Hello. My name is Tim, I’m 56 years old. American living in London. I work in the banking world. I’ve a very good job at a German bank for which I won’t give the name, but… And I’ve been in banking all my adult life, so it’s kinda sort of what I know.

I’m gay. Gay since birth, obviously. HIV-positive since probably the mid-, say the mid-20s perhaps. Maybe I got infected in, when I was, when I was 21, 22, but I didn’t find out ‘til I was 30, and… But that’s not really who I am, obviously. HIV’s not who I am so it’s kind of sort of in the background now. Back in the ‘90s it was more in the foreground because it was more new and more… Medicine, medicine, medicinal-based, more medication back then. But, obviously, now: I am who I am. And I say I’m a gay man, number one. Number two, my, my… My job, I’m a banker, number two. Number three’s a mix of different things, you know, things I love, people who I love, things I like to do, where I live. That’s number three.

To me, home is where I think I physically am, at the moment. I mean, obviously, home could be for most people where their family is or where their partners are or where their favourite, I dunno, favourite pair of socks are, perhaps, but for me home is where I am physically at so if I literally get up now and get on a plane and go to, like, let’s say for instance, Mongolia and get a flat with nothing just myself, to me that would be home. So I don’t define home as possessions, I don’t define home as people, I define home as where I’m physically at and I’m happy. I gotta be happy there so I think that if I go to Mongolia and I find a place to live and I’m happy that’s gonna be home.

For me, defining home is not materialistic, it’s not people-based, it’s not family-based, ‘cause I’ve lived away from my family since I was 18 and I’ve had… I have lots of friends in London, lots of friends in New York. I used to live in New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s and I left New York to come to London in 2003 and at that time during those decades New York was my home. Because that’s where I lived. That was my apartment, that was my physical effects. That was home. But since I moved to London in 2003, immediately London was home, ‘cause I got a flat, London was home. So, it’s not really… I’m not really held back by family, community, possessions, even job. Where I wanna be is home.

For me home was always basically when I was a young, young kid growing up, growing up living with my parents and my brother that wasn’t really my home to me it was more like my parents’ home. I was forced to stay there because I had no other options but to live with my parents when I was younger. I couldn’t get a job, obviously, y’know, I couldn’t feed myself. I had to live with my parents but living at home with my parents was never actually… I never felt like it was home.

It was only when I moved to New York when I was in my early ‘20s that I got my first apartment and made my first friends in my early ‘20s and started exploring my sexuality and kind of sort of getting my own apartment, to me that was actually my first home. Sure, I lived in the dorms in college but dorms are not really home they’re more temporary accommodation, they’re not quite, they’re not quite home. You have to share the bathroom, share the shower, you have to, you know… Check in the front desk, well, well thats not really home. But for me home is actually for me when I paid my first rent on my first apartment. To me that was home.

So the first strong positive reaction, positive not negative, positive reaction I had with HIV, I think, I dunno, I think the first positive moment I felt was when was I just stopped thinking about it. Before, when I got diagnosed in ‘95 after my partner passed away, the medication was just constant, constant medication, I was just.. I wasn’t working, at that time, and I was a bit sick and it was just constantly on my mind, physically in front of me all the time and I lived in Manhattan, Greenwich Village and you see people all over the place looking sick in the Village back in ‘95. I mean, people were pretty much walking around looking like they were on death’s door. So the first positive reaction I had being HIV-positive was when I actually stopped thinking about it. That’s when I thought, like, I can live like a normal life without actually thinking about it all the time. To me that was a positive thing about it. So. And that probably didn’t happen, ‘til probably ‘97, ‘98, about three years after my diagnosis because the diagnosis was really very sudden and too… Very quick. But after a couple of years you get used to it, it settles down. And then you forget about it and you just take your pills twice-a-day and to me that’s a positive thing. It’s not really going to be… It’s not going to define your life.

