‘GREEN
AND BIGOTED LAND’It’s 1am. I’m on a coach returning from the British HIV Association gala dinner in Newport, Wales (think cruise ship entertainment, with 200 HIV doctors shaking their booties to Abba covers. Fearsome image, I know). I focus, with steely determination, on not chucking up 13 glasses of wine, when the coach driver strikes up a conversation.
“So, is this trip for doctors, or err, you know, sufferers of aids?” he
asks in a voice tight with ill concealed panic. “Well,” I reply,
knowing this is going somewhere ghastly. “I imagine everyone here works
in the field of HIV and Aids and some may also be living with the virus.”
“
I’m not prejudiced against ‘them’ or anything”, he
continues, warming to his subject, “but I’m from farming stock
and when creatures are sick or suffering like that, well, we just put them
out of their misery. I think that’s the kindest thing to do with these
people”.
I felt I should offer to stand in front of the coach and invite him to run me over, perhaps reversing for good measure. Perhaps he would advocate collecting all of us, like cattle stumbling blindly around with foot and mouth, put a bolt through our brains and toss our infected carcasses on bonfires across the country. It would do us a favour, don’t you agree? and society too, if the skies across rural Britain were black with swirling miasmas of smoke from the burning bodies of the HIV positive population?
I had an epiphany at that moment; perhaps my rose tinted view of Britain as an evolved nation of open minded people, free from petty prejudices and choking ignorance, wasn’t entirely correct. Perhaps I lived in a fantasy world, where discrimination was a thing of the past and everyone wore this season’s fashions. I woke up and smelt the roses. And they smelt very like steaming bullshit.
I suppose, until treatment, my experiences of being HIV positive were similar
to my experiences of being black in Britain. I realise racial prejudice and
discrimination are alive and well but it’s something I personally haven’t
had to face - so far at least. I realise people living with HIV are sometimes
stigmatised and face prejudice and discrimination, but luckily the people I
have told have never rejected me. Because some of us may live in a cocooned
world, where nothing really bad seems to happen to us, should we be blind to
the grim experiences facing other people living with HIV?
I recently attended a TB/HIV conference in India where I stayed in a plush five star hotel. Again, I thought I had the measure of the country from my gilded experiences, until I travelled in a taxi (shamefully to buy diamond earrings). The taxi was suddenly surrounded by beggars. Like a scene from a zombie B movie; crazed, ragged with filthy bandaged stumps, they clambered on the car, imploring me for money. When I opened the window to hand out cash, a beggar grabbed my wrist. We looked at each other and for a moment I wondered how different my life could have been if I had been born here rather than bland suburbia. Later at the conference, I heard about people in developing countries co-infected with TB and HIV. TB is curable and HIV treatable, leading to a normal life expectancy. However, so many of these people die shocking deaths that can be easily prevented, because they don’t have access to treatment. And I sometimes complain because my HAART regimen is twice a day and can be difficult to remember.
I quickly got off the coach before my gay best friend, Robert, punched in the driver’s nicotine stained dentures. I complained that everyone in the hotel seemed to be wearing shell suits and that Robert and I had to share a bed. He itches all night you see, and I wake up with his flaccid penis lying limply on my thigh (the only time I share a bed with a naked man and not even the hint of an early morning erection). Before we fell asleep I asked him a favour: ‘Please, if ever I become a middle aged, balding bigot, put me out of my misery.’
