Russell Fleet Alive and kicking
This disclosing your status is a funny old business? I thought I sort of had
it covered, but now I’m not so sure. A few things have come up recently
where I’ve found myself wondering, not only about whether to disclose,
but why I do it in the first place.
I should point out, these situations thankfully haven’t been of the
earth-shattering variety where there’s something huge on the line, like
losing a job or getting chucked out of my home, but sometimes it’s the
small things that make you think.
First off, I’ve just done some shows with an amateur theatre company
and when I joined I decided I wouldn’t disclose my HIV status to them.
I wasn’t worried about the possibility of bad reactions, it’s
just not relevant to what we do. I’m also getting a little bored of
the supportive, if slightly pitying, looks from well-meaning people; that
and the endless round of questions. I feel like I’ve sung that aria
in every possible key, and it’s time for a new opera.
Yet, one evening in the bar after rehearsal, one of the cast said she was
bored at work and Googled our names. For a flash I was worried because Googling
me takes you to this column, but then I reminded myself that it comes with
the territory. If I’m going to plaster my ramblings about life, catflu
and everything all over a national periodical with a website, I can hardly
expect it to go unnoticed, can I? Nothing came of it though, not even a discreet
private word to let me know she knew. So for the moment, I’m still known
for who I am and what I can do rather than for what bits of alien RNA I have
floating round my lymph nodes.
The other time disclosure came up was when I was at a certain establishment
on a Sunday afternoon where gentlemen are encouraged to - how shall I put
this - dress as nature intended and celebrate the rites of spring.
I’d just been chatted up by someone who definitely qualifies as a major
fantasy; 27, eastern European, gorgeous, blind. Well, not blind, but I couldn’t
work out what he was doing chasing me when he could have the pick of the place.
And better yet, when I asked him if he fancied coming back to mine, he said
yes.
As time went by, I had the ‘do I tell him now or later?’ conversation
with myself and... I just couldn’t do it. But I also knew I couldn’t
not disclose, because I’d never be able to relax feeling like I was
holding something back. Once again, it wasn’t fear of a bad reaction.
He hadn’t reacted badly to me being 43, and frankly I was more nervous
about admitting to that. It was more that the moment you disclose a positive
HIV status, you ‘become’ HIV, or everything about you is filtered
through it. In the end, however, I bottled it completely, told him I was too
trashed and went home alone, kicking myself up the arse all the way, metaphorically
speaking.
When I was diagnosed I made a decision early on to be open about my status.
This was partly idealism because I knew enough from being gay that the only
way to change attitudes is to be visible and come out. But it also seemed
like such hard work keeping this kind of secret. Not to mention that the moment
people sense you’re holding something back they start digging.
However, now I find myself wondering how to handle it at a point where HIV
is less central to my life than it was. It just seems like it’s still
a big issue for the world out there. Would it really have been such a big
issue for the guy in the club? Maybe, maybe not, but the fact is I made it
into one on his behalf without consulting him. Which ever way you slice it,
the result was the same, but I got to do the rejecting before he got a chance
to... only trouble is, in rejecting him I really rejected myself.
As Shakespeare might have put it, “To D or not to D, that is the question”.
Mind you, Hamlet wouldn’t have been that much help. He had enough problems
of his own. “Alas, poor Yorick! He could do with some New-Fill.”
