7 minutes to meet with Kareem

I have 7 minutes left. I totally edited the speech down and I'm starting to get nervous.

Seeing the eflats last night, I thought of how shy I am. He just called so I have to go, but I'm going to post my thoughts for today so people can respond if they want after I speak. I'm sure many people won't want to say anything in public. Our culture of being "educated" and also of wanting to be loved and cool, and PC-policied, make us afraid of being authentic, especially emotionally honest in public...besides we're also moving to have our lives be virtual.

Well here goes.


I want to thank Kareem and Amanda for asking me to speak. I had the opportunity to hear the eflats last night. The sang some songs and told some stories of the new people who joined this year and so I thought I'd follow suit today. First I'll tell my story around HIV, and link it to some info about HIV in our country, and other countries around the world. I want you to think about your experiences, have your feelings and then we can share a bit with each other. How's that sound?
I have a bad habit of talking too much though so I need someone to time me: I'd like 20 minutes, and give me a warning at 5 minutes and when I have one minute left. Cool?
(sung)
Well, I was born an original sinner
I was born from original sin
If I had a dollar bill for everything I’ve done
There’d be a mountain of money piled up to my chin, HEY!
Annie Lennox
That's from an Annie Lennox song called Missionary Man. It's what the stigma of being HIV+ feels like to me. Every time I say, "I am HIV+", I feel like I’ve done terrible things and I don’t deserve a seat at the table. That I should be thankful that I’m allowed to live off the crumbs that fall.
I came to America when I was 15. Confused about sex, sexuality and also naive, a tad foolish, and desperate for love and attention, I ended up in a couple dangerous situations and was raped on occasion.
I've always been in love with the Eurythmics, from "Sweet Dreams" to "Missionary Man" Annie Lennox made me feel better. But all through the years 1987 through graduation in 1991, from Colgate, I worried. Would I get AIDS? Would someone in the small town of Hamilton would call me nigger? Would the gorgeous football, lacrosse and frat boys who I longed to befriend and maybe even date call me FAGGOT and bash me? I didn't want to hang with the Queer group. I'd stimatized them as not-cool and I wanted to be cool and popular. Being Queer at Colgate would be social death and I had enough handicap as it was.
And so I ended up in a secret relationship with some alum I'd been introduced to freshman Homecoming who took me in the back of his car. He came back to campus now and then for meetings and I squeezed love from a this older big man on campus, who was essentially using me.
But the man who gave me HIV, I believe, in 1991, didn't start as a violation. But, five years into the relationship with this beautiful, butch, protective, artistic and loving man, who had stolen from corporate america to help his paralyzed mother keep her home, things fell apart. First, I found out that my dream man was self-destructively flawed. He missed a parole meeting, and landed in jail, lied to me about it and somewhere in that circus of activity, five years into our relationship, I realized I’d been had again. I was officially diagnosed positive, and the totality of all this put me in shock. I felt a little like Carrie, like someone had just dumped pig's blood all over me and I was pissed.
And what does this lovely little personal narrative have to do with World AIDS Day? Well, first, I wanted to introduce myself. Normally, people read off a list of the most fabulous things about themselves but I think our vulnerability reveals more of our humanity. And that's what connects us. I think AIDS is something that betrays our humanity, because for many of us it symbolizes loss of control of our bodies and eventual death.
So to summarize my story I was afraid of my own strength and afraid to let in the love that was there. I went after love in the darkness instead of in the light. I thought of myself as without love and protection, and so I acted as if there was none and HIV/AIDS found an easy vulnerable target. My experience with HIV started way before the physical exposure. And the healing process goes way beyond the physical one.
There is a quote that captures a lot of the work I've done since 1996 to heal. I've heard or read it a at a couple different times in my life, but I recently heard it while watching a movie called Akeelah and the Bee about a black girl who overcomes major odds to win the Spelling Bee. It's attributed to Marianne Williamson and made even more famous by Nelson Mandela. I like that it transcends race, continents (Marianne's in the US and Nelson's in South Africa) and class.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God...[and I'll throw in Mohammed, you are the Buddha.] Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you..."