Like a lot of people that are HIV-positive, the negative reactions outweigh the positive reactions. Negative reactions could be people’s perception, people’s attitude, people’s behaviour, people… Other gay men denying you a one-night stand because you tell them you’re positive. I’ve had that happen to me so many times it’s insane, really, it’s totally insane. I like to tell people my status, it’s their choice to walk away or to stay, y’know, what can I do but I wanna disclose, but… Yeah, the negativity’s, even, even today, you know, obviously in 2021, I find that if I tell a friend I’m positive I expect negative reactions still. Because some people still don’t get it. They still don’t realise that people like myself got infected before we knew what it was back in the ‘80s. So people who get infected now probably maybe less educated, but people still think of it, you know, negative, negative aspect of it. So yeah, even today I hold back on telling people ‘cause I don’t want to get a negative reaction. So it’s their, it’s their attitude, not mine, it’s their attitude.

Oh totally, I felt excluded many times. I mean a case-in-point was when I was with a friend of mine in London about ten years ago. I was after work and I had my HIV medication in my backpack to take with dinner later that night and him and I happened to walk into a club in Angel and they checked my bag and they found the medication in my bag and they thought, like, it obviously could have been drugs, like ecstasy or whatever, Meph or whatever, but they, I told the guys: “My HIV medication, I need to take it with dinner later blah blah blah, I’m not going to go back home so I brought it with me blah blah…” And then my friend’s reaction was like: “Oh my god, you’re HIV-positive?” He was so shocked. But then we carried on that night with each other but I never heard from him again, ever again after that night. He kind of stopped contacting me, this was about ten years ago. This is an educated guy who works in the City, you know, smart, you know whatever, but he just couldn’t accept, he couldn’t accept it, so you know… That was I think another major negative reaction I had. Disclosing my status to a, not just to a friend but to a stranger. The doorman at the club who also knew because I said that, a stranger, so yeah… He didn’t let us in by the way. We couldn’t get in because of my drugs. They were drugs obviously they were, they were HIV medication, so… Aye aye aye aye aye, sorry… Hm. Anyway.

I think in terms of family relationships, I think things stayed the same. I was never really close to my family to begin with, so when I told them my status nothing really changed. They didn’t really, they didn’t really make an effort to like reach out to me more, y’know, help me out more, kind of everything stayed the same which I was fine with. I don’t need them to help me out, you know obviously, I’m a grown man I can help myself out but… So family stayed the same. Aunts, uncles, my aunts, pretty much nothing changed. Friends, like I told you a couple of examples a lot of friends shunned me because they found out I was positive and a lot of, a lot of friends shunned me. Even though I told then, you know, by the way you should know blah blah. But then I had other friends who really embraced me, who said: “It’s fine, I’ll be here for you if you need something further down the road, it suddenly happens blah blah…” Yeah, so relationships… Family stayed the same, some friends walked away, some friends got closer, yeah…

I think being a part of a community means being a part of any community. I mean, I’ve got my HIV friends, I’ve got my, my gay, my other gay friends, I’ve got my Latino friends, I’ve got my mix of straight friends, I’ve got my mix of my gym friends, you know, I’ve got my mix of sex friends. So all those are separate communities in my point-of-view, so, you know, I belong to all those communities because I made a choice to have all those people in my life, whether they’re sexual friends, nightclubby friends, bar friends, I’ve got friends I just go to restaurants with, my restaurant friends. My gym friends I see at the gym, at the time, all the time, you know? People that I meet, it just, yeah.

I belong to many, many communities. Yeah. Somehow they overlap, but most of the time they don’t, because everything, everybody’s in a box and, I know my sex friends I keep them separate, I don’t want them to meet my other friends because I don’t want them to start having sex with each other, so… You know, I like to hold on to what I have, right. But then the gym friends are purely focused on the gym because that’s where we know each other from and they’d never really want to mix with my restaurant friends, if that makes – [loud phone rings] – sense, yeah? Sorry ‘bout that… Yeah, it’s fine, it’ll go to voicemail. But, yeah.

