On Personal Responsibility.

When I was a baby gay I moved to London. I was hoping for a home, for brotherhood, and for romance. I had spent my youth in green valley far from civilisation, I was closeted, I was performing, and I was finally ready to live.

It didn’t take long for the world to disabuse me of silly notions. I only had to open any gay magazine in London to discover there were two types of gay: there were the Good Gays who had monogamous relationships and used condoms and had sex exclusively in the dark; and there were the Bad Gays who had casual sex but didn’t feel bad about it, were naked when the lights were on, and sometimes didn’t use condoms at all. I had chubby rosy cheeks and wore sensible shoes and dreamed that one day some man would love me so of course I was one of the Good Gays. Nobody I knew was transgressive, and I certainly wouldn’t be friends with them if they were.

I took longer than wanted to find a man to love me, but eventually another, older, man took out on a date. And then another, and then another. Eventually we were naked together, the windows were open, and a glorious summer sunset bathed the room. He whispered in my ear that he preferred not to use condoms, it felt better, would I mind, and anyway he was all out. I was hungry for love and approval and agreed. After all, we could have a little fun together.

When he was finished, I was overcome with guilt and went straight to the hospital and explained that I didn’t know what came over me, was there anything they could do for me? The nurse was thin lipped and stone faced and said I had been stupid and bad, but I was lucky. They had some medicine for me, but it costs the NHS a lot of money, and next time I had better be more responsible. The drugs would have side effects, but I should be fine.

I told nobody, convinced that I would lose my friends for my stupidity. In the end I was lucky: I walked away with nothing but a story. I realised that weren’t two types of gay, that there were only scared boys like me who were lonely and hungry for love. That it was only by the grace of God that I went about my days. That we all had been abandoned by doctors, and scientists, leaders, because they could not imagine a life for me that wasn’t in the shadow of the virus.

I’m lucky today - I can take a pill daily that prevents HIV infection. The road from there to here was very long, and it is only because of a legion of activists with a vision of collective solidarity that I am able to take that pill at all. It took a lot of people to convince the public at large to fund our healthcare.

Personal responsibility lets the powerful abandon us when we’re inconvenient, and so we turn on ourselves. I was an ass to think that I was Good, that I was in any way less fallible, that we were divided. I was merely more fortunate.