One Christian's Meditations on HIV

By Clarence

on 12 December 2004

About once a month or so, my heartbeat quickens somewhat on a Wednesday evening as 5.30pm approaches. Usually I don’t leave the office before 7 but each time, on this particular Wednesday evening, work becomes a race against time – to finish up whatever is outstanding for the day so that I can rush off to catch the taxi the department secretary has booked for me.

Then I am always fascinated when I tell the taxi man to take me to Kelantan Lane. Often he does not know where I mean. At that point I just say, “Uncle, you know the sex clinic where people go to check sex disease?” A light always comes on and they always know where that place is.

Sometimes a slightly perturbed look blankets their face. Other times they ask me if I am a doctor – a tie and long sleeves does wonders to one’s image. Remembering how Dr. John White the famous Christian author once described feeling dismay when someone assumed he – then an intern – was a patient at a STD clinic, everynow and again I am tempted with to answer the doctor question with “No. I am a sex disease patient,” just to see the effect on the taxi driver.

I like volunteering at the clinic during the Action for Aids anonymous testing days. I get to meet people I would not otherwise meet - people from all walks of life – from the foreign construction worker, to the local waiter, the sales assistant, the successful professional, the well to do expat and even retirees. For a couple of hours each month I get to step away from the Bloomberg computer screens and the intense business discussions to meet flesh and blood human beings all leveled to one class; to one commonality, by the spectre of HIV.

The times I spend at the clinic are therapuetic for me. Due to the anonymity code, the counseling sessions become a very present and in the moment activity – something a person like me who constantly lives in the future needs in order to become grounded again. Volunteering there forces me to live in the present. It is one of those times when I sense myself deeply vitalised as if I am intertwined into the very being of the great I AM. The God who is present. That God of the incarnation to whom I belong.

Encountering a HIV positive client has almost become a minor calling of sorts. My very first day as a volunteer, I had to inform a young straight man I tested that he was infected. Then again on my very first day back as a volunteer after a break of a year or so, again I had to inform another straight man that he was infected. I am told that there are counselors who have volunteered for years and have not had to inform a client that their test had yielded the dreaded double red line indicating infection. No such luck for me.

In retrospect I realise that everytime I have had to be in the same room with a HIV+ person on a Wednesday evening it has been a sacred event. Often it is a sadness that flows over me as I stay present with a client who goes into shock or breakdown upon hearing the news. But there have also been times of hope when I experience with the client that the possibility of a life still worth living beyond the devastating news – except in one situation when both the client and I knew that there was no beyond after that fateful night. And then on a couple of occasions there has been awe – yes proufound awe - and I come to understand a bit more what it means to love another person.

A Straight Man’s Coming Out Story (and Christians Distorting Statistics)

But first a funny story. A fifty something man steps into the counseling room looking rather worried. I scan his intake form and note that he did not complete the section on his sexual preference - same gender, different gender or both? He was rather squeamish. I always stand up when a client comes in. Always shake their hands and always tell them my name and smile reassuringly. Somehow disclosing my name and flashing a genuine smile often puts a client at ease. So he finally starts to talk – still quite sheepish - as I ask him rather detailed questions about his sexual habits.

The gentleman was troubled. He thought he was gay and was seriously afraid that being gay he would get the dreaded “gay disease,” AIDS – four letters meant to be a word of comfort and help transformed into an acronym for death. Talk about oxymorons.

There was only one problem. Firstly he didn’t look very gay (I know I know I am stereotyping but I just couldn’t resist on that occasion!). More importantly though, he had never slept with another man in his entire life nor even fantasised about it. Added to that he had slept with countless women. The catch was he by far preferred anal to vaginal penetration. And only gay men do anal sex right? So he concluded with much fear and trembling that he might be gay. I tell you the fellow was a prime queer studies specimen!

The fifty something gentleman had come to believe that someone who only does anal sex is gay even if he only has sex with women. Thankfully the man used a condom properly each time and as expected, his test results came out negative. The gentleman left my room, quite elated that he was most likely a raving heterosexual.

In recent times various Christian groups particularly have bandied around a statistic which they say is derived from the 2001 National Institute for Health Report (“NIH Report”) entitled Scientific on Condom Effectiveness for Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention.. According to the people bandying the statistic, the study demonstrates that condoms even when used properly provide only a 85% protection from HIV. Having believed that condoms are quite safe you can imagine my alarm on reading this statistic. If that were true I would have been misleading a whole bunch of people into risky behavior.

But here’s the truth. The study1 actually found that the chances of a person wearing a condom properly being infected when he repeatedly has sex with a HIV infected person is 0.9% for every 100 person years. In other words, if you use a condom properly and you had sex repeatedly with a HIV+ person over a 100 year period, the chances of you catching HIV is less than 1%. Yes less than 1% in 100 years of repeated sex with a HIV+ person. The 85% number is actually a distortion of a statistic used in the study.

