Kaya. So I was diagnosed HIV positive more than six years ago now. And it was very hard. Many people may not know too much about it, and for me, when I was diagnosed, I didn’t know anyone living with HIV. For many years after, actually, I didn’t know anyone living with the illness.   

And most of my media around HIV was—Holding the Man, Philadelphia—remnants from the AIDS epidemic. So when I was diagnosed, it felt quite catastrophic, and a lot of the shame and stigma that you feel is not just within the broader community, it’s also within the gay community. You know. 

To compound, I guess, that part of my life, I was also living in Singapore. For about five years up to my diagnosis, I lived and worked there. And unfortunately, the laws in Singapore prohibit foreigners with HIV from having any permanent residence there. So I essentially was also deported and lost my home at the time.  

So I came back to Australia to live with my parents. I guess I’m just setting the scene to say that, at this time in my life, I was very lost and kind of set a bit adrift. And I think, as happens when something quite large like that takes place, very soon after moving back to Perth, I met someone on Grindr and fell in love really quickly.  

So he and I—yeah, we met just as a hookup on Grindr and he was such a jock, right? Like, just this hunk. And obviously we fucked on a massage table in his apartment because—I don’t know, like—why wouldn’t you? And I think being very lost at the time, I just fell kind of head over heels, you know? Maybe without much substance. 

But I just knew that I wanted him; that stability, that desire for him. I didn’t disclose my status though. And—brief update—you are not required by law in WA to disclose your HIV status, as long as you know you are taking best possible care of that other person.  

But I will say, from my experiences through life, that with a romantic partner, the longer that you wait, probably the harder it is for you and the harder it is for them to take. Yep. But I felt, just looking at him, I didn’t think that he would accept me. So I didn’t say anything. He was here in Perth living on a temporary visa. He was a worker. He told me that he was a masseuse.   

I think, maybe, I also had a misplaced kind of kinship—sense of kinship—for him, you know, on this temporary visa status, because I had just been through this experience where I had lost my chosen place of residence and I had to return home.  

It kind of became apparent as we saw each other more that he wasn’t really a masseuse, he was a sex worker and a methamphetamine dealer. Which, neither of which I’m very judgemental of, but I only bring it up because those things threw up quite difficult emotional blocks in the forming of a relationship.  

You know, he could be very, very unavailable. You know, he could make things really difficult. Sometimes I’d get in his car, we’d go for a drive, he’d say, ‘oh I’m just, like, I’ve just got to stop off somewhere for five minutes and then we’ll go.’ And then I’m sitting in a pitch dark driveway for two hours, just waiting, hoping that he comes out again.  

I mean, it wasn’t all bad. He would only ever eat at that Taiwanese cafe restaurant in Northbridge, you know Formosa? I think it’s still there. He’d only eat there. I fucking hate it there. Like I can’t walk past it now without being like, no. One time we were driving and he just gave me the stupidest smile and he was like, ’Hey look, I’m an Australian.’  

And he just wound down the window and shouted, ‘FUCKING CUNT!’ And I was like, yeah, fair enough. Very Australian. Masculine. So it was quite an on-off relationship because of that unavailability that he had. But I think that the longer it went on, the more that I felt that I wanted him, I wanted more. I kind of wanted this, I don’t know, intimacy and togetherness.  

At a certain point, maybe after a year, I think this was around the time that the Supreme Court in Taiwan mandated same sex marriage in Taiwan—and this was before the plebiscite had kind of started here in Australia—he brought it up to me and he said, ‘well, why don’t you come back to Taiwan with me and we can get married?’   

And in my heart, I think I wanted to, but I knew that that wouldn’t be a possibility. Taiwan has the same or similar laws to Singapore about residence, so I knew that I would not be able to take any residence there. And also, you know, my life had just been uprooted and put back here. I didn’t think that I had the strength to start again somewhere else.  

And what would I do? My Mandarin is quite bad. But I didn’t say anything because I think, you know, I wanted it. I wanted it to keep going, whatever this was. Even though it was so broken and strange, I just desired him so much. It got to then he finally made the plan to move home. His visa was running out. He didn’t want to extend it. I don’t think he actually liked it here very much. 

And so he chose to go back to Taiwan. And on the last night that we saw each other, that we spent together—we hadn’t seen each other for a few weeks beforehand, and then we had this kind of last night. And then we had sex and then afterwards, I finally told him—after, like, more than a year of seeing each other—I told him that the reason I couldn’t go, that I wouldn’t be able to follow him later, was because of this thing.  

Because of HIV. And he said that he had already guessed. He said that he’d guessed as much. And then he said that he was positive as well. Which I hadn’t guessed; I had no idea. And I felt, maybe, like this huge sense of unfairness that it was so jarring. That all this time, and all this emotional distance between us, and there actually shouldn’t have been. You know?   

Like all that wasted time that I had spent not telling him about this, and that I didn’t know about him either. And so I said something to him like, ‘oh, well, we’re alike. We’re the same.’ And he held me and he said, ‘no. You probably got it because you were a slut and you couldn’t be careful, I got it because I love someone and he tricked me. So we’re not the same.’  

And I think I just said, ‘I-I don’t know.’ And I remember, like really clearly, that feeling of lying in the bed and holding someone really, really close to you, and just thinking that, you know, this should be intimacy, right? This should be kinship. We now know all these secrets that we had from each other. But I had never felt more, I think, alone than then. Like more locked within my own body than in that moment.   

And then after that, that was it. So he left. He went back home. Occasionally, I will check his photos on Facebook, see that he’s alive, doing very well. But I think it kind of put, I guess, a lot of issues around disclosure and living openly with yourself in perspective for me. And it’s still, you know, been widening circles for a few years. 

But I think it actually took COVID, really, like COVID lockdown, for me to finally have something break, and then to start writing and living and performing and existing as purely, publicly HIV positive. But yeah.   

Thanks very much.