HIV and AIDS Yesterday and Today
December 1, 2020By Topher Campbell, Artist/Filmmaker
It’s a Monday in November during one of the most destabilising years of my life. I have just been through 14 days of self-isolation because one of my lovers tested positive for Covid-19. The surreal experience of seeing his beautiful face looking tired and disorientated on our facetime calls and the worry that I too might be a carrier has been stressful beyond belief. Thankfully it was not too serious, and he has recovered from what turned out to be a mild version of the maddening Coronavirus. As for me, I was tested and turned out negative. During my isolation, I was called by the government Track and Trace people. They claimed they were making sure I was coping with isolation but then ended the call with a reminder that I could be fined for breaking isolation before my assigned date. The call felt like a form of social control.
Rewind twenty-one years to 1999 and I am in the home of a best friend who had painfully succumbed to many years of fighting the HIV virus. He was dying and gasping for breath in his last moments of life. His partner joined me with several other friends. All of us young, Black, white, straight and LGBTQ gathered around his bed in the small upstairs bedroom in North London. Bewildered and saddened by our once beautiful and youthful friend, a Black man now emaciated and shrunken. The attending nurse encouraged us to help him on his way. So, we did. With tears streaming down our faces holding each other’s hand, some shouting, some whispering imploring him to “Let go”. To let go of the suffering. In the next hour Steven or as we called him Little Steve died.
Now I hear the same language of testing positive or negative for a deadly virus; feel the same sense of weariness at a public health crisis that has gone on and on as memories reach across the decades to remind me how vulnerable we all are. The difference is that in the 90’s, the time of my young adulthood there were no calls from government helplines or laws that could fine you or a national campaign telling us (laughingly) that we were ‘all in this together”. Instead, there was vilification, shaming and rampant homophobia about the evils of the “gay plague”. No matter that heterosexual, bisexual or for that matter any-sexual human being is vulnerable to HIV and AIDS. The era before Anti-retrovirals was deadly for us all. It’s not over.
The picture has not changed for Black people throughout the Diaspora and Black men particularly. In Nigeria in 2017, 25% of newborn babies were HIV+. In parts of the US one in two Black men are HIV+ and in the UK the fastest growing group of people testing positive for HIV is Black men. In truth, the era of Anti-retrovirals is still a long way off for many in the Global South, particularly parts of Africa and for many in the Indian Sub-continent where drug prices are high and health care is basic to the point of non-existent. Added to this Black Trans women, who face a tsunami of issues from sexism and homophobia to racism and effemiphobia, and out and out violence, also have a high rate of HIV infection.
Homophobia, transphobia religious bigotry, state-sanctioned ignorance and self-hate are the real disease in the fight to stop this. The devastating, persistent world epidemic that predates Covid. There is still no cure or vaccine.
My little film, Encounters, commissioned by the pioneering organisation VisualAIDS is an attempt to prize open a space for Black and Brown people with HIV to be seen. It’s a reminder of the challenges we face within Black and Brown LGBTQ+ communities. It is also a celebration of sex and sexuality. A reminder that in the continuing era of HIV and AIDS we must be open to talking about sexual pleasure. We should promote the message of connectivity as a bulwark against our experiences of lockdown and isolation today. A lockdown that cares not for our lived experience or difference as LGBTQ people.
The memories of Little Steve’s death and the death of so many of my friends forced me to confront my own mortality and issues around my sexuality like never before. So as an artist I have begun many honest conversations with myself. Encounters is part of that conversation and one that I am inviting the world to participate. I hope Encounters will embolden and inspire those living with HIV, to live more freely without stigma. Whilst also encouraging those who are not to be less fearful and continue to live lives that are full of promise, surprise and wonder. Now, more than ever we need to reassert the visibility, vulnerability and strength that is within our communities because, like in the worst era of HIV and AIDS, we need to look to each other for solutions.
I am lucky. Undetectable and thriving and able to experience many more Novembers. I am not especially lucky though, it’s just that I live in a rich country with free healthcare. There are many who do not. Many who are experiencing all kinds of pressure to be quiet, hide their status, be less open. This shit is real, and we need to fight to make it end.