So enough about me. Let’s look at others in our country.

It is said based on a CDC study in five major cities, that almost half of black gay men therein are HIV+, and that 2/3rds of them don’t know it. The percentage is over twice that of any other race of men. New York City, my hometown was a part of that study. I did some really sloppy math and some quick intense demographic cross-referencing on the 8 million people of New York City, and came to an approximation of low ball 50,000 black gay men, and therefore almost 25,000 HIV+ african-american men in New York City, who each have their own individual story about how they got infected. 25,000 people like me.

Let's leave the US. As I mentioned, I grew up in one of the most homophobic societies: Jamaica where there are songs on the radio that speak of killing homosexuals. Boom bye bye mek di battybwoy dead, is blared in the dancehalls, and police officers will join in a frenzied mass to kill someone identified as a battyman in the street in broad daylight. It’s sanctioned as the law of the land.

And by now most people know of the tremendous impact HIV/AIDS has on most third world countries like Jamaica, Burma, and of course Africa. At least in America, many of us have access to drugs that extend the life expectancy of those carrying the virus. I’m not going to talk of the inequity of the healthcare system on our continent. But the life sentence is made more manageable for those of us who respond to the drugs. But in the third world the drugs are often too expensive, or the distribution system is corrupt.

I spoke at Colgate last year for their Stop Global AIDS student group which raised money for some of the 34 million AIDS orphans there, children who's parents have both died from the disease. To be honest, I hadn't thought of Africa much, I was way to self-absorbed. I still am. But this year I’ve been thinking about Africa, and differently from last year. This year I think of her as the mother we’ve pushed aside, for she’s been raped by stronger men. Mother Africa (like me)struggles to see her own beauty, to reclaim her power, to heal. She worries about the stigma that has landed on her as the dark land of savage sadness. She shrouds her sexual practices. She holds our terror for us, while we live rich, free lives. If we think group dynamics, America, Europe, Australia, we play scapegoat with her, and taunt her with AID, while she languishes with AIDS. It's so awful what's happening in Africa. It's almost like we need her to be troubled and fragile, and cast aside, yet beautiful and brimming with potential. I found this story from Mark Schoofs on thebody.com, called “The Agony of Africa.” I want to share a bastardized adaptation.

“There are few places where poverty is worse than in Nairobi's slums, vast warrens of tin shanties, open sewers, and garbage-strewn dirt roads. In Korogocho, one of the poorest and meanest sections, a maze of narrow passageways leads into a one-room shack where the aroma of vegetable stew simmering on an open fire competes with the stench of raw sewage wafting in from outside. This is the home of Mary.
She ran away over 10 years ago from her husband a drunkard who beat her almost every week, burned her clothes and denied her food.
Just a week ago, one of Mary's johns -- who pay as little as 75 cents for sex -- slapped her in the face when she asked him to use a condom. "I can't eat a sweet in its wrapper," he said. She flashed back eight years before to the man who beat her so viciously that she couldn't work for two days, she let her latest violent customer go ahead. He may pay for his pleasure with AIDS, because Mary is HIV-positive.
There are thousands of women like Mary in Nairobi, not to mention all of Africa, who would rather die of AIDS tomorrow than die of hunger today.
AIDS: The Agony of Africa Mark Schoofs December 1999 thebody.com
http://www.thebody.com/schoofs/africa5.html

I’ve said enough. What are your feelings? What are your thoughts and ideas? I think together we can discover personal and collective solutions to move us out of the red.

And I know some people are shy or it takes them time to come up with thoughts, so I thought I'd have a blog for a couple of days to continue this conversation online. It's http://williamscollegeworldaids.blogspot.com. I'm also on facebook under Columbia Teachers College and I'll post it there too.