Positive change

Positive change, when the word has a double meaning. Alessandro “Gifter” shares his personal experience with HIV.

DISCLAIMER: there is irony in this post, but also a fair bit of Drama Queen behavior: readers have been warned.

POSITIVE change

Right now, it’s not “Gifter” speaking, but Alessandro, sharing a post about my experience as a person living with HIV to dismantle the prejudices of those skeptical about my participation in this blog, which started as a satirical project.

Negative event? Yes. Devastating news? Absolutely. But since when “positive change” comes along you just have to deal with it, it's worth acknowledging and learning to live with it as peacefully as possible over time.

2013: Think twice!

I listen to all kinds of music because I'm passionate about it, but there's one particular track I can't bring myself to face: “Think Twice” by Celine Dion.

Yet, back then, I used to adore this track because it was the one that brought me and Alberto together—the great love and mistake of my life.

At 32, I should have already been an adult, but instead I fell for someone who promised to be faithful while being a serial cheater. I kept forgiving him even though, with the benefit of hindsight, the signs of an unhealthy relationship were glaringly obvious.

Eventually, though, one day—finding yet another stranger's sock under our bed, I packed up all his stuff and left his suitcase outside the door.

If I had found used condoms instead of socks, it would have been disgusting, but at least I would only have had to deal with his cheating. Instead, I was forced to face a “positive change” I gladly would have avoided.

I even managed to grow to hate “Think Twice.” Fortunately, that relationship didn't drag on much longer, but Alberto’s scenes outside my house or on the phone begging, “Alex, please forgive me,” with that song playing in the background, repeated themselves from mid-January 2013 until March—and I'll skip the details about Valentine's Day, when he risked me filing stalking charges against him multiple times.

So now, just the opening notes of that song make me as irritated as when a solicitor rings the doorbell hoping to sell me things or preach improbable religions.

I’ve never allowed myself to do that to anyone at the door, but I did throw more than a few buckets of water out the window at Alberto when he came to bug me. In the middle of winter, that’s not ideal, so if he caught a nasty cold, he brought it entirely upon himself.

On the bright side, during that same cursed period, I had caught a terrible flu myself without even being hit by any buckets of water—or at least, that’s what I considered it to be. Relationship over, stress, but with a pill and some rest, everything disappears.

As soon as I recovered, I went to the dump to throw away the last pair of underwear Alberto had left in my drawer, perhaps to delude himself into who knows what. But the old Gifter—or rather, the old Alex in this context—once he decides to close a chapter, he closes it with no room for second thoughts. I was still unaware that, objectively speaking, you can't just throw away all the “gifts” left behind by an ex.

2013: Rite of Passage

When you get past the climax of post-breakup stress, what do you think? “Cemeteries are full of irreplaceable people,” there might be someone else to love, and you realize that at 37 maybe, just maybe, it's time to “get back on the market” so you don't end up like an austere 19th-century widow.

So, with the idea of starting to meet people with a classic “we'll see,” I made an important decision: to get tested for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, because I felt in perfect shape. However, knowing that I had been monogamous while Alberto hadn't, I considered myself sufficiently vulnerable: in the worst-case scenario, I would at least safeguard any potential new short-, medium-, or long-term relationships.

We gay men have developed a certain awareness over decades of HIV or AIDS being primarily associated with our sexual orientation: viruses don't care if you're monogamous or polygamous. All they need is an open door to enter, and they don't give a damn if you make love without protection because you “trust” your partner, or if you're with a completely anonymous stranger you only care about until you're dressed again. Viruses walk into your house without knocking or asking, “May I?”

To be fair, it's the same for straight people too. However, the latter most of the time feel lulled into the media's “comfort zone” regarding risk categories. Even if the serial cheater is the “next-door neighbor” who devotes themselves to home and family, the average straight person often fails to consider the possibility of STIs, doesn't get tested, and then tragedies happen—like a husband or wife with full-blown AIDS after years of silence, or an HIV diagnosis discovered during a pregnancy.

I don't care if I sound brutal, but since life pulls no punches, I don't pull mine when expressing my views on these topics.

With the tests, I planned to officially close the Alberto chapter, and I even joked about it with my best friend: “Come on, I can't be unlucky enough to be cheated on and HIV-positive? I can handle the betrayal, but I don't know about HIV.”

Adriano, however, is much more astute than I am and dropped the hint: “I'm sticking to you like a barnacle because that flu you had a while ago didn't sit well with me at all.”

Who even remembered that flu? Certainly not I! But like a good “leech”—as I still call him today—he never misses a single sign of vulnerability from me, and even back then he said, “The two of us can handle the weight of any misfortune. I'm with you.”

He’s been close to me since we were teens; he was the first person I confided in that “I didn't like pussy” (boy, did I phrase things poorly back then). That’s a friendship spanning decades. We’ve been through so much and we feel completely secure — there’s not even a risk of stealing each other's partners since he's straight!

