AIDS Is Dead: The Recounting Of A Man Still Living With It

“I believe in living. I believe in birth. I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth.” –Assata Shakur

The flight attendant asks me if I would like anything else to drink. Her voice all but falls inaudible on my ears as I continue to march these words back and forth within my mind. “I believe in living, I believe in birth.”

How riveting yet depressing, to feel the need to voice claim on something that should otherwise be intrinsic.

I am currently on my way to the University of North Carolina Charlotte to speak/perform at their World AIDS Day event. It is a short flight from New York to Charlotte so I decided to occupy my time by finally starting Assata: An Autobiography written by Black Revolutionary Assata Shakur.

The flight attendant is still waiting for my response so I tell her, “Thank you that would be great.” In the midst of my daydreaming, I have realized that I have forgotten to take my pills today. I was diagnosed HIV positive almost three years ago.

I was diagnosed with a resilient strand, which means it has grown an immunity to certain forms of medication. So in response, I have been put on a daily three-pill routine. At first, I used to cringe at the notion of having to consume three pills every day.

However, lately, it’s been feeling like the least burdensome method a young queer black man could use to stay alive.

My contraction story is all but a trite lackluster one as I fell to the whim of a cheating ex-boyfriend. Throughout all this time that has passed, I have grown less and less interested in sharing the details of how I got “it.” It begins to feel like the retelling of a ghost-story to an audience that only showed up to be scared.

There’s an almost implicit agreement that infected individuals must divulge every letter of their story as a way to ensure no one will follow down their misguided path. As if constantly rehashing the events leading up to our personal diagnosis is not a traumatic experience for most within itself. However, I still do, in hopes that the act of recalling memory in a public space would work as a catalyst for others to reclaim their own personal narratives and trauma as well.

As I slowly sip my ginger ale as we all careen amongst the clouds I finish chapter one and am overwhelmed with a sense of exhaustion and rage. In the first chapter, Assata recounts the ways in which she was framed as a murderer by the police. I think it would be irresponsible of me to connect Assata’s recounting with my own recent protesting in the name of Mike Brown with a word as simplistic as “coincidental.”

For me to call the juxtaposition of these two stories at this moment in my life a “coincidence” is to trivialize this moment to mere chance.

It is to say that this moment is absent of any cause of the event that can be predicted, understood, or controlled. Instead, while reading her words I am reminded of the circular nature of oppression that is simply diagnosed, yet never fully examined for a cure; just a way in which to continue living despite the reality of a slow death.

This circular oppression is at play in our work against HIV/AIDS. The media tells us “AIDS is dead” as a means to empower the general public to “fight the good fight” in the bedroom by using “protection” and keeping yourself “safe.” Yet, when taken out of context, the language being used sounds a lot more like preparing someone for war than for sex.

Using that same rationale—if this is a war on HIV/AIDS, then who are our soldiers, or better yet, who are our casualties? I am not opposed to this war-like rhetoric because as a black gay man who represents 46% of all new HIV cases, I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel like I was behind enemy lines on most days.

As someone living with HIV, it is peculiar to me that these campaigns are intended to unite us.

Campaigns aimed at “ending AIDS” continue to ignore the personhood of the individuals still living with it by constantly pushing this idea of “the end, the end, the end” coupled with an emphasis on the use of condoms.

Condoms, or the lack thereof, are too often used as means of criminalization. Individuals engaged or perceived to engage in the sex trade are consistently criminalized for carrying condoms. Of this population trans women of color are disproportionately affected through increased surveillance, policing and criminalization.

Similar criminalization is attributed to HIV positive individuals as well. Even when a condom is used properly between two consenting adults the positive participant can still face a prison sentence for “non-disclosure.” This idea of having to “disclose” and granting individuals access to what many people living with this disease describe to be a traumatic experience is truly horrifying. To think that the responsibility of each sexual partner’s health rests solely on the infected individual when it comes to the court of law is a level of deflection and victim blaming that has begun to sit at the core of this disease’s discourse.

What criminalization such as this does is helping to perpetuate a culture of vilifying, and dehumanizing.

Unfortunately, this overt assertion of condoms as the primary means for preventing further fuels the stigma and fear already associated with this disease. Though a useful aid to prevent contraction, condoms have never and will never be the end to HIV/AIDS. If instead, we substituted conversation as the first line of defense we would finally be able to take the burden of “ending” this disease off of the individuals living with it and distribute a more even sense of accountability to both the infected and non-infected.

Being that the rate of incarceration for black men are already six times the national average, the criminalization of this disease just further expands on our disenfranchisement. Many might say, “Well, if black men would just stop getting infected they would not have to worry about such criminalization.” According to the National Poverty Center, in 2010, 27.4 percent of blacks and 26.6 percent of Hispanics were poor, compared to 9.9 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 12.1 percent of Asians.

What poverty does is limit access to health care, HIV testing, and medications that can lower levels of HIV in the blood and help prevent transmission. When I was first diagnosed I was paying close to three-hundred dollars a month for my medication. Those without the privilege that I had at that time to fit that bill every month will continue to go untreated. While in turn, risk exposing the rest of their community.

Assata Shakur writes, “I could deal with whatever they were putting out, but how long would this go on?”

I find myself pondering this question often. While thinking about HIV. While thinking about criminalization. While thinking about how every twenty-eight hours a black man is gunned down by the police. While thinking about the time period between 1882-1968 when blacks accounted for 72.7% of all public lynchings. While thinking about Assata Shakur’s life.

However, I cannot continue a full thought without thinking about the prison industrial complex and how it sits at the epicenter of all of these things. In the her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, author Michelle Alexander defines the prison industrial complex as a term used to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry, which use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to what are, in actuality, economic, social, and political problems.

Currently there are more black men in prison today than were enslaved in the 1850’s. When I think about my life living with HIV I cannot bring myself to dismiss what Assata refers to as “the fire of truth.” The reality is that through the vilifying of my disease and dehumanizing of my skin, I too can easily fall victim to the prison industrial complex, this new racial caste system that prioritizes productivity over black lives.

I cannot dismiss how the preservation of capitalism is part of the reason I may never see a cure in my lifetime to such a profitable market as HIV/AIDS.

I cannot bring myself to dismiss why the “colorblind” society Michelle Alexander describes only helps to perpetuate the tradition of genocide this country was founded upon. On this World AIDS Day I am interested in dissecting all the intersections that work to sustain this disease so we can finally work towards “ending” it.

Photo via flickr user Jayel Aheram featuring sculpture by artists Linda & Charles Perkins