It's hella easy to just choose love. One of the most life-changing moments for me was back in the summer of 2015. I had just finished the first year of my MSW program at Boston College, I had just got into a relationship, and overall, things seemed to be going pretty smoothly until they weren't.
By the fall of 2015, just a few months later, I found myself at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, in the Infectious Disease Department. I anxiously awaited news that I had already prepared for. The doctor came into the room, emotionless, and quietly said, “You have HIV.” At that moment, I knew my life would change, and I began to question everything.
As I rode home, I kept asking myself, “How did I get here?” How did someone who, on the outside, seemingly had everything together, someone who chose a noble profession in social work and tried to be the best version of himself for others fuck up so royally? Also, why would God do this to me? Is this my punishment? Deep down, I knew exactly how.
I mentioned that, on the outside, I seemed to have everything together. However, on the inside, there was internal chaos, and the two main culprits were homophobia and toxic masculinity, which led to self-loathing and a secret lifestyle of living on the down-low. Let’s define some of these terms just to make sure we’re all on the same page.
Homophobia, the irrational hatred and fear of people who identify as LGBTQ. Homophobia includes prejudice, discrimination, harassment, and acts of violence brought on by fear and hatred. It occurs on personal, institutional, and societal levels. Something to keep in mind is that this is culturally produced. We don't naturally hate others. This is learned behavior. It’s also rooted in white supremacy. That’s for a different talk.
(Laughter)
Toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity is what can come of teaching boys that they can’t express emotion openly, that they have to be tough all the time, and that anything other than that makes them feminine or weak.
Now, this does not mean that all masculinity is toxic. That's not what I'm saying. It means that some aspects of masculinity definitely are.
Down-low, a subculture of mainly black and brown men who secretly have sexual encounters and sometimes relationships with other men, while claiming to identify as heterosexual openly. Sometimes these men have girlfriends and even wives, but do not see what they do as wrong. They often compartmentalize it as something they just do on the side.
So what do these definitions have to do with me contracting HIV? Everything.
As a boy who grew up in Oakland, California - East Oakland - messages perpetuating homophobia were ubiquitous - they were everywhere: hip-hop, the church, television, family, and even classmates perpetuated the idea that anything outside of heterosexuality was wrong.
In elementary, I wasn’t even sure what gay was, but I’ve been approached on various occasions about my sexuality. I did, however, know to deny it because of the energy the boys would ask me. It was like, “You better not say yes or else.” They didn't have to say anything. So I vehemently denied it then and continued to for decades. Toxic masculinity and homophobia had already infected my eight-year-old brain.
According to The Trevor Project, 75% of LGBTQ youth reported that they had experienced discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity at least once in their lifetime. More than half of LGBTQ youth reported that they had experienced discrimination based on these same things in the past year.
These are kids - These are kids who cannot control who they’re attracted to any more than any of you can. I too learned that I couldn’t control it either.
In middle school, I knew I was different. I knew that I was attracted to the girls, and I was also attracted to the boys. This is when the internal chaos really began. On one hand, my body was telling me I was attracted to the boys because - puberty.
(Laughter)
On the other hand, many of the important people in my life, celebrities I admired, TV shows I loved taught me that I was wrong. Even God.
So I tried to do any and everything I could to suppress it: make my voice a little deeper, listen to more gangsta hardcore hip-hop, act tougher. I even tried to flirt with girls, even though I was terrible at it, to prove to myself this must be some kind of mistake, a mistake that was my fault and that I alone needed to change.
What do you all think happened? It didn’t work. None of it worked. Not even prayer. And believe me, I prayed long and hard for God to take this far away from me. But it never left. I was dealing with all this alone, but who could I tell?
As a “man” at 14 or 15 years old, I was supposed to handle everything myself. I couldn’t ask for help. Who could I turn to? My parents? No. Friends? No. Any teachers at my Catholic high school? No.
In my young brain, I thought that this was something that was going to ruin me. I thought my family would disown me, my friends would abandon and ridicule me, my physical safety might be at risk. And I was going to hell.
Additionally, toxic masculinity taught me I was a man, a black man, and I couldn’t feel fear. I was not allowed to feel sadness, and I couldn’t even feel confusion. I had to get my shit together and figure this out, which led to suppression of my emotions in public, but getting my needs met in private.
I wasn’t concerned with figuring out who I was and what this all meant about me. I was running away from who I didn’t want to be, because all I knew was that queerness was bad. It was weird. It was wrong. It was disgusting. And it was a sin. I was brainwashed.
Suppression of emotions publicly, but getting my needs met privately looked like. Using hateful terms like “faggot” during the day, but staying up late to watch gay porn at night. Acting absolutely disgusted when two men held hands or kissed, but checking out men seeking men ads on Craigslist, eventually meeting up with men from these ads. And this was my introduction to down-low culture.
