MSMNPA.ORG World Aids Day 2005

Living OUT Large - Against All Odds

DIVA GLAM 1976
MSM: No Political Agenda . September 2005

I guess I am a very special young man as I have been able to succeed in life against many of my circumstances. My mother walked out on my father and me when I was three years old and my father decided that it was best for me to be raised by an outside family who was willing to take me. I have no brothers and sisters and in fact no mother since that time. My Dad would financially provide for me but we did not have much of a family relationship. At the age of ten I moved in with my grandmother and aunt. There I felt a greater sense of security as my grandmother would pamper me and treat me with kindness and compassion. She also taught me some essential life’s lessons in an old fashioned, traditional and god fearing way.

Yet by the age of sixteen, there was something different about me, something that I feared that my grandmother and aunt would never understand or support. I found myself attracted to other boys. To this day I still remember that expression, “A thousand French men can’t be wrong” and always thought it applied to me. Ever since I was small I felt that I was different though I did not know what it was to be ‘gay’. At about the age of ten, I began to have sexual feelings for boys. I never thought that it was wrong, but people would make me feel that way. They would make comments about the way I walked and talked and dressed. They made comments like “Look She”, “Look at Barbara”, “Hi Henry” and “Hey Sheila”. I felt hurt and did not understand why I was being discriminated. I felt like I was a mistake, I was not normal and not like everybody else. I felt emasculated, like I was not a young boy, like what they were seeing was something else.

When I was twelve, older boys in school would approach me for oral sex. They would put notes in my bag. When they with their friends they would call me names, but when by themselves they would be nice to me. It was confusing. I knew that other boys were having sex at my age and my first sexual encounter was at twelve with a school friend who was two years older. These encounters were experimental, there was no penetrative sex and this went on for about three years. Though I was so young I felt that I was in love with him. I knew he loved me, but thought that for him it was more sexual since he had a girlfriend.
At sixteen I left my grandmother’s home. It was a planned thing. Once I finished my exams, I packed my bags and went to stay by a gay friend. I regret leaving my grandmother this way, but I felt that I was disappointing them and had to live the life I wanted, not one that others expected of me. Sadly she died before I had a chance to talk to her about this.

I met my first boyfriend at the age of sixteen in 1992. The relationship lasted for one year and nine months. I met him at a gay party and we hit it off right away. He was twenty-six years. It was a whirlwind romance and within a few weeks I was living with him. We lived together for about three months before having penetrative sex. It was after that time that it all started going badly. He became very possessive and controlling. He did not want me to work, have friends outside of the relationship or go anywhere by myself. The relationship quickly turned violent. The violence lasted one year and six months.

“Though I was living with HIV,
I could live well,
as well as any other person”

In 1993, I was diagnosed HIV positive at the age of seventeen years at the POS General Hospital due to a violent attack by my partner in which my skull was baldy damaged with significant blood loss. During the last weeks at the hospital, I was advised that an HIV/AIDS counsellor would come to see me. No one ever did. I was treated as a haemophiliac, though they would come with their gloves and assorted sanitary cups.

To be honest, I really did not know anything about HIV/AIDS at that time; did not know that there was medication; did not know there was anything that could have been done to treat it; and did not know anything about prevention and about condoms. In school no one ever told you about HIV, AIDS and Condoms and there were never any discussions about sex in my family. I thought that this is something that I would have to live with until I died.

Fortunately, I was personally referred to a Gay Support Group (LAMDA). There I met peer members in the community. The majority of them were older and supportive regarding my HIV status. It was at LAMBDA that I first heard of Safer Sex and Condom Usage. There was no talk of Medication and I thought it was only available to persons of a higher socio-economic bracket and was embarrassed to ask. Still, LAMDA gave me a sense of well being and the building of my personal self esteem and confidence, though this support group did not last very long. I spent the next years working on myself; I ended the relationship and sought new role models who were HIV/AIDS Advocates in our community.

I always resisted the idea of seeking Treatment & Medication because I always thought that I could not afford it. It was only when I contracted Chicken Pox in February 2004; my private doctor immediately referred me to the Medical Research Foundation - MRF. There I was re-tested for HIV in conjunction with a CD4 test. In addition I was provided with some HIV positive life skills, “Though I was living with HIV, I could live well, as well as any other person”. This was the first time an HIV/AIDS professional told me anything like this. It gave me a great feeling of hope. I was not as silently depressed; angry for not knowing about Condoms and protecting myself; and not as afraid as I was before after all of these years.

I am currently on Antiretroviral Treatment - ARV at the Medical Research Foundation. It is ideal for me as the services are great and the staff are extremely accommodating to my needs. The best thing about the treatment for me, is that it give me a new look on life. I find I am not as tired or as thin. I see them as my two-a-day and now I live as anybody else. I take my pills like a diabetic. That’s it. Now I have a partner who is also living with HIV. We are both positive. I encouraged him to get re-tested and to consider treatment if recommended. We use condoms all the time, every time we have penetrative sex. We are both happy as at the end of the day there is someone to come home to. We can be ourselves through trust and love. I think I have found my lifetime partner but we are not rushing into anything. We support each other and now have a lifetime of new experiences to build on - no rushing around, time is on our side.

I believe that I have a purpose in life and that I have something to share with my community and that is to lobby and advocate for persons living with HIV and AIDS - PLWHAs; and to end the myth that all gay people get AIDS and die.
I have no regrets as these experiences have made me a more responsible person, someone who is stronger and more capable of managing my life. I would have not met the people I have or gained these experiences. Sometimes I wonder if life would have been different if I had a mother and father. But I honestly believe that this has all happened for a greater reason and if I had the opportunity to change it, I am not sure I would. We all have problems and I am just one of many, for a specific purpose.

My advice to young gay persons or anyone is to focus on your life and get grounded. See about yourself first. There is much time for sex and relationships. No can make you complete but yourself.