HIV Then and Now, AIDS Awareness week, Hulbert's Cafe

I came to support Alfredo as he gets back into the lounge singing swing of things, but I stayed for a panel discussion that spanned almost 25 years. Summed up into one sentence: Not much has changed. Drugs are more available, but tolerance is still the biggest hindrance. HIV drums up all the fears of society: otherness in poverty, queer identity, racism, and DEATH. In this disease hides all of humanity's anxieties and skeletons and it's a shame that the awareness is but a week, not a month, or always.

Though the discussion was mostly based around HIV from the queer perspective with some insight from drug use, the fact that today's perception that HIV is an issue in a lesser developed nation (and not an issue for your friends and neighbors) is the largest problem in reaching today's youth. Everyone knows what HIV is now thanks to media, but not everyone still thinks that they can get it. that deathly message is what's still being hidden in mainstream media, as HIV is a disease that's plaguing communities elsewhere without clean drinking water or education. But what needs to hit home is that HIV can infect anyone anywhere and that we each have to take responsibility for our own bodies.

On the way home, Alfredo, who has been living with HIV for 20 years, felt out of place tonight. He had one more song, but it was too late. He was active in home care for his community and awareness, but as he says, that was so long ago, it seems like another life . . . I don't doubt the truth in that statement. He lives his life, openly as a mature gent with HIV in a prominent professional position, HIV activism is not in his life, but in his being, the subtleness in the way he can live his life, that might be the biggest change we've seen.