Black, Gay and Twentysomething: HIV and Me

I am an HIV negative man. There, I said it.

I’m neither proud nor ashamed of the status itself, but I’m proud that I know my status as yet another World AIDS Day has come and gone. Whether I would be bold enough to reveal the status if it were the other way around, I don’t know. But if I’ve learned anything from the past few days, it’s that combating HIV/AIDS stigma starts with talking a bit more honestly and openly about it.

While much of the rest of the gay community is mired in a different kind of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell debate this week, I couldn’t get myself to stop thinking about the don’t ask, don’t tell role that HIV plays in our community and the silent prison in which it grips us.

Dating and living in New York City comes with the constant possibility of having sex in New York City, and let me tell you if you’re even moderately attractive, the opportunity comes up at the oddest and most unexpected times: the subway, ferries, even Yankee stadium.

You name it and someone who’s not the writer of this column has done it.

For so many of us, HIV/AIDS is the relentless, silent passenger that we don’t talk about. In the past 10 years since I’ve became sexually active, I’ve lived my life in fear that HIV would one day show up on my doorstep in one form or another.

I wish I could say that I was being irrational, but there are plenty of reasons for me to worry. Statistics show that 62% of HIV infections occur among gay men of color, and here in NYC, it’s estimated that 1 in 5 gay men of color are infected with HIV.

A few nights ago, I attended a spoken word/theater performance by an HIV positive performance artist that I’ve known for a while, and I was struck by his strength while simultaneously being reminded of my own weakness.

You see, around three years ago when yours truly was new to this city and first met this artist, I had a massive crush on him. For days after our first meeting, I couldn’t get his muscular arms, caramel-colored skin, full lips, and big brown eyes out of my mind, and I concocted elaborate fantasies about what it would be like to be his boyfriend.

Those fantasies came to an abrupt end when I found about his HIV status, and I saw those sweet fantasies turn to thoughts of daily pills, extra-carefulness, and finally the exaggerated fears of a hospital room at the end of the road.  

Never mind that this trajectory is nowhere near a fact of life for many, many people who live healthy, full lives with HIV. But to my HIV-negative self, the omnipresence of the disease in my life was only manageable as long as I remained detached from it and continued to use a condom to prevent it.

When I saw my friend perform a few nights ago, and saw so much life in his eyes and so much strength in his soul, I cursed the weakness and fear that the disease still caused in mine, and vowed to try to open up my mind a little more.

My own personal model regarding HIV has been Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In a time when survival means treating every single sexual partner as if they’re positive, why do I need to know, right?

I think the real question in a time when so many of us just want to love and be loved, is whether a disease and three little letters is really going to remain a barrier to love should the situation arise.

Over lunch with a well respected writer friend of mine, I was treated to the simplest advice anyone has ever given me on the topic. Ever the 49-year-old Wise Gay Elder, he leaned back in his chair, pushed up his spectacles, and shared two simple words of wisdom with me: “Stay negative,” he said, before adding that “it just makes things so much easier.”

In reality, that is all I’m trying to do in a world where people who look like me represent so many who are HIV positive, but I’m starting to feel as if the focus on “staying negative” is a prison in and of itself.

HIV stigmatizes us all, positive and negative, and it very much remains the pink elephant in the room of every gay bar, every club, every function, and every place in which large numbers of gays congregate. In a world where most of us have groups of friends who will tell you details of their sexual conquests right down to um … shoe size, most of us still don’t broach the subject of HIV, regardless of our status.  

Perhaps it’s time to ask and tell, to take away some of the power that this disease has over us all, and in doing so combat some of the stigma that HIV positive people still have to live with both in our community and outside of it. I am HIV negative, but my status in no way makes me better or worse than my positive brothers and sisters, just different. They live with HIV in their bodies, while I live with it every day in my mind.

Every time I put on a condom before sex, every time my mind starts to think about broaching that issue after a few dates, and every time I instinctively look away at the older guy at the gym with the facial wasting, veiny arms, and extended stomach that are trademark side-effects of the AIDS cocktail, the fear is once again renewed in my mind.

I’m not asking for empathy, or even for anyone to understand, but I’m telling you how I feel.

Perhaps it’s time we stopped being so afraid of the conversation.