A closeup photograph of a pair of shoes. It has a seamless abstract pattern of design.

Photo Credit: Christian Hui

As a first-generation immigrant settler living with HIV originating from Hong Kong, the Dish with One Spoon Territory has now become my homebase for more than half of my life. While I am presently a doctoral candidate, writing has often been a difficult process for me. Yet when I learned of the opportunity where I can write freely and creatively for StOries: Strangers to Ourselves project, I jumped on the idea so I can utilize this rare opportunity to share the often untold stories about BIPOC people living with HIV.

Acquired Immuno-deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is a global pandemic that affects 38 million globally. While HIV is a communicable disease that does not discriminate, it often disproportionately affects those who have been historically oppressed and marginalised such as Indigenous peoples, members of the African, Black and Caribbean communities, migrants, trans people, people who use drugs, sex workers, and gay, bisexual and other men-loving men, people with experience of incarceration, women, and youth, amongst others. While the mere utterance of HIV/AIDS might conjure up silence due to its associated stigma, I wear my poz and Undetectable identity proudly today. In fact, I often find opportunities to educate others that people living with HIV with suppressed or undetectable viral loads cannot pass on HIV sexually to others, or in other words, that there is zero risk in sexual transmission.

Reflecting on my intersecting identities often rouse up multiplicities of emotions and memories which often stay buried deep inside me. I was excited to write for this project not because I wish to reprise the challenging experiences I faced as an immigrant settler: as a racialized queer living with HIV who yearned for love, or the intense bullying I experienced as a gender diverse child at an all-boys catholic English primary school in Hong Kong, or having to face the double bombardments of being called a “chink” and “faggot” during junior high as a teen in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States—experiences which I had written about previously and shared through published blogged articles as a young poz and queer activist. Instead, my conviction to engage in this piece is to make space for stories of others like myself, racialized queer poz settlers, whose passion and contributions to the HIV/AIDS response on this stolen land would otherwise be lost or erased. This is particularly important as the COVID-19 pandemic has further deprioritized HIV/AIDS as a global pandemic, which one would rarely hear about in the news unless during the Pride festival season or around World AIDS Day.

Up to this day, I still recall clearly how Derek, or affectionately called by some as Dee (after the signature “DYee” he would use on himself), had called me the Thursday prior to his passing. It had only been four days since I last saw him at his apartment when I learned of his ill-health as a result of f a two-year drug holiday he took from antiretroviral medications. Although he was so weak he could not sit up to greet me, I remembered clearly how determined and ready DYee was, and how seriously he wanted to get his health back on track. This story is written with love, and as an act to memorialise my dear friend, mentor, peer, colleague, Derek Yee, so that his legacy as a poz POC activist will not be forgotten.

“I Just Want a Hug”

The day in late March 2021 was cold, wet, and grey. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and people were still hesitant to venture out as many wished to avoid contracting the highly communicable infection, the tragic Asian spa shootings in Atlanta, USA, had nonetheless riled up a sense of unity amongst Asians and allies to demand for racial justice. Since I often tend to rush to get ready before heading out the door, I clearly remembered how I heard my phone ring that day. I almost ignored the call without even bothering to see who the caller was. When the caller ID showed it was DYee, whom I had not seen due to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, I swiftly picked up the phone and greeted my beloved kindred soul.

The COVID-19 pandemic had altered the lives of citizens involuntarily in such fundamental ways. Given the transmissibility of the novel corona virus, public health measures recommended people to limit social contacts, and where possible, work from home and reserve their outings only for essential trips. While these guidelines were effective in containing the spread of the SAR-COV-2 virus, the stay-at-home orders had heightened additional layers of vulnerabilities for people belonging to marginalized communities such as people living with HIV. Not only did AIDS service organizations have seconds to switch from in-person to virtual service provisions, service users living with HIV who might already be socially isolated often became even more alone as a result.

