It was 1984 and one evening, “An Early Frost” aired—a TV movie about a white man who dies from AIDS. I was 15 years old and far removed from the threat of such a thing happening to me, but I watched with curiosity and sympathy, like a bystander to an accident. Strange that someone knew enough about AIDS in 1984 to make a TV movie but it took then President Reagan much longer to acknowledge it.
Later that year, I would be hit on at two different times by two different males—one from school, one from church. And like the President, I would deny. I would run. Meanwhile, straight/gay porn star John Holmes, entertainer Liberace and actors Ray Starkey and Rock Hudson would be publicly ousted from their private hell and undergo the cruelty of America’s naiveté like school children sometimes endure when they are the new kid on the block.
1987 came, I graduated from high school and my innocence abruptly ended, as would the lie that AIDS was only a white gay disease. Tennis pro Arthur Ashe and groundbreaking ABC news anchor Max Robinson passed from AIDS. Unfortunately, it barely made a ripple in the fabric of white America and black America shook their heads and gave the expected traditional, “Ain’t that a shame” response.
I was trying to party like it’s 1999, as best as I could in Iowa. By 1988, after nine months of a hellish first relationship, enough time to become pregnant and have a baby, I took a test. It was an effort to run away from my own private hell (which included being raped by my “partner” in the midst of his chronic infidelity) only to be thrust into its deepest parts by way of testing positive for the human immunodeficiency virus. While Janet Jackson was winning awards for being in “control,” I was earning my Oscar and Golden Globe for best portrayal of a human being. The diagnosis had left me empty as the room where the nurse told me my results.
Keeping people at a distance gave me plenty of room to wander around within myself as the world debated how to treat the virus. France says “this,” America says “that” and somehow AZT is agreed upon. In its infancy, AZT was barbaric and people were overmedicated and died from that. I used it for about a month, but not consistently. I was not properly told what to do or how to do it, and it became one more complication to keep up with. Michael Jackson took pity on a young boy, Ryan White, and he became the former “gloved one’s” pet project for a moment, as did the world for a moment with the release of the single “We Are the World.”
Four years had passed since my diagnosis and I was not about to go back to the health department or a doctor’s office—the public service announcements about AIDS were like mini-horror movies, and we know what happens in those: The black man dies first. In 1992, I went to my first funeral of a friend who passed from AIDS.
But in the meantime, I prospered, relatively speaking. I got some college under my belt; I had a first girlfriend and first “straight” heartbreak. The torment and depression that had debilitated me since my diagnosis finally lifted. The country and the world, apart from Africa and a few other places, had progressed in its treatment methods, and industries surrounding HIV & AIDS, and STDs had arisen. In 1996, I had my first conversation with a black man dealing up close and personal with AIDS and not afraid to share the experience of losing his lover to it. Still, I was not liberated to share the script of my drama. By 1998, anyone who had sincerely thrown themselves into doing what was necessary for HIV and AIDS were beginning to burn out. Agencies that had been abusing and misusing funds, government provided or otherwise, came under severe scrutiny and downsized, restructured, or totally disappeared.
Sylvester, Eazy E. and Jermaine Stewart passed from AIDS. Well known persons in black gospel music died as well. As usual, the black community at large whispered and swept it under scrappy rugs while many continued to die and passed like quiet whispers in the night. Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s “confession” is but a blip on the screen in the bigger picture. For some reason, some in the black community still look to celebrities (entertainers, TV, sports, or otherwise) to reach our community—the younger and older. Why turn to the “flavor of the minute” to address an issue that is older than you are? Why turn to Hollywood, who is so fickle as to give Denzel an Oscar for “Training Day” as opposed to “John Q”? Or Halle one for “Monster’s Ball” instead of “Losing Isaiah”?
Mr. Brady (“The Brady Bunch”), Uncle Arthur and Mr. Stevens (both of “Bewitched”) have died. More relevant to me would be Kenny Greene of the group “Intro,” or Gene Anthony Ray, “LeRoy,” from the “Fame” movie and TV series. I have emerged from my 14-year fog to find America in a fog of its own when it comes to dealing with HIV and AIDS, especially when it comes to black America, particularly black men. How do we reach African American males? How do we define gay males clinically? What is this so-called “down low” phenomenon? How do we handle men who are having sex on the supposed “down low”? What is this homo-thug thing? Trees seem to keep popping up in the forest.
We, in the black community, seem to be waiting on the white community to tell us the who, what, when, where, why, and how of what’s going on in our own backyards and how to address it. We’re reactive instead of progressive and in turn that makes us “slaves” to their understanding and directives. This is my conclusion five years after having thrown my hat into the ring to be more proactive not only with my life and health, but for those who for whatever reason will not or cannot stand up and represent. I had to identify what was going on and be truthful about it, and be truthful thereafter. When will the black church and the black community at large do the same?
The issue of HIV and AIDS is not a “dead horse” issue. It is alive and well. People of all ages, gender, and race are still becoming infected, and even more people are affected.