Go read the study yourself at www.niaid.nih.gov/dmid/stds/condomreport.pdf

While I am in no way interested in championing or even condoning promiscuous sexual activity, it is deeply saddening that the people bandying the 85% figure – which is at best a grossly irresponsible misrepresentation or at worst, a deliberate distortion of the study’s results – it is deeply saddening that these people claim to be Christians. We Christians say we worship the incarnate Truth, the Lord Jesus Christ. If you believe Jesus is the Truth, then you bloody well make sure you don’t present stats just to justify your position when they blatantly don’t. Firstly it is simply silly because you will be found out in due course. But more importantly, it dishonors the name of Christ. I have seen this happen many times and I am ashamed.

Only One Shot Is Needed Baby

The study however does show that not wearing a condom can be deadly. But I didn’t need a study to tell me that. Kaien (all names and identifying details have been altered to protect anonymity but the incidences are true) taught me this lesson on one of those Wednesday evenings.

Kaien was a young man. He was approaching his thirties and had just completed his Masters at a local university. Staunchly Christian, he was deeply conflicted over his sexuality, starved of healthy same sex affirming friendships and had low self esteem. From a HIV public health perspective these are clear danger signs – a deadly cocktail lacking only one ingredient.

Unable to be himself in the presence of others, Kaien finally threw himself into a relationship with another guy he had met on the net. When asked one night by this guy to have anal sex as a sign of mutual commitment, he suggested using a condom. The reply Kaien got was “if you love me, you would trust me and not use a condom and that if you didn’t trust me then why should we be in a relationship?” Crippled from forming healthy friendships that affirmed his sexuality and build up his self esteem, the years of self loathing took its toll. The deadly brew was completed: Kaien agreed to be penetrated without a condom.

After that one incident, his so-called boyfriend left him. The sex was not satisfying it seemed. Kaien was devastated. He finally consulted a counselor who suggested he go for a HIV test. Kaien came with another Christian friend on an evening when I was on duty at the clinic.

He was my only client that evening as he roller coastered from shock to anger to despair in a matter of hours before my very eyes. His Christian friend tried to be there but did not know what to do. I left that night offering Kaien counseling if he wanted some help to work through some issues he would be facing and gave him the contact for a HIV+ support group.

If you don’t believe one act of unprotected sex with an infected person can get you infected, think again.

Kaien subsequently did call me. His Christian friend could not accept Kaien’s misfortune. Kaien had to deal with constantly being berated over his sinfulness and being told how much this friend cared for him. The split personality behavior of the Chrsitian friend was too much to take.

Today the Christian friend is no more a close friend. Kaien has moved on and has in fact grown as a person. Last I saw him, he had started work and was supporting his family. He decided against taking expensive medication for now as his parents sorely need the money.

If Kaien’s self esteem and self acceptance as a gay person had been affirmed and built up, I am certain he would have drawn the necessary boundaries when faced with his so-called boyfriend’s emotional blackmail. But we are a conservative society and we would rather sacrifice our gay sons than teach them their inherent dignity even as a gay human being. ( I know I sound a little angry – call it the Snowball Effect. Eventough I was not planning to attend the event I am aghast at the denial of the licence.)

No Safe Relationships Without Empowerment (Let’s Not Victimise The Victim)

I sat across from Suriana an Indonesian domestic helper. She was sobbing; her shoulders heaving back and forth under her belaboured breathing. I had just told her that she was very probably infected with the HIV virus. Both of us knew it the moment I told her. For her, it was a death sentence.

She would be repatriated to her village near Ayer Molek, a village near the town of Pekan Baru in Sumatra, to live with her unemployed parents who had been depending on her income. Beyond the shame, we both knew she would most probably be unable to access proper medication. That night was truly the beginning of the end for her.

But she was married, she insisted to me between her broken sobs. And she had been faithful – she was a one man woman. She had saved her virginty for this man. Her husband was just outside. I looked out – he seemed so ordinary he could almost have been my own older brother. He came in eventually but didn’t say a word; his face tinged with a mixture of guilt and an unwillingness to acknowledge the horrendous consequences of his actions.

It turns out that not being able to be legally married, the man had convinced Suriana to form a kind of de facto marriage with him. Suriana would visit him on her days off or when her employer travelled on business. And this had been going on for over a year.

The man had known for a while now he was HIV+ but would not tell me if he knew before he met her though I suspected that after he found out about his HIV status, he still had had unprotected sex with Suriana. There was no way this man could afford medication for two people and in any event Suriana’s days in Singapore were over. She would have to return to her village and short of a miracle, wait for the virus to savage her life. I have rarely felt so powerless.

Safe relationships are the ultimate protection against infection. Monogamy is the only 100% guarantee against HIV. All true and we must keep encouraging and perhaps even cajole people to honor their relational commitments. But how was Suriana to know if her man was safe? And more than that, even if Suriana had, half way through the relationship, begun to suspect that her common law husband was not safe, would she have been empowered enough to at least insist he wear a condom if not break off the relationship? Similarly how empowered was Kaien, with his shattered self esteem to be able to tell his “boyfriend” to go put his unsheated genitalia somewhere else?