“Christeean?” DYee called out my name in his usual Trinadadian drawl. I felt both happy and embarrassed as I realized I had neither called or seen him for almost a year. “Derek!!! What’s up?” Though I responded with excitement, I prefaced our conversation by informing DYee in a hurried manner that I only had limited time to speak as I was already running behind to attend the Anti-Asian racism rally with an second generation Asian Canadian friend. In reflection, I was extremely grateful that DYee paused me and explicitly told me what he needed. “I really want a hug” were the words which he pleaded with me, words I can still hear clearly in my mind. Although I did not know why DYeek needed a hug so badly, just hearing those words convinced me to see him that day, despite us both knowing the visit would only be a brief one.

I told DYee I would be ready in about twenty minutes and would meet him downstairs outside his apartment building. I then headed off to a local popular fresh-baked cookie store which sold decadent baked goods mixed in with childhood favourite candies so I could cheer him up with a surprise gift. As I was waiting for the customers to leave the store in the rain, I called DYee so he would not be waiting in the cold. He learned of my plan to get him a fancy crowd-pleasing baked treat, and immediately stopped me in the act. “Get me a bubble tea! I can’t chew with my dentures,” he explained in a firm tone. DYee also insisted that I go up to his apartment, and let me know that someone would let me in. The exchange frazzled me a bit, as I knew I would be late to meet my protest buddy, and I was conscious of the public health recommendations to limit the number of contacts with others. Nonetheless, I was also determined not to disappoint DYee.

“I Have No Intention to Die…”.

When I arrived at DYee’s building, a young gentleman came out of the building and asked if I was visiting Derek. I nodded. The lad was a guest who was experiencing housing insecurity and someone whom DYee had offered a roof over his head. After the young fella finished his cigarette, I followed him up to DYee’s apartment. I was surprised by the huge number of items DYee had accumulated since I last saw him. The apartment door could barely open all the way, and I found myself having to swing my body sideways and squeeze through what used to be a short hallway into his living room. Once I made it to the room, I was able to see DYee, not standing, but laying flat on his couch. I can still recall the image like it was yesterday. I was struck by the amount of weight DYee had lost, and more so because he was so weak he could not even sit up to give or receive the hug which he so loudly demanded.

Being a person who had experienced homelessness in his own life, DYee often offered a helping hand to the less fortunate. Seeing DYee resting in a horizontal position due to his frail state, I put down the bubble tea which he requested me to bring him. Stricken by concern and apprehension, the first words that spilled from my mouthwere, “Oh Derek… what happened?” Although DYee was unable to sit up to greet or hug, he nonetheless seemed quick-witted and said, “I haven’t taken my meds for the past two years.” A sense of panic overtook me and I immediately asked DYee if he planned to get back on meds.

To my relief, DYee gave me a definite “Yes,” and proudly noted that he had contacted his doctor about resuming medication, and had gone to get his regular blood tests. He also informed me that he had already contacted the local HIV specialty hospital a few weeks prior and was put on a waiting list for respite care. He then went on to let me know his CD4 white blood cell count was 40. As a fellow person living with HIV, I knew that having a CD4 white blood cell count under 200 copies/ml meant we did not only have HIV, but it meant our immune system was so weak that we would be diagnosed as having AIDS.

While medical advances have helped preserve the lives of many people living with HIV, we as poz folks must continue to take our daily medications as prescribed or we may risk the virus to mutate within our systems, rendering the medication ineffective due to resistance. “You know, if you don’t get back on meds, you won’t be able to wear all the beautiful dresses, gowns and shoes you have bought and stuffed in your closet…” I said affectionately to DYee as I attempted to crack a joke to lighten the heavy mood we were in.

What gave me comfort was when DYee responded with an invigorated vivaciousness, “Christeean, don’t worry. I have no intention to die…” Having gained assurance that my friend’s spirit is strong and that he wished to get better, I told DYee I would contact two former colleagues who worked at two different ethnocultural AIDS service organizations, ACAS and ASAAP, which provide suppor to East/Southeast Asians and South Asians/Middle Easterns respectively so they could case coordinate and advocate for his admittance to Casey House, an HIV-hospice turned HIV-specialty hospital, where he could utilize their respite services to regain his health.

