The toughest act in stand-up.

By all odds, Mike DeStefano should be dead. He never figured he would last this long. But instead of taking a dirt nap, he is sitting with me at the bar of the Ha! Comedy Club, where he appears nightly.

"When I was first diagnosed with the virus, I told a friend of mine from the Bronx I had HIV. He thought it was a cable channel. He told me he had HBO, too." Ba-da-bump.

DeStefano, 34, has the manner and affectations of one of the old Dead End Kids. An Irish/Italian product of the Bronx who grew up on its streets, he has a husky build, old-school tattoos and twinkling eyes that take in everything.

"Everything that was supposed to kill me kept me alive. Shooting heroin probably saved my life. That drug made the wise guys in the Bronx not trust me. So instead of getting in a car where I would have shot someone or got killed?that happened?they left me behind nodding on the corner.

"With AIDS, it brought me to a better life. I had gotten off heroin for a few years, but I then started to drink a lot and that would have brought me right back to dope. I got diagnosed with the virus and got healthier."

DeStefano has had the virus for more than 10 years and claims he has never had one symptom or had to take any medication.

"I am like a walking miracle."

Others in his life weren't so lucky. One of his best friends died of the virus; then his wife, Fran, died of AIDS in 1995. He met her after he was diagnosed, and they moved to Florida to start a new life. But it wasn't meant to be. During the last two years of her life, she was in and out of hospitals, with DeStefano trying to care for her.

"That was a hard time. It's tough watching someone you love die. When she got real sick I had to remember who she was when she was healthy. That kept me going when she spent all that time in the hospital. One of my best memories was when I went out and bought a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and I took her around the parking lot riding on the back in her hospital gown. She had to hold her morphine IV drip over her head. It was a classic moment. We were so alive."

DeStefano went on to tell me about growing up with three brothers in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx. His older brother, John, was a notorious car thief whom the local dailies and the cops labeled the Red Bandit. John was fearless, but his red hair gave him away, and he spent some time upstate. He now lives in Florida, where he's trying to straighten up?at least as much as the Red Bandit can. His two younger brothers were able to avoid the lure of Bronx street life: One went on to be a fireman, the other a construction worker.

"My father was a printer and a gambler. I tell people we were rich?seven times. We became good friends after he stopped beating me. He was an imperfect man, but before he died we became real close. He died the same year my wife did. That was a tough year. After all that I realized I wanted to be a comic."

I asked DeStefano about his mother and the struggles she went through raising four wild boys.

"My mother still lives in the Bronx, and works as a truant officer. She couldn't get her own kids to school, but now she gets those little bastards in on time. I guess we gave her good training."

DeStefano grew up around a mafia criminal element, yet didn't have it in him to get into crime full-time.

"It was fun growing up in the Bronx. I thought I wanted to be a gangster. But I just couldn't handle it. I liked to dress up like a wiseguy, but I didn't like the blood that came with it."

Today DeStefano calls the Bronx home again, and counts a few mafia captains among his fans. When he produced a video about his life, From the Bronx to the Buddha, a made guy approached him and asked, "You sure you don't want to be a wise guy?"

He declined. "I have friends who are in that life, and maybe to the average person it is exciting or exotic, but to me they're just friends. So I'm the wise-guy comic. I kill them with laughter. I'm in a business where you say I 'killed, slayed and destroyed' the audience. When I heard comics talking like that I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm from the Bronx, I can do that.'"

DeStefano works every night. His two favorite clubs, Ha! and New York Comedy Club, hold a spot for him.

"I'm able to make a living from it. Those two clubs have embraced me, and no matter what, they give me stage time. And believe me, it's hard to get stage time in the city. I am very blessed."

To supplement his comic wages, DeStefano gives talks on drug education in the national college circuit.

"They pay me $3000 to speak to college kids. I get up and tell the students, 'Don't end up like me. I dropped out of high school and got on heroin. I have a GED but didn't even know it. It wasn't until I got off drugs that I found out I had it. I must have taken the test in a drug fog and somehow passed.'"

What does stand-up comedy do for him?

"It's the only way for me to release what's inside me. I get to talk about a lot of the pain and suffering in a funny way. Just how I look at the world always tormented me because I just think most things are funny. A comedy stage is like the last place where I can say what's on my mind and not care who's insulted. It's comedy. Laugh."

The MC nods in DeStefano's direction. He takes the stage and opens with a routine about growing up in the Bronx.

"Where I grew up, all you'd hear is, 'You better not go to jail because some big black guy named Bubba is gonna fuck you in the ass.' That was the neighborhood crime-prevention message."

He rips off a couple more one-liners.

"Last night I went to a gay bar by accident...again."

"I call crack whores chemically addicted oral technicians."

"Guatemalans are cute. They're like Puerto-Rican Pokemon. I saw one with a sign: 'Will Work For Food.' I hired him because he was so little?I figured, how much could he eat?"

He wraps it up with a riff on the differences between blacks and whites, and the audience gives him some nice applause. We walk out into the night air and stand in front of the club.

"That was tough because the smaller the crowd, the harder it is to get them to laugh out loud."

He looks at his watch, shakes my hand and tells me he has to go to another club.

"I gotta go kill 'em." He runs down the block with a laugh.