It was Kevin's partner who made him take a HIV test in 1994. As far as he was concerned, "there was no way I had HIV". He agreed to take the test along with his partner, at the Gay Men's Health Project in Baggot Street, Dublin, "to prove to him I wasn't", he smiles.
Waiting for the results was not particularly anxious for him. "I just didn't consider that I had it. As far as I was concerned, I always had practised safe sex. I had had, I suppose, a few `extramarital' affairs, but I had always used a condom. So yes," he nods, "it did come as a shock.
"I was taken to see a counsellor at the centre as soon as we got the results. I spent two hours with him and was pretty rough on him - shooting the messenger - but in the end he was a great help to me, someone outside to talk things through with."
Sitting in the office of the Dublin AIDS Alliance, the soft-spoken man, looking 10 years younger than his 36 years, says the impetus to have the test came from his partner after Kevin admitted his affairs. He was certain he would test negative but "was very worried that [his partner] may be positive because we had been having unprotected sex for the past year.
"When his test came back negative and they told me mine had come back positive, I was relieved about that - that he was OK. He was very supportive, but very angry."
Kevin grew up in rural Leinster in a family of four children and speaks with a soft but discernible accent of his native county. The alcohol problems he developed he puts down to the fact that he had, on some level, always known he was gay, "but I was terrified of it" and so drank to extreme. By the time he had emigrated to New York he was an alcoholic. Happily, it was also while in New York that he went into recovery and in recovery he began to "explore" his sexuality.
He moved back to Ireland, first to Sligo and then to Dublin, where he met his last partner - who was to make him take the test. "It took about six months before the first thing I saw every morning when I woke up was that big neon sign saying, `You are HIV positive'. But you get past that and it is better to know. You can take precautions, change your lifestyle, eat better, get more rest. I worked out that I had probably been positive for about a year before I was tested.
"I spent a lot of time wondering who gave it to me, whom I'd given it to . . . but I realised, what's the point? I am HIV positive and it makes no difference who I got it from. The thing I had to worry about was taking care of myself."
Having chosen not to take the drugs and vitamins (known as triple or combination-therapy), he relies on living healthily, going for acupuncture treatment every week as well as some other form of therapy, such as massage. His doctor is anxious to get him on the drug treatment but he is determined not to for as long as he can. "I've spent five years cleaning up my body [from alcohol] and I don't want to start putting other toxins in." Today he looks in the flush of health. He feels mentally and emotionally fit. His family knows his condition, as does his current partner.
Asked if being HIV positive is like "having a sword hanging over you all the time", he replies emphatically: "No. In fact, it focuses you, focuses your mind on the kind of person you are, how you treat people. It magnifies life. Everyone is going to die, but sometimes, I suppose, yes, it would be nice not to know about it every day."
He is frequently amazed at how reckless people are with their own health. But the main thing is always, always use a condom with someone whose sexual history you don't know.
"Always assume anyone you sleep with, if you don't know them well, has AIDS."