At 20, you should be getting dressed at midnight to go to a party, harassing your friends to help put gas in your hooptie, falling in and out of love.
The last thing you should be doing is sitting in a doctor's office reading phrases like "viral load" on the wall. But that's exactly where Nkosi Figueroa found himself in 2002 -- young and HIV-positive.
"It was hard because I thought I knew how HIV worked," said Figueroa, who was working as an outreach worker at a center for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered youth.
But, like many gay African-American men ages 13-24, he didn't know enough to avoid the virus. Men in that demographic comprise 17% of the total HIV/AIDS cases in Detroit, according to the Michigan Department of Community Health. And their infection rates have been rising over the past decade while rates for most other groups are declining.
Young, black, gay and vulnerable
Detroit Free Press, United States -
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