Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome to this podcast Will Kill You, the
Speaker 1: bonus episode. I'm Aaron Welsh.
Speaker 2: And I'm Aaron Almond Updyke. First of all, holy crap,
Speaker 2: Holy crap. Hi to all you literal thousands of new listeners.
Speaker 1: It's insane, it's We are completely.
Speaker 2: Overwhelmed with the response and with the love from all
Speaker 2: of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, yes, thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening and for rating and reviewing us
Speaker 2: on iTunes.
Speaker 1: And also for engaging with us on social media. These
Speaker 1: last few days have been an absolute whirlwind in the
Speaker 1: best way, and we're very excited to have you all here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is our first bonus episode, which we're releasing
Speaker 2: while we work on gearing up for season two. If
Speaker 2: there are any diseases or epidemics that you'd like to
Speaker 2: hear about in season two, let us know. You can
Speaker 2: find us at all of our usual places on email
Speaker 2: where this podcast Will Kill You at gmail dot com,
Speaker 2: our Twitter, our Facebook, Instagram, etc.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look us up.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, this week we will be sharing more of Frank,
Speaker 1: Hillel and Brian's stories, which you heard a bit of
Speaker 1: at the beginning of last week's episode. So if you
Speaker 1: haven't listened to episode twelve, HIV AIDS apathy will kill you.
Speaker 1: Go and do that now, We'll wait, Yeah, just kidding,
Speaker 1: We won't just go do it.
Speaker 2: You press the pause, but yeah, we'll still be here. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So we when we interviewed these three men, their stories
Speaker 2: were just so powerful and there was so much more
Speaker 2: that we wanted to be able to include in last
Speaker 2: week's episode, but we couldn't fit it in.
Speaker 1: So what we decided to do was to bring them
Speaker 1: to you in a special bonus episode and consider this
Speaker 1: kind of like the director's cut of episode twelve. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's bigger and better and yeah, but honestly though, we
Speaker 1: are really excited and honored to be able to share
Speaker 1: these stories with you all. So let's get to the interview.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we sat down with Frank and Hallel, who are
Speaker 2: both gay men who lived through the HIV AIDS crisis
Speaker 2: in the US in the nineteen eighties and nineties. So
Speaker 2: we asked them to tell us about where they were
Speaker 2: at the time at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic
Speaker 2: and what they remember about how it was perceived right
Speaker 2: at the beginning.
Speaker 3: Well, my name is Frank and my last name is
Speaker 3: I am Ellie. I was living in Boston, I mean
Speaker 3: outside of Boston. I was about twenty seven, I guess,
Speaker 3: or twenty eight when we first started to hear about it.
Speaker 3: I remember distinctly walking into work one morning and this
Speaker 3: woman I worked with, she hadn't read the newspaper, and
Speaker 3: she said something about, hey, have you heard about this
Speaker 3: gay plague. It's going on, this gay cancer, And I
Speaker 3: had never heard of it before. So we read the
Speaker 3: article together, and I distinctly remember that they were saying
Speaker 3: that one of the signs of the gay cancer at
Speaker 3: the time you were calling it was a rash on
Speaker 3: your feet. So I immediately went and everything was fine.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: When we first heard.
Speaker 3: About it, there was, well, we don't have to worry
Speaker 3: about it because it's happening over there, you know. And
Speaker 3: then when it hit here, it didn't seem to be
Speaker 3: an immediate panic about it. That all changed within a
Speaker 3: very short amount of time when people started to get
Speaker 3: sick here, because they died pretty quickly when it happened,
Speaker 3: because as far as I can remember, there were no
Speaker 3: treatment protocols there was. There literally was an immediate sense
Speaker 3: of panic throughout the whole city, and you know, if
Speaker 3: you would go to a bar or something on a
Speaker 3: Friday night and you'd meet with your group of friends
Speaker 3: and have a drink, and all of a sudden, the
Speaker 3: conversations got, hey, we haven't seen so and so in
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks, we had to check on them,
Speaker 3: or I heard so and so was sick. And it was,
Speaker 3: like I said, just that a horrible, horrible panic that
Speaker 3: went on right at the beginning. But then as more
Speaker 3: people started to get sick, they quickly organized informally into
Speaker 3: being caretakers for your friends that got sick, because in
Speaker 3: many instances, you know, people didn't have families. Families that
Speaker 3: you know, cut them out of their lives, and the
Speaker 3: only families that they really had was their network of friends.
