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-Story 4
I tell everyone about my HIV status, I don't keep it a secret. There's a real lack of understanding around HIV.
I was diagnosed in 1989 but I’ll go back to early ‘83.
I was about to go work in Saudi Arabia and was in the gym for a workout where I ran into a friend of mine, Bob Goldsmith. He had these marks on his legs and he seemed to have lost weight. I said “Bob how are you going?” He replied: “I’ve been a bit crook really”. I told him I was about to go to the Middle East and I would see him when I got back.
Early ’83 I knew nothing about HIV/ AIDS. It wasn’t until I was working in Saudi Arabia, when one of the American expats, who came back from a holiday in the States told me about gay guys in America dying from GRID (gay related immune deficiency). It was still quite a foreign concept to me. Then someone sent me a copy of the Sydney Star Observer and I read about AIDS and its impact on the gay community in Australia. When I got back to Sydney mid ‘84 a friend met me at the airport and told me my friend Bob died. I was quite shocked. That friend was, of course, Bobby Goldsmith.
I had been around the traps and I think I had sex with possibly half of the men in Sydney at that time. I continued on doing the same thing to some extent because there wasn’t much education about AIDS. I kept going back to my doctor having tests and they came back negative. I went and lived in Perth in ‘87 and in ’89, still HIV negative. I then went to the USA, firstly to Seattle and met some friends who I’d worked with in Saudi Arabia. After Seattle I went down to San Francisco. There I came across a bar called the Pendulum which was mainly for black gay men. I got a very good response in that bar and I went home with a lovely man. He told me about a place in LA that I should visit while I was there. So when I was in LA I went to this nightclub called Catch 1.
I was dancing by myself and I noticed this incredibly handsome black man smiling at me. I beckoned him to come over and join me which he did. We had this immediate rapport and if there’s such a thing as love at first sight this was it. We went to a motel and I was with Bruce every night and day for the next five months. After about a month of us being together, he implied he might be HIV positive but he didn’t actually state it. I threw caution out of the window because I’d fallen madly in love.
I had these romantic notions that if I die, I’ll die for love. A couple of months into our relationship we were in a nightclub and I passed out on the dance floor. He took me home and I was sweating and shivering. I recognised this as an HIV seroconversion. A few months later I returned to Australia and had an HIV test. I wasn’t at all surprised to find that I was HIV positive. The doctor talked about HIV but he said it would progress to AIDS. For the first seven years after my diagnosis I refused to take any medication because I knew a lot of people who were taking AZT and they died: what’s the point? I was very healthy; I was going to the gym, running and so on. I kept on with my life.
Gold ring, Liberace & Larache
I was going back and forth to America and Bruce was travelling between Australia and America. Two years into our relationship he was shot in the stomach in a holdup in Los Angeles and it looked like he wasn’t going to pull through. He did, but his health began to deteriorate because of the HIV. For the next three years his condition really deteriorated. A few months before he died he came over to live with me in Sydney. I gave him a gold ring for Christmas because he wanted to be married to me. About three weeks after I’d given him the ring we were out walking, he was shuffling by that stage, and the ring slid off and fell onto the ground. He’d lost so much weight over the previous three weeks. One of his beautiful teeth fell out at about the same time: there was this very quick deterioration. He was going downhill so rapidly that I told him to go back to LA because he had a daughter, grand daughter and a big family back there.
I sent him back on the plane; he was in a wheelchair by then. I rang his brother to let him know Bruce was really sick. Bruce asked me not to tell him he had AIDS. They thought it had something to do with the bullet wound. Bruce got back to America and told his brother and he took him around to various hospices to find a nice one. The day he was due to go into one Henry went to collect him and Bruce literally died in his brother’s arms. He’d actually willed himself to die because he didn’t want to go into the hospice. He died in ’94. He’s in a lovely spot right next to Liberace, in Forest Lawn Cemetery Hollywood. Bruce played piano and sang, so he was in his element. I visited his little space a few months later.
The following year I decided to change my life. Even though my heart was still broken I thought I needed to do something different. I’ve always wanted to go to Morocco so I set off via Egypt and Rome. In Egypt I got food poisoning and was quite ill but I ventured on, and got to Rome and met a friend, called Salvatore. I left my luggage with him and went on to Morocco. By the time I flew into Casablanca I was seriously ill. I was coughing and my breathing was very difficult. I was determined to continue on: I wanted to go to Tangier to look up a writer called Paul Bowles. I had his address and I was on the bus to Tangier. However, I became so ill that I got off the bus in this small coastal town called Larache which is about 80km south of Tangier. That’s where Jean Genet is buried; I didn’t know that at the time. I went into this seedy little hotel in the town square and I thought maybe this is where I’m going to die. I was sweating, shivering and I couldn’t swallow. It turned out later that I had thrush in my throat and bronchial pneumonia.
