ME& World Aids Day

Today is World Aids day and while it will most likely pass fairly low key I can't help but reflect on this matter and the fact that I’ve been a practicing gay for over two decades and how HIV and aids has affected and changed my attitude within that time frame.

When I first had an inkling that I was gay AIDS was billed as the gay plague and the frightening government adverts scared any interest in me wanting to get involved in anything sexual with a man. As I grew and finally came out at 17 I’d more or less come to the conclusion that as long as I’d stay away from anal sex I’d be ok, HIV wise. Another incentive to stay away from dirt box riding was the fact my friend told me you’d get a big fat, flat lesbian ass. This lasted for a couple of years then my curiosity got the better of me, but I was empowered by the knowledge that I wasn’t going to get infected with the disease as any sex would be safe sex and with someone I loved and had know for a while. When it did, boy was I shocked and wrong about how good anal sex could be.

Anyway up to this point I’d never met or known anyone with HIV or AIDS and it wasn’t until I moved to Newcastle when I was 20 did this change. An older guy, Tony, I had been seeing for a while, well his best friend moved back to Newcastle from London as he wasn’t well. It turned out he was HIV + and over the course of a year I got to know him and our regular cinema trips became a way to strengthen our friendship and find out about each others lives, experiences and hopes. Not every day was a good one for him and after knowing him for just over twelve months he took a turn for the worse and within a month fully detireated and passed away. It was hard to watch and even harder to see the effect his had on Tony. In my mind this senseless loss of life reiterated the importance of safer sex. One thing I took from this friendship was never to be scared of the unknown and this gave me the strength to up sticks and chasing my dream of getting a degree in London.

It wasn’t until I moved to London that I encountered people who were living and coping with HIV. By my mid twenties the move now was to prolong the life of those with HIV with combination treatments. While some of these were hit and miss some worked and one good friend of mine who contracted HIV over a decade ago has continued to be fit and healthy despite have an HIV related cancer for most of that time. The only problem he faces now is that when he contracted HIV he was written off as being terminally ill and has been claiming server disability benefit since then. Now its obvious that treatments are working to prolong his life and he wants to get back into work but after having 10 years of being written off by the government he’s finding it hard to get a decent job and accounting for such a big gap in his CV, employers are exactly jumping at the chance to give him a job.

Combination treatments have however also had a negative effect in moving the message about AIDS / HIV from one of immediate death sentence to one of living with the disease. There is a whole generation of young gay men who don’t understand or realise that once you get the disease its for life and it can take a while to find the combination therapy to suit you, yet they have totally disregarded the safe sex message and this has lead to an increase again in infection rates within gay men.

Things have obviously moved on since the gay death sentence that AIDS / HIV was portrayed as in the late 80’s and I hope that in the next decade I’ll see this disease eradicated, but until that time I still believe in the safe sex message.