I am loath to offend one of my closest friends, but the stench of her home is positively fetid. It is a combination of cat pee, incense and something heavy and sweet and lingering, enough to make one retch. She has few friends and almost never has anyone over and so is probably unaware of the extent of the problem. Recently I stopped by and was almost overwhelmed by the stink; even standing some feet from the front door was uncomfortable.

She is perfectly clean in her person, although sometimes the bad smell lingers in her clothes.

How do I broach such a delicate issue?

I'm a 50-year-old gay man living in San Francisco, the great gay Mecca. But my friends are mostly dead, and romance is pretty much nonexistent. After a decade here, I'm worn out with the place. It's turned into a hellhole of multimillion-dollar lofts inhabited by SUV-driving yuppies with cellphones jammed in their ears who are in a great hurry to go nowhere at high speed. Enough, already! And for the first time in my life I feel homesick for the Shenandoah Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains where I grew up and where I have wonderful friends of 30 years' standing. I'm poverty-stricken here, and I'd be comfortably middle class there. But I wonder if I can survive there after living in large cities most of my adult life. Gay rights in Virginia are basically nonexistent, although I'm sure I can still "pass" as a good ol' boy. Still, it rankles.

An added concern is my elderly parents, two angry, demeaning, depressing individuals who insist on living as if the Depression were still in full swing. If I go back there I'll be stuck dealing with them, something I've pretty much avoided for the last quarter-century.

To top it all off, I've been HIV positive for 15 years. So far I've had no problems with it. My blood counts, while declining, remain within normal healthy range and I've yet to need medications. Still ...

What do you think, Mr. Blue? Would I be going from the frying pan into the fire?

My father, who is in his 70s, is a drug-taking alcoholic who makes everyone in the family miserable with his constant attacks. It's so bad that I don't want to visit them at all, and that hurts my mother. However, he's such a vicious man that there's really no choice.

How does one deal with a father who abuses everyone? I'm tired of being called unprintable names by e-mail and on the phone. The easiest course of action would be to never talk to this psycho again. But what do you do when he's your father and you still want to talk to your mother?

Am I just getting older or do I not have what it takes? I'm 32 and have lived the life of the artistic bohemian ever since I quit my first post-college job. I've written stories and published a few, written screenplays and produced one of them, acted in commercials, performed comedy, completed three-fourths of my novel, etc., while scraping by on freelance writing and temp/waiter jobs. I've always had a vague thought that someday I would somehow "make it." Now, however, this thought is waning, and I think to myself: Do I have the hunger to succeed in film and television? Do I have the focus to choose one path and make that my life? Something in me shrinks when I think of battling doubt and rejection, financial stress, etc.

I'm beginning to think of myself as a failure, someone who has all the talent but not the perseverance or discipline. Plus, I've just settled down with a love, and all of a sudden the possibility of children, kindness and stability is exerting a pull. I've been thinking about going to grad school and becoming a psychotherapist. Yet part of me feels that what I lack here is courage, self-belief, etc. I'm going around and around in circles. Any thoughts?