2013: The Answer

The flu — what could it be? I had already read on the internet that the “conversion” from HIV-negative to positive could trigger flu-like symptoms, but I never wanted to let myself get influenced by that. After Alberto, I hadn't allowed anyone to approach my life until I was certain of “being CLEAN”—which was how I defined being HIV-negative at the time. So, I had my blood drawn without any dramatic thoughts. All in all, I was calm: I had “a clear conscience,” “I had behaved well,” the test was just a precaution, and generally speaking, “AIDS only gets those who aren't careful.” I too was a victim, in some way, of poorly executed media campaigns.

The screening was for all sexually transmitted infections; I hadn't gone to one of those clinics offering anonymous HIV-only testing, and I waited for the results.

I remained at peace until my cell phone rang: the doctor wanted to “see me to discuss the results.” At that point, I even snapped at the receptionist: “For fuck's sake, young lady, don't beat around the bush, just tell me I'm HIV-positive and hang up!” She was formal yet polite: “Sir, please have patience, I am not authorized to give you information over the phone, I kindly ask you to make an appointment with the doctor!” Friday, May 3, 2013—fine.

Adriano accompanied me that day, the only person I could trust, and he waited outside while I was shut in the room talking with the doctor. “All negative, except for HIV, I'm sorry.” No, fuck no! Me, HIV positive? No! Alberto couldn't have done this to me!

Receiving news like that shatters every certainty you have, but everyone reacts in their own way: at that moment, I no longer had a doctor in front of me, it wasn't a clinic anymore; I felt as though I were sitting at my dining table at home across from Alberto, and all that was missing was Think Twice playing to make me completely lose my mind.

Treatment and Psychotherapy

That doctor had (and still has) the patience of a saint. Only once I had calmed down did he explain the whole roadmap ahead. I was too terrified of the “aftermath,” and I still remember saying, “Doctor, please, if you give me a treatment that doesn't turn me into a walking ghost, I'll take it.”

He did much more than that and gave me the opportunity to undergo both antiviral and psychological therapy. Thanks to that, I have recovered my balance and have no trouble talking about it openly.

Alberto? Naturally, he tested positive too, and to this day I am convinced he wasn't aware of it. Just as he paid little attention when driving, he was the same way with sex, and the consequences showed. Yet, over time, I let go of the resentment toward him because hatred wasn't making me feel well.

Despair and Loneliness

Psychotherapy lasted a year and a half. The first few months felt completely useless to me because I loathed myself so much that I locked myself indoors for days without taking a shower. Adriano, for his part, came to visit me, but less and less often.

“You don't want me as a friend anymore because I have HIV,” I wrote to him one day, but his response was merciless: “If I don't like coming over to your place, it's because you smell like a goat. Do you think you're going to scare off the virus like that? More likely, I'm the one who'll leave! Keep going like this and HIV will remain the only one sticking by your side, but only because it has to and can't detach from you or it'll die.”

No professional will ever say a line like that to you, but a childhood friend will— especially when he watches you self-destruct and doesn't know what else to do to help.

To top it all off, there was the shock therapy from the psychologist, to whom I confessed that I had spent the summer of 2013 figuring out the best way to die before the virus killed me.

He confronted me head-on: “You're describing so many ways to die. But if you spend days thinking about it without actually doing it, I gather you don't really want to kill yourself. What do you say? Let's start from here: you don't actually want to die.”

“Of course I don't want to die,” was my reply, “but it's HIV forcing me to think about it! At 37, an expiration date! It's not fair!”

Adapting and Living With It

That holy man let me rant nonsense nonstop, and then started telling me the exact words I had already heard from the doctor: “It's no longer a death sentence,” “take your therapy regularly,” “have as healthy a lifestyle as possible.” It took a long time, but eventually, besides making peace with HIV, I made peace with my own self-esteem and eradicated the internalized stigma and homophobia I had carried inside for years.

Chapter closed on hating the infection too: I am now emotionally at peace, to the point where the virus is part of my family just like the cat, and I take care of it by staying regular with my pills and medical check-ups.

I should exercise more, but me and my HIV are like this: whenever one of us wants to go for a walk, the other coordinates with Jupiter Pluvius and makes it rain. Like human, like virus! TV series, couch, horizontal activities! At least, being in symbiosis, there’s no risk of HIV rooting for the opposing team while we're watching sports.

I admit it, after all the trouble it put me through just to get welcomed in, I've actually grown fond of this virus. It forced me to question far too many certainties built on nothing, but in the end, it allowed me to find much firmer ones—including some solid friendships and loves that perhaps were there all along, but I couldn't see them.

Ugly to say perhaps, but without it, I probably wouldn't have befriended @elettrona, the creator of this blog, who shares this experience with me from the opposite perspective: that of an HIV-negative person and former partner of a man with the virus.

What more could I want? To go back to being negative? At the moment I don't think about it because it's not possible, save for those leukemia patients who receive stem cell transplants that the media occasionally reports on.

It would be enough for me to keep HIV at the Undetectable = Untransmittable threshold without having to take medications; research is focusing in that direction, so it's just a matter of patience. For now, my desire is simply to live and enjoy it to the fullest—I've already wasted too much time on bullshit!

In closing, I reassure readers that I have no intention of writing books and profiting off my experience; I just want to tell my story to help defeat the stigma.