Running With Kites on New Year's Eve

I never thought I'd follow a post that touched on Pakistan with one on Afghanistan, but here it is. Since my deportation back to New York four years ago on New Year's Day, I've spent every New Year's Eve alone in contemplation. But not last night. Last night I had the excellent company of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, 371 pages that stayed with me for about nine hours, and then left calmly and quietly at 5:30 this morning. No raucous. No police. No hangover. Just a lingering, if not slightly painful, memory of Hassan and Amir, two Afghani boys whose friendship shattered at the age of 12; whose lives were then spent trying to put the pieces back together again. It was one of those stories I felt had been written just for me, that the author was trying to tell me: there really is a way to be good again. Since contracting HIV, I've counted too many days when I thought my life would never amount to what it once had been. And yet, somehow I also realized that I had to find a way to make my life useful again. To effect reconciliation within my family. To repay a debt to an old family benefactor. To bring hope and optimism to students who might feel otherwise. But I am still not a selfless person, not in the way that Hassan was. Far from it. There is still a great deal of ugliness and pettiness in my life. Insecurity. Longing. More than anything, I understood last night that I want to have someone in my life to whom I can say "for you, a thousand times over" and dare I hope for this new year, someone who would say the same in return.

My Real Imaginary Date

Just when I was thinking that 2007 has been an unremarkable year for movies, I'm given a reason to reconsider (and yes, cry) after seeing Lars and the Real Girl, an original fable about one man's loneliness and what an entire town will do to help him out of it. These past four years, I have tried my hardest not to think of myself as a victim of HIV, and for the most part, I think I have succeeded with the help of my family and doctors. But I have also stopped denying that I have become an extremely lonely person, similar to Lars. On the weekends, I get dressed up as if I were going out to meet someone special, as I did tonight. And of course, there is no one waiting for me when I show up at the movie theater. But it's still nice, maybe even essential, to pretend that there is. I recognize the irony--that a delusion is what keeps me going, what stops me from totally withdrawing into myself and shutting out the world. Lars had a plastic doll he called Bianca; I make do with my imaginary date whom I have yet to name. When I walked into the crowded movie theater tonight, there were two empty seats in the back row. And I thought to myself, "Wow, two empty seats just waiting for us to fill them." But while this kind of thinking might be poignant on a movie screen, I'm not so sure it's just plain pathetic in real life. After the movie ended, outside of the theater, purely by chance I ran into Chad, a guy I've asked out and been rejected by countless times, a guy who always said he would call but never did. He was going to see a movie with his group of five friends. Normally, I would have been happy to see Chad. But not so tonight. Tonight I was with Evan.

Midnight Rainbows With Charlie

How credible is the message "life can be good" when there is so much turmoil in Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma and Sudan? To be sure, there are times when I feel that living with HIV is just a walk in the park after navigating the landmines of the day's depressing news. On Sunday night I was sitting in a restaurant in Times Square with my good friend Charlie from Hawaii. Charlie and I met three years ago outside a gay bar in Manhattan, eight months after I was deported back to America. He was in town for the US Open. Our eyes met and we got to talking. We agreed to go see matches at the Open one day. It was the first date I had been on since learning I was HIV+. He was so nice, so good-looking, I thought I was in a dream. He wasn't shy about holding my hand in the stadium or showing the kind of sincere affection that made your heart start beating a little quicker. But it was when we found ourselves alone that I really got nervous. I wanted to tell him about my status. I felt myself caring about him. So I found a way to force the words. And he found a way to take me in his arms and tell me it was all right. I felt so protected, so accepted. Charlie went back to Hawaii, but we kept in touch. I went to see him in 2005. Rainbows everywhere--in the sky, on the license plates--it was a gay man's paradise. Looking out the window at the midnight rainbows of Times Square, with Charlie next to me, I felt the world could be peaceful and beautiful.

From Iran to Singapore, With Love

Just yesterday Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was at Columbia University claiming that the phenomenon of homosexuality did not exist in Iran. This clueless remark was one I heard voiced by older people when I lived and worked in Asia--many of them also thought that homosexuality was an abomination confined only to the West. Contrast these sentiments with those of Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong who went on record last Friday in support of retaining Singapore's laws that criminalize sex between men, insisting that "that's the way many Singaporeans feel." So which is worse--the ignorance on the left or the insouciance on the right? That's a question I often ask myself as I come into contact with people (many of them gay) who either don't know anything about HIV, or don't care to know anything about HIV. While a cure would surely wipe out the virus, I'm not so sure it would eradicate my question.

