Born in Los Angeles to argentine parents, my family arrived with the optimism and the joy for life that the 60’s and the America of the Kennedy’s offered so many newly arriving couples.

Dad worked hard at Sunset strip restaurants. Mom connected everyone, charming Hollywood personalities at their many parties. Vivi and I had toys, color TVs trips on airplanes, exotic pets, cozy carpets and so so many people and friends all day long. Pool parties at night while in the living room Goldie Hawn played with shutters colored with flowers on a show called Laughin.

My parents weren’t the most intimately affectionate of parents, mom was hard and dad was aloof, but they thought me to look for the depth in things. The most noticeable difference in our family was the passion that both my mother and I shared for the animal world. Aside from regularly coming to integrate an exotic animal to the family like an ocelot, a monkey, a cougar or a pigmy pony from Argentina; our regular pets would always be exaggeratingly numerous. Six or Seven Persian Cats or a whole clan of Samoyeds. From the age of five through the art of film production and Elsa de Lion, my strong willed mother Laura fixed my eyes on Africa and the protection of wild species.

For seven years my sister Vivi and I lived in Mar del Plata, Argentina in the care of housekeepers and private schools, while Mom and Dad worked on their success. First a stained glass studio and then the beginning of what would be 18 years of restaurant business. When we came back in time for me to start High School there were several Mercedes Benz parked in a Beverly Hills arched driveway and the sound of people playing volleyball and jumping in to the swimming pool in the back yard.

I did not know how to make myself complete homework at school, or care to sit through a 40 minute class. Instead I clung to a very pretty girl of long red hair who spent every morning with me watching MTV in my guesthouse room. I played salad bar-tender at Dad’s restaurant, and smoked grass I stole from little secret drawers around the house. Except now the parties were different. There were men that would arrive with young pretty boys from their arms and new friends from Colombia or Puerto Rico were taking my sister for quick visits to the vanity toilet room. They would come out unusually exuberant and strangely generous, my older sister’s laughing glare staring right past me.

It got heavy. Dad got in trouble twice and ended up doing two years, two hours outside L.A. I was the only one that would visit him. Everyone turned their backs on him. …He just wanted to hang-on to the feeling of that first proud paycheck seventeen years before when Frank Sinatra amicably vouched to be the boys godfather, and do what his own Immigrant Italian father taught him to do by having him work as a child in their nurseries in Argentina. And that was to work hard for family and earn a good keep.

Even before this low point in my family’s history everything was quickly being lost. Taxes weren’t being paid, trusted friends were dipping and steeling. My parents enchanted by the American period of new morals, play and abundance innocently lost to the ravenous demands of a new capitalistic era of credit cards and expensive banks for an expensive life.

I meanwhile managed to slide by the wayside of their frustrations putting myself in a different solitary lane. I got accepted into a small private architecture school in Santa Monica and pausing after my second year, went on to live in Europe were I learned to teach English as a foreign language. In Europe I discovered a side of myself that made me proud and made me feel truly accomplished for the first time in my life. I for the first time paid my own rent! But more importantly I understood a personal, so far emotionally exhausting aspect of my sexuality in a way that freed me and finally made amazing sense .

You see, Mom hadn’t showed me how nice a woman could be to a guy, and Dad hadn’t showed me to know me and assert myself, so I easily found acceptance in the seduction of a popular and growing 80’s gay scene. Plus I had become introverted after suffering abandonment trauma in Argentina during my childhood, never learning how to relate to the guys and always feeling like an outsider in my own country.

In Italy on the other hand I was swept by the cheer of new friends, distant relatives and a new culture, and I ended up having the beautiful experience of knowing a real girl friend through my own true male sexuality for the first time. Because there I wasn’t expected to not have misgivings about homosexuality nor put on the spot and expected to state weather I was one or the other, people spoke in uninhibited friendliness, not vulgarly when the subject came up, in good taste and acceptance. - I was almost thirty when I was taught by my grandparent’s culture that I was not “born” gay, I loved the confident guy that I was inside and I was not obligated to be gay. I was happy. Every reason behind my past needy emotional behavior became clear.

