I went wild. A friend showed me the nightlife – I remember one time he took me to the only gay spot in town and abandoned me in the middle of the dancefloor as fresh meat. So, I certainly learned very quickly how exciting it could be and I took every advantage of it to be perfectly honest. At 21, the world was my oyster.

I remember seeing something about HIV on television. It was pretty frightening, actually. It was in America and people were wearing masks; there were still no real ideas about transmission or anything like that. That fear did permeate some of the community here in Wellington, but it was something that was over there, not here.

I remember one morning in the early 80s, waking up one morning freezing and wet through – just saturated with a night sweat. It was something I’d never had before in my life. It scared the hell out of me. I went to my doctor almost immediately and said, “something’s wrong”.

I wasn’t ready for the diagnosis. I rang my boyfriend at the time and said, “I think you better come home; we need to have a talk”. He told me he didn’t want to see me again and hung up. I spent ten years in a daze; I went through all the emotions you usually get – anger, blame, sadness.

These days, people aren’t dying. That’s great. But it’s not a life you want, I can tell you that. Relationships are tough. You feel like you have to start everything again; that’s what I did, I started again. Imagine what you’ve got now and remove a lot of the happiness and enjoyment, all for the sake of not putting on a condom for heaven’s sake. Why would you want to risk that? This is not something you can relax about.