Getting older is like, um… Things are happening with my body that I don’t like. You know, my mind is still 25– my mind wants to be 25, my body is not. You know I wanna, like, run around with my 15 year old step son, and I can’t. For me, getting older with HIV […]
I was born in Louisville, Kentucky. I moved to Montreal, Canada, and lived for some 15 years in Germany, and now I’m living in the west of Canada. A small town called Medicine Hat, Alberta. I went there as an artist in residence for the college. It’s a very small town, mostly driven by oil,
Al principio– sí, mucho rechazo. Primero porque era transex– soy transgénera, mujer transexual. Y luego el VIH, luego no saber el idioma y luego venir de un país “bajo.” Pues el VIH no era muy bien visto, en las mujeres y sobre todo transgéneros. El rechazo era visto, se miraba de lejos. Ahora ya no.
Edward: She used to follow me around all the time. I was 15, she was 11, so I looked at her like a kid, like my little sister, and she became my best friend. Andrea: We lived in the same neighborhood in New York. Long Island. I’ve always been in love with him,
I always knew that there would be a possibility. I had some friends that passed away. I was a intravenous drug user. My lifestyle prior, from ‘80 to ‘88, wasn’t the nicest thing. But I stepped out on faith and changed that on my own. By 1988 I had changed my whole life around. I
Ron: I found out my status when I was incarcerated, as a result of seeing a dentist. The dental hygienist dropped one of the tools and it pricked her on the leg. And as a result of their protocol they asked everybody who had saw the dentist that day to take an HIV
Me quité eso de que: “Porque Dios me castigó? Porque…?” De estarme martirizando, porque pensaba yo que Dios me había mandado ese castigo. Dije: “No, ya, es el momento de quitarme todo esto y por algo estoy aquí. Yo creo que Dios me mandó una misión y la tengo que cumplir.” Empecé a luchar, y
I’ve had cancer three times, I had stage four cancer. I’ve been through a lot. Every day is a bad day for me at some point or another. I got neuropathy from taking a particular medication. It’s from like above my knees all the way down to my feet, like someone has taken a truck
Ann: I kept it a secret for a decade that I was positive. It would have cost me my job in my state – we don’t have job protection. And the only way you could fight it is take it to court, but when you take it to court it becomes public record,
Getting old is a bitch. You go to bed feeling one way, and you wake up and it’s something else. Aging with HIV, you’re never really sure what it really is. And as a woman, I don’t know if it’s just the aging, if it’s menopausal, if it’s the HIV. And I don’t know how
I thought I might want to have a baby and I was 43, and I knew I would have to get tested before I would do that. I am unmarried and I’ve never been married, so I was sexually active. I lived in Africa for some years, where we know that the epidemic has higher
