Why do I blog about living with HIV/AIDS? Because I’ve been living with HIV/AIDS for 31 years and counting, for starters.
I found out the AIDS virus was inside my body in 1985. I was 23 years old—a graduate of UCLA all of one month. The world was freaking about famous actor Rock Hudson having AIDS. Subsequently, the world started freaking out about anyone having AIDS.
I first publicly admitted to having the virus in a Frontiers Magazine article titled Just Like Magic, published in 1991, after Magic Johnson’s HIV announcement. Then I published four novels with main characters who happen to be black, gay and living with HIV/AIDS. When blogging became an option, I created Randy Boyd’s Blocks, where I blog about living with the virus in the section called HIV-POV.
So why all the talk about living with HIV/AIDS?
I’m a writer, and writing is how I matriculate and navigate through life. Whether it’s writing in my head, my journal, or writing for public consumption, I’m a wordsmith, and if I didn’t bear witness to my 31 years (and counting) of living with the most stigmatized disease of our time, of my time—if I didn’t do that—I probably would’ve been dead a long time ago.
So I blog because Scott, a high school classmate, can’t. He died of AIDS in the early 1990s, before age 30, and was never afforded the chance to see a better day, better meds, a 21st-century life full of hope and promise. Ditto for many other friends gone too soon.
I blog because in this new century, there are still 23-year-old kids finding out they’re living with the virus, and the world is still a very scary place for a kid with HIV/AIDS.
I blog because I hear from people who tell me my stories have helped them cope with living with the virus.
You see, I have to write about AIDS, and events such as the original AIDS Panic and the current AIDS ignorance. I must bear witness to being a veteran of a kind of war—one who suffers from post dramatic symptoms—and what it feels like, being an AIDS monster, one this new fabulous new gay world is scared of.
If I weren’t living with HIV/AIDS, I wouldn’t be living, and if I weren’t writing, I wouldn’t be living. So I have AIDS and I blog about it. I write books and short stories where the main characters are living with and dealing with HIV/AIDS, and all the characters are infected with or affected by it.
Lastly, I blog about living with the virus because, after 35 years of knowing about AIDS, the world is still having hard time dreaming of a person living with HIV being worthy of all the love, happiness and acceptance we all seek.
So I’m dreaming of it for them.
Randy Boyd author 