I think, ‘cause I live alone, I find my flat to be my safe space because obviously I live here by myself. It’s a small, one-bedroom flat but I feel safe here, you know, I feel safe. Nobody can be knocking on my door, nobody can be walking in to my flat, I don’t have any room-mates, no partner. So for me this is like my safe space, my own flat.

My flat is actually small. I live alone so it’s really perfect for me, I find my flat to be really perfect ‘cause I’ve got a separate bedroom, plus a separate bathroom with a shower obviously, with a combined kitchen-living room-dining room, with nice big windows overlooking London, with a lot of clouds all the time, very cloudy London. But yeah, for me my flat is actually… I find it perfect, you know, ‘cause obviously it’s centre of town, centre of London. I walk out the door I’ve got ten coffee-shops within a two-minute walk. I’ve got lots of restaurants. I’ve got theatre right outside my door. I’ve got my gym two minutes away, so… You know, my flat is actually the perfect flat for me and my lifestyle.

To describe myself? Obviously that’s hard because I don’t like talking about myself… I really don’t like talking about myself. I’ll say that again, I don’t like talking about myself. But to describe myself I would just say I’m a normal, normal, normal 56 year old professional, gay professional, gay first, professional second, erm… That’s it. There’s really nothing to describe. You know. I like to be social, I like to go out all the time, I like, I like the clubs, the bars, I love the gay scene. So I said before, many times, the gay scene is who I am. Being gay is really who I am. It’s not the colour of my hair, it’s not how tall I am, it’s not my friendships, it’s not my family. Being gay is… I wake up in the morning, I’m gay. I go to bed at night, I’m gay. I mean, you know, I see a good-looking guy on the street, I get aroused and I’m gay, you know? It’s just kind of, sort of, it’s who I am.

So basically in 1990 when I was living in New York, I went to, I belonged to a gym called Jack Le Main Gym and my partner, my future partner was also a gym member there and somehow, some ways, I don’t know what happened but we looked at each other across the room which sounds very, very hokey, it sounds very like a film but we looked at each other and kinda knew, I kinda knew, he knew, it was just we just kinda knew ‘oh, this is the guy I’m supposed to be with.’ It was just the weirdest thing because we’re in the gym with all these good-looking muscle boys working out, sweating, testosterone filling the air, you know, sexuality, homosexuality just bursting at the seams in this gym and then this guy, this normal guy – his name is Carlos – normal guy, not big, not muscular, just normal, normal body, just normal, to me a very good-looking face, we just… We started talking. Then we had a date, like a thing, I mean this is going back thirty years but we had a date that Friday. And then we had another date and we kissed. And I got so aroused I was like: ‘Woah.’ You know what I’m saying? I got really... But he was like: “No, let’s wait, let’s wait ‘til, you know….” He was very smart to say, like, ‘let’s wait.’ We waited to have sex for quite some time. For gay men that’s quite unusual. Because he kinda knew, I kinda knew, it’s probably best to wait because we’re like, what? 23, 24. 24, 25. We kind of wanted to jump into bed right away but just thought: ‘No, okay, you know blah blah, we’ll wait for a while.’ So we waited for a while and then we did it, obviously, eventually, on his rooftop in his building. We did it outdoors. In the New York summertime it was really, really hot so we had sex on top the roof. People were probably watching from the building next door, but… It was dark, it didn’t really matter.

Yeah, so… He was, he was Venezuelan. I met him when I was 24, he was 24, we were both the same age. He was a chef. So basically he did all the cooking at home. We moved in with each other pretty much right away. I mean it happened, it happened really quick. ‘Cause he had a roommate but his roommate died, unfortunately of AIDS, his roommate died, literally like pretty soon after I met Carlos and so I moved in, moved in with Carlos in a two-bedroom apartment in New York in the Village. Great apartment, great, lot of space. Two-bedroom, really nice apartment. At 24, two guys living in a really big apartment, at age 24 in New York, in the Village. Back in 1990, who… You know, it’s… Those were the days. You can’t do that now, but you know… Those were the days back then. You could actually do that as a 24 year old, you could get an apartment in New York in the Village. Crazy, but, but…

