Scott Fried contracted HIV in 1987. The first advice he received after the diagnosis was to find a sense of self. For Fried, that purpose has become to share his stories with others.

He did that Wednesday night when he spoke to about 200 students in Schine Student Center on AIDS prevention, self-mutilation, drug and alcohol abuse and the importance of self-love.

As hard as it can be to share the intimate and admittedly scary details of life with strangers, Fried said he does it in an effort to save lives.

‘I’m here because I want you to live,’ Fried told the audience.

Fried asked the audience to look into their own pockets and see what secrets they are keeping inside. Fried encouraged everyone to find someone who they love and who love them for who they really are, despite what they keep in their pockets.

‘It was like an epiphany,’ said Ariana Reed, a sophomore biochemistry major. ‘He makes you realize we are not invincible.’

Fried is the author of three books aimed at helping young adults. His third book, ‘The Private Midnight: A Teenagers Scrapbook of Secrets,’ is a collection of all the words teenagers carry around in their pockets everyday, too afraid to let them out.

‘We all have the same things in our pockets,’ Fried said. ‘In one pocket we have a cell phone that lets us know we are not alone. In our other pocket we have our memories. Memories of what people have done to us and the memories of what we have chosen to do.’

Fried said he remembers his first lecture at Herricks High School in New Hyde Park, N.Y. in May 1998. At the time, Fried’s boyfriend was in the hospital dying of AIDS. He remembers feeling sad and wanted the students to understand HIV was a real threat that affects real people.

But he also remembers being happy because, for the first time, he had a captive audience.

‘They really wanted to know, and I really wanted them to know. If it happened to me, it could happen to anybody, because it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,’ Fried said.

Fried also addressed depression and the feelings associated with it. At some point, all teenagers will feel alone, scarred, defective, invisible and unloved.

These are normal feelings and instead of filling the emptiness with drugs, alcohol, sex or self-mutilation, young adults must let themselves feel the emptiness in a safe way.

‘Let the emotions wash over you,’ Fried said.

Fried said he has not always been able to share his most inner thoughts with his friends and family, let alone a roomful of strangers. He struggled to come to terms with both his diagnosis and his sexual orientation.

‘I spent the first 24 years of my life in a proverbial closet,’ Fried said. ‘It was the gay and HIV closet.’

But Fried does not refer to himself as a victim. He said he is partly at fault for what happened. He contracted the virus after his first and only unsafe sexual encounter. He’s since made it his mission to inform people on the importance of safe sex and the reality of the disease.

Fried, a short man with a thin build, pointed at himself and said, ‘This is HIV, this is what it looks like, this is what it sounds like.’

He ended the night by showing a slideshow that he narrated of some of the 129 friends he’s lost to the disease.

Candice Cepeda, a sophomore architecture major, said Fried’s lecture was deep and touching.

‘His story was really compelling and his message reached everyone tonight,’ Cepeda said.

After the slideshow, Fried made a point to look into every person’s eyes in the audience so that he could connect with them, ‘eye to eye, heart to heart.’

hadrost@syr.edu

Published on October 21, 2009 at 12:00 pm