(Tear-jerker alert- this story made me cry)
Because you have to register at the site, I'm posting the whole thing here for those who are too lazy to register
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/met.../27minish.html
Truth trumps HIV in affair of the heart
A hemophiliac infected as a child, Jay Minish spent his teen years and early 20s fearing love was forever off-limits. But he refused to give up his quest.
By HELENA OLIVIERO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/26/04
A chubby-faced Jay Minish pushed the microphone away after his 30-minute speech about living with the virus that causes AIDS.
"Do you have a girlfriend?" a female student asked.
"Not right now, but I hope to have one real soon," Jay said, flashing his signature grin.
"Are you a virgin?" a sweet-looking blonde asked.
Some of the teenagers burst into nervous giggles. An adult moderator at the Alpharetta high school told Jay he didn't have to answer.
But Jay beamed. He liked the question. It went to the core of his struggle as a twentysomething who worried about spending his life alone.
"God, Almighty. That's probably the best question I ever got," he said, blushing. His palms got sweaty.
He brought the microphone close and said, "Yes, I am a virgin."
Born a hemophiliac, Jay was infected with the human immunodeficiency virus as a child while being treated for the inherited blood disorder. Struggling with both illnesses, he lived his life walking a thin wire. A simple fall could provoke uncontrollable bleeding. A mix-up in HIV medication could be deadly.
But he didn't stop living because he was afraid of dying. Jay, a native of Carrollton, traveled across Georgia and spoke to tens of thousands of students as an AID Atlanta speaker. He called his speeches "therapy."
Dressed in Tommy Hilfiger jeans, he blended with his peers. He enjoyed the benefits of young adulthood: independence, close friends and his own car, a canary yellow Dodge Neon.
But what gnawed at him was what he wanted above everything else: romance.
He was part of the first generation of children to survive HIV into adulthood, because of advances in medication. But surviving posed a new set of challenges. Although these children did not contract HIV through sex, they have a disease usually associated with physical intimacy. And that dichotomy made the simple hope of finding true love seem out of reach.
"The hardest part of living with HIV is not having a girlfriend," Jay said.
Walking away
Every Wednesday night over pitchers of Bud Light and a basket of fries, Jay, 24, played trivia with friends at Los Locos in Carrollton.
He reveled in the games and the opportunity to meet women. They flocked to him, a well-mannered young man who wore pressed khakis and a crisp white cotton shirt to bars. He smelled fresh, like Zest.
But when they learned he was HIV-positive, they walked away.
"It happens all the time," said his friend Gena Willard. "A woman will walk up to me and say, 'Jay is so great.' But after a date or two, the woman disappears. She doesn't return his calls or says, 'Let's just be friends.' "
On a night last December, a twentysomething blonde flirted during trivia. He smiled back, but brushed her off.
"I just am not up to it tonight," Jay said as he returned to his seat.
He sat next to his buddy John Olsen. Olsen whistled at his girlfriend, Sarah Muller, to get a kiss. Muller kissed her boyfriend once on the lips, twice on the cheeks.
Jay looked away.
But he knew love was possible.
Three years ago, a nursing student chased him across a parking lot to give him her phone number. He called her a couple of days later, and they laughed through their first date over cheese grits at a Waffle House.
But the woman's mother began to fear the virus, and fear him, according to Jay. After two months, he sat with the woman and her mother at their kitchen table. The mother thought the relationship was too dangerous. She begged the couple to separate.
Jay wept in his car and headed home.
Staying positive
Jay's parents always focused on the positive.
Shortly after he learned of his HIV status in the seventh grade, his parents pulled him off the community swim team after several parents complained. Jay's father, Dan Minish, found another way for his son to swim. As a middle schooler, Jay and his father attended Camp Sunburst, a California summer camp for HIV-infected children.
Jay's parents encouraged their only son to play pingpong and manage the high school basketball team. They indulged him with rare baseball cards, beach vacations and fishing excursions. Though divorced, they regularly sat together with him at Braves games.
Jay and his father, a former sports information director at the State University of West Georgia, developed a spirited college rivalry. Jay rooted for the University of Georgia, his father for Georgia Tech. Jay's mother whipped up his favorite snack — deviled eggs — anytime he asked.
"I never let myself get down because I surround myself by so many positive people — my friends and family," Jay said. "My dad has a way of always making me laugh."
But when it came to girls, his parents — united in concern for their son — were at a loss.
His mother, Terri Todd, knew he was lonely, but what could she possibly say? His father wept openly at the thought. While rejection by girls is a natural part of growing up, Jay never seemed to get a fair shot.
But he was upbeat and thoughtful and had lots of friends. He regularly taped a wrestling show for a friend who worked nights. He obtained a $500 loan last year to help pay for Christmas gifts for his "extended family."
At Applebee's, where he worked as a waiter, he danced in the kitchen to make his co-workers chuckle.
Even Jay's doctors sympathized.
"How are things in the girl department?" Dr. James Steinberg asked during one of Jay's routine visits to Emory University Hospital.
"Nothing new there," he replied, head bowed.
Steinberg asked whether Jay had checked into online dating sites for HIV-positive singles.
"Yeah, I looked at it once, but it didn't feel right," he said.
"Well, we'd be happy to talk to her if it happens," Steinberg said. "And your fan club here" — pointing to a colleague, Dr. Shanta Zimmer — "can also give a thumbs up or down."
Jay laughed.
"OK, OK," he said. "I'll let you know if anything turns up."
'The Speech'
Suzanne Brons, a 23-year-old waitress, first eyed Jay while eating at the Applebee's where he worked.
Those engaging green eyes. His wide smile.
They made eye contact. Jay introduced himself. Suzanne loved his gentle voice. He seemed polite.
