I asked for an HIV test because my nasty flu segued into drenching night sweats, which wasn’t a good sign. When I got the news that I was positive my doctor said he’d been dreading telling me all day.
I went on tablets for a year (five tablets twice a day, never missed a dose) and have remained undetectable off medication for the last 12 months.
I thought I would share ten major discoveries. They won’t necessarily be popular but they should be of interest to all readers, positive or negative. It’s not quite a manifesto and certainly not a confession, but simply one person’s viewpoint on HIV in 2004.
Being HIV-positive might not constitute an identity but it has provided a startlingly different perspective on representations of AIDS.
AIDS narratives in plays, films or books, now seem insubstantial, maudlin or just plain stupid. Even well-meaning buggers wearing red ribbons raise the hackles. Who needs the reminder? Cultural connections came from unlikely sources. For me, it was the sixth season of Buffy, when the title heroine is brought back from the dead. Haunted by memories of heaven, Buffy is treated tenderly and distantly by her well-meaning friends, bonding instead with vampire pal Spike, because she feels like the walking dead. Having faced death with convulsive howling on day two, I consumed Buffy like it was chocolate.
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