Handsome & HIV Positive: Part 1

Photo by Adrian Tuazon

Nic Holas is a writer. He is a very handsome writer with an excellent moustache. He is a very handsome writer with an excellent moustache who was been published in Cosmopolitan and in Hello Mr. He is a very handsome writer whose moustache is so excellent it was even featured on the cover of Hello Mr. Nic is also HIV positive. I had a chat to him about his experiences as a young man living with HIV in Australia.

After our interview, I constructed the 5 things that I was most surprised to learn about HIV.

1. HIV and AIDS are different things. HIV stands for Human ImmunoDeficiency virus. AIDS stands for Auto ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome. HIV is the virus; AIDS is what happens when you let the virus run wild. They share a cause and effect relationship that could be compared to that of a cold and pneumonia, although it’s not quite the same thing (go figure).
2. Being diagnosed as HIV positive in Australia was once much more of death sentence. To date, 6843 people have died of AIDS related causes in Australia, and it has claimed nearly 30 million lives worldwide.
3. AIDS related deaths are no longer recorded on the Australian national health register. If you’re lucky enough to live in Australia, being diagnosed as HIV positive is not a death sentence.
4. You’re more likely to be infected by HIV from someone who doesn’t know whether they’ve got it or not, than from someone who knows they’ve got it but sticks to their meds.
5. AIDS is a pretty gay affair. 80% of people diagnosed in Australia are men who have sex with other men.

 COMING OUT (AGAIN) (FUK)

Tell me a little about when you were first diagnosed, where were you when you find out?
I was diagnosed in last October (2012). I was on tour with a circus company, moving in and out of Sydney, ducking in and out of little towns throughout New South Wales. When I was tested, I had to elect to get the test results over the phone because I was on the road and all.

Was it playing on your mind before hand? I know whenever I’ve had an STI test, as confident as I am, I always get the butterflies of doubt.
A big part of me already knew. I had been in a period where I was having lots of sex. I knew it was a possibility; I had been having unprotected sex with men. I knew I had put myself at risk. Granted, they were educated, informed risks.

Did knowing you were at a greater risk make the time before the phone call any easier?
Well I had to make the phone call. You have to ring them. I don’t know if this is hindsight, but I did feel a greater sense of gravity that morning for some reason. I had been at the gym that morning and got an email from an ex-boyfriend – just a catch up of sorts. In my head, I drafted the reply I might send, debating how I would tell him that I was HIV positive.

Did the doctor call and be like ‘hey gawjuz, soooo… hypothetically, if I were to tell you that you were poz…’
No, no (laughs), he was very sensitive when I rang to get the news. I was in Penrith at the time he called.

Penrith. Stop The Boats. Buddhist Iconography. Contiki Tours. Win.
Yeah (laughs), it’s a great place to find out that you’re HIV positive.

How does one deliver news like that?
He just said “I’m sorry to tell you but you’re HIV positive”. I think I hyperventilated for 10 minutes standing in this car park in Penrith, about 100 metres away from the Joan Sutherland performing arts centre – attached to a Westfield shopping town.

MEDICATION AND DIAGNOSIS

What is the time frame between being diagnosed and going onto medication?
It’s up to you. Some people get put on medication right away, because they’ve had a particularly troublesome seroconversion (the process of the viral cells bonding with your body). I chose to go on medication quite early, it just meant I would become undetectable as early as possible.

Is the medication optional?
There are guidelines. Guidelines that are changing, the World Health Organisation altered their guidelines to advise people who contract the virus to begin medication earlier. It’s up to you though, it just depends on your viral load and T cell count (CD4s). The levels of these two determine the severity of your infection. When your T cells drop to a certain point, they are like ‘Go on it. Now’. The hope is that your viral load drops to a level so low that the virus itself is no longer detectable

And what does that term ‘undetectable’ actually mean? I’ve heard it so many times when HIV is discussed but I don’t really get what it means.
Well, when you’ve been adherent to your medication for long enough your T cell count will stabilize and/or increase and the HIV becomes suppressed, to the point that you can’t actually see the virus on a test anymore. That’s where I’m at now. It’s not to say I’m not HIV positive – I am. Being undetectable is not a ‘get out of jail free card’ either, but there is a much lower chance of me ever passing it on. No medical professional is going to turn around and say “you’re all good, go crazy” but the chance of passing it on through unprotected sex is reduced by 96%. The problem with the trial that showed this however, was that its sample was mainly heterosexual couples. Which is strange, considering the prevalence of HIV amongst gay men.

 STIGMA

So you have to take medication every day, how else does being HIV positive affect your daily life?
This is the thing – it doesn’t really. When I explained it to my family, I compared it to diabetes. It’s a chronic illness. Something I’ll have to manage and think about every day for the rest of my life. It sounds morbid, but it becomes routine. It normalizes. Actually, it’s the stigma that affects me more on a daily basis than it is the medication.

You live pretty outwardly with HIV, you talk about it a lot in your written work. Do you think your confident nature protects you from the stigma at all?
Yes, I am an egomaniac (laughs), and I think everyone else should be an egomaniac just like me. Although it’s not just my personality, I’m privileged to be a HIV positive man living in Australia in 2013. I have access to medication I certainly couldn’t afford if I was living in the U.S. The stigma wouldn’t be my hardest battle if I were living in Polynesia or South East Asia or Africa.

Can you run me through that? What is the stigma and how have you seen it affect yourself and others?
I see and work with men whose days are affected much more severely by the stigma around HIV. Their sex lives are ruined. They are re-closeted from their families in a sense, feeling that they can’t disclose their status because of the shame. But again, this is not how they are letting the disease affect them. Your sexual function isn’t affected at all after contracting HIV.

Do you think the stigma is internal or external? Are these men ashamed of having HIV because of what they think of themselves, or what others think of them?
Well it’s a bit of both – the stigma exists because when people hear HIV/AIDS they immediately think of the epidemic and the 80’s and that god awful grim reaper bowling ball ad. Back then being diagnosed as HIV positive was seen as a death sentence. You got AIDS and many men died. End of story. These days, the situation is less dire. HIV positive Australians are offered subsidized medication as part of the federal health care scheme.

Do you think that would anger the people of Penrith? To know that ‘tax payer’ money is going to help cure a ‘faggots disease?’
(Laughs) Well to be honest I haven’t encountered too many radical responses. No one has emailed me saying ‘DIE AIDS FUCKER’ just yet. I mean it’s a manageable, chronic illness that affects a range of people. It makes it seems like more of a shared responsibility. It’s still fucked though. Even in my privileged position (Australia, 2013), I would take it back if I could.

Why? You talk a lot in your work about how being HIV positive re-purposed you.
I’m still looking down the barrel of a life where I take medication every day. We aren’t a lifetime into these medications, so no one can tell me what affect they might have further down the track. Everyday, I have to deal with stigma that’s both inside and out. I struggle to forgive myself for contracting the virus, and the stigma that society reinforces doesn’t help.

In Part 2, I talk to Nic about more about the stigma – what it actually is and how he deals with it. We also talk about his sex life, how it’s changed since being diagnosed. You’ll be surprised; it’s less of a game changer than you think, this whole HIV thing.

Nic Holas mainly fills his time with the creative management of performance, media, and the arts. His writing has appeared in Hello Mr magazine and Cosmopolitan, and on Junkee. He is co-founder of a social umbrella for HIV positive people The Institute of Many. You can find him on Twitter @longlivecanapes.

Henry Boles is a freelance writer living in Melbourne. A lot of his socks have holes in them. You can follow him on Twitter @henry_boles or on Instagram @henagain