NEVER WALK ALONE

The numbers continue to dwindle. AIDS isn’t what it used to be. There are buzzier causes: ALS, prostate cancer, refugee resettlement. Staffs at the past two schools where I’ve worked attend charity dinners and auctions each September to support research for medical conditions a few of our students have battled. There are other banners I want to get behind, like mental health, everything pertaining to animals and the environment and, yes, refugees.

But AIDS remains closest to my heart. I first grappled with coming out back when Geraldo Rivera reported about GRID—Gay-Related Immune Deficiency—on “20/20”. It was the acronym that preceded AIDS, with a heavy emphasis on “gay”. Gay men were getting sick; gay men were dying. I signed up to volunteer with the AIDS Resource Center in Dallas before I’d ever so much as kissed a boy. I was profoundly impacted by Randy Shilts’ agonizing account of the early years of the AIDS crisis (And the Band Played on) and the haunting, Oscar-winning documentary “Common Threads: Stories from the AIDS Quilt” before I’d ever had a date. Gay may technically be synonymous with happy, but in those days it was heavily weighted with fear, maybe even death. AIDS will always play a part in my identity as a gay man.

I made sure to avoid any proximity to this sign. Just not me.

And so I showed up at the Roundhouse Community Centre yesterday for yet another AIDS Walk. I first participated in a walk twenty-six years ago in Los Angeles, a decidedly grimmer time when the people with full-on AIDS sat in wheelchairs pushed by loved ones. Some bravely walked, with or without a cane. We knew who had it. Their faces were gaunt, unnaturally tanned and KS lesions dotted their skin. I remember trying to project hope. You can beat this. The AZT will work. The cure is coming. But my sunshiny disposition faded after seeing the ravaged bodies of so many men in their prime, from watching mothers push their thirty-year-old sons, from seeing the inequity as one healthy-looking “longtime companion” supported the weakened one.

So much has changed. In the past year I’ve briefly dated two HIV+ men, each “undetectable”. They are among the lucky few who were diagnosed thirty years ago and somehow managed to survive the darkest years. They take their meds but show none of what once were the telltale signs of AIDS. They manage their condition. The hope now is real. Still, it’s not like diabetes or epilepsy. There remains a sense of shame and even shunning from potential partners. As I listened to both of them tell their story, one was wracked with guilt while the other’s language was loaded with affirmations delivered defensively rather than convincingly. The mental toll remains great.

In truth, I’m out of touch about what it means to live with HIV or AIDS today. I don’t have a clue what the needs are. I don’t know what is within reach and what remains a loftier goal in terms of medical research. Where are things at in terms of a vaccine? Why won’t my medical insurance cover PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis)? What are the inequities regarding prevention, detection and treatment in developing countries?

How did I become so removed? Why did we stop rallying? Where did everyone go? Thousands turned out for AIDS Walks in the early ‘90s. In recent years, only a few hundred show up. Contrast this with the fact that, according to the CBC, “hundreds of thousands” showed up for the Pride parade in Vancouver only seven weeks ago. Something seems amiss.

I need to re-educate myself as to where things are at regarding AIDS. I need a better sense of how the donations help. Despite my ignorance, I know I must continue to participate in this annual event. For me, the AIDS Walk is a meditative time when I honor the thousands who died from AIDS in bleaker times. Knowing that HIV is no longer a death sentence makes it more critical that I remember friends whose bodies and minds battled desperately and ultimately futilely and who died at twenty-eight, at thirty-five, at forty-one. I continue to mourn the passing of Stephen, Don, Farrell, Steve, Greg and Jose. The anger is gone but the tragedy only feels greater. All their potential wiped away. All so unnecessary.

I keep hoping the number of walkers will stabilize and that more gay men will show up again to reflect and remember. Pride celebrations offer more opportunities to ogle glamorous drag queens and ripped studs in Speedos. Pride leaves many feeling good, but the AIDS Walk stirs trickier emotions and commemorates an era that must not be forgotten.

A WALK IN THE PARK

Beautiful September day! Sun shining, temperatures warm but merciful thanks to a gentle ocean breeze. Perfect day for a walk in Stanley Park. This walk is more special, more than just an extension of summer. This is AIDS Walk Vancouver. It’s a far cry from the chilly, rainy day last year when I walked alone along with a threadbare entourage dedicated to the cause. This time I have a good friend with me and the larger group, while nothing the size of the hordes from twenty years ago, is boosted by a human injection as well.

