It’s the most soul destroying news any young gay man could want to hear. Finding out you have HIV may not be the death sentence it once was but that doesn’t mean it’s any less significant today. HIV in London is on the rise quite dramatically which makes me wonder…Have the new generation of gays learnt nothing from their elder’s mistakes? To coincide with World AIDS Day, below is the first part of a young mans very personal account about living with HIV today.
“I’m afraid the test has reacted positively.”
On the outside you project an air of composure and calm while you listen to the Doctor awkwardly explain what will happen next. On the inside you can feel your world imploding, everything you know and took for granted now in a tailspin. Immediately your mind is full of horror stories from the eighties and early nineties. Pain, ridicule and an imminent death are all you seem to be worried about now. Your skin turns pale and you begin to shake as your body finally catches up with your mind, all the while you’re assuring the Doctor you are fine.
You wait while they conduct more tests but all you want to do is get the hell out of there. The clinic is a cold, dispassionate place, the last place you want to be when you receive news like this. You begin to think about how sickened your family will be by all this. Will they even want to know you when they find out? They are, after all, only familiar with the sensationalist headlines, trumped up by the tabloids during the original epidemic. Your trail of thought gets interrupted by the Doctor. As if he has read your mind, he advises you not to act on your first instinct and tell your family: “At least wait a week so you can come to terms with the news yourself. Even then I would still not encourage you to tell your family. It tends to be too hard for them to deal with while we still have this current stigma about HIV.”
As you leave the Clinic you immediately want to tell the closest people to you but (and rightly so) the Doctor has scared you into keeping it to yourself. ‘Not unless you are completely sure they will handle the news appropriately should you confide in friends’. This is easier said than done and as you head out onto the grimy streets of Soho, thankful to be out of the clinic, you reach for your phone, call your closest friend and ask them to come and meet you for a drink…To be continued
World AIDS Day December 1st
Craig Ford