Speaker 3: So I want to say, within probably two two and
Speaker 3: a half years of me first hearing about this, you know,
Speaker 3: we were already attending to our friends that had come
Speaker 3: down with Originally it was called it was called POSTI
Speaker 3: sarcoma was the big thing, I think at the time,
Speaker 3: but we all sort of went into this state of
Speaker 3: mind where we need to help those that are sick,
Speaker 3: and we need to try to be as cautious as
Speaker 3: we can be. In taking care of them, because we
Speaker 3: still didn't know that much about how you can catch it.
Speaker 5: My name is Hillel Wasserman. I lived in Los Angeles, California,
Speaker 5: and at present time I work in the should picture business.
Speaker 5: At the time of the age crisis, I was, of
Speaker 5: course here in one of in what was in fact
Speaker 5: the epicenter of the epidemic. The first three cases of
Speaker 5: a new assistant pneumonia were reported at the UCLA Medical
Speaker 5: Center as a matter of fact, so we were very
Speaker 5: much in the center of that storm living here in
Speaker 5: Los Angeles. At the time that I first learned about HIV,
Speaker 5: I was about I guess I was in my late twenties.
Speaker 5: We started to hear these whispers about this weird gay
Speaker 5: cancer that was going around, and you know, there was
Speaker 5: a lot, there was a whole you know, I understand
Speaker 5: this was now the like mid eighties to really put
Speaker 5: in a time frame on it, and there was a
Speaker 5: whole stew of sexually transmitted diseases that were getting passed around,
Speaker 5: and they were getting progressively more and more exotic in
Speaker 5: the gay community. I was just beginning to wade into
Speaker 5: that world myself, and so that's what I was greeted with,
Speaker 5: you know, sort of the fruits of the sexual revolution.
Speaker 5: And we started to hear first there was some kind
Speaker 5: of a strange a meeba that was going around, and
Speaker 5: guys were getting terribly sick with ridiculous diarrhea and the like.
Speaker 5: There were other things like that, and then finally the
Speaker 5: whispers of this gay cancer, which you know, a lot
Speaker 5: of us discounted because come on, cancer is amal disease.
Speaker 5: How can you, you know, transfer cancer from one person
Speaker 5: to another. It must just be a way for the
Speaker 5: repressive society that we were living in to kind of
Speaker 5: quash the gay you know, liberation revolution, whatever we were doing,
Speaker 5: and so, you know, it was easily discounted, but it
Speaker 5: was getting harder and harder to overlook. Guys were getting
Speaker 5: together for funerals more often than we were getting together
Speaker 5: for brunch, and people were showing up at the gym
Speaker 5: that looked like walking skeletons.
Speaker 6: I mean, it really was.
Speaker 5: It began to be a kind of overwhelming, and then
Speaker 5: you started to see, you know, weird articles in the newspaper.
Speaker 6: And where it really.
Speaker 5: Hit home for me was when Rock Hudson began to
Speaker 5: die all over the front pages of the La Times.
Speaker 5: You know, you couldn't open up the paper without seeing
Speaker 5: another story about this man. Now, I don't know how
Speaker 5: many people really remember who Rock Hudson was, but he
Speaker 5: was probably the biggest movie star in the world. I mean,
Speaker 5: he was Hugh Jackman, he was Tom Cruise, he was
Speaker 5: Daniel Craig.
Speaker 6: He was all of that rolled up.
Speaker 5: Into line, you know, and comedies and action movies and
Speaker 5: dramas and the like. And here was this man, this buff,
Speaker 5: handsome man that we all watched in collective horror as
Speaker 5: he shrunk before our very eyes. Now, you know, among
Speaker 5: my community and friends, the perception of this, well, it
Speaker 5: suddenly became a whole lot more serious. Right, Like I said,
Speaker 5: this was something that we could no longer discount.
Speaker 1: Since the federal government's response to the crisis was so
Speaker 1: woefully inadequate. Division played a huge role in creating real change,
Speaker 1: And so we asked Frank in Hellal whether they were
Speaker 1: personally active in any political groups at the time.
