Bill is a good-looking young man in his late 20s. He is around six feet tall, with black hair, pale skin and very blue eyes. He has a slim figure and favors club fashion. It is very likely that he attracts many admiring glances when he walks through Hillcrest. He is surprisingly affable and outgoing, considering that many young gay men with his physical advantages adopt an aloof attitude. Bill is also HIV positive. It is easy to assume that one knows the explanation for this. He looks like a party boy. It was probably too many drugs followed by unprotected sex.

“I know when I was infected,” Bill says, in a recent interview with the Gay & Lesbian Times. “I almost know the exact time and hour. It wasn’t that long ago. I can’t have been positive for more than about nine months. I couldn’t believe it when I found out. I had no idea. I had this cold that kept going into bronchitis and wouldn’t go away. Then I got an infection that wouldn’t heal. The doctor suggested we do an HIV test and I agreed, although I told him I didn’t think that could be it. Well, it came back positive. I’d always played it pretty safe. I didn’t do drugs and sex. I know the guy who infected me. I’m sure he didn’t mean to do it. I’m sure he didn’t even know he was positive himself. I’m going to have to tell him. He was ... I really loved him. We were lovers for five years, then he moved away. We had a chance to see each other a while ago when he came out to California. We went to Palm Springs for a weekend. It was really early, about 5:30 in the morning. I could tell he was awake, and I was awake, and there we were in bed, and we’d run out of condoms the night before, and we didn’t want to go out and get some more, so … it just happened. I’m sure he didn’t know he was infected.”

Maybe Bill’s story is true, maybe it’s not. Maybe he only thinks it’s true: He might have been infected at a completely different time and place and only imagines he knows how it happened. However, assuming his account is true and accurate, it presents some challenges to the scenarios normally presented in prevention literature. The sex wasn’t anonymous or casual. It wasn’t influenced by drugs or alcohol. Bill was with someone he knew and thought he could trust. Strictly speaking, Bill was careless, but who would speak strictly under the circumstances? Nevertheless, a virus is a notoriously unsentimental being, and it never overlooks carelessness.