‘FREAK OF THE WEEK?SEX AND THE SUBURBS
It’s 11 am. I’m sitting at my desk at work, a decadently cocooned world where being out about living with HIV is de rigeur, when the phone rings. It’s a woman from a tabloid, chattering with frenzied bonhomie. “Natasha Bell ?” she gushes, “I have a proposition, I’m sure you’ll love. We’re doing a feature to raise awareness of HIV and I’d like YOU to be in it. We’re looking for HIV positive women to be photographed for tomorrow’s edition. Some we’d like to dress up like librarians, you know, sombre grey suits, thick glasses etc. The others we’d like to dress up as prostitutes. Then our readers can have a fun quiz to guess which ones have Aids! Fabulous idea don’t you think?”
I declined, ungratefully I know. She was mortified; incredulous I could turn down this extraordinary opportunity to combat stereotypes whilst cunningly titillating their leering readers. If I was happy to be photographed in Positive Nation, baring my soul, why should I mind being photographed in their paper, baring my breasts?
I’ve turned down other interviews with magazines delirious to get hold of someone living with HIV who isn’t gay or African. Okay, the fact that I am black was a disappointment and lost me some brownie points, but a passable home counties’ accent was a saving grace. I’d made the mistake previously of naïvely speaking to a women’s magazine, blithely believing they’d represent me as I was. Instead I was portrayed as a hapless victim, gushing with gratitude that my negative boyfriend was generous enough to go out with simpering, diseased little me.
I recently told someone that I’d never experienced any stigma or discrimination due to my HIV status. He retorted that that was because I didn’t tell people. Do I need to wear my HIV positive status as a badge of self-worth, disclose to everyone I meet and have my picture emblazoned across every newspaper to validate my experiences? Should I regard myself as a cowardly traitor to the stigma-bashing battle cry, simply because I’m selective about who I tell, or because I don’t relish featuring on the Jerry Springer Show?
Last month I spoke to a couple of groups of people living with HIV about my experiences. I happily opened up my life for dissection, allowing my intimate sex secrets to be scrutinised with cheery composure. I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to share stories with individuals afterwards, and delighted in sniggering riotously with a group of African women in a corner about our common sexual shenanigans. “I tried to tell my boyfriend that I was HIV positive, by hinting,” one told me. “I said we must always use condoms, that we probably couldn’t have children the normal way, even that I had a serious medical condition that could be passed on by sex. Still he didn’t get it. Why are men so stupid?”
I’m happy to be open about my status in such settings, where sharing my experiences with other positive people, many newly diagnosed, seemed to be of value to them as well as me. The recent conference of people living with HIV in Leicester was good fun in this respect (but especially for the young man reportedly found tied up to a table, in a state of undress, with a strategically placed broom about his person). The conference was also incredibly rewarding, despite the fact that I had to leave on Sunday night to join my boyfriend for his 30th birthday and then return again at 6am the following day. I didn’t even get a shag out of returning home; bloody waste of time if you ask me. Who says pregnancy and HIV should dampen your libido?
So tar and feather me, slap on a scarlet letter and stick me in the stocks for not talking to the media and the world about living with HIV. I may be uncouthly open in Positive Nation, to friends and family and to support groups, but I’m not prepared to be ‘freak of the week’ to titillate the tabloids. Despite my Catholicism, a burning martyr I’m not, and I don’t relish being sacrificed on the altar of educating the ignorant. I’m not public property, I’m only up for being used and abused in S&M sex sessions. Brooms and bondage anyone?