Speaker 3: You know, honestly, I wasn't because, for I would say
Speaker 3: a good five to six seven year stretch after that,
Speaker 3: my life was, you know, was working and taking care
Speaker 3: of everybody that was getting sick around me. You know,
Speaker 3: there were periods of time throughout the eighties where I
Speaker 3: had a partner at the time, and he and I
Speaker 3: were caring for probably about the at one time, probably
Speaker 3: seven or eight different people, just one night with this, one,
Speaker 3: one night with that, one, one night with this one.
Speaker 3: And then when we weren't doing that, there were memorial
Speaker 3: services because you know, people were dying left and night,
Speaker 3: and as angry as you as you would get from
Speaker 3: seeing this carnage, I just thought, for me, my energies
Speaker 3: were best spent in caring for those that I loved,
Speaker 3: you know. And there was certainly plenty of people that
Speaker 3: had joined Act Up, which was the age you know,
Speaker 3: after this group, and they were doing their job, and
Speaker 3: you know, I felt like I was doing mine, you know,
Speaker 3: in the trenches kind of thing. And I do want
Speaker 3: to say that something that is not really I don't
Speaker 3: think it's really well known, but the lesbian community was
Speaker 3: truly the unsung heroes of the whole age crisis because
Speaker 3: they stepped up to the plate. I mean, this was
Speaker 3: a disease that relatively did not affect them at all,
Speaker 3: and I got they just stepped up and they were
Speaker 3: in there taking care of people left and right, and
Speaker 3: working in hospitals and volunteering and so their gay men friends,
Speaker 3: and it was amazing.
Speaker 5: At the time that I was diagnosed, As I had said,
Speaker 5: I was concerned for my job security because I was
Speaker 5: perfectly healthy, though I did have this bus to do
Speaker 5: anything my blood. So I really was not involved in
Speaker 5: any activist sort of groups, at least not in a
Speaker 5: public way. I gave money because you could do that anonymously,
Speaker 5: but I didn't show up at HIV social groups because
Speaker 5: who knew who I was going to run into there
Speaker 5: and what they might say to somebody, and what that
Speaker 5: somebody might say to somebody else that could cost me
Speaker 5: my job.
Speaker 6: So no, I wasn't.
Speaker 5: But at a certain point it was post cancer, and
Speaker 5: I'm not that much of an egomaniac, but I could
Speaker 5: not help but believe that there must be something in
Speaker 5: my experience that somehow could illuminate the lives of others.
Speaker 5: And that's when I decided that it was my turn
Speaker 5: to step up. And what I did was I sought
Speaker 5: out a speakers program, and there was one. There was one,
Speaker 5: tiny little speakers bureau, I should say, the remnants of
Speaker 5: a speakers Bureau. It was being run by an organization
Speaker 5: called Being Alive Los Angeles. Look them up on the web.
Speaker 5: Being Alive as la dot org. Being Alive was founded
Speaker 5: now some thirty thirty or more years ago by two
Speaker 5: HIV positive guys. Remember this was the darkest days of
Speaker 5: the epidemic, and they founded this as a way for
Speaker 5: HIV positive men and women to come together and speak
Speaker 5: openly to another of our fears and share the rumors
Speaker 5: we heard because our doctors were completely stumped. But here
Speaker 5: they formed an organization where people could speak in an
Speaker 5: authentic voice because we were living it every day. I'd
Speaker 5: given lots and lots of money to Being Alive, but
Speaker 5: finally it was my turn to put my put some
Speaker 5: skin in the game.
Speaker 2: Effective treatment for people with HIV didn't really emerge until
Speaker 2: the mid nineteen nineties with the introduction of anti retroviral therapy.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden AIDS diagnosis was no longer the
Speaker 2: death sentence it once was for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Though Frank remained HIV negative throughout the epidemic, he lost
Speaker 1: countless friends and his partner at the time, and Hillel
Speaker 1: had been diagnosed with HIV in nineteen eighty seven, we
Speaker 1: asked them both how things changed once these so called
Speaker 1: miracle drugs came onto the scene.
Speaker 3: We're talking of good at least ten years or so,
Speaker 3: I'm guessing from my memory of when we first heard
Speaker 3: about AIDS up to that point when those recombination therapies
Speaker 3: came into play. During those years, just seemed that every
Speaker 3: week there was some other drug or some other treatment
Speaker 3: that was coming into play. There was a z ty,
Speaker 3: and then there was this, and then there was that,
Speaker 3: And so in retrospect, when those drugs, those therapies came out,
Speaker 3: we did not know at that time obviously what a
Speaker 3: game changer it was going to be. But you know,
Speaker 3: to us, it was just let's see what the hell
Speaker 3: this one does, you know, that kind of thing. So
Speaker 3: it wasn't really that big a deal to us at
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 5: Credation inhibitor drugs had entered the scene, and that changed everything.
