Hagrid is in the House!

[Error: unknown template qotd]

I'm from the generation of gay men immediately after the worst of the AIDS crisis. I came out in the late 1980s, and was well aware of the dangers of HIV and the necessity of safer sex by the time I became sexually active. I know in my gut that, had I been born 5 years earlier, I wouldn't have survived unscathed.

I turned 40 this year, and have so far remained HIV-negative.

The hardest part about it for me is that there's an entire generation of gay men before me who simply weren't there for me as I came into my own. Selfish, I know, but I was raised without a father, and I NEEDED all of those surrogate daddies in my life. I missed out on so much without them there to take this scared little boy under their wing. It makes me sad to think about what could have been...