Garry Bowie worked in retail. He did not have health insurance, despite being a manager. He survived the height of the AIDS epidemic, barely, and by the late 1980s, was in a gulf of despair.
Bowie contracted HIV in 1983, when he was 20, and the first drug that came available to treat the virus, in 1986, cost tens of thousands of dollars a year. Bowie’s friends were dying virtually every day. Sometimes two a day.
Out of options, and fearing he would be next, Bowie made like many others trying to survive. He headed for Mexico.