Bobby Reynolds Describes Living with AIDS (1986)

but the main part of this is it's associated usually with an incredible amount of pain and people are not able sometimes to even swallow their own saliva. [Reynolds]: So here it is now like a week and a half after that started, and they're healing pretty good but I'm still having fevers at night and I'm starting to have night sweats. [Narrator]: Until last year Bobby counted on his lover Mark to see him through the bouts of sickness and the fear of dying from AIDS. They had been together for eight years but Mark died last fall. [Reynolds]: Mark Mark Mark. He had its good points and bad points as we all do. He's a little arrogant. He was very strong willed about certain things. But we had fun. [Narrator]: When Bobby was diagnosed in 1982, Mark was apparently healthy but in April of 85 he too was diagnosed, struck

by cancer, and a debilitating paralysis. The disease progressed quickly in Mark. [Mark]: And I, I truthfully admit that I missed being able to go to restaurants and go to a movie. I mean I'm just not mobile enough to do that and those things are still important. I want to work. You know, I want to go in my kitchen and Cook. I want to be able to help him work in the backyard and - [Reynolds]: Well I tried to prepare myself as much as possible because I knew his death was inevitable. But you really can't. He went into respiratory failure. And he had done that twice before so I called to [inaudible] for the ambulance, the paramedics. But he was gone. He was the most important person in my life for a long time. And I think that says it all for anybody no matter what your sexual preference is, to you have somebody in your life that's the most important

person and that's who he was. Is. What's next? So I'll live it and I'll breathe it and I'll eat it for so long and then I'll say, break time. You know. Let's go blow bubbles, let's go read a murder mystery. Let's just unplug the phone and forget about it. Luckily I can do that.