About Derek and I

Prior to working in the HIV sector, Derek was a visual merchandiser for a high-end department store. I suspect his love for fashion and shoes must have grown immensely while he worked Holts, a high-end department store which hosted mainly designer goods. When DYee contracted HIV, his declining health eventually forced him to leave his work and he was admitted to Casey House, then an HIV hospice. As opposed to dying, the institution helped nurse DYee’s health back and saved his life. Since then, DYee became a long-time volunteer at the HIV-specialty healthcare facilities as well as many other organizations, such as a member of the Speaker’s Bureau at the Toronto People with AIDS Foundation, served as the Chair of the Toronto Candlelight Vigil Committee, and was a Co-Founder of Ontario Positive Asians, an independent network of Asians living with HIV/AIDS, or OPA! as he would call it..

When DYee’s health rebounded, he became engaged in Toronto’s HIV/AIDS sector as a committed volunteer and staunch activist. DYee was a champion for the Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GIPA) principles, and advocated to ensure us poz folks are fairly compensated as peer workers or staff at AIDS service organizations. Eventually, he became a coordinator for the Legacy Project at the Committee for Accessible AIDS Treatment, a mentorship program which matches people living with HIV/AIDS with mentors so they can be supported in reaching their personal life goals.

I met Derek back in 2011 when I started volunteering at local AIDS service organizations after receiving a year of interferon treatment for my HIV/hepatitis C co-infection. One day, I saw a flyer for an upcoming training for racialized folks living with HIV/AIDS where participants would be paired up with a mentor. While I was definitely drawn to enroll in the course, the application form stated applicants were required to have completed either a volunteer or leadership training offered by other agencies---requirements which I did not possess. Hoping that I could take part in the course, I nonetheless took a chance to email the program coordinator, Derek Yee.

I did not hear back from DYee for about a month. As the training was going to take place within a week, I called the office and inquired if I was registered for the course. Derek was not in then, but the manager asked me to visit the office to meet him the day after. Expecting to see a fellow Chinese like myself, I was surprised to see Derek with dark skin and a Caribbean accent. Being a Trinadanian Chinese settler, Derek would have been a perfect model for the United Colours of Benetton. DYee possessed smooth, soft, brown skin from his Indo-Caribbean heritage, a lankier build which must have passed on from his Chinese ancestors, and spiraled, curly hair which he had proudly worn in Afro-style as a young queer fashionista.. With his multicultural background, Derek was a service user and volunteer at many ethno-racial and mainstream AIDS service organizations in T’karonto, and was genuinely well-loved by many.

After learning of DYeek’s mixed heritage. I was immediately drawn to his fast, melodic speech which was often interspersed with laughter, utterances which he would often pair up with taps of his feet like Michael Jacksont. Upon seeing me, DYee turned around with excitement, and spoke with his manager sitting across from him. Displaying genuine concern as if we had been kindred spirits, he pleaded with the manager so I could be considered for the mentorship training program he was coordinating which was to begin that weekend. The quiet and stoic looking manager nodded. With a big smile, DYee told me to come back as a registered participant for the mentorship training a few days later. I felt elated and immediately felt connected with DYee hereafter. This interaction showed me how much DYee cared about the community, and how much I owe to him for advocating on my behalf the first day I met him. From that day onwards, DYee became one of my mentors in the poz community. I was drawn to DYee from the start because we shared a number of commonalities. Our identities as poz queer Asian settlers allowed us to understand the common challenges which Asians living with HIV/AIDS might often face in silence: racism and xenophobia from white Canadians, HIV-stigma and AIDS-phobia from one’s cultural community, and for some, alienation from one’s family or friends. DYee and I formed strong bonds as we both lived with an HIV/hepatitis C co-infection at some point in our lives.When I first met Derek, I was undergoing my 48-week treatment on ribavirin and peg-interferon for hepatitis C, a condition which my body was ultimately able to get clear. Given that Derek had waited to commence his own hepatitis C treatment when newer, more effective treatment became available a few years later, my experience of undergoing and fully recovering hepatitis C had created opportunities where I also became DYee’s mentor and a friendship that is based on reciprocal love and co-learning.