The X on My Chest

Watching the X-Men movies, I always thought that the "X" gene was a metaphor for the gay gene. That the evil Senator Kelly, who wanted all mutants to be registered for tracking, was a metaphor for a society that saw homosexuality as a disease that had to be "X"ed out, so to speak. Like the characters in the X-Men movies, I too feel as if this mutant strain called HIV has given me powers whose full extent I don't understand. Powers I am not always sure when and how to use. That I am afraid to use. Over the course of four years, I have grown increasingly empathetic. I don't claim to read minds, but I am acutely aware of pain and suffering in others. In these situations, do I keep silent and allow the suffering to continue? Or do I offer a kind word or a helping hand at the risk of being told to mind my own business? There are days, I admit, when HIV feels like the mutation that forever changed the life of Bruce Banner, aka, the Hulk. With a soul inside that's capable of tremendous anger, I feel there's no way I can get close to anyone at the risk of putting that person in danger. Like Bruce Banner, I roam and wander in the search for a cure. Among the X-Men, the character that intrigues me most is Mystique, the shapeshifter. They say that she has changed forms so many times that she can't remember the person she originally was. Your greatest power is ultimately your greatest weakness.

Top 10 Ways How HIV Has Changed Life

10. Had to find a new job. (One where money was not the objective. HIV makes you realize there are things more important than money, though I should have realized that before.)
9. Had to find new friends. (I've found some very nice tennis partners. The practice courts at the US Open in Flushing are super sleek. The courts in Harlem are lit up at night! You'll wait two hours to play one hour on the Upper West Side...)
8. Had to build up a wardrobe again since my so-called "friend" never sent me any of my stuff back. (I will always miss that black jacket from Paul Smith that I bought in Tokyo.)
7. Had to get used to taking medicines twice a day. (2 pills in the morning, 3 in the evening. They are yellow and blue, and are turning me into a Swede.)
6. Had to watch what I eat. (Currently drinking a daily boiled concoction of carrrots, daikon, shiitake mushrooms and burdock that a Japanese researcher said helps control HIV. It tastes pretty yucky, but it has helped keep my cholesterol level down.)
5. Had to find a new boyfriend. (Still looking, although my old BF recently came to visit me in NYC. That was pretty emotional since he has now found a new BF.)
4. Had to realize that I really will die some day. (I thought I would live forever.)
3. Had to forget my entire life in Asia since an HIV+ person is prevented from re-entering the country I was living in. (Equally outraged that a foreigner in America found to be HIV+ can be deported as well.)
2. Had to understand that I am so much luckier than the many people in Africa dying from HIV. (Oprah opened my eyes on this one.)
1. Had to understand that life is too short to not be happy every day.
(Still working on this one.)

Truly Madly?

The openly gay, Australian singer Darren Hayes, former frontman for Savage Garden, is currently being investigated for using a racial epithet on a waiter in a Thai restaurant in London. Unlike in America which brands its First Amendment on both ass cheeks, hate speech is a serious crime in most of Europe. Conventional wisdom has it that gay people, as minorities who are still deprived the full legal rights accorded straight people, would be more open-minded and accepting of other minorities. Like people of color. People with HIV. But the longer I live in New York City, the less certain I become of the soundness of that wisdom. Hard as it was for me to come out to straight friends and family, I have grown to find it much harder to "come out" to other gays about my HIV status. Because of HIV, I have been turned down for sex, for dating and even for friendship. Is it foolish of me to think that gay people should naturally be more open-minded and accepting of others deemed "outsiders" by mainstream American society? Or is being gay not quite as fabulous as I originally thought?

On the Road to A Pozitive Life

It's been close to four years now. I was an American expatriate living and working in Asia at the time when I found myself summoned to Immigration Headquarters. There, a phone call was made on my behalf. It was my doctor. Who informed me that I was HIV+. I handed the receiver back to the immigration official. To his credit, he wasn't without sympathy--as he hung up and then placed me in detention. Two days later I was deported home to New York City with nothing but the clothes on my back. I'll never forget the anguish and solitude of that two-day period, three if you count the 15 hours I was sitting on the plane. It just so happened to be January 1st, and after crossing the international date line, it was still January 1st when I landed at JFK--a new year's nightmare that refused to end. In three days I learned that HIV could take away friends, family, job and everything you had worked so hard to accumulate for the past ten years. As I stood outside the airport, I felt the coldest welcome in the world.