Moriah Ulinskas

Harrold L. Reason

​

I was born 10/26/1961 in Boston, MASS

I grew up in Roxbury in the projects.  My mother was in school at Northeastern University to become a social worker when I was a child. When she got a position, she moved us out of the projects to a nice big house on Alaska Street.  My mother bought the house- it was a beautiful house.  It was me, my two brothers, my sister and my mother. My parents were separated.  Mother was very strict. She raised us to be very Christian. We went to church every single day! I would like to go to church here, but I haven’t found a church home in San Francisco.

 

We were raised Pentecostal. We had a very strict upbringing. We were raised to be respectful of my mother’s friends, we called them “Mr.” and “Mrs.”  My brother Daniel went to Bible college and became a pastor. My brother Bobby went to Dartmouth and my sister Lois went to college, but I never went to college.

 

I graduated from Charles River Academy in Cambridge, MASS. In high school I met a girl who got me off my family ways. She was gay and she opened my eyes to the fact that I was gay.  My family was very upset.  My father was more open, he loved me no matter what.

 

I moved out of my mother’s house and went to live with friends in the Fenway, which was where the gay community was.  I was about 20 years old.  I was young and I was rebelling. I started drinking and having fun.  I worked at Boston University for a while, then got a job as a prep cook at Mel’s New York Style Deli in Kenmore Square.

 

I was drinking a lot. My father’s side of the family was a very drinking family and I was drinking so much my pancreas hurt all the time. I had a  doctor tell me that if I kept drinking I would surely die, so I quit. But then I turned to crack.  I needed something to stand on, I don’t know I can’t explain it.  I was lonely. If things were different I probably wouldn’t have.

 

I had a boyfriend for a year, but he was doing crack and he was abusive.  Then I heard about a disease that men who were having sex with men were getting.  My friend Jimmy and I decided to get tested and we went to Beth Israel hospital together.  We were best friends, so we got tested together. He was negative. I was positive.

 

I was crying my eyes out, I was so upset. I told my mother and she was so upset, she was crying too. I told her, “Ma, you don’t have to worry. I’m going to go someplace where they take care of people like me.  I’m moving to San Francisco because they have lots of good medicine”.

 

I came by myself on a Greyhound bus. It took three days and I was about 25 or 26 years old.  I didn’t know anyone in San Francisco and I was homeless the minute I got off the bus.  Also, I was a crack smoker and crack was so much cheaper and there was so much more of it in San Francisco than there was in Boston.  I was on Social Security, and I used my money to buy crack.

 

I went to to AIDS Community Fdn on Market street and they gave me a 28 day stay in a motel in the Tenderloin.  That helped a lot.  They hooked me up with caseworkers, but after the 28 days were over I needed to pay for my room out of my own pocket and I spent my money on crack, so I ended up staying on the streets.  

 

I had left Boston without telling most of my family I was HIV positive.  I didn’t want to hurt the family.  Sometimes I wanted to go back, but my family didn’t want me in the house because they knew why I was in San Francisco.  Black people in Boston then were not educated on HIV.  For about 20 years I was going back and forth- going back to Boston every time someone died.  My mother, my father, my brother Daniel.

 

I made a friend named Philip who helped me get an interview for the Leland House.  I think that was in 2005. (Ask Trevor).  San Francisco is my home.  My community is here, sometimes I was in shelters, sometimes I went to Glide or St. Anthony’s to eat.  I lost a lot of friends to HIV and AIDS in Boston and San Francisco.  The drugs were really heavy too and I lost even more friends.  But I lived through it.

 

I’m Christian and I believe in God.  I believe that God made me go through this.  God saved me.

 

If you have the mind to come to San Francisco, you have to have faith in God and something spiritual you believe in or you will truly die not only from the disease, but the drug epidemic in San Francisco.  There’s so much homelessness in this city. It’s not a pretty site. It’s sad to be homeless.