I won't spend too much time on this topic, but what I can tell you is that encounters were often. They were usually in dark locations. There’s minimal communication, very little emotional expression. It was solely focused on sex, and each person would go their separate ways, pretending as if nothing ever happened. There oftentimes were phone numbers or even names are not exchanged. All of this is true for many men who consider themselves DL even today.
Now, my public relationships with women weren’t too successful either. I often felt rejected when expressing feelings for women who didn’t feel the same about me. I felt lonely, and I never felt good enough.
So guess where I found comfort. More secret encounters. Again, toxic masculinity taught me that I was supposed to not only have one, but many women. So when I did it, I felt embarrassed, I felt guilty, I felt inferior, and I felt like maybe there really was something wrong with me.
Who could I talk to though? I thought real men don’t experience these emotions. So how would it look if I did? So again, I held it in, and I coped the best way I knew how with the only thing that made me feel better, my only outlet: more risky down-low sex.
Fast forward to grad school, 2015. Toward the end of the semester, I got sick. This was not a normal cold. It lasted for weeks. I was extremely fatigued, had a high fever, I had no appetite, stayed in bed, and lost a considerable amount of weight. I didn’t go to the doctor because in my experience, men don’t go to the doctor. We handle it ourselves. “Just put some testing on it. It will be fine.”
(Laughter)
Eventually, the sickness passed, and things were getting back to normal. Soon after, I met a woman who would become my partner, and I had no concerns, but just to be 100% safe, I decided to go to campus to get an HIV STI screening. Abnormal. “Abnormal” was the word he used to describe my HIV results.
When I asked the doctor for folks who have abnormal results, “How likely is it that they have HIV?” did you know what he said? He said, “95%.” I collapsed. I broke down. And with my mom holding me in her arms, I realized that this is the result of sweeping things under the rug. This is the result of wearing a mask 24/7. I could no longer hide from myself or anyone else.
Over the next few months, I got tested three more times at three different locations, and nobody could give me a clear answer because it could have been a false positive. Until again, my doctor at Brigham and Women’s said that I indeed had HIV.
So here I am, riding home, reflecting, “HIV positive. Am I going to die?” The doctor told me I wouldn’t, but is he sure? What would my partner say? Is she going to leave me? There’s no cure for this. I will have this forever. I’m dirty. I’m tainted. No one’s going to want me. But the worst thing on my mind, the worst thing: I’m going to have to tell people I got it from a man.
I couldn’t continue to lie. This was right here. This was right in front of me. I could not run from this anymore. So I stopped. With research, therapy, and an incredible village - Hey y’all! - I’m in a much better space.
(Applause)
HIV is not a death sentence.
In 2019, there are approximately 1.2 million people living with HIV in the US, and infection rates have been decreasing. Because of modern medicine, we now know that “you” equals “you,” “are undetectable” equals “untransmittable.”
So if a person living with HIV takes their medication as prescribed and reaches an undetectable viral load, that means the presence of the virus is so low it can’t be detected, they cannot pass HIV through sex. Now, this is phenomenal news. But also in 2019, an estimated one in eight people living with HIV in the US did not know they had it.
So we need to encourage folks to get tested. Gay, straight, bi, DL, whatever, you need to get tested. We need access for folks in low-income communities of color who are getting hit the hardest. We need true education, not abstinence-only teaching in schools. We need to stop pretending that this will just go away, because it won’t.
I now know that I am not tainted. I know that people will and do want me. I’m a catch.
(Cheers)
And I just found out I’m fine. So I’m just saying -
(Laughter)
I had to learn how to radically love myself, HIV and all.
I don’t share this story with you for sympathy. What I’m not doing is blaming my HIV diagnosis on homophobia or toxic masculinity. I take full responsibility for my diagnosis. I share this story because there are little black boys, girls, nonbinary, queer youth who are struggling with these same things today.
There are nearly 2 million youth in the US alone who identify as part of the LGBTQ community, 2 million youth who have higher rates of mental health diagnoses like depression and anxiety, 2 million who will have higher rates of homelessness and houselessness, 2 million who have higher rates of attempting and potentially completing suicide.
If during those early years, I had someone, anyone in my life to tell me that I could talk to them without judgment, if I had some positive messages and openness around queerness, if I had a black male mentor telling me it’s okay to cry or express emotions other than anger, or that it’s okay to be attracted to people of the same sex or the same gender, if I had an adult telling me that I was okay exactly how I was, I think the outcome would have been a little different.
You can choose to do nothing, or you can choose to be a positive light for someone hiding in the shadows. You can encourage queer folks regardless of age. They don’t have to hide behind their mask anymore.
Whatever you decide to do, just remember that it’s hella easy to just choose love.
(Applause)
