Scott Fried has lived with HIV for 31 years and has lost 134 friends to AIDS since.
Fried, HIV/AIDS educator and speaker, brought Penn State students and State College community members to tears with his discussion on “AIDS, Love, and the Meaning of Life” at 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 28 in 233A HUB-Robeson Center.
“He is such an inspiring speaker,” Jeremy Sandberg, who works for the Pennsylvania Expanded HIV Testing Initiative, said. “The message of HIV, you can lose the personal aspect, and he so eloquently spoke about his story, I thought it was wonderful.”
Fried told the story of how once he was infected with HIV in 1987, a man he worked with handed him a piece of paper with his phone number, telling him he knew his secret.
“How easily we surrender our dreams to a stranger when they say, ‘I know you,'” Fried said.
He explained the questions he asked himself as he walked up each flight of stairs to the man’s apartment, the last question being, “Am I enough?”
Fried made one mistake that changed his life forever – he forgot a condom. He thought, it was just one time, he would be safer next time.
He asked the man if he had been tested for HIV during a time when it was an epidemic. The man told him he was tested six weeks ago. But Fried neglected to ask if he had any unsafe sex since then.
“We tell ourselves the truth, but we rarely, if ever, tell ourselves the whole truth,” Fried said. “I got infected with HIV because I wanted love.”