Harm of Hatred

I am a 55-year-old gay man and I am of a generation that remembers the beginning of AIDS, and even before it was named what it’s become, when there was only fear and panic, threat of extinction in the midst of the Cold War. Something about those days, pre-1985, still aches deep inside. I want it all to end, and I want to live—to accept what is, what and who I am. But my heart is bruised and the pain lingers on, like an echo that won’t quite die down toward complete and restful silence.

I spent years writing a book, a memoir, about some very personal experiences with a psychiatrist, my “coming out” and familial relationships, but what I did not explicitly state in it was that AIDS drove many of my decisions early on in life—my fear of self, my fear of contagion, my fear of sex, all related to the spread of a disease, a plague, that at the time seemed synonymous with what it meant to “be gay.” Even to this day I cannot shake off the absurdity of that belief because at the time it was all-too real, it was cultural, and it was everywhere, no matter how much some of us (and I) resisted it. In more recent years I’ve learned not to fear myself, sex as an expression of desire and, at times, love, but I also wonder how much of those toxic messages from my formative years still plague me to this day. 

Over the last decade or so my family doctor has been wanting me to get an HIV test, not out of any particular concern other than as a precautionary measure, along with all other blood work, and while I know it’s completely irrational, each time he’s given me the requisition for the test I’ve placed it under a pile of books in my home and ignored it as best I could. Each time I found it again, and then again, and I thought about the test, I felt that old fear and panic rise up. Anxiety, at times, has overwhelmed; it has crushed me into depression. All the reports and even friends tell me that “AIDS” is no longer a death sentence, and while I know this to be true, shame from those early years, fear of death and familial estrangement as a direct result of contraction, of contagion—of the erroneous conflation of homosexuality and disease—have so deeply burrowed into my being, infected me, that I am not sure I will ever be able to free myself from their poisonous messages. I try, and then I fail, and I try again, each day.

Finally, just a few months ago, I asked a friend if he would come with me to the lab, as a support while I received the test. There was no real reason for my fear, as I’d been abstinent for years—again, likely as a result of ancient fears—but none of that mattered. The relief I felt after my doctor’s office told me, weeks later, that “of course you’re negative” hardly even reassured. It is one thing not to be infected, and as I’ve learned, it is another thing entirely not to feel the shame and fear of my youth. I try, and then I fail, and each day I try again.

I do not think, it all honestly, it was ever “AIDS” that drove me into bad decisions, or even into the fear of self and sex, but the harm of hatred, and ignorance, and sadness over my own lost youth.