Speaker 5: People were getting up off of death edge, returning to work,
Speaker 5: returning to life as productive citizens. There was real reason
Speaker 5: for hope again, and so the last thing people wanted
Speaker 5: to do was get up in front of a bunch
Speaker 5: of high school kids or junior high school kids or
Speaker 5: community college kids talk about how miserable their lives were
Speaker 5: with HIV, and in fact, we were starting to live
Speaker 5: good lives again. But that's what was most important, That's
Speaker 5: what made my participation so urgent, was because you can't
Speaker 5: tell by looking. You know, the joke is, you know,
Speaker 5: you walk into a gay bar, you can tell who
Speaker 5: the hid the guys are there are really fuss good
Speaker 5: looking runs because you know, we're taking care of ourselves, right,
Speaker 5: but we're walking around with this and you know, as
Speaker 5: I grew find as telling my audiences, you really cannot
Speaker 5: tell by looking. And that's why I thought it was
Speaker 5: so important to carry that message out, to put a
Speaker 5: human face of what at that time was a terrifying,
Speaker 5: mysterious disease.
Speaker 2: We also sat down and spoke with Brian Jackson, whose
Speaker 2: story you hurt a little bit of last week. He
Speaker 2: was infected with HIV when he was only eleven months
Speaker 2: old after his father, a phlebotomist, intentionally injected him with
Speaker 2: HIV infected blood in an attempt to avoid paying child support,
Speaker 2: which is just the most unfathomably evil thing I can
Speaker 2: even think of. Yeah, and he is now his father
Speaker 2: is now serving a life sentence in prison for this act.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my name is Brian Jackson. But when I was
Speaker 4: eleven months old, my father, who was a probotomist at
Speaker 4: a hospital, decided to her HIV sainted blood and then
Speaker 4: sinsuly injected me with the HIV bias, hoping I would
Speaker 4: die off and he wouldn't have to pay child support.
Speaker 4: My father stayed in the picture for about a month
Speaker 4: longer and told my mom don't worry about looking me
Speaker 4: up the child support. This child's not going to live on.
Speaker 4: So she didn't think anything about that until nineteen ninety
Speaker 4: six one for being this playful, hockey energetic five year
Speaker 4: to this loaded beavers sick kid. In the amounter of months,
Speaker 4: my body began to break down and doctor started custody
Speaker 4: for numerous diseases, even forever and then just another country.
Speaker 4: In conclusion, they came to say, you know, I know
Speaker 4: he's not a risk for HIV, but let's.
Speaker 6: Testing for HIV.
Speaker 4: The results came back and I was diagnosed with full
Speaker 4: blown AIDS. Given five months to this, my T cell.
Speaker 6: Count was at zero.
Speaker 4: They put me on twenty three or medications through IVY
Speaker 4: in a Vatican two ingestion's daily the majority of those
Speaker 4: were not available for SHIVEN at the time. But three
Speaker 4: months past, five months past, and as I stand before
Speaker 4: you today, wasn't supposed to see my sixth birthdays. But
Speaker 4: come next month, I'll be celebrated my twenty seventh birthday.
Speaker 1: As we talked about last week, a diagnosis of HIV
Speaker 1: or AIDS carried with it a stigma and a feeling
Speaker 1: sometimes of impending doom, particularly during the height of the
Speaker 1: AIDS crisis from the mid eighties to the end of
Speaker 1: the nineties, when treatment was hard to come by and
Speaker 1: ignorance of how the disease worked was rampant, both in
Speaker 1: the scientific community and in the public. Hellal and Brian
Speaker 1: discussed with us the emotional told that their diagnoses took
Speaker 1: on their lives.
Speaker 4: When I first became diagnosed with HIV, my body was
Speaker 4: just sharing that day.
Speaker 6: By day, the muscles of my legs.
Speaker 4: Were breaking down, my boundary becoming brittle, and achy.
Speaker 6: Was vomiting all the time.