Suzanne begged her friend Georgia Richards, who also worked at the restaurant, to pass along her number. Richards said she would, but told her that Jay would need to share a secret before "anything happens."
Later that week, Suzanne saw Jay again at the Mansion, an upscale Carrollton restaurant where she worked.
Someone pointed in Jay's direction and whispered, "You see him? He has HIV."
Suzanne wanted to hear it from Jay. She smiled at him and later approached him. He wanted to buy her a drink.
"I can buy my own drinks, thank you very much," she said.
A few days later, Jay and Suzanne had a date. They met at Jay's one-bedroom apartment in Carrollton to watch the movie "Dumb and Dumberer."
But before Jay slid the video into the player, he turned to Suzanne and gave "the Speech."
"There's something I need to tell you," he said.
He told Suzanne that he was born with hemophilia, a rare disorder in which a person's blood does not clot normally. Sometime during the early 1980s, he was injected with a treatment that was contaminated with HIV. He was diagnosed when he was about 8, but his parents waited a few years before telling him about it.
With his hands clasped on his lap, he said flatly, "This is the part when most girls leave."
Suzanne, a petite blonde with turquoise-colored eyes, did not. She'd dated a legion of losers, men who blew her off, men who were untrustworthy.
"Well, I am not going anywhere," she said.
Jay started the movie. Suzanne slipped her hand into Jay's. As the movie went on, they leaned into each other. They laughed.
Afterward, Suzanne slept in Jay's bed. They held each other tightly. In the middle of the night, Jay awoke and pulled Suzanne's arm around his waist. He had craved a woman's touch. He wanted to be sure she was still there.
For the next three weeks, Suzanne and Jay slept in the same bed every night. They had, according to Suzanne, "a full and complete relationship."
"I think it's safer to be with someone and to know what they have and take precautions instead of being with someone and not knowing," Suzanne said.
They saw each other during work breaks and text-messaged each other with their cellphones.
Jay was romantic. Once he surprised Suzanne with a single red rose, another time with a takeout dinner of country-fried steak and mashed potatoes. He visited four music stores to find a Jimi Hendrix movie after she said she liked his music.
He shared his hope of someday having a son to name after his father.
He sent her a stream of text messages.
I think it is going to work out between us
Home safely? Just making sure
Listen with your heart. Not your mind
Sweet dreams
'I love you'
On May 15, a Saturday, Jay celebrated his buddy Greg Waldrop's upcoming wedding over beers and conversation. Suzanne was working across town, but his friends knew about her. He seemed to have found the real thing.
Celebrating, Jay was tipsy. At some point during the party, he fell down. Falls and bumps can be quite serious for hemophiliacs, but he got right back up.
"Are you OK?" Waldrop asked.
"I am perfectly fine," Jay said.
Jay slept over at Waldrop's and went home Sunday.
By Monday, Suzanne knew something was wrong, but she thought maybe it was that Jay was ignoring her.
"Jay did not blow people off," she said. "But I am insecure."
On Tuesday afternoon, another friend, Steven Cook, swung by Jay's apartment to maybe watch a game. Jay's Dodge Neon was in the parking lot. Cook knocked on the front door. It was slightly ajar, and swung open.
He heard a box fan in Jay's bedroom, but his friend wasn't there. He turned toward the front door to leave, when he noticed a light in the bathroom.
Jay was lying on the bathroom floor with spots of dried blood around his nose and mouth. He was alive, but barely.
Cook called 911. An ambulance rushed Jay to the emergency department at Tanner Medical Center in Carrollton.
Within minutes, a friend notified Suzanne that Jay was in the hospital.
Upon arrival, Suzanne saw Jay's father and stepmother, Cindy, waiting outside the emergency department. Still in her waitress uniform, Suzanne halted at the doors.
She felt close to Jay, but she had known him less than a month. She wasn't sure she should interfere.
Within a couple of hours, more than 100 people — high school friends, customers from Applebee's, buddies, co-workers and Suzanne — stood outside the hospital, forming a circle and praying for Jay.
There was still hope: Jay had swallowed twice and had moved his body slightly. At nightfall, he was transferred to Atlanta Medical Center.
Suzanne tapped out a message on her cellphone while she was on her way to downtown Atlanta.
I know you will get through this. I care for you. I love you.
At the Atlanta hospital, Suzanne walked into Jay's room. As a handful of friends and family members parted to make room for her, she leaned down and gently placed her arms against Jay's body. She sobbed.
Jay had suffered a massive stroke, probably caused by a brain hemorrhage and complicated by his hemophilia. Doctors said it might have been from the fall, or it might have been spontaneous bleeding, common among hemophiliacs.
Jay's family, one close friend and Suzanne held hands and encircled Jay. They recited the Lord's Prayer. Then Jay was taken off life support.
Suzanne knew the relationship was in its early stages. Jay had never met her family. But she mourns a sweet and brief courtship that might have led to something special.
"I have a different kind of hurt," she said. "My hurt is because of the excitement I had. And because I was really looking forward to our relationship."
Epilogue
About a week after Jay's death, his father opened his son's apartment to friends and asked them to take home anything they wanted as a keepsake.
Suzanne fumbled through his closet until she found the blue oxford shirt he wore during their first date. She also picked up the slip of paper with her phone number that he kept on his bedside table.
And while cleaning Jay's car, his father found a note from a teenager, written after one of his speeches:
"Don't worry, you will find someone for you someday."
****
I am very proud to say that Jay's sister is an Alpha Gamma Delta from my chapter. June 25th was his birthday. Angela and her family celebrated Jay's life on a trip to Florida which had been planned to celebrate his birthday before the accident.
This article had been in the making for several months but was just published in the Sunday edition Atlanta Journal.
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