If my memory isn't too faulty, someone somewhere created World AIDS Day in the late 80s. Maybe it was the ACT UP people. It sort of arrived around the same time as National Coming Out Day and The Quilt. Sobering days created out of sobering times.

When I think about World AIDS Day, I think about Protease Inhibitors. They gave me back my life. No bloggies, I am HIV negative -- or at least was when last tested. But in the late 80s and half of the 90s, I lived with someone who was HIV positive.

That didn't make a difference to me. I was in love and his HIV status was a minor thing. He was healthy and vigorous and taking an AZT cocktail and love would overcome all. We were careful, but no more than otherwise. This was to be my longest relationship.

But by the mid 90s, things were rocky. Not sure if I've written about any of that before. Not much to tell. I don't think he was happy with the path his life had taken, and I had problems of my own.

He and I tried a few things to make it work, things like couples counseling. Sometimes these things would work -- temporarily -- but then old patterns would reemerge and we'd be right back where we were before. Like a toilet that refuses to fully flush. I had made up my mind to leave.

And then he started to get sick. His T-cell count, always relatively stable, began dropping quickly. Along with his weight. He tossed around in bed and sweated so bad that the dye from the sheets leached on to the mattress. He was scared and I could tell that in his eyes. I couldn't leave.

He got into a clinical trial for a new set of drugs. They were shots that he had to administer himself into his stomach. He taught me how to do them in case he got too sick. It should be easier because I didn't need to worry about finding veins, these shots needed muscle or fat. I wouldn't leave.

These new drugs had immediate, if eery, results. His color came back, he began gaining weight. After two months, he had a t-cell count nearly equal to that of a healthy person, a t-cell count he had himself not seen in twelve years.

He was a minister; he praised god for the miracle.

Before I could see or know the results, I walked in a permanent smog. I thought, I have to get through this somehow. I went to a psychiatrist, I got anti-depressants. And whether it was the situation or some weird side-effect, I was getting panic attacks.

They would rush up and suddenly I'd be drowning without water. Maybe I would be out driving or sitting at my desk and everything would be fine. And then something -- a passing reflection, hearing a dog bark, anything -- would bounce off the wall or glint in a mirror and I'd be yanked in a dark undertow, fighting like hell to get back.

He traveled a lot and one day I met him at the airport. I came upon him at the gate, his old weight back, his old color back. Without looking at his watch he said, you are seven minutes late. And I thought, that's it, it's over.

A few years later, when I was dating again, I met a real neat guy. He was a computer programmer and way into the amateur rodeo scene. I have something to tell you, he said on our first date, I'm HIV positive. That doesn't matter, I said and what I remember is the look in his eyes. We had nothing in common but when I visit out west, we still meet for drinks.

So those are my World AIDS Day stories. I could spout off some statistics and talk about how it's still a world threat, perhaps more so because of the lull of these new drugs. But you can read about that on a thousand other sites.