                             

 

 

                             

 If you are a teenager now, it is unlikely that you knew us well. We are your shadow uncles, your angel godfathers, your mother’s or your grandmother’s best friend from college, the author of that book you found in the gay section of the library. We are characters in a Tony Kushner play, or names on a quilt that rarely gets taken out anymore.

       --David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

AIDS Walk numbers will never match the masses from a generation ago. That’s a good thing. Great strides have been made in terms of research, treatment and other care issues. Still, I feel that those of us who lost and feared the most back then have to recommit to the cause. Without the urgency, the front-page headlines and the sensational letters to the editor, people less impacted by AIDS are no longer stirred to action. They have moved on to bike rides for cancer and opportunities to garner several dozen YouTube views from getting cold water poured on their heads.

I am one who believes each person’s charitable priorities should be private—only you, the organization and the taxman need to know. I will, however, continue to post about my renewed commitment to supporting AIDS charities to encourage you to consider whether there might be something in your wallet that can go to a local AIDS entity. The competition among charities nowadays is fierce. All the more reason why we must keep AIDS in focus.

It was an exquisite irony: Just when we stopped wanting to kill ourselves, we started to die. Just when we were feeling strength, it was taken from us.

 –David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

This year I walk in honor of my friends Farrell and José. Farrell was a guy I befriended in a tennis class in Dallas in the late 1980s. We formed a tennis connection that evolved into a friendship, albeit one that was limited by our reserved dispositions. Only after he visited me in L.A. did he come out to me in a letter, the self-hate as a lifelong Bible Belt native pouring out on the page. By telling you I’m gay, I know you must detest me. I wrote back to say that what I truly detested was the fact both of us felt so compelled to live(?) in the closet. The friendship became stronger but not enough for him to tell me he was sick with complications from AIDS. I only found out in late 1994 when a letter I mailed was Returned to Sender with “Deceased” stamped on the front. There was no funeral service.

José was a friend I met in Malibu while I was going to law school. He owned an independent clothing store in a large space that is now a Banana Republic. José was a jovial individual, the guy whom everyone in my group of club-going gay friends kidded, sometimes mercilessly. He played into it, soaking up any kind of attention. He was generous to a fault, sweetness to the core. In 1995, after I’d moved to Vancouver, a friend called to say José had died suddenly. A brain aneurism. Two summers ago, as I had dinner with that friend, the real story came forth. He’d died of AIDS, but the shame was too great. None of us knew. He retreated and died alone.

For both Farrell and José, the shame was too great. It saddens me to think they couldn’t reach out. I know that each died completely alone.

This is part of the past devastation from AIDS. This is what I cannot forget. This is why walking remains imperative. Circumstances are drastically different, but I need persons with HIV or AIDS to know they will continue to be supported. I know that shame remains. I read it in the dating profiles of men who are HIV+ and I occasionally see it manifested as anger on Twitter.

This is not over. AIDS still matters.

WALK ON

I awoke frequently in the night, aware that rain was pelting my roof, but there was a greater consciousness that made sleep elusive. My mind thought of Stephen, of Don, of Farrell, of José. When the alarm finally sounded, I dared not snooze. I had a ferry to catch.

Before heading out, the dog needed his morning walk. He looked at me between piddles, seeming to beg me to turn back. Rain has never been his thing. Definitely not a water dog.

I knew as I sailed, then drove toward Vancouver that I could have stayed home. I could have tried to get a rebate on rest, maybe head into the work week with less pronounced bags under my eyes. Why slog things out in the rain? All my money had already been accepted online. No one would know the difference.

But I’d been absent for too long, perhaps as long as seventeen years. People had fought, even emerged victorious in the battle with AIDS, but I had lost my way. This AIDS Walk is intended to be a rebirth, a renewed commitment to causes far greater than my own hapless dating life. Thank goodness.