A Community Giant

On the Thursday prior to Eastern Monday, my phone rang. It was just the weekend when I last saw DYee and witnessed how thin he had become. As I picked up the phone, I heard my frailed friend spitting out words at bullet’s speed. “I am so upset, Christeean,” said DYee. Recognizing that his Trinidadian accent became stronger, a sign that gave away he was mad. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “I am so upset at Casey House right now. I was just on the phone with a staff there, and they told me they have 3 empty rooms upstairs,” declared my well-connected activist friend who often served as resourceful community worker and peer navigator for other racialized poz BIPOC in the city. Before this time, DYee had often spoken fondly of the HIV-specialty hospital, a place which had previously saved his life and where he had devoted much of his time as a committed advisory committee member. His rage was sparked by the fact that there were unused inpatient beds available at the facility, yet as a long-time volunteer at the HIV-hospital, the irony was that he could not gain access to its services when he needed it most.

I asked DYee if he had been in touch with the workers from the ethnocultural AIDS service organizations, and if the support staff had been able to advocate for his admission to the HIV hospital. It turned out he was infuriated because despite his own advocacy along with the efforts of support staff from other agencies, Casey House insisted that they would not be admitting him until after the long weekend. I tried to console Derek, by noting that it might be an institutional policy matter and tried to downplay the seriousness of the issue by asking if he had eaten as a cultural way of comforting him. As an activist who was greatly inspired by DYee and one of his mentees I turned my social worker hat on and inquired if there was anything either I or the agency support staff could bring him to cheer him up. “A Chinese barbecued duck, with low salt soy sauce and no rice,” demanded an upset DYee in a tone which demonstrated the usual assuredness he would often display as a community leader. “I will use it to make duck soup…you know I can’t chew anymore because of my dentures…” After the call, I immediately contacted the support staff at two different agencies to ensure Derek will get the meal he wanted delivered.

That was the last conversation I had with Derek. Having been given the message from Casey House that he would be processed for intake on the Tuesday after Easter and no other options, DYee spent the long weekend at home. I learned from an instant message sent by a close friend, Samuel Lopez, that he had passed alone at home the evening of Easter Monday, 2021, a news which was a shock to many, including myself. Losing Derek was literally losing a community giant. A most unfortunate part about DYee’s death was that one the HIV-specialty hospital’s empty rooms could have served as a respite for a fierce HIV selfless activist and advocate who had done so much for others. What’s even worse was that if DYee, being a well-connected community activist who knew the HIV service delivery system so well, could fall through the cracks, that would mean others living with HIV who do not know how to navigate the system or do not have the ability to self-advocate would very likely to be dismissed by the neo-liberalized AIDS industrial complex and face a similar fate.

The Black Suede Shoes from Derek

Learning of DYee’s death prompted me to look for the black suede shoes which he had a couple of years ago. I remembered the occasion when I was gifted the shoes, the day when he invited me to visit his home after a community training so we could catch up with one another and let out any frustrations we might have as fellow poz BIPOC activists about what was not going right in the system. As I got myself ready to leave, DYee, being the fashionista and good friend he was, offered me a pair of his black suede dress shoes. Initially, I politely declined as I knew he was not working at that time, and I would feel guilty for taking something from him then.

As a fellow poz peer, I have shared the common experience with DYee where, like many people living with HIV/AIDS, we were advised to go on social assistance to access life-saving medications which would otherwise have cost tens of thousands per year. I understood how living on assistance could be extremely challenging as it meant we rarely could spend extra money to pamper ourselves with things we loved and liked. Yet with his loving yet at times devious humour and infectious laugh, his insistence convinced me to take the footwear with me. He told me that since he did not need the shoes as his closet was already filled with many other pairs, asight which I was privy to witness as DYee’s sister was clearing up his belongings after his passing. The visuals of DYee and his artefacts are memories I would cherish and forever hold dear to my heart.

