A Triumph of Love : Caring Mates, Committed to Each Other, Now Must Live With an Unwelcome Intruder as the Specter of AIDS Touches Their Lives

They are among the luckiest people in Los Angeles.

In a city of singles searching for the ideal mate, they have found one. Love--unconditional and irrevocable--illuminates their daily lives, turns even mundane moments into memories.

They are among the unluckiest, too.

They have gambled and lost. One or both has done something that has altered their lives forever. They live with HIV, the AIDS virus.

They go to work, to movies, on weekend trips. They hike together, bike, stand in supermarket lines, shop for shoes and visit the dentist, just as they always have. On the outside, it’s business as usual.

But in their relationships, nothing is really the same.

The way they kiss, make love, plan meals, treat their own and other people’s injuries, the way they cuddle children has changed.

They worry that something minor--like skinning a knee--will cause catastrophe, because their immune systems are so compromised. They worry that no matter how careful they are, they might infect the people they are closest to.

They are not necessarily depressed or hopeless, they want you to know. In fact, psychologists who work with couples who have HIV say that people like these--in stable relationships--are the lucky ones. If the relationship was good beforehand, experts say, then the couples generally will stay together. “I’ve not seen a lot of people destroyed by the news. I’ve actually seen very few,” says Leon McKusick, a San Francisco psychologist and a researcher for the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at UC San Francisco.

Here are the stories of three Los Angeles-area couples whose lives have been changed by the AIDS virus. Their names have been changed to protect their privacy; they have not told families, friends or employers about their condition.

Mark and Nancy live on a San Fernando Valley street dotted with cozy homes and carpeted with autumn leaves. This is where the couple, both 36 and married for six years, planned to raise a family. He is a film executive; she manages real estate.

They met in 1985, while waiting in a supermarket line.

Until then, Mark says: “I worried constantly that I would never find the right woman--someone I could be with all the time and never get bored. Someone who would never get bored with me. Nancy was it.”

Nancy, then 29, was searching, too. In the few months since she’d been divorced from her first husband of five years, she’d had a few unexciting dates and even less exciting sex. “One or two times I went to bed with someone. That was all I did. I was on the Pill and I felt safe.”

They married in 1986, after dating for a year. “We felt like the luckiest couple in the world,” Mark says. “We skied, played tennis, traveled.”

They applied for life insurance in 1989, not concerned about the blood tests they were asked to take.

Nancy learned she was HIV positive in a letter denying her insurance.

“It was a horror. I had no way to find the people I might have got it from. It wasn’t my ex-husband, I’m sure. So I got educated fast. I read everything I could on HIV and joined a support group of gay men who opened their hearts to me. Last September, I started going to a women’s support group as well.”

Mark, who has tested negative, went with her a few times but stopped because it depressed him too much. “I came home and cried because the people were so sick,” he says. “I try not to think about her illness. I try not to worry before there’s a need.”

Nancy worries all the time. Although she feels and looks “pretty healthy,” her T-cell count is below 200, which is not good. (The count in a healthy adult is about 1,000, doctors say, but it can vary.)

She said she’s had two cases of shingles and a “horrible, dehydrating gastrointestinal virus that came from eating chicken not cooked well enough. People with normal immune systems aren’t bothered by the virus, but it could kill a person like me.”

They ride bikes, go to movies and to dinner, as they always have. “But we don’t have sex,” Mark says. “We have physical contact, of course. But no intercourse or oral sex.”

Nancy says she has “transcended sex. . . . My doctors haven’t said what I can or cannot do, but I don’t want the responsibility of possibly giving this to him.” She also isn’t sure she wants the responsibility of becoming pregnant and possibly passing the virus onto her child.

Meanwhile, the illness and medication are tiring her out, she says. “I try to live a stable life. I go to work every day. I can’t really sit at home and wait. . . . It doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve probably had this thing for five or six years, so I could last another four years” without getting really sick. “Or it could happen next month,” she says.

Tears trickle down Mark’s face as he listens. “I try not to think about it,” he sobs. “But sometimes I can’t help myself.”

Nancy has not told her employer she is sick because she might lose her job and health insurance.

She has not told the truth to her family or her friends. “I do not want to be a warrior, to battle people’s opinions of me.” There’s a perception that AIDS comes only from taking drugs or being promiscuous, she says.

“I don’t want the stress of having to have to deal with all that.” Her friends would be “blown away” if they found out, she says. “They think they don’t know anyone with this disease, that no one ‘normal’ like me could have it. That’s because everyone who has it is in hiding, just like me. I am in hiding from everyone.”

Except from Mark, of course. “I think this must be love,” she says with a smile. “Otherwise, he would have left by now.”

“I will never, ever leave you,” he says, in tears again. “I used to picture us holding hands and walking down a road when we are 85.”

“Now you’re being negative,” Nancy scolds. “You’re saying I won’t be around by then.”

“You know very well that you’re more negative than I am,” he shoots back in mock argument.

They look at each other and laugh.

Lisa and Danny look like children themselves. Both slim, blond and baby-faced, they have been together two years, since they met in Hollywood.