The next day while I was in the town square eating yoghurt a young Moroccan man asked me if I wanted to buy some hashish. I said: “No. I’m not well. I can’t smoke”. The next day I was sitting in the same spot eating yoghurt and the same young man came along. He noticed that my health had not improved and he asked me to go home with him so that his mother could look after me. I thought: “I’ve got nothing to lose at this stage”. When we got to his home on the outskirts of this little town, his mum was in her prayer room praying: they were a devout Muslim family. When she finished praying she opened the door and she was happy that he’d brought somebody home. I stayed in that house for a month and his mum spoon fed me like a baby. His father would come and give me massages and the whole family, including the extended family, would come and visit me. I was in this delirium aided by ‘majoun’ that his mother used to make. It’s a mixture of hash, various herbs, cashew nuts and honey. After a month one of Hamidi’s friends said that he thought I had AIDS. Hamidi said: “We all love you but if the police find out, if you die, they will arrest us all because you’re not allowed to have AIDS in this country. You can’t stay here.” This was back in ’96.
I’d actually gotten a little better by then and I was well enough to get a bus back to Casablanca. I flew back to Rome and rang Salvatore. He took me to an infectious diseases hospital in Rome and I stayed there for 16 days where they pumped various drugs into me. He nursed me at his home for the next couple of weeks after that. By then I was on my way back to Australia. When I got back to Sydney I was very thin and not looking very well. I had a blood test and found I had 77 T cells left. I was down to about 40 kgs and all my friends thought I would be the next one to go. But it was 1996, late 96 and there were new drugs. So my doctor gave me these and initially I had very bad reactions with peripheral neuropathy and throwing up. However my doctor tried various combinations and I started to put on weight. Gradually there were more combinations to choose from, and I got better. Six months later I was back to my weight and I’d gone back to work. Since then, I’ve been well. I mean I have had a few bouts of pneumonia, but mostly I’m quite well. Now I have this feeling for Egypt, so I go back nearly every year. I talk to a group of HIV positive men in Cairo who’d never had any contact with anyone outside their group. A lot of them are heterosexual. They were thrilled to have someone come and talk to them through an interpreter. And now I’ve joined Positive Speakers' Bureau (PLWHA/ NSW). I’m 60, so I suspect I’ll probably end up dying of old age. There’s little things happening to my body and I sometimes think is it HIV or is it because I’m getting old? I think having HIV is part of the passage of my life.
I’ve always had a good relationship with the idea of death, it never bothered me. Also back in the 70s I used a lot of heroin and lost various friends to overdoses. I also overdosed a couple of times and was brought back. There’re many times in my life when the doctors have said he’s not going to live and I have.
Call from the mosque
During the course of my going back and forth to Egypt I converted to Islam. (My Islamic name is Tariq). I’d never been very religious, I was brought up as a Christian and my grandfather was a minister. I’d never really bought the whole story of Christianity. I started reading about Islam and the philosophy of Islam appealed to me because: a) it doesn’t clash with science and b) there is no iconography. In the mosque there is no ornamentation; you are there alone or with Allah. I found this gave me a great feeling of peace. I didn’t like the mosque I went to in Sydney, so I pray at home. When I go back to Egypt, I go to the mosque regularly. Part of my mantra is “Allah Akbar”, God is great. It’s one more thing that’s helped me get through life.
On a scale of one to ten, HIV is a four. I would rather I didn’t have it, but it’s always omnipresent because a) I’m taking medication each day, and it’s one reminder but, also, b) I like to travel and it’s always a problem for me. I’ll never go back to America because of all the hassles of travelling there with HIV. I would be living in Egypt if it wasn’t for HIV. Four years ago I met a very handsome and very loving man in Egypt. He’s not allowed to live in Australia and I can’t live there except for six months a year, but we’ve talked it through and it’s working out okay.
I’ve got a really good quality of life considering I wasn’t expecting to live this long. I still have people saying I’m crazy travelling with HIV. Whether I die of HIV/AIDS or something else, I think I’m just as likely to either die of old age or get killed in a bomb attack. That’s always quite possible, not necessarily here, but certainly in the Middle East. Having a good relationship with the thought of dying makes my life much easier. I’ve “been around the block” many times and I’m ready for whatever happens.
Photos: Jamie Dunbar
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