Eventually after three years I returned to Los Angeles with the goal of completing my architectural studies. I felt like a tourist for a while, observing differences, but soon I became overwhelmed by the only lifestyle and friends I had ever known, returning me to that feeling of knowing few or no options and in a matter of weeks loneliness led me to the club scene of West Hollywood once again. A year later I contracted HIV and soon after Hepatitis C, and lived the biggest, darkest and scariest heart break I ever knew could be possible. After having begun to grow as a man and known the freedom of self-sufficiency, I became once again an insecure adolescent except I was now thirty-one. No degree, yet I was given a section 8 voucher that lasted me six years. Though I ended up losing it for not finding an adequate apartment within the allotted time.

After the devastation of those first ten or twenty days, amazingly something new awoke inside of me. A determination. A Focus. My creative mind saw a plan for me to survive by. I went to a book store and bought books and bought a table full of herbs, and vitamins, I now knew things about sociology, childhood psychology, and sexology one might think you need to have a degree to speak with authority about. I learned heaps about nutrition and holistic medicine. I was getting stronger, and four years later decided Hawaii was the perfect sanctuary to be more in touch with heartfelt values far away from temptation and superficiality, and I was right. Kauai became my temple. The spirit of the earth and the glory of nature shun brighter than the happiest day in a child’s life. I learned about spirituality and yoga, however after a few years something started eating at my sense of self. I felt I needed to accomplish. I was still on general relief. I still dreamt of becoming that professional mature man I had started honing in Rome, yet I felt oddly out of step with my culture, earning a living seemed like an illusion. An unfulfilled life dream.

I had never subscribed to the idea of settling in the consolation of a disability check or SSI. I believe that the real damage of HIV is the suggestion that “it’s all over”, the sense of disempowerment that believing there will never be a cure can bring you in the absence of financial strength and ample medical possibilities. That’s why I believe in carrying on like everyone else. Earning a living, opening a business, travelling, etc. Goals that sadly I haven’t been able to start on for some sixteen years. Though I have struggled with attempts on both paths; sending out resumes for years, starting job trial periods as well as having had my SSI applications denied; Today I find myself living in a shelter, getting by on 200 dollars a month, no Medicaid and living with the tragic notion of knowing that if I had a decent income I could treat my liver and HIV holistically and nutritionally 100 times better to where I would feel a lot stronger, look a lot healthier, and very likely live longer diminishing the chances of leaving our world before cures our found. HIV is not incurable; we simply haven’t discovered the cure yet. And being able to afford dance classes. Take voice or yoga lessons, buy a car and go back to school make that truth all the more real.

The potential that internet communication brings to the field of Medical research, studies and treatment development is mind boggling in that we could be moving towards the cure of many health issues ten times faster than we are. Just by opening up cross-communication between different medical philosophies, research institutes, hospital doctors and pharmaceutical companies thus being able to compile, order, amass information, designing quickly new treatment protocols freely and expediently without so much silly considerations of privacy.

At age 44 my life is no so interesting and way too tragically difficult. Design talent is sadly being wasted. Social activity is dull and unfruitful to society. I keep my sense of purpose alive by writing about many things. Recently I have made another attempt at seeking to add enough financial aid to complete my five year BA in Architecture. But was unsuccessful. In fact I’m writing this letter from my school as an auditing student. -Question: How is it that no administration before us has not noticed nor taken the initiative of including Education in a big way as an important part of the social security and welfare sectors of the nation? How is one suppose to “rise” and become better skilled and qualified so as to BE better able to get-back on one’s feet and leave social assistance behind?

I enjoy immensely my passion for progressive and interesting ideas about government and sociology and am focused on concepts about the future of the United Nations which I would be honored to share with our country’s new administration would it be requested. I hope soon I can bring everything together though a serious website such as this one, or perhaps someday through a social/political activism group.

Thank you sincerely for giving people the opportunity of offering our life’s stories at this so amazingly special new starting point of our nation’s history. I hope I managed to keep your interest through all of it, and humbly offer my intelligence towards any area I can contribute in, regarding the future affairs of our nation.

Aloha. Patrick Edgar Regini