And he was a chef, so he made all the meals, he never let me cook, I never cooked. Not allowed in the kitchen. So he cooked all the food and blah blah blah. I did all the dishes, but… Yeah, but he, probably a couple of years after we met he started getting purple blotches on his skin and we knew right away it was Karposi’s sarcoma. We knew right away and he knew right away and he knew where he got it from because his previous partner was an older gentleman, like twenty years older than Carlos, and he was sick. So Carlos realised he probably got the HIV virus from… This guy’s name’s Bob. So that’s where Carlos got infected, so, y’know, what can you do, so… Carlos was pretty healthy up until the very end. I mean, he was literally very healthy going out, going to the gym, you know… Up until six months before he passed away. He was just, y’know, normal, but everything happened so fast and…

He died before the cocktail combinations came out in ‘95. People started taking combinations of cocktails in late ‘95, where people would take three different types of medication, where he was only taking one, he was on monotherapy because that was the, that was the routine, or that was the prescription back then. One pill, one type of pill, back in ‘94, just… The doctors didn’t really think about mixing them up until ‘95. But ‘94 he just took one pill a day, made him really sick all the time and he just got sicker and sicker and sicker and sicker and then he died when he was 30. He died on Oscar night in February, March 2000, I’m sorry, March 1995. Literally the year Forrest Gump won all the Oscars. I remember the body was in the bedroom and we had the TV on and the Oscars were on and they were saying: “The winner was Forrest Gump.” Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump, the Best Picture. I just remember people in our apartment coming in and the Oscars were on TV and his body was still in the living-, in the bedroom and in our bed, dead. He had passed away. That night I just hear ‘Forrest Gump, Forrest Gump’ all the time. Plus people coming to visit. Yeah, so he passed away when he was 30.

So, and literally six months after that and I got tested and I found out that I was positive as well. But he, him and I, assumed that I was negative. He always told me: “Oh, you’re definitely negative, I can tell, blah blah…” so I never really told him, he never found out that I was positive. So I’m glad that he never knew that I was positive. You know, obviously, I don’t know if that would have made a -. Whatever. But he always assumed I was negative and I assumed too. Who knew? Who knew? But that was Carlos. He was good-looking. He was a Matt Dillon lookalike. Not Matt Damon, a Matt Dillon lookalike. Tall, totally 50 – 100%, 100% match to Matt Dillon. You know Matt Dillon the actor? Good-looking, dark hair, curly black dark hair, gorgeous, gorgeous: that was Carlos. To a T. But yeah, yeah so… That’s Carlos. And I still think about him all the time.

We had what’s known in New York as a railroad apartment, railroad, so it other words was like you walk in one door and the whole apartment you just walk through, it’s like a walk through. You just walk from one end to the other. So we had the front door, then you had the bedroom as you walked. Then we had a terrace, so you literally can walk through to the terrace and terrace overlooks the little park in Greenwich Village. And we’re on the top of the floor hence the sex we had on top of a roof, because that was right above the apartment, you know? Nobody else went up there, so… But we had it great, we had it made, a gay couple living in Greenwich Village in the early ‘90s, you know, you know, so we had it made but that all came crashing down when he passed away, unfortunately. As most things do. Storybook romances tend to be more disaster movies, you know. We had this beautiful storybook life, relationship, and obviously came crashing down. So, yeah…

