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"I now know that he was frequenting gay bars, in a city 4 hours away, when he said he was just being with friends. The other day, he told us he is HIV positive. Why am I not surprised. I tried; my wife tried; but he had way too much reinforcement in the university community -- in the counseling department, in the music department, in the university atmosphere at large, and in the nightlife, much of which is conducive to 'it'."

My sympathies and prayers are with you. Your story is very similar to that of my now-deceased best friend. We were extremely close most of our lives. He moved to North Carolina and even briefly married another girl we both went to school with. They had a daughter, Rianne. They struggled to make ends meet but seemed happy.

Something happened down there...suddenly he left his wife and was making big bucks as a real estate broker, a job he was not qualified for. He abruptly moved to Oregon and loved it there...he could really wax poetic about Oregon. Now Oregon IS a lovely state, but it's the state where he came "out of the closet", so he and I weren't seeing the same "scenery" when we were looking at Oregon. He stopped talking about his beautiful little girl, too...I didn't push him, figuring the divorce was still too sensitive a subject.

A year later he was HIV positive. He moved back to North Carolina with his equally HIV positive male partner. 3 years later he was dead. His mother and father went through hell. None of us have ever been able to forgive him for the selfishness and STUPIDITY that cut his life so short.

As a side note, so as not to get off the topic of the thread, he was NOT bullied.