preserver floated past us and his partner, David Doughten, a native of Chinook, MT, passed out from the trauma. He had to return to attend his business in Palm Springs, CA, so I was left with the dubious task of identifying John's body ten days later after he was recovered in a hundred feet of water.
I also picked up his cremated remains and flew to San Diego to play the piano at his memorial and I got to meet all his friends.
Call it The Stockholm Syndrome, but I had compassion for David and we fell in love after 5 months. I had moved to Palm Springs after a disasterous trip from Missoula, to Forest Lake, Minnesota, to Ixtapa, Mexico and back to Missoula in a dodge van, to help my mother relocate. The trip pretty much soured my relationship with my mother and strained my relationship with Kathy. She was such a trooper.
I was set to fly one-way to Honolulu where Kathryn is from. She was a Porter on a cruise line. She got me a car and a job. My mom had bought us tickets to Europe and a one month Eurail pass for two. On March tenth, nineteen eighty-seven, I got my HIV test result as sero-positive. My flight left on the seventeenth, just one week later. I sat in a rental car with the keys in the ignition and I couldn't turn the car on to head to LAX. I got out and called Kathy and said I wasn't coming.
"Whattya mean 'not coming'? Did your flight get canceled?"
"No, Kathryn, I can't come. Period. Something terrible has happened and I cannot bring myself up to telling you right now..."
"Damn you!! I just had my nails done!" she said.
A few days later I received a fedex parcel with a missing bottle of my cologne, and a seven page blistering commentary over my gross missteps. I deserved every word she wrote.
Three years and 6 months later, on August Twelve, Nineteen Ninety, at two-forty in the morning, David took his last breath while I held him in my arms. I weep as I write this, as the pain will never ever ever go away.
Journey Hate-Free Millenium (I had a small part during the trial of Matthew Shepards killers) I met Judy Shepard twice. That woman has more compassion in her pinkie finger than this whole country combined for forgiving her son's killers.
The Sum of Us. I was in the last scene dancing.
This blog is dedicated to my Long Time Companion, Clarence Smelcer, to whom I love more now than I did twenty years ago when we met. More later!
Chadrugroden@gmail.com
406-220-8623
my randomly generated Verizon phone number is rather unique. 1986 is when I left Montana, and 2023 is when I returned. Stranger things....