My family kind of knew I was gay but I never really told them about Carlos because, I’m not… I was never really close to my family. I mean, my brother not close at all, he’s totally straight, anti-gay. My Dad’s a bit not really gay-friendly, either, as my Mom was very gay-friendly and gay accepting but again I just never really felt close enough to my family to share Carlos with them, y’know, ‘cause I lived in New York. To me family was New Mexico, like a whole different world away. Like I had my life, my home with Carlos in New York. My, my family, I wanted to escape them. When I was eighteen, I left when I was eighteen, I didn’t want to be with them anymore because I didn’t really feel like they were my family, if that makes sense? I never really felt at home at my parents’ house. I never called it home, I called it my parents’ house. Never was my home. So I never really felt comfortable there. I’m not… I just never felt like it was home, never. So I never felt like I needed to share Carlos with my family because Carlos was mine. He was all mine, you know what I’m saying? Not my family’s, he was mine, so. But it was only when Carlos got sick that I had to tell my Mom what was happening because, you know, I was… I thought maybe I should kind of share something about, you know, about my life with them. But by then Carlos was already, you know, sick. Literally he died like probably a week later after I told my Mom he was sick and at that point my Mom probably also figured out that I was positive. Although I didn’t know myself, but you know, obviously my partner was dying of AIDS and I was with him for five years sexually, you know whatever, living with him for five years and obviously it was only just a matter of time before I found out I was. Yeah.

We made sure he died at home. He was, for the six months before he passed away he was in and out of hospital. In and out, in and out. It was like, it was like a factory. Luckily the hospital was down the street from where we lived. Literally, we were so lucky. Right around the corner the hospital was right there so it was easy to just manage him being in the hospital. I’d go home, get stuff for him, go back to the hospital, get him a change of underwear, socks, whatever, you know. It was actually really convenient, you know, so, but yeah, yeah, it was a… Yeah.

I think since I lived in the flat after he passed away for another, another, how many years? Six years. No, eight years. I lived there eight years after he passed away. It was home before he passed away and it was home after he passed away. Obviously, because it was my home… You know, it was more home when he was with me alive but it was still my home after he passed away because it was still my flat as well. So… But, it was probably maybe more home with some- with a partner ‘cause we did things together at home, watched movies together, he cooked, I cleaned, you know blah blah. So it’s more of a home when you’re with somebody, but it’s also a home when you’re alone as well. Yeah, so that definition of home didn’t really change, a lot.

I think in New York there’s so many communities. A lot of his friends were Venezuelan, Colombian, people that from his, where he grew up, where he was born in Venezuela, so a lot of his friends, a lot of his friends were like living in New York were from that part of the world, you know, so… They all, they all came, plus my friends came as well. So my friends from New York or wherever or whoever were available at that time, on that… It was on Monday night, so Monday nights were, you know, hard to, you know, in general, so people were literally working all day and then came to my apartment to see me because my partner’s just passed away so, yeah. So different types of people showed up. My friends, his friends. The nurse was there who gave him the… Closed the, helped us with the body, you know. My neighbours downstairs were there as well, in my flat, just kinda helping out as well, so, yeah… Yeah yeah yeah. Twenty-six years, I can’t believe how quickly time has gone, twenty-six, he passed away twenty-six years ago. Twenty-six. Yeah, but I think about him all the time. His picture’s right in my foyer. When I walk in, almost eye-level, picture of him and facing the door so when I come in, first thing I see when I turn on the light is him and me. A picture taken in 1993. So, yeah. He’s still, he’s still there. Strange, but he’s still there. Yes, yeah.

I think what happens is when people pass away, they’re remembered… People have their own ways to remember people, you know, like, I’ve got my own way to remember people, other people have their ways to remember people, whether it’s a scarf, whether it’s a jacket. I still do have some of Carlos’ clothes in my chest-of-drawers, you know, like his old, well… When I first met him he was wearing these really tight blue workout shorts, which I still have. I kept those, I held onto those. I don’t wear them but I just, you know, it’s his, they were his when I met him so it’s something that I’ve kept for a long time, you know, so… But I think remembering people, people have their own way of remembering people whether it’s through the brain or through the heart. Through physical things, you know, it just depends really. Like my Mom obviously she just passed away, I think about her all the, I mean, literally all the time, all the time you know, so Carlos, my Mom, they’re like fighting for space up here and up here, they’re really, they’re fighting for space, they really are.

