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SLAG ON THE LOOSE'Fun, fashion and fag friends...what every smart HIV+ girl needs to keep sane these days. Welcome to Susan Cole’s new column
I suppose it was inevitable that I’d catch ‘the gay plague’, seeing that my first ever crush was on The Village People, well before I understood that I didn’t have the equipment the Construction Worker required.
Fifteen years later and here I am, HIV positive and still enamoured of gay men. I fear I may be accused of being a ‘fag hag’, or perhaps in my case a ‘fag slag’, but so what? I firmly believe that what every HIV positive gal needs is a couple of gay soul mates.
Two of my best friends are gay and they are certainly my best friends, even more than the half price sale at Gucci.
There’s Robert. Do you remember being 11 years old and having a best friend that you could chat to all day at school, then come home and talk to on the phone about nothing for two hours?
Well, that’s just what I have with Rob, except now it’s my partner and not my mum who’s saying “You’ve been on the phone for hours! What the fuck have you got to talk about?” (My mum of course didn’t swear, nor did her voice ring with suppressed suspicion that I might be shagging my best friend, regardless of sexuality.)
Together Robert and I have the naughty adolescent thrill of discovering each other’s bizarre sexual practices. I can now casually identify a fister or S&M-er simply by a furtive glance at the colour of their arm-band. He has put away a misconception that vast amounts of soap are needed to utilise breasts in a masturbatory fashion.
I take him to straight “pulling” discos, where girls in powder-pink stilettos eye him appreciatively, and he takes me to gay bars where gorgeous strangers comment on how magnificent my breasts are, sadly without the slightest twinge of desire.
With Ben it’s slightly different. Do you remember the cool smart kid at school, the one you always looked up to, who one day - oh joy! - let you join his gang? Well, when I grow up I’m going to be just like Ben: obscenely intelligent, fearlessly assertive, and able to throw together a Zara ensemble for £34.99. Ben is my hero.
Clean living, New-York-Marathon running, mediaeval antique collecting, Ben is everything I’m not - apart from being HIV positive. Having a close gay friend who also has this nasty bug is incredibly invigorating.
For one thing he looks great and I shamefully must admit my greatest fear in being positive is losing my looks, not dying a slow and painful death! Also he has a “so what” attitude to being positive that has helped me realise that there’s nothing dirty or shameful in having it.
My two best gay friends have both been wonderfully supportive in helping me cope with being HIV positive. When I was due to start medication it was Robert who came with me to the consultation at the clinic, grilling the doctor with questions about the latest studies.
My straight friends, albeit very concerned and unrejecting, have reacted to news of my diagnosis with horror and tears, as if I would kick the bucket before dessert was served. My gay friends have been empathetic and helped me keep things in perspective. “No, you’re not going to die imminently. No, you won’t grow a buffalo hump overnight. No, you don’t have to give up sex and move to a nunnery in Peru”.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not enamoured of all gay men; in fact some of the vilest people I’ve met have been gay, with truly hideous dress sense. It’s just that the gay men that I’ve chosen as friends are wonderful, with only the bizarre flaw of not finding me sexually appealing.
They’ve helped me realise that it’s okay to say: “So, I became HIV positive probably by taking it up the arse, not a freak needlestick injury” and that although it’s pretty shit being HIV positive, there are worse things in life.
