WORLD AIDS DAY
Wake-up call By PATRICK SAUNDERS psaunders@thegavoice.com The signs that something was wrong began to appear in mid-August. “Today has been the worst day ever,” O’Ryan Moss posted to his Facebook page, in what to most people would seem like everyday social media griping until a post two days later. “I’m not dying but I’m ready to go!” he wrote, tagging himself at Grady Memorial Hospital. Then nothing until Sep. 4, when he wrote “Sombody [sic] buy me a new stomach.” The posts from Moss ebbed over the ensuing weeks and into October as posts from his friends and family asking for prayers multiplied. By November, he had entered hospice care. On the evening of Nov. 10, he was gone. Moss, 26, died from complications from AIDS, leaving his loved ones to wonder why the openly gay Atlanta man didn’t tell anyone about his status and how someone that age could succumb to the disease with so many resources around him. ‘He loved to make people laugh’ Darline Dodard met Moss in 2009, when she and a group of Moss’ friends were hanging out at MetroPointe Lofts (now known as WestMar Student Lofts) in West Midtown. The man they called “Oboi” loved to dance; that was his passion. And he made an impression. CONTINUES ON PAGE 6