HIV AND THE FINISH LINE
AS THE ANGEL GABRIEL IN 2005’s Constantine, Tilda Swinton explains that “only in the face of horror do we find our nobler selves.” The crucible of suffering and tragedy tends to galvanize communities and drive collective action. In America, it seems like nothing brings us together as a community quite like a tragedy.
The LGBT community is no stranger to overcoming tragedy and adversity. Just recently, we came together to push for marriage. In the 80s and early 90s, however, it was the HIV crisis. HIV forced our community to take a hard look at itself and we banded together to demand change. The community embraced — or at least acknowledged — its relationship with HIV and stood up for those who suffered. We fought for research and treatment funding and circled the wagons to care for those who needed us.
HIV still exists and thrives in the gay community. Now more than ever, we seem to have the option of masking our community with raucous personalities and energetic fun. We now have PrEP and antiretrovirals, but the disease still winds and twists its way through our vibrant culture. There’s still a continuing need for us to bind together. We still carry the experience and history with us in the form of those who lived through it and those who are struggling to.
Acknowledging our own mortality is not easy and often not something we want to do long term. In the film An Englishman in New York, John Hurt’s character wonders why gay men are obsessed with the gym and physical fitness. He is told that the community will not tolerate the reminder that it’s dying and throws itself behind fostering an illusion of health to mask its impending mortality. This is a stinging assessment of the community as we push past the idea that physical fitness might be an attempt to reclaim our health. Instead, it accuses the gay community of deception and sidestepping.
Today, there are men in our community who lived through the AIDS crisis. You may not recognize them or interact with them, but they suffered to push the community forward to where it is today. Those who did not succumb to disease outright suffered through bouts of trial medications that taxed them body and mind. Their sacrifice permitted us to escape their experience but they still bear the marks.
Many of these men carry the mental scars of those medications and have to live on disability, unable to truly assert their presence because of their physical, mental, and financial limitations. Others paid a higher price, having died in this fight. We have lost thousands upon thousands of voices, unceremoniously silenced, leaving but a void to witness them.
Their sacrifice permitted us to escape their experience but they still bear the marks.
Perhaps the most potent force keeping these men from being a vibrant part of our community is the community itself. We have moved on from HIV. HIV is a nuisance and a frustration, now. We medicate it and set it aside. When someone contracts it, it is often taboo to share. All of this adds to the invisibility of those who are suffering, especially when their need is so great, and especially for those nearly invisible groups that are entirely dependent on their community for care.
Recently, there was a flap in the news about a man who raised the cost of a basic HIV medication to an exorbitant level. This particular situation was handled, but the alarm should still be raised so we, as a community, can take care to defend this population against wolves like Martin Shkreli. This also means reaching out and engaging this group again and seeing them as the pioneers within our proud history that they truly are.
We are making progress toward a world free of HIV. Science presses forward and we celebrate each step as we eagerly await the day of a proper vaccine and treatment. While we’re constantly looking forward, we need to make sure we look back and make sure everyone is still with us. We may need to carry a few, but we must get to that finish line together
