“Hi!  My name is Brian, I am 60 years old but I tell everyone I am 39 years old.  I came out of the closet at a certain age but it never changed me because I’ve always been me.  I grew up in Montreal.  My family moved to Guelph, Ontario 50 years ago which messes with my claim to being 39 – there you go! 

My family was not homophobic.  When I was 16, my mother asked me if I was gay.  When I was 17, I told her I thought I was gay and she said it was just a phase.  I thought, it was an interesting phase.  By the time I was 19 years old, it was pretty much set that they knew I was gay.  It was cool although my brother was mad at me one day because I had never come out to him.  He said, “You never told me you were gay!” and I responded, “But you already knew I was gay.”

I became HIV+ in 1999.  Before that, I had lived in Toronto for 10 years.  I knew many people who were HIV+ and many who had died of HIV.  I had been adopted by a drag queen and her whole group of people and I was surround by people who had HIV.  It did not directly affect me but it did.  Angie Douglas, her partner Marsha, Kelly Greene, my friend Dallas (with whom I had the most intense non-sexual relationship with.  I would do anything for that man.  He was a tall skinny boy and drag queen who did Barbra Streisand.  I handbeaded gowns for him.  Yea I’m crazy)…they all died.  Angie and her partner died in 1992.  Dallas died on March 15, 1993 (the drag queen has left the building…)…the interesting thing is my partner and I met on March the 15th.  One of those little “Oh that’s an interesting conundrum” kind of things. 

I knew people who had HIV, I knew they died.  I didn’t go to funerals.  I went to Dallas’s but I didn’t go to anyone’s funeral.  I didn’t want to go.  It was a way for me to be in denial of what was happening.

I was infected in 1999, probably by my partner while I was living in Ottawa.  We had sex and he bled everywhere.  I remember thinking at the time, there’s taking risks by barebacking and there’s being foolish – And I was just foolish.  Just before Easter that year, three months after that sexual encounter. I got really sick.  I got that “flu” that everyone talks about, except mine was special.  I had sores in my mouth so I couldn’t eat (the sores were so painful my doctor gave me a mouth wash for people who had cancer).  I felt like a 90 year old.  I was in that much pain.  I did not get an anonymous test, I went to a walk-in clinic to get tested.      

When I found out, I thought that was the end of my life.  Because at that point, the ART had gotten to the point that was good and it worked, so it wasn’t so poisonous.  But even at that, my doctor told me I only had 10 years to live.  And when I was first infected, my CD4 was just over 200 but my viral load was so high they could not count it.  I was really sick.

I decided to move back to Guelph so I could die comfortably at home with my family.  I ended up being my mother’s caregiver for the 16 last years of her life.  I had thought I was going to die but I did not because of the meds.  How adamant am I about taking my meds?  One of the meds I’m on now I’ve been taking for 25 years, 3TC.  All the other drugs I used to take have been changed.  My doctor in Ottawa was great because he let me choose which drugs I wanted to take.  So I avoided the ones that caused stomach issues and thought, peripheral neuropathy, anyone can handle that.  Hahaha.  No!  So, I was 3TC, D4T and Sestiva.  And when I started having peripheral neuropathy, we switched out D4T for DDI, which causes….neuropathy.  Sestiva I was on for the first 17 years of being poz.

Did thinking I was going to die make me live life differently?  I didn’t care.  I did things I had never done before.  What was it going to do?  Kill me?  It relaxed me.

I think in some ways I am a better person because I am HIV+.  It has made me care about people more, especially other people who are poz.  The whole peer thing, which I would never had given value to.

I still think about my friends who died.  I don’t have a emotions lol.  I mean, they’re there.  I think about them but I don’t react. 

Earlier in the year, I was in a play called “The Inheritance”, which was about the early AIDS epidemic in the gay community.  I was one of probably about 60, community extras, who were in the play.  We were all gay, male-identified and living with HIV.  Being in the play was hard emotionally.  The first full dress rehearsal was draining because at the end of the first act, the actors go through a “gun shot” list of gay men who have died, been infected or lost a friend or partner because of AIDS.  It was really emotional.     

In terms of stigma in the gay community today, I don’t think it is as bad in Toronto.  There’s a larger poz community and men are better educated, I’d like to think, but not always.  Small town Guelph was really bad because…it’s small town Guelph.  Someone disclosed my status without me not necessarily wanting my status to be disclosed in 1999.  But, I did participate in this speaker’s bureau on HIV, which helped me own my status and not be ashamed.  There were many gay men who would choose not to have sex with me or judge me, asking me why I was trying to spread HIV and putting men at risk.  I would need to give them the whole HIV 101 and explain to them that as long as they were having sex with other men they were putting themselves at risk. 

I think a lot of gay men in today’s generation have no clue about what it was like to live as a gay man in my time.  At that time, being gay was not accepted.  I knew men from my high school who were gay but got married and had kids because that was what was expected of them.  I still marvel at the fact that today and I can walk around Toronto as a couple with my partner.  I think gay men need to know about the past because what you don’t remember will be repeated.  History is showing us that – Donald Trump for example.  Even in small town Ontario, last year there were battles over the Pride flag being raised.      

I knit.  I was taught to knit in elementary school because I was different from my siblings.  I was unco-ordinated.  And I guess I had a learning disability.  I knit on and off through my teenage years.  I actually have a doll I knit when I was 16.  My mom kept it so I still have it.  The knitting became a way for me to meditate.  If I am knitting, I can turn off my brain and just be.  When I go to church (which still sounds weird to me), I knit.  If I did not knit, I could not pay attention to the person up front at the altar. 

I have mental health issues.  Depression seems to be a part of my journey with HIV.  Without an antidepressant I don’t function.  I believe depression goes along with HIV just as the neuropathy does and chronic pain.  9 times out of 10, I hurt. 

I can’t give advice to gay men who are diagnosed with HIV today because their journey is going to be different from mine.  My journey started with the certainty that I was going to die.  Now, that’s not the story of HIV.  There is life.   

A lesson I have learned in life that I want to share with the world is not to dwell on the past.  Look to the future.  Shit happens.  But the reality is, if I was not HIV+, I would not be living in Toronto and met all the wonderful friends I have made and my community.  It is a miracle that I am here and I am thankful.

I love everything and nothing.  I love the fact that I am here.  I love the fact that I have a partner.  I’m curious about the fact I am starting to have a relationship with God again.  I love the fact that I can be me, a silly little homosexual.”