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Chris Whitney tells his friend Erin Kuka about being diagnosed HIV positive early on in the AIDS crisis.
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Piece Description
Chris Whitney tells his friend Erin Kuka about being diagnosed HIV positive early on in the AIDS crisis.
Transcript
Chris Whitney (CW): The first person I told was the person I was dating at the time and that was pretty much the last conversation I had with him. You know, the fear just took over. That kind of made me really weary about opening up to people. So, I decided to do some traveling (1) and I met a Frenchman who would become my partner for the next ten years (2). And I was freaked out about telling him, and I was like, well, I have to tell you something, I, you know, I'm HIV positive. And his response was, "Yeah, and so?" And I thought okay, he didn't understand that.
Erin Kuka (EK): Language barrier.
CW: Right, you don't understand what I mean. And he said, "Yeah, no I understand. And so am I. And so what?" And I was so blown away by that response. I was so used to always being the person who was positive meeting somebody who was negative. It didn't occur to me that I would meet someone w...
Read the full transcript
Intro and Outro
INTRO:It is Friday morning. Time again for StoryCorps -- the project traveling the country, collecting your stories.
And today we have one man's account of living with AIDS.
Chris Whitney lived in San Francisco in the 1980s...
There wasn't much known about AIDS at the time.
He tested positive for H-I-V ...
... and explains what happened next, to his friend Erin Kuka <
Chris Whitney, with his friend, Erin Kuka <
All StoryCorps conversations are archived at the Library of Congress.
And you can sign up for the podcast -- at NPR-dot-ORG.
Musical Works
| Title | Artist | Album | Label | Year | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Densistafabriken | Fredrik | Trilogi. | The Kora Records | 2010 | 00:20 |
Additional Credits
NPR, Corporation for Public Broading
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