I’d like to think I have remained concerned and connected regarding the struggles and advances pertaining to AIDS. In truth, however, I had become complacent. Deeply sympathetic, indeed, whenever a news article surfaced online, excited to hear about people living HIV+ without ever progressing to the point of having AIDS, but I’d gotten consumed by a career that mattered, a writing passion and a couple of little dogs who lapped up every minute I gave them. Admittedly, AIDS lost its urgency.

There was a time when most of my sleepless nights were due to AIDS. I read Randy Shilts’ And the Band Played On and raged over governments, religious institutions and medical providers that denied the crisis, hailed the epidemic as God’s wrath, underfunded research studies or got mired in political maneuvering. I feared intimacy as my mind twisted Silence = Death into Sex = Death. I consciously lost contact with an aunt after she ranted about me wasting my time volunteering with AIDS Project Los Angeles. I drew strength from my mother’s negativity, betting that I couldn’t handle being a buddy for persons with AIDS since I had a history of fainting over films in high school Biology and during standard hearing tests. There was a time when AIDS made me stronger. In fact, AIDS made me a better man.

Somehow I lost that within a year of moving from Los Angeles to Vancouver. The move left me underemployed and in debt, but it also threw my priorities out of whack. Having left my alcoholic ex back in La-la Land, I could now flit from tea dance to dance club to drag show with a new group of friends whose behavior I didn’t have to monitor or correct. I never became a wild boy, never went through a sowing-his-seeds stage, but I let frivolity take the forefront.

Things started to change this summer, first with a stop at the AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and further with an extended stay in L.A.—and my alcoholic ex’s disclosure that he was now HIV+. I recommitted myself. For starters, I pledged to participate in the Vancouver AIDS Walk.

So rain could not keep me away. Putting it aside for another year might push the issue away for good—actually for bad.

And so I parked my car and sloshed a half mile along the seawall toward the starting area. When I’d first participated in an AIDS Walk twenty-two years ago in Los Angeles and even during that first year in Vancouver, I’d always felt a rush as so many headed toward the start. This morning was radically different. I seemed to walk alone. There were a few other fools walking or running, but they had other agendas.

I am not the only one who grew complacent.

To be sure, the constant rain may have discouraged dozens, but weather cannot account for the light numbers roaming the muddy field encased by opportunistic food trucks and corporate sponsor tents. Where once I would have been guided to a short string of alphabetized letters wherein my last name fell, I was instead ushered to one volunteer who searched through a single alphabetized list of online registrants. Four pages of names. There are far more names on Vancouver’s AIDS Memorial wall.

There is complacency and then there is charitable competition, perhaps even donor burnout. On this day alone, Stanley Park was also the site of an Ismaili Walk and a cycling event for schizophrenia. As well, the downtown core played host to a First Nations Reconciliation Walk. When governments fall short in supporting the neediest citizens, competition for dollars becomes fierce and all the more vital.

Not sure what caused the magical firefly effect,
but I'd liketo think I did not walk alone.

It did not take long for the crowd to thin out as we began the walk. When I wasn’t navigating puddles and green globs of goose poop, I had plenty of time to honor the sweet dreamer that was Stephen, the fatherly orchid grower that was Don, the conservative tennis pal that was Farrell and the goofy, lovable José. All gone far too soon.

My shoes sounded a squishy, squeaky beat to my march. Water climbed the legs of my jeans, passing my knees and stopping just short of the pant pockets. Ducks splashing in puddles on a field provided further distraction. Around Stanley Park’s Lost Lagoon, I glanced at two plaques intended to educate the public about local wildlife and habitats. The first read. “Everyone needs a home”, the second, “To each their own”. Twenty years ago, these might have been the messages on placards carried by walkers.

I did not linger within the temporary tent town at walk’s end. Glancing in that direction, it seemed nobody did. I slogged back to the car, envious of a little boy in rain boots who gleefully jumped in the biggest puddle he could find. How is it that I have lived here nineteen years and never bought a pair of puddle stompers?

As I sat in the driver’s seat, door open, finally sheltered by the Granville Street Bridge overhead, I dumped water from my soggy Converse shoes and wringed even more from my socks. I drove barefoot with the heater on as eau de wet sock filled the car. All a temporary inconvenience.

Meanwhile, the daily struggles, setbacks and, yes, successes surrounding AIDS continue. I hope to have a better sense of things in the year to come. And I’ll be back for AIDS Walk 2014, rain or shine.