With Valentine’s Day upon us, PN’s
Laurence Gibson got together with two couples who share everything
- except their HIV status
Photos Piers Allardyce
Welcome,”
Richard says, beaming; his pumped body clear through his tight t-shirt. “This
is my partner Michael.”
We are in Richard’s trendy flat in London Bridge, where he introduces
me to a particularly angelic boy sitting on a sofa in a living room straight
out of the Ideal Home Exhibition.
“We first met online,” Richard explains.
“We had sent each other a random message. and arranged to go for a drink,”
adds Michael, a 20-year-old student at Oxford Brookes University. “When
we met we got a bit drunk and stayed up until about 2am, just chatting. We
got on really well from day one.”
There is an obvious closeness and gentleness between them. They touch each
other regularly. “I would like to move into this flat eventually,”
Michael considers.
“I spend most of my time here anyway, and I have learned to cook since
being with him,” he says with a cheeky grin.
“Before we met I was hopeless in the kitchen. But now I am getting really
into it, creating all kinds of things. I cooked last night in fact. My friends
and family are beginning to joke that I am turning into a housewife.”
“Well, you do like to keep the place tidy,” Richard comments glancing
around his immaculate surroundings.
Textual healing
Richard says these days he mentions the HIV immediately because of past rejection
and hurt after telling people.
“There were people I’d been seeing for a while who I never heard
from again once I told them. Or they simply couldn’t handle it and politely
made their excuses. I have decided now it is best to be upfront about it from
the beginning.”
But, finally, he has met someone with integrity.
“When he first told me about HIV he did it by text message,” Michael
recalls.
“I was really tired when it arrived and misunderstood. ‘I’m
positive,’ it said, which I took as he was a positive thinker, or something.
“I sent a reply back. ‘Yes, that’s fine. I am too.’
But when I read it back a few times later I began to wonder if that was exactly
what he meant and it soon became clear what the reality was.”
Wanting to impress
A touch of sadness comes over Richard: “I respected Michael so much
for the way he dealt with my drunken text message, because I was too scared
to face up to him.
“He didn’t judge me at all, which I think shows a great deal of
strength and humility. It made me think ‘this guy is really good’.”
“I honestly knew nothing about HIV. But, at the end of the day, I decided
I really liked him, and that’s all that counts,” says Michael.
“I looked online to find out more. I typed HIV into the search engine
and read what I could find,” he explains.
“Me and a mate went for a test together in Oxford that came back negative.
They gave me loads of leaflets there. I wanted to impress him with what I
had learned and did not want to look stupid.”
For someone so young, Michael has a wise head on his shoulders.
“I realised if you play safe, you’ll be fine. And he’s doing
well on the HIV drugs; so I thought ‘let’s just get on with it’.”
Something
special
Richard says: “I tried to keep it open and let him know he could ask
me anything he wanted. But there is a balance between being open about it
and banging on and on.
“Then there’s the sex,” says Richard.
“Which is very good,” adds Michael.
“It is quite an important aspect and is often treated as an awkward
issue. If you are trying to help someone understand what you can and can’t
do, then I don’t think the general literature is very good,” Richard
explains, with a furrowed brow.
He went on to say that there was very little useful information if you are
an HIV positive man wanting to have a healthy sex life.
Michael says some literature tried to scare them into not doing anything at
all.
“But if you are safe then everything is fine. The sexual health clinic
in Oxford had quite a balanced view and told me you can do pretty much the
same as anyone else. Everyone should be safe anyway, shouldn’t they?”
“I can’t remember ever having had a big row with you, can you
believe that?” asks Richards, gazing lovingly at his boyfriend.
“He’s got the whole package, hasn’t he? His looks were the
first thing that attracted me but because of the age difference Michael also
provides me with a fresher look on life - what with me being so bitter and
twisted!”
“It has all been very easy and pleasant so far,” says Richard.
“I think we have found something very special within one another,”
adds Michael.
Next to Birmingham, to meet Mick and Caroline Mason at the workplace they
share. The morning is overcast with freezing fog and it is a relief to be
inside the warm office.
Mick, 39, has haemophilia and caught HIV and hep C through infected blood
products in the early 1980s. Today he stands in front of me looking the picture
of health and greets me with an enthusiastic smile.
“For me, it was love at first sight,” explains Mick, proudly sitting
with a big grin on his face, arms crossed, looking up at his wife.
“Before we met I had never been out with anyone for more than a week.
As far as I was concerned, it was never, never, never.
“But when she walked in I immediately thought ‘yup, that’s
it’,” he says with boyish charm.
A gradual love
“I thought Mick was very peculiar when I first met him,” explains
Caroline.
“We met through Mick’s cousin, a friend of mine, and we all went
out to the pub one night. It wasn’t that I disliked him; I just thought
him quite strange for a while, that’s all,” she jokes.
