My Apartment at the "Alamo" was #206. It was a room divided by curtains (from ceiling to floor) that David had inherited from the Starck Club. My bed and three windows were on the other side of the curtains with the living area, turntables and wall of records in the front by the entrance. On the left was the kitchen and bathroom. Very small but that didn't stop me from having people over and playing music. Many nights most of my neighbors (and whoever else happened to be around) would pile into my efficiency apartment to talk about various subjects, listen to new music from the record pool, get ready to go out and never make it, stay up all night and then pretend we hadn't been up all night but whatever we did we always managed to laugh a lot. I guess with all that was going on in the world around us everything seemed dark and so did the future. We didn't even know if we had a future. AIDS seemed to be taking so many people and it was starting to be more and more people we knew. How would we survive this scary disease? Depression was setting into the deepest, unexplored parts of my soul. I tried to stay upbeat and busy. It wasn't working anymore and I couldn't stop coughing. Is it coming? Am I getting sick? For the next two months or so I fought depression and mild flu like symptoms. Then Christmas 1989. I Drove home to Wichita Falls still feeling down. I had my bishon frise, Cloudy, with me. We slept most of the time at my parents on the couch watching TV. Cloudy would sleep on his back between my arm and the side of my belly. I always felt a little better when I went to sleep with him. Safe for some reason, as if he could protect me. LOL. I don't remember too much about being there that Christmas but as I was leaving my Mom handed me a cassette tape that had belonged to my grandmother, Bop. I looked at the cassette called optimism and thought I would give it a try on the way home. I listened to the tape front and back all the way back to Dallas. I was alone, except for Cloudy, so I really concentrated on listening to the recording. One side was ocean waves that supposedly had subliminal effects and the other side was a man talking about taking deep breaths and imagining you are looking up at the sky. Stuff like that. I know this sounds so crazy but I when I got home something seemed odd or different but I couldn't put my finger on it so I went to sleep. The next morning I woke up and realized I wasn't sick anymore. Better than that I wasn't depressed either. At first I thought, "Oh don't get too excited it will probably be back later in the day." Days went by and I never got depressed feeling or felt sick. Then weeks. Then one day I remembered the cassette and wondered if that could have been how I suddenly felt well. I had really been sceptical of metaphysics/hypnotism/subliminal healing or anything like that but the experience definitely was enough to open my mind to it. A few months later I got up enough nerve to go get an HIV test. I either was positive or negative and I needed to know. I had been running away from reality for too long. Frank and I planned to be each other's support and get tested in Wichita Falls. Actually I asked Frank to go with me and he said he would get tested too. We drove down one afternoon to Wichita Falls to the flower shop where my Mom worked. When I got there and saw her I started crying. She told me it would be ok. I wondered how she could have came to that determination. I didn't see any way it could turn out OK. Mother drove us there to the health clinic. The nurse took my blood and said, "Thank you, your results will be available by phone in a few days." I was stunned to find out that we would not be getting the results immediately. I was relieved. I felt better. It was done..............not so much. Weeks turned into months and I still had not called in to get my results.