One of the hard realities we will have to face in HIV prevention is that all relationships carry within them equations of power. It is unrealistic to expect someone who belongs to a marginal group whose very being is constantly denied or loathed by others to be able to stand up for himself in a potentially unsafe relationship. Similarly there is no way we can expect a person who is at an ecomomic or social disadvantage – such as a domestic worker or a wife from a lower income family and who depends on her husband’s income – to be able to effectively assert her right to safety. The safe relationship message is important but it must come with appropriate empowerment measures. Otherwise we are in danger of victimising the victim and unwittingly empowering the perpetrator.

Sacred Unions

But as I wrote earlier when I started this reflection, there have also been moments of profound awe. Moments when I feel, sitting there across from the client, that I am witnessing the formation or the unfolding of a sacred covenant between two souls who love each other deeply.

Tony and Keong had come to consult a counselor. They had just commenced a relationship and it was Tony who suggested coming to the anonymous test site. The decision had relieved Keong from an agonising uncertainty. But it was not the uncertainty of their HIV status. Keong was HIV positive and had been so quite a while before meeting Tony – there was no avoiding that. Tony was HIV negative.

The agonising was on whether Tony would still love Keong and want to be with him once Keong told him about his HIV status. I can’t imagine the process Tony and Keong must have gone through. But after the initial shock, Tony decided that he did indeed love Keong and that that love could transcend even HIV. They came to find out how a HIV+ and a HIV- person could build a strong and safe relationship which included sexual intimacy. I was honored to be sitting there across from them.

Speaking to them that evening exploring various options and scenarios, I remembered my most positive HIV+ moment. If ever one could have a HIV Kodak moment, it would have been that moment when Seng and Tina walked into my room a couple of years back. They came to get Tina tested. As usual I tense up when a man and a woman come in and it is only the woman who is going to get tested. The usual excuse is that the man has been tested (a point that is asserted in rather unbelievably defensive manly tones) eventhough the woman was not present at the testing – a sort of misogynistic premarital post modern virginity test if you ask me – paticularly when the woman is of a lower socioeconomic status. I don’t take kindly to men like that.

But Tina let out an assuring giggle, paradoxically relaxing and confusing me. Seng did not need to be tested. He was HIV+ and they were a sexually active married couple. When they found out that Seng was HIV+, they decided to keep the marriage, use a condom and have Tina tested regularly. They were one of the most relaxed clients I have ever met at the test site. For Seng and Tina, life went on and indeed seemed to be going on quite well.

Tina and Seng looked like a safe relationship to me (thank God for the true statistics of the NIH Report!). Remembering them I prayed that Tony and Keong would be safe too.

Safe Relationships - Beyond Moralisms

I am writing this while on a holiday in Melbourne. I came with my mum, my ex David, his wife Cynthia and their children (his daughter is actually named after me). Had my partner Han been in Singapore, he would have come for this holiday too and would have probably brought his grandma. Some people think it bizarre that I can go on a holiday with my ex-partner of eight years with his wife who knows he was in a gay relationship once with her friend (me) who is gay and whose partner is her friend too and whose children once asked their father in my presence if I and Uncle Han were married. And as if that wasn’t crazy enough we add in two old chattering and yet loving and often aggravating ladies.

I have sometimes wondered if it would have been possible for me to have married a woman - not that I do not treasure Han – we have gone through so much over the last five years and more than ever I am certain I want to die in his presence when the time finally comes (assuming of course that I go first). Then David, I know has sometimes wondered how life might have been different had he not married Cynthia as some of his same-sex yearnings tug at him. And then there is mum, who though does not fully understand Han and me, once told us that she could see we loved each other very much and let’s not forget the fortnightly dinners Han’s Methodist grandma cooks for us at her home when his own mother will not willingly eat with us even in a restaurant.

I don’t know the answers but life isn’t a simple set of self righteous moralisms. Life isn’t an ideological battle. It is incredibly complex and it is to be lived with clear minded courage and humilty.

Perhaps I will burn in hell one day for living as a gay man (though I think not) but for now all I do know is that I am glad that when Cynthia who earns a meagre salary has a bad row with David who makes six figures a year, feels empowered enough to come to Han or me for solace. And then I do know that every now and again David and Cynthia will ask me how things are with Han and me – two faggots trying to make sense of a sometimes hard life - and invite us over for a meal and play with the kids reminding us that faggots are precious human beings too. Han and I want David and Cynthia to have a safe and lasting relationship. Likewise David and Cynthia want Han and I to have a safe and lasting relationship too. We don’t moralise, we don’t theologise, we don’t do battles between good and evil, we just live our lives and learn to care for each other as authentically as we can. We’ll tell you in ten years time if that was safe enough for the four of us.

In the meantime, don’t forget to drop into the clinic every now and again.

Endnotes.

I am indebted to Alex Au (www.yawningbread.org) for pointing out the correct interpretation of the 2001 NIH Report.