Op-ed: The Harder Coming Out — as HIV-Positive

I am fairly certain that I became an activist and community
organizer sometime shortly after leaving the womb. In fifth grade I organized
the students in my classroom at the Longfellow International School of Fine
Arts in Minneapolis to boycott McDonald’s until they stopped using ozone
depleting Styrofoam containers. At 17, while a senior in high school, I
co-founded the Minneapolis district wide safe schools program Out4Good. By the
time I was in college, I was working the national organizing circuit and
organizing with other radical queer youth on issues of importance to us as
young folks. At 20, I was co-chair of the National Queer Student Coalition, and
by 21 I had firmly established queer street cred as an activist.  I came out of the closet with a roar
and a high kick and adopted my new queer identity with fearlessness and little
hesitation.

I tested positive for HIV when I was barely out of college,
and, based on my previous incarnation as an organizer, one would think that I
would have pinned on a red ribbon, adopted this new identity, and added HIV
rights to my roster of causes.

Not even close.

HIV took me by surprise, caught me off guard, and for the
first time in my life, I turned inward to deal with a life situation instead of
looking outward to my friends and community. I was terrified that I would now
face the rejection from friends, family, and community that I hadn't
experienced when I came out as gay. I'd heard the whispers in the club about
this or that individual that wasn't “clean.” I was already queer and a man of
color, I'd grown up poor in the Midwest, I didn't want or need another
“difference” in my life. HIV, for the first time, shut me down, closed me off,
and forced me to find a new way to deal with something life had thrown in my
path.

I had always been a writer of scathing opinion, but it was
spoken word poetry that took me from pain to celebration in relationship to my
HIV status.

I have written exactly one poem about being HIV positive.

It wasn’t writing about HIV that helped me come to peace
with my HIV status. It was performing pieces that dissected and reexamined
love, life, politics, sex, race, and beauty as an openly HIV positive
performance artist that lifted me out of shame and fear and into acceptance and
living. There is a permission on the stage to be brave, to put on and pull off
masks, and to reveal the hidden. The stage has given artists the strength to be
more of themselves, it is a two way mirror, a glass dressing room, and a place
of open secrets and revelation. It gave me the strength to find the power in
being positive.

Don't get me wrong, reading that first poem at Latino Pride
in Fall 2010 in front of a standing room only crowd was absolutely stupefying.
I broke down crying at least three times during the reading, but when I was
done, the roar from the crowd blew away any fear that remained.

By claiming my identity, through poetry and performance, of
being positive in front of often times unsuspecting audience members, I have
watched faces consume my body, my face, my presence and watched it force aside
their notions of what an HIV positive person looks like, acts like, lives like.
By telling my story and living it through performance, I have seen others
connect with pieces that touch on their own life stories and find resonance
with me across the positive divide. And I have been touched by and lifted up by
the many individuals that afterwards have come to me and sometimes whispered
and sometimes cried and sometimes plainly stated that they too live with HIV
and never though to have that part of their lives brought, unexpectedly and
unashamedly, into a performance space that wasn't specifically about people
living with this disease.  By
living openly and performing my truth, it has given my family permission to
love me through the tough times living with HIV. By not being afraid of this
disease, I have given those that love me to be fearless as well, and when I
have been uncertain or afraid or in pain as happens now and again as part of
the reality of being positive, my family and friends are now fearless for me.
Courage breeds courage.

HIV is now a piece of life and, for me; it is a source of
strength. No other illness comes with such stigma or is surrounded by quite the
same level of fear and ignorance. Through the claiming of my life and presence
as an HIV positive man and finding and creating love and acceptance of the
wholeness of my person, I have found the strength to confront other parts of my
life and this world that I want to be better, stronger, and healthier. By
claiming my place in the world as an HIV positive person, I create space for
others to do the same, and I change the face and the assumptions of who is
living and thriving with HIV.

BRANDON LACY CAMPOS blogs at MyFeetOnlyWalkForward.