Speaker 4: If if it wasn't HIV or the opportunity to conceptions
Speaker 4: that were making me sick, it was the side effect
Speaker 4: that THEATIS. I've also lost a little bit of my
Speaker 4: hearing because the doctors weren't moditing the drug that I
Speaker 4: was on, and therefore I lost my hearing. And then
Speaker 4: all those years of just battling this illness, I'm actually
Speaker 4: another thing I speak about besides HIV is mental health.
Speaker 6: When I was thirteen years old, I was.
Speaker 4: Really struggling with the question that was left out a
Speaker 4: birthday Piet.
Speaker 6: And this is when Bullian was really high for me.
Speaker 4: At school, I would be getting jumped into the lack
Speaker 4: of room and I thirteen, You know, I said, do
Speaker 4: you know what? I'm just interview everybody at Favor and
Speaker 4: I'm going to kill myself. And I, as thirteen, I
Speaker 4: had three knives in front of me, asked myself which one.
Speaker 6: He had deeper and I, in.
Speaker 4: My moment of desperation, this voice caught me through my
Speaker 4: Bible and I read this passage and said why I said, downcast,
Speaker 4: tell my soul with your hope in God. And that
Speaker 4: would hold stuck out to me. And so this is
Speaker 4: about two thousand and three, so I couldn't just.
Speaker 6: Go google you know what is hope? But I was really.
Speaker 4: Fascinated by the word hope, and I really wanted to
Speaker 4: find out what it is, and gat Internet's not going
Speaker 4: to cut it, you know. So I'm like reading Booth
Speaker 4: and I'm reading I loved Encyclopedia before Wikipedia. And what
Speaker 4: I came to is that and I You're going to
Speaker 4: go through struggles no matter where. But the consistency we
Speaker 4: need to have is hope, and hope is vital. And
Speaker 4: so with that, I started to realize that we had
Speaker 4: huge choices.
Speaker 6: When we have these oh plat moments.
Speaker 4: It's either to be a part of the problem or
Speaker 4: to be part of the solution.
Speaker 6: And I said, you know what, I'm tired of being
Speaker 6: a part of the problem.
Speaker 4: I want to be part of the solution. I want
Speaker 4: to live in victory, not victim mode. And so a
Speaker 4: question I asked myself is if I believe that I
Speaker 4: have a purpose in life, what is my purpose?
Speaker 6: And I started asking that question that we.
Speaker 4: All asking that victim zone, It's what can I get
Speaker 4: out of this? And I realized that life isn't about
Speaker 4: what you can get, it's about what you can give.
Speaker 4: And then I started asking.
Speaker 6: What do I have to give?
Speaker 4: And I saw that I had a pass and I
Speaker 4: had a story, and my story is now a story
Speaker 4: of hope. And I think the word is missing hope.
Speaker 4: So I wanted to just start sharing that story of
Speaker 4: part And so since the year just thirteen, I've been
Speaker 4: in Motivation Speaking and traveled all around the world to Haiti, Ecuador, Kenya.
Speaker 4: Last year I was main Canada Speaker of the Year
Speaker 4: and so Motivation Are Speaking for me is my tient
Speaker 4: to give back to people whoever struggling with something in
Speaker 4: their life, whether it's mental health, whether it's disease, whether
Speaker 4: it's just a day to day life problem. And I
Speaker 4: would just want to empower people that there is hope
Speaker 4: and that hope is vital and that regardless of your situation,
Speaker 4: you can do anything and you can overcome it and
Speaker 4: you can be.
Speaker 6: The best person you're capable of being.
Speaker 5: And so there I was sitting in my beautiful office
Speaker 5: when I get a phone call from the doctor after
Speaker 5: those seven days to tell me that the chest results
Speaker 5: came back and they were positive. And as I sat
Speaker 5: there and listened to all of that, all I could
Speaker 5: think of, first, Oh my god, how am I ever
Speaker 5: going to my parents? See I was between my thirtieth
Speaker 5: and thirty first birthday at that time, and I know
Speaker 5: to many people that seems impossibly old, but it is not.
Speaker 5: When you are between thirty and thirty one, your entire
Speaker 5: life is ahead of you, or at least it should be.
Speaker 5: But there I was in my thirtieth and thirty first birthday,
Speaker 5: and the primary relationship I had in my life, for
Speaker 5: better for worse, is with my parents. I'm also the
Speaker 5: oldest of three kids, and I don't know if anyone
Speaker 5: out there is the oldest in their family, but I
Speaker 5: can clue you if you aren't, that is the oldest.