I think just in general terms of Carlos I think as the saying goes ‘it’s better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.’ So I’m just really glad I had him in my life when I did, for the short period of five-and-a-half years I knew him. It was a strong bond, it was just a strong love with each other. I can’t describe it, it was just… We were like two young gay men in our twenties in New York in the early ‘90s and we just seemed to, just seemed to fall into place with each other. It just happened organically, naturally. I don’t think I’ll ever find that ever again but I’m glad to have had it in my life when I did at that time when I was in my early ‘20s, mid-‘20s, you know, navigating New York city as one does in the early ‘90s, you know, and finding your partner, you know, just like at the gym, of all places, you know. It just kind of happened organically, so, yeah. So I’m glad I had that experience with him and I’m sure he’ll say the same about me. He’s, you know, lucky he had me in his life to help him to the next life, if that makes sense, yeah? To the next world, yeah.

I mean I said before HIV doesn’t really define who I am now but back in the ‘90s it was all in my face all the time, I was going to the doctor all the time, it was all new to me. Plus, with Carlos, with him going to the doctor it was in our lives all the time and then when he passed away and I became… I knew I was affected, it became my life. I stopped working because I became HIV I thought I was going to die within, within a year. This was ‘95, I got diagnosed in the summer of ‘95 after Carlos passed away on March ‘95, so I thought when I got diagnosed: ‘oh, I got a year to live.’ I literally didn’t think I was going to live to see 1997. I really didn’t, I really didn’t. I just didn’t think I was going to be here. Now, looking on it, I’m 56 now and I still can’t believe I’m still here. So I think I’m living for, living my life for Carlos and for all other people who passed away with HIV/AIDS back through the ‘90s and whatever, ‘80s. I mean, we lost tons of friends. Me and Carlos lost, we lost like a whole section, a group, a community of friends in New York that all died of AIDS and Carlos was one of them. And after Carlos passed away, more friends of ours died. The ‘90s were just, they were just non-stop. They were literally… and I had a cousin who died in ‘95, before Carlos died. He died back home, where I’m from. He died, in Texas. An older cousin of mine, a gay man, he died. And another cousin of mine who back home in my home town had AIDS for like twenty-five years but he just, he passed away in 2010. Not of AIDS, he had a heart attack, but he had AIDS pretty much all of his adult life. Yeah, so, you know. AIDS has affected not just me, my family and my friends. Luckily now, things have changed and people are more healthy and more… taking more medication and things so HIV’s more like in the background now, but back then it was brutal. Funerals every week and people… You’d see guys at the gym you know with… One minute they’re there and the next week they go and they have purple spots on their face or on their back then you see them in the shower, they look emaciated. That was the life back then in the ‘90s as a 25 year old young man, should not be living a life like that, seeing all their friends pass away and seeing people on the street looking like they’re ready to die. In wheelchairs in New York in the Village, you see guys in wheelchairs with a nurse pushing them, ready to die. That was normal, you know? You just, yreally can’t… Yeah, Greenwich Village was like a cemetery back in the late-’80s and early-’90s when I lived there it was just like, it was just like… You just couldn’t get away from it. Yeah. And I hope that sends a message to people right now to think about what we lived through. Sure, coronavirus is right here, right now. It’s pretty severe as well, but this was a different sort of pandemic that affected the gay community. Nobody shut down, there was no, there was no, what is the, shutdown, what’s the word I’m looking -. Yeah, there were no lockdowns or no government officials getting involved, there was nothing. We were on our own, by ourselves, to deal with this big pandemic, epidemic, pandemic, and there was nobody to help us out, nobody to, nobody, nobody to… There was no medication, no nothing. Nothing whatsoever. We did things ourselves. We had no choice, we had to… You know. Save each other. And some survived, some did survive, but yeah we had to fend for ourselves, so… That’s it. I wanna end on that note of: you guys have it made today. Back then Ronald Reagan couldn’t even say the word AIDS. Back in the ‘80s he just didn’t want to discuss it. And, you know, he was President until 1988. And by then it was… People were infected, people were dying, it was just too late. And Manhattan, Greenwich Village was like a cemetery. You know. Yeah. Crazy.