Looking for Love and Living With HIV Aren’t Incompatible

Linda Luschei met the love of her life in June, 1983. She was at the Beverly Center, sitting at the bar of the Hard Rock Cafe with a girlfriend, when Michael walked up and said she looked like the only woman there who was not pretending to have a good time. Two years later, Michael and Linda were married.

Not long after their wedding, Michael fell gravely ill. A case of chronic hepatitis, treated with blood transfusions before and after their marriage, was causing severe internal bleeding. Surgery was performed and declared a success--but, as the doctors put it, there were “complications.”

The day before Michael died, a blood test determined that he was infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Soon, Linda was found to be infected as well.

For four lonely years she kept her condition a secret, “terrified” that she would be shunned by employers, insurers, even loved ones. “I felt I had lost so much. What else might I lose? What if my family and friends ran away? I thought I’d have to be selfish and live a lie for awhile.”

But when Linda got around to confiding the sad details, nobody important ran away. Life went on. Life got better.

And early last year, Linda took a bold step:

LOVEABLE, PRETTY BLONDE blue-eyed SWF, 33, intelligent, warm, funny. I’m HIV-positive, seeking together SWM for platonic or other relationship. Call. . . .

When Linda placed her personal ad in the LA Weekly, her intentions were sincere and experimental. For some time, the small circle of HIV-positive women that Linda counted among her friends wondered what would happen if one of them laid it on the line like that. Would anyone dare call?

Love in the time of AIDS is a complicated matter. However implausible romance might seem, Linda and her friends agree that their condition does not foreclose the prospects of love and sexual intimacy.

Examples abound. They knew married couples that remained devoted even though one spouse became infected. Within their circle there is Ann Copeland, who with Linda co-founded Women At Risk, a nonprofit HIV services agency. Ann married a longtime suitor whose ardor for her did not dim even though, during a hiatus in their relationship, she became infected by another man.

Linda and her friends realized that some nice, heterosexual, HIV-positive guys might hope to meet women such as themselves. One group called Friends for Life holds monthly potluck dinners expressly for that purpose. And another HIV group, Being Alive, has been printing more personal ads from straights in a matchmaking newsletter called “Connect.”

HIV inspires celibacy in some people for several reasons. They fear they may transmit the virus. They fear rejection. And with their immune systems compromised, they fear encountering other sexually transmitted diseases, or HIV reinfection. But Linda and her friends, as well as many doctors, agree that if proper precautions are taken, sex with HIV is OK. Studies have shown that female-to-male transmission is very rare--and a condom substantially reduces the risk.

A few years after Michael’s death, Linda dated a workaholic engineer who, she said, took a scientific approach to the matter, reading up on HIV and “calculating the risks.” Linda now jokes that no two people ever had safer sex--that, emotionally, “it was like we were in separate rooms.” Eventually they went their separate ways, but not before the relationship taught Linda there was still reason for hope.

The moral equations of sex are complicated by the virus. One of Linda’s girlfriends with HIV says she sees no obligation to inform a prospective sex partner about her condition; just make sure he wears a condom.

That might work for her friend, but not for Linda. What she wants, she said, is not just sex, but a relationship. How would a guy feel, she asks, if after a few weeks of romance you suddenly say, by the way, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. . . .

So Linda tries to be upfront about her condition without being alarmist. That is why Linda’s ad declared that she is, first of all, “LOVEABLE.”

That she is HIV-positive, Linda says, is secondary.

Linda figured that a few men might call the 900 number listed with the ad to leave a message on the voice mail system. As it turned out, more than 60 men left 72 messages. Linda was stunned.

Not all fit the description of the “together” man that Linda desired. The “creepy” calls, she said, came from men who were obviously interested only in sex and seemed to think, “Aha! Now here’s a desperate woman.”

But most men sounded sincere. A few were HIV-positive; the vast majority were not. Overwhelmed by the response, Linda returned calls to about 25 men and felt guilty about not returning several others. Always, she would ask them why they called. Their answers, she said, carried a common theme: That placing the ad was “a very gutsy thing to do . . . and if you were that honest, you’re somebody I’d like to know.”

She met about 10 callers, dating a few more than once. One man, after a few outings, became obsessive and harassed her. One time, when she checked her voice mail, she was greeted by the sound of a man hissing “Sinner, sinner!” She suspects it was the man she jilted.

Two other men proved to be good companions--and steady dates for a period of several months. One was HIV-positive, the other HIV-negative. Linda’s co-workers teasingly referred to one as “Friday,” the other as “Saturday.” Over time those relationships ran their course, evolving from romantic to platonic.

So this SWF finds herself available--but busier than ever in her duties with Women At Risk. Their task, she says, is not only to alert women about the risk of HIV, but to show them that living well is the best revenge.

And, for Linda, it is also a way of honoring Michael.

“He was someone who absolutely grabbed everything from life,” she said. “And really, that’s what I’m doing now.”