 "Photo: Liz Naro - Staff Photographer")
Four pills, down the hatch.
"Because I didn't use a condom," he says.
Five more, swigged with water.
"Because I said, 'Next time, I'll be safer. I swear.'"
Scott Fried holds up clusters of pills, dedicating each chug to the night he said 'yes' when the answer most definitely should have been 'no.'
Twenty-two pills later, he's finished his "cocktail," but just for now.
In about three hours, right before bed, he'll swallow 30 more pills and wish a dozen more times that he didn't have HIV.
Every moment counts
Scott Fried's life could be defined in numbers. For the past 12 years, he's talked to several million students in more than 100 schools about a fatal virus which claimed him 17 years ago.
He's been to UNH twice, and on Tuesday night, he spoke to more than 450 people in the Granite State Room, the biggest crowd he's seen in two years.
Fried is only 40 years old, but he has a dozen or so friends who have already succumbed to AIDS. He wants everyone to know their stories, and his story, because when he was first diagnosed in 1987, he thought his life would amount to being a memorial candle in his mother's kitchen window.
Now, it's because he's taking his life into his own hands, representing himself the way he says he wants to be represented. And also, he said, because he knows no better story that will make students think about protecting themselves during sex.
For Fried, every moment counts. Perhaps he's most intense when he asks the audience to count with him, to engage in a moment of his life.
Fried takes 104 to 110 pills each day, a diet that helps keep his current T-cell count at a satisfactory 323. At 200, one is considered to have full-blown AIDS. Infection-free people, he says, have about 1,100.
He tells Tuesday's audience that in one week, he will visit the doctor for a routine checkup. Though his days are numbered, Fried takes his optimism there and everywhere.
"Any day, any year," he says. "But not now."
"Hear a piece of yourselves"
Fried grew up on Long Island living what he calls a "life of contradiction." He had the popular, athletic, happy side and a vulnerable, insecure, "are they laughing at me?" side. This, he says, is what makes him the same as everyone else.
"I learned to hate myself growing up," he said. "I learned to like myself. I learned to be a contradiction."
Fried went to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., but transferred to New York University after his roommates pinned a picture of a nude man on his door. The picture, he said, simultaneously "thrilled" him and made him feel like his heart "must truly be ugly."
After graduation, Fried worked at a theatre in the city. There, he met a man who seemed to "know his secret." Both afraid and intrigued, Fried joined the man in his loft, all the while asking himself questions and fending off doubt.
Fried was scared, he said, scared of rejection and vulnerability. He said everyone feels this way at some point, and he encouraged the audience to "hear a piece of themselves" in his story.
"I wanted someone to take me out of the feeling of invisibility," Fried said, "to know that I existed."
He thought he could trust his lover's knowledge. Fried figured if his lover knew he was infected with HIV, he would have told Fried about it.
These, Fried said, are assumptions he shares with everyone he speaks to.
"Everyone is promised a phone call," Fried said. "Everyone wants to be someone's number one. Everyone wants to be remembered tomorrow."
And at some point during the month of December 1987, Fried let one night go without protection. He was "too scared" to say no.
"Somewhere in that month, because I turned my head and looked away, somewhere in that month I got infected with HIV," Fried said. "And if it could happen to me, it could happen to you."
No love lost, no sugar coating. Fried says he doesn't blame himself for getting infected-not anymore.
He knows he is dying, but says that right now, "I'm as alive as I'm ever going to be."
See the echo of your life
Fried is the author of two books, and during his 12 years on the speaking circuit, he's received letters from thousands of teens. Some plead for help, some ask for advice and still others write just to vent.
But Fried said virtually all of them, in one way or another, say "I'm so scared."
He encouraged the audience to think about their own lives and their own feelings of fear and doubt. He said it's not easy being a young adult today, because all everyone wants to say is "don't judge me, fix me or solve me."
"It has to be OK that we change our minds," he said. "It has to be OK that we don't make sense. It's not OK to get drunk and have unsafe sex, or sex at all."
Take a reality check, he said.
"At the end of each day, look at the stuff in your pockets, the echo of your life. See who you are in the moment. Become accountable for yourselves in the presence of others."
Fried talked about sacredness, asking the audience to repeat after him: "I value my life. I value my mistakes. And even though I make mistakes, I am sacred."
Senior Jen Jerome saw Fried when he spoke during her freshman year. At Tuesday's event, she raised her hand to thank him.
"You came to us as a person with HIV, but you stand before us as a human," she said. "You spoke to me on so many levels."
Senior Ben Gnacik first encountered Fried when he spoke to Gnacik's youth group several years ago. He helped bring Fried to UNH during his freshman year, and again on Tuesday.
Throughout these four years, Gnacik said, people would ask him when Fried was coming back.
"I think that showed the impact he had on campus," Gnacik said.
And it was impact that went both ways. Before closing, Fried asked his largest audience in two years to be still so he could see faces, so he could emblazon the memory in his mind.
"Have a good life," he said. "Have a long life. I hope I get to see you again."
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