The black suede shoes DYee gave me were not new, but slightly worn bargain finds that had been kept in an almost pristine condition. The geometric patterns lightly etched on the suede leather exuded a refined elegance, while the small silver circular buttons gave the footwear a flashy call for attention. Given that I worked in a non-profit setting and tended to dress more casually, there had not been many opportunities to wear such fancy shoes. As such, I stored the shoes away, not knowing when would be the appropriate moment or occasion for me to wear and walk in them again.

When I learned of DYee’s passing, having seen him only a week prior and having spoken to him on the phone four days earlier, I immediately searched for the shoes and placed them on my altar and said a prayer. As I reached for the shoes, I noticed a sense of love, joy and camaraderie that is often evoked through remembering loved ones who are no longer with us. I then lit an incense stick and envisioned positive, loving energy surrounding my dear late friend so he could be reborn in the Sukhavati. On the day of his community memorial organized by his close friends, peers and colleagues to honour DYee’s legacy and to celebrate his life, I purposefully dressed up wearing a crisp white shirt and red bowtie, and made sure my feet were wrapped around by Derek’s black suede shoes.

“Walking In These Shoes”

While members of our poz BIPOC community were all born from different parents and originated from different countries and cultures, and some of us may be gender-diverse and queer as sexual beings, we are all bonded by our experiences as Indigenous and racialized people living with HIV/AIDS where we must collectively resist systemic and structural racism and xenophobia in addition to the everyday HIV stigma and discrimination which continue to haunt us for decades in the first discovery of the AIDS pandemic.

As a beloved community activist, Derek possessed a unique aura and always spoke with passion. His death had come as a shock and great loss to so many, especially for members of the BIPOC poz community. Bearing the gift of Derek’s shoes had inspired me to follow and walk in his footsteps. The black suede shoes have since evolved from being a gift of friendship into a baton in a relay amongst poz BIPOC in our journeys of resilience and resistance as we continue to show love, care, compassion towards one another, and speak up and rise against the injustices which we face on a daily basis.

Knowing how upset my mentor was at the HIV-specialty hospital because it refused to admit him until after the long weekend stuck with me. It is something I myself and other concerned poz BIPOC activist friends of DYeek would not forget and an incident we would collectively seek justice for. As someone who had taken part in more than one Casey House #SmashStigma fundraising campaigns, I felt betrayed by the institution knowing that my fellow dear friend, mentor, colleague and peer was not offered the needed care during his critical last days due to outdated institutional policies and bureaucratic red-tape. I have a particularly difficult time comprehending why a well-funded health-facility which would use our faces to front their high-profile fundraising activities could not have admitted DYee when there were empty, unused beds. Even worse, why the CEO of Casey House would ask the mutli-stakeholder group of DYee’s blood and chosen family members and concerned executive directors of AIDS service organizations who requested a meeting with the HIV-specialty hospital in an effort to fix the systemic gap facing Poz BIPOC that we need to “change our tone.”

I have decided to write down what took place during DYee’s last days so his love for the community, and his legacy of speaking out and taking actions against social injustices can be honoured and continue within our community. It is my hope, as I am sure it would be DYee’s as well, that life events like these as experienced by poz BIPOC folx would be documented and be used to address service gaps that exist within the HIV/AIDS sector. Following the death of DYee, a number of his friends and peers including myself gathered to take part in a documentary short film project, “Walking in These Shoes” to honour, memorialize, and pay tribute to this community giant. As friends, peers, and chosen family members of DYee, we invite you to watch the short documentary as a way to gain additional insights on some of the issues we face as poz BIPOC people in T’karonto. In closing, we ask you to join us in celebrating and honouring the lives of BIPOC living with HIV/AIDS who have come before us, and those still among us, as well as the legacy of our dearest Derek Yee.

  • This StOries: Stranger to Ourselves Anthology piece you just read is meant to serve as companion piece to “Walking in These Shoes,” a multi award-winning Poz BIPOC short documentary film commissioned by the Viral Interventions Research-Creation Project, which premiered at the Toronto Queer Film Festival on April 23, 2022 at 8 pm and can be viewed at https://youtu.be/ggnp69jLOVE.