The Science Made Me Do It! A Journey Toward Reimagining Myself as Non-infectious: Serodiscordant Sexuality in the Age of TasP

Abstract

I occupy an interesting position on the Australian HIV/AIDS timeline. In my teens, my friends and I would steal into Oxford Street, Sydney’s queer epicenter at the time, to pick up copies of the local gay paper. We would sit in a café filled with queers and paw over images of the thrilling urban life we desired so much. Then pausing, chilled, on page after page of obituaries. A few years later I hit the queer scene, just early enough to pass the spectral form of Brenton Heath-Kerr, maintaining an elegant dignity as he walked painfully down Oxford street in his last days. His fragile frame has left a permanent mark on my memory. I knew he was the genius inside that Tom of Finland costume and many other mind-blowing artworks. He was an icon of the AIDS crisis and there he was walking alone down Oxford Street, heading toward the hospice. By now I was a budding performance artist and was hugely inspired by his work. I had a sense that I was watching some kind of royalty decaying before my eyes.