Speaker 5: That child that is the repository of all their parents. Fond,
Speaker 5: just houpes and dreams. Right, we're the ones that are
Speaker 5: going to change the world. We're going to have grandchildren,
Speaker 5: We're going to shine in our lives and make them
Speaker 5: proud on that afternoon that no longer was a possibility
Speaker 5: for me. And you know, I'm no kind of an actor.
Speaker 5: When they walked in the house, they cleanly saw that
Speaker 5: something was wrong on their own. Say, no one knows
Speaker 5: me better, or in this case, knows me least. But
Speaker 5: that's when I had to sit them down and tell
Speaker 5: them that it was time to start planning my funeral.
Speaker 5: You know, it's wrong for a parent to bury a
Speaker 5: child out of the national order of things. We're supposed
Speaker 5: to go to our parents' funerals, cause our parents' fuderals, right,
Speaker 5: every since the day they gave with those cartoons at sixteen,
Speaker 5: they have not select a night. I guarantee you that
Speaker 5: I remember my mother's eyes filled with tears, and my
Speaker 5: father got this serious look on his face that he
Speaker 5: gets when they're thinking about something really important. And he
Speaker 5: looked me in the eye after a moment, and he said,
Speaker 5: it'll all. He said, you are our son, and we
Speaker 5: love you conditionally, and we will live to see you well.
Speaker 5: Which wasn't this astonishing thing to hear in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 5: In nineteen eighty seven what you heard at the end
Speaker 5: of that story with how that guy's parents threw him out,
Speaker 5: how they turned their back on their own sick child.
Speaker 5: How can you do that and call yourself a parent.
Speaker 5: But that's what was happening. It was real. But that's
Speaker 5: not what I come from. Thank God, I come from
Speaker 5: better people than that. And I sensed a moment. I
Speaker 5: sensed an opportunity here, and I thought, Okay, what can
Speaker 5: I ask for?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: I can ask for anything I want. Now I'd be
Speaker 5: like I'm sympathy on my side, and I asked if
Speaker 5: my parents not tell my younger sister or brother. I
Speaker 5: was just afraid of having them be heard by that news.
Speaker 5: You know, Like I said, I'm their older brother. I'm
Speaker 5: the one they looked up into reasons I still don't understand.
Speaker 5: And I couldn't bear the thought of them worrying about me.
Speaker 5: And that was an amazing thing to ask of my parents.
Speaker 5: I had no idea what an enormous demand that was,
Speaker 5: what a strain that put on their everyday lives. There
Speaker 5: was no one they could talk to about this except me,
Speaker 5: and they were so afraid of upsetting my apple part
Speaker 5: that they just didn't talk about it. I really isolated
Speaker 5: them so terribly, and I feel I feel so bad
Speaker 5: for that. But you know, life comes. Life doesn't come
Speaker 5: with an instruction book, right. We make the best choices
Speaker 5: that we can given the information that we have, and
Speaker 5: in my life, that takes the form of trying to
Speaker 5: spare the feelings of others. I did what anybody else
Speaker 5: would do at that point. I put one foot in
Speaker 5: front of the other and I marched onward. Because here's
Speaker 5: what was weird. I had a perfectly intact immune system.
Speaker 5: I had twelve hundred tees olves. I also had the
Speaker 5: HIV ryers circulating through my body. Who knew how long
Speaker 5: it would take before the damage store. But I was
Speaker 5: healthier than the doctor at that point. So, like I said,
Speaker 5: I put one foot in front of the other and
Speaker 5: I marched. I walked into work every day. I stabbed
Speaker 5: people in the back and I got promoted. I climbed
Speaker 5: over the dead bodies and I got promoted again. I
Speaker 5: quit the studio. They hired me back a year later,
Speaker 5: at twice a salary. I quit again, started my own business.
Speaker 5: I did what any normal person does, right. I made
Speaker 5: contrifusions to my retirement line. I bought a condomitium with
Speaker 5: a thirty year fixed mortgage. Right. What dead man does that,
Speaker 5: you know? But I did what just normal people do,
Speaker 5: because that was all I could do.
Speaker 2: At the end of each of our interviews, we asked Frank, Hillel,
Speaker 2: and Brian to share with our listeners some of the
Speaker 2: things they felt were most important about the AIDS crisis
Speaker 2: or what it's like to live with HIV today.