“It definitely took me a while to warm to him, but he was most persistent.”
They talk about their meeting with enthusiasm, as if it were yesterday when
they met, not 17 years ago.
“I found out about the HIV through Mick’s cousin quite early on.
But because I didn’t really fancy him at the beginning I felt sorry
for him, but it didn’t directly affect me,” she says.
“It was a very gradual thing for him. It wasn’t until the June
after we met when I could finally ask him ‘is it true?’,”
she adds.
“I flatly denied it,” say Mick. “I said it was only hepatitis
and he had got it wrong.
“I had only just managed to get you to hold my hand in public by this
time, and I did not want to jeopardise that.”
Honesty
By this time Caroline was falling in love with Mick and thought if they were
going to move forward they had to be open and honest about it.
“I couldn’t be doing with all this stuff hidden beneath the surface,”
she says.
“I was really nervous about telling you,” says Mick. “The
sweat was dripping off me. Back then I assumed if I were to tell anyone about
the infection then the reaction would be to push me away. But you didn’t.”
“We just talked the whole thing through,” his wife explains.
“It was very upsetting and we both cried a lot. It was a different time
in 1989. There were no treatments, much more stigma and those bloody tombstone
adverts were all over the place.”
At that time, Mick had been given a death sentence by his doctors: “Whenever
I went to the clinic I was told I had six months tops. Every time I went back
I heard the same thing. It took until the mid-nineties for them to concede
I may have a few years left in me yet,” he continues with a wry smile.
“When we were married the advice was to make the most of it, because
we would only have a year or so together. It was really surreal at the time,”
Caroline adds.
“But you just kept on surviving and surviving, against all the odds.”
Panic
“Before I met Caroline HIV had never been discussed at home either.
When I was diagnosed in 1985 my mum was in the room. But that was the only
time we ever spoke about it,” he tells me.
“When we told your dad and step-mum about our engagement she was really
panicked. She actually asked your dad if he thought I even knew about the
HIV. It really was that engrained with secrecy,” she says.
Now, almost two decades later, both Mick and Caroline are closely involved
in the HIV sector, both working for THT Birmingham. Mick has taken part in
various national media campaigns to help improve the lives of others, while
Caroline has stood firmly by his side the whole way.
“Now I don’t care who knows, or what their reaction is. If they
don’t like it, that is their problem,” Mick states proudly.
Opening
up
“It was difficult on both of us, trying not to mention it for all those
years. For the first time in our life we can now relax and work in an environment
where neither of us is judged in any way,” says Caroline
“It was the gay community in Birmingham who opened their arms up to
us.
“In the early days it was the haemophiliacs who were cast as the innocent
victims of this virus, whereas the gay men were the demons. It is my opinion
they are both very disempowering labels.”
“But it is because of Mick that I am where I am today. He is absolutely
the right person for me,” she says glowing from head to toe.
“He has supported me in everything, in my various roles at THT and I
have even done a degree in my thirties,” she adds.
“We have proved there is life after HIV,” Mick states proudly.
“We are very different and therefore complement each other quite well.
We ground one another somehow. I really can’t imagine being married
to anyone else.”
Beyond the virus
For their obvious differences, both these relationships are working because
they have learned, in Mick’s words, ‘to see beyond the virus and
realise the virus is not who we are’.
Both couples were forced to adopt an honest and open attitude from an early
stage, partly due to HIV itself.
If you are negative and meet a positive person try to not dismiss them out
of hand. Take time to learn and understand about the virus. If you are the
positive one, remain open and honest about your HIV infection. The rewards
could last a lifetime.
• THT’s site for gay or bisexual men in mixed HIV status relationships:
http://together.chapsonline.org.uk/home
Call for poz/neg couples
There is little doubt that following repeated exposure to HIV it will be transmitted
and established infection will result. However, the ease with which HIV is
passed on seems to vary between indivuals. Certain people remain uninfected
despite high level exposure to HIV. This of course could just be luck, but
understanding the mechanisms underlying this apparent ‘resistance’
to HIV is of critical importance in the development of preventative vaccines
for HIV.
Understanding this mechanism may also have an impact on development of new
treatments for people already infected. It is already known that certain genetic
factors can provide relative protection from HIV infection and how the body
fights infections; the immune response may also play an important role.
We are looking for volunteers in either HIV sero-discordant relationships
or HIV negative couples, who may be able to help. It would involve four clinic
visits per year and some blood samples to enable us to study both genetic
and immunological factors.
If you and your partner are interested in finding out any more about this
project please contact:
• Kristin Kuldanek - 020 7886 6047
k.kuldanek@imperial.ac.uk
• Mr Ken Legg - 020 7886 1464
k.legg@imperial.ac.uk
• Dr Sarah Fidler - s.fidler@imperial.ac.uk
