Charles Roth

Posted by Dave on February 1, 2010 | 11 Comments

I’ll never forget the time in 1985 when Charles was hanging out with me and Glenn and Trawn one night at our favorite haunt—an all-night diner called the Cricket on Lake Union in Seattle. We were camped out in our usual booth in the back, slurping down endless free refills of weak coffee. Charles needed to use the bathroom, and he carefully placed a napkin over the top of his cup before he left the table. Didn’t he trust us?

Naturally, as soon as he was gone, we dumped every condiment known to man in that cup: sugar, salt, pepper, Coke, ketchup, you name it, before artfully replacing the napkin. As he slid back into the booth, we couldn’t contain ourselves. We were doubled over with laughter before he ever had a chance to lift the cup to his lips. Of course, we felt he had earned our lame attempt at a prank the moment he signaled a lack of trust, but because we were such good friends, we couldn’t let him sip the toxic brew we had made for him. Either that or we just had lousy poker faces. When he figured out what we had done, he scowled indignantly, but we could see in his eyes that he knew he had brought it on himself.

By a year after I finished college, Charles was the only friend from high school I was still in touch with. He was the best man at my wedding.

This picture captures him well. He’s always impeccably dressed, making the rest of us look a little dowdy by comparison. He is a gifted public speaker, and gave a moving toast to us at the reception.

Soon after, he told Greta and me that he was gay, which was a surprise, but also made some sense: every relationship he’d ever been with a girl had been awkward, and always seemed to end in heartbreak. Over the years, though, we lost touch with Charles. We were in New York and he was in Seattle. We had kids and he was single. We knew he was banker, moving up through the ranks of SeaFirst and then Bank of America, doing quite well for himself. But we never seemed to get a chance to see him, and we drifted apart.

Then last June I finally got around to setting up a Facebook page, and saw that Charles had a page too. We “friended,” and shortly thereafter he sent this message:

Greetings Sir. I am glad you found me. I retired from banking a few years ago, wanting to get off before the train wrecked. Now I read, think, and write. Do you ever get back to Seattle?

That seemed a little odd, but maybe Charles had really hit it big in banking and cashed out before the crash. Spending time reading, thinking, and writing sounded good to me—I’d made a career of it. Charles sent me a link to one of of his projects, a dry, understated, but hilarious web site called The Seattle Geographic Society, whose mission is to “go where others have gone before, but more boldly.” (Read it! Read the whole thing!)

But I soon found I had been right to suspect this new life of leisure wasn’t undertaken by choice. On September 9, Charles sent me an email with a one-word subject line: favor. Here’s the text of his message:

Hi Dave,

Well I wish I could be writing about something else but I’m not.

I need to ask a big favor..I am really in a jam.  If you can’t help I totally understand.

It’s a long story and I can tell you more by phone and email

but short version is I have been dealing with a progressively worse diagnosis of HIV/AIDS.  I had to leave corporate life, I was able to handle self employed project work for awhile, but can’t even do that anymore.

I am applying for disability, etc. but it is a long, difficult process.

I have sold everything I owned but my clothes to keep going, even my computer.  The one I am using now I found on the street for free and fixed up.

I am finally in an apt I will be able to afford within the next month, as some state benefits kick in.

I need to see if there is any way I could borrow some money to cover the rent and the deposit to stay here….

Anyway…I don’t know where to turn..I have begged, and sold …I can see a way to a simple safe life but I need some help to get to the final step.

Please let me know one way or the other.

I am sorry to drop this on you.

Cordially,
Charles

I was floored. AIDS can do that to you? Really? I hadn’t been following the research closely, but I seemed to recall that there were now plenty of effective treatments. Hadn’t Magic Johnson been completely cured? I knew there were still major problems in developing countries, but I thought that was just a question of affording drugs.

My first priority was helping Charles. I gave him some money, and friends were eventually able to secure a free room for him on Whidbey Island, about 40 miles and a ferry ride from Seattle, where he lives on $339 a month in state disability, plus $200 in food stamps.

But I couldn’t escape wondering: If I didn’t know this about AIDS, then how many others were similarly ignorant? Even with this new knowledge, there was much I didn’t know. How typical is Charles’ case? What other hurdles do people with HIV and AIDS face? Is the problem getting better or worse? Are researchers making any progress finding a cure?

For the next month, I’m going to do my best to answer those questions. I’ll be sharing more of Charles’ story, but I’ll also share the stories of the people who are still working to fight HIV and AIDS in America. I’ll try to explain the treatments and why they don’t always work, get a sense of how significant the problem is, and learn what the prospects are for the future.

I’m going to be doing a lot of learning myself. While I’ve followed the news, I’m clearly not as well-informed about HIV and AIDS as I should be, so I hope readers will offer their insights, stories, and links to more information in the comments on this blog.

If there’s a particular aspect of this topic you’d like me to follow up on, don’t hesitate to ask about it and I’ll do what I can to find out more.

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