Speaker 4: But after I thought, even after, I can cream with
Speaker 4: my story and said, hey, I don't care about what
Speaker 4: you guys think, like this is who I am.
Speaker 6: HIV doesn't define me. And I started showing.
Speaker 4: People that I was lobbying in Washington, DC. Some of
Speaker 4: the ignorance went away, but still the ignorance is still consistent.
Speaker 4: And it's just it's mind bioing to me that we
Speaker 4: live in twenty eighteen now and there's still ignorance when
Speaker 4: it is hidna.
Speaker 6: And just several years ago, I was dating.
Speaker 4: This girl and her father had the audacity to tell
Speaker 4: me you can't marry or date my daughter because.
Speaker 6: You're killing him and you're going to be just like
Speaker 6: your father. And I'm like, what what do you mean?
Speaker 4: And what people don't know about me is that I
Speaker 4: have an open invitation for anybody who wants to come
Speaker 4: to the doctor with me. Like my house status, it's
Speaker 4: not hidden.
Speaker 6: I'm an open book. I said, ask questions.
Speaker 4: You know, I've done the research, I've lived with it,
Speaker 4: but still people are ignorant. And I was also adaptics
Speaker 4: who aren't well educated about HIV and they just lit
Speaker 4: the prescription under the door and not even come in
Speaker 4: and take a looking. But in twenty eighteen, you know,
Speaker 4: we have great medications that can help people live long
Speaker 4: and healthy life and be undetectable. Most people can have
Speaker 4: a zophysic chance to pass and underbas but a lot
Speaker 4: of people the stigma is still live and real, so
Speaker 4: where people don't want to go get tested, or when
Speaker 4: people contracted by it, they automatically.
Speaker 6: Think I'm screwed, I'm going to die, and that's not
Speaker 6: just true. It's like people who are living with HIV
Speaker 6: can lead successful.
Speaker 4: Lives, and people who hang out with HIV positive people
Speaker 4: who are probably going to always remain HIV negative.
Speaker 5: There's what you was saying from the tone, and the
Speaker 5: shaving the life of one person is like shaving the
Speaker 5: world entire and it's mind hopes that somebody listening today
Speaker 5: might change the way they think, where they act towards
Speaker 5: the people who they meet in their lives who are
Speaker 5: living with HIV. And if you haven't met us, you will.
Speaker 5: If you haven't met us yet, you will. Because the
Speaker 5: CDC estimates that they're what seven hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 5: to one point five million people living with HIV, and
Speaker 5: fully a third of them don't even know it right
Speaker 5: here in America, and they don't know it because they're
Speaker 5: not getting tested. That is so key, get tested, share
Speaker 5: the results with your partner, develop strategies if you have
Speaker 5: to to negotiate, you know, safer sexual practices, but get tested.
Speaker 5: You know that that will feel like my life has
Speaker 5: been well lived, like I have done my part to
Speaker 5: try and fix the world. So giving me this platform
Speaker 5: to speak on this on this program is deeply touching
Speaker 5: and I truly think about.
Speaker 3: And like I said, I really believe it's important to
Speaker 3: pass these stories down because the case, you know, we're
Speaker 3: all getting older and someday I'm not going to be here,
Speaker 3: and you know, life is just going to go on
Speaker 3: and those stories are going to be forgotten. And you know,
Speaker 3: part of that is just light you know that happens.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, there's just still needs to
Speaker 3: be some record somewhere that you know there was a
Speaker 3: wonderfully live, vibrant community of people that loved each other
Speaker 3: and cared about one another and supported each other when
Speaker 3: you know, times were bad and now all that's gone.
Speaker 3: And honestly, that's one of the reasons that I'm doing
Speaker 3: this today is you know, if we don't tell our
Speaker 3: stories about what happened, who will.
Speaker 1: Again, we want to give a huge, huge, Thank you
Speaker 1: to Frank, hellel and Brian for sharing their experiences with us.
Speaker 1: We feel so fortunate for their openness and willingness to
Speaker 1: talk about their lives, and we hope that it made
Speaker 1: as much of an impact on you as it has
Speaker 1: on us listeners.
Speaker 2: Thanks again, yeah, thank you, and thank you for listening everyone.
Speaker 1: Until next time, wash your hands
Speaker 2: Yes, filthy animals.