He is 26 and is HIV positive. She is 24 and has AIDS-related complex. Their beautiful 6-month-old baby, Laura, has full-blown AIDS--and they didn’t know any of this until three months ago.

They think they were infected by intravenous drugs they took before they met each other.

She ran away at 14 after living in a succession of Midwestern foster homes. He married young in Iowa and came here with his wife. “My wife ran off with someone else; I had no money and no job. I did anything I could to stay alive,” Danny says.

From the day Lisa and Danny met, “we’ve held each other together--we’ve never been apart,” Danny smiles.

First they lived in shabby motels and did odd jobs, unable to save enough to rent an apartment. When he landed a food catering job that paid good money, they rented the Hollywood apartment in which they now live. Then he earned even better money as a maintenance man.

“We wanted a child very much but didn’t think we could have one,” he says. “When it happened, we thought we could finally put our bad times behind us.”

It was not to be. Lisa gave birth and came home with her baby not knowing any of them were sick. “We assumed they’d test for AIDS, because I told them I’d injected drugs,” Lisa says. “But they didn’t.”

A few weeks later, Lisa was hospitalized for a month with pneumonia and tuberculosis. This time, doctors tested the whole family--and the terrible truth emerged.

Now their apartment looks like a pharmacy, with wicker baskets of medicine scattered everywhere.

Danny welcomes a visitor as he fills a four-inch oral syringe with medicine he calls “baby AZT.” At the same time, Lisa fills another syringe with different medication. The baby, in a swing and gurgling happily, doesn’t cry as Lisa tilts up her head and quickly empties the syringe into her throat. “She likes the taste of that one,” Danny says. “But she hates the tastes of AZT.”

They lift Laura onto the sofa. Lisa holds her little arms while Danny puts the syringe way back in her mouth. The baby coughs, wails, waves her skinny legs until Lisa picks her up and dances around the room. Danny doesn’t take his eyes off the two of them.

“The doctors say we’ll have the baby for six months to two years,” he says, suddenly in tears, “so we have to make her life the best we can. Everything’s just a little more precious because of it.”

Lisa is in shock, he says, and refuses to think about their tragedy. “I told her she’s got to think about it. She’s got to get with the program.” Lisa takes AZT once a day instead of five times a day, as prescribed, because the medicine makes her sick.

Danny seems traumatized, too. “Lisa and the baby are the best thing that ever happened to me. And now we have a decent apartment--things are starting to look up.” But this week he quit the job where he worked 12 hours a day, because the family needs him at home, he says. “I have to get a job with more normal hours until we get on our feet again.”

He seems to hug or touch Lisa and Laura every other minute, as if to make sure they’re still there. “If there’s any kind of mercy in this world, they’ll find some help for us,” he says, in tears again. Lisa hugs him and rubs his back.

He and Lisa use “heavy protection” nowadays if they have sex, which is increasingly rare.

Their landlord and neighbors know they are sick. “Five people with AIDS live in this apartment complex,” Danny says. “We all help each other. We’re careful about anyone who visits. We don’t want to catch their germs, because it would make us sicker . . . and we don’t want to contaminate them with ours. If anyone has an open cut, we tell him to be very cautious around here. We don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”

Bob, 37 and John, 31, are in love. “It was instant attraction,” says John, an anthropologist.

“He’s tall and dark; I’m blond and short. He’s HIV positive, I’m not. That made no difference to us,” he says. “I see the man, not the virus. There’s so much more to him than that.

“We’re in this for the duration. Hopefully things will get better. But if not, that’s when he’ll need me most.”

They live in an old Spanish-style building in Silver Lake, with 40 birds and two cats as pets. They have “redefined sex,” they say, as something very erotic and yet safe.

“There’s music and lighted candles all around, mutual masturbation, a lot of foreplay--it’s all very nice and sweet,” John says. “The whole sex act does not have to be centered on intercourse. But if you do have intercourse, it’s crucial to use condoms, spermicides and to pull out before ejaculating--even when when you have a condom.”

Bob, a medical historian who’s known since 1989 that he’s HIV positive, says his former lover left him when he found out. “But the HIV didn’t make any difference to John. It’s basically become part of our lives. That’s just the way it is, and I have that perspective now, too. It’s so much easier when your lover says it’s OK with him.

“What’s really nice about our relationship is the touching and the hugging and the holding,” he says.

Still, “there are always worrisome thoughts going through my head. I went through hepatitis and was very upset when I kissed a pregnant woman on the cheek and thought I’d given it to her.”

John is tested for the virus every six months, Bob explains, just to be on the safe side.

The men are open about Bob’s illness with their families, friends and colleagues.

“I had some fears about how my family would react,” Bob says, “but they treat me as they always did. They let me hold the my brothers’ and sisters’ kids, which I was afraid they might not let me do any more.”

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Where to Call

These hot lines will answer questions and refer callers to HIV/AIDS testing sites. Operating hours vary.

* Southern California HIV/AIDS Hotline: (800) 922-2437

* Spanish-language hot line: (800) 222-7432

* Asian-languages hot line (Cantonese, Farsi, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Tagalog, Tonga, Vietnamese): (800) 922-2438

* Hearing-impaired hot line (TTY): (800) 553-2437

* Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center: (213) 464-7400