WELLNESS STARTS WITH AWARENESS - CD8 T cells - The Body

Th e concept of Nightsweats and T-cells
was born out of frustration.
In the late 1980s, gay author, poet and
activist Paul Monette and his best friend
Victor Brown were on vacation together
when they befriended a radical social
worker from Cleveland.
Honey, as she was aff ectionately called,
worked in the infectious disease unit at a
local university hospital. She expressed
great concern regarding the overwhelming
number of her clients and friends across the
country whom she witnessed die relatively
quick and horrifi c deaths due to complications
with AIDS as the U.S. government
and the rest of its citizens sat idly by doing
nothing. Paul and Victor, both living with
HIV, could completely relate.
Th e three of them spent hours sharing
how they had each been personally aff ected
by the disease and lamenting about the
devastating eff ects that it was having on the
gay community at large. From their discus-
38
Nightsweats
and T-Cells
Where business and social service meet
sions, they idealized a fi ctitious company
that would produce and distribute a line
of T-shirts brandishing strong, provocative
messages about AIDS—messages such as,
“All I want is a cure and my friends back,” or
“I just can’t have another day like tomorrow.”
Th ese messages, they felt, would force AIDS
into the face of the general public, in everyday
places such as the grocery store or on
public transportation, making the subject
matter diffi cult for anyone to ignore.
Upon her return home to Cleveland,
Honey began work on a project which
required that she have custom T-shirts
designed. She learned that there was a local
screenprinter in town who was living with
AIDS, and sought him out for the job.
Michael Deighan had just started
his own screenprint shop and was excited
about the work that Honey brought to him.
Not only did it provide a source of income
for his fl edgling business, but the nature of
the project itself was powerful in a way that
gave his work a purpose.
Honey shared with Michael the conversations
that she had had with Paul and
Victor and, before long, Nightsweats and
T-cells became a reality. Initially, they were
selling shirts out of Honey’s car and giving
the money away to people with AIDS
(PWAs). Th eir primary objective was to get
their messages out into the world.
“People were dropping like fl ies,” said
Michael. “Th ese were very scary times and
we wanted to have T-shirts out there that we
thought were important.”
As the demand for their shirts began
to increase, so did the need for more manpower
to assist with the workload. However,
instead of placing an ad in the classifi eds for
part-time help, these innovative entrepreneurs
devised a plan that many at the time
considered irrational. In the pre-protease
by Keith R. Green
inhibitor era, they conspired to put people
with AIDS back to work.
Th eir logic came from the fact that
although they were witnessing countless
numbers of people die from the disease,
they also knew a signifi cant number
of survivors. Th ey realized that it wasn’t
necessarily the virus itself that was killing
these people, many of whom were gain fully
employed before they became too ill to
work full-time. Instead, Honey and Michael
observed, many of them were dying of sheer
boredom.
Sure, life with AIDS was no walk in the
park. But most PWAs were usually not sick
every day, but maybe only four or fi ve days
out of the week.
With this understanding, Michael and
Honey agreed that rather than give the
proceeds from the line of shirts away to
people with AIDS, they would bring some
of these same people in on the days when
they weren’t feeling so sick. Th ey would
teach them the ins and outs of screenprinting,
with the intention of providing them
a source of income and a sense of dignity.
Th eir idea became an instant success.
Eventually, more for the sake of keeping
his sanity than anything, Michael
merged his custom screenprinting business
with Nightsweats and T-cells. Around the
same time, he met and fell in love with Gil
Kudrin. Gil worked as an engineer in a local
hospital and believes that he’s been living
with HIV since the early ’90s.
His new found partner’s passion for the
work that he was doing at Nightsweats and
T-cells compelled Gil to become involved.
But it was Gil’s creative vision that would
take the company to the next level.
“In 1992, we took the business outside
of Ohio for the fi rst time,” says Gil. “We
went to the AIDS Quilt when it was in D.C.
in October of 1992.
PA • September / October 2008 • tpan.com • positivelyaware.com
Positively Aware
Photo: Enid Vazquez - TPAN volunteer Ed Kuras with agency outreach bag designed by Toolbox, Inc., and printed by Nightsweats and T-cells