I am still waaaaaay behind the current technology but I have made a couple of steps forward. I now have a phone that I can text; with the plan I have it's much cheaper to text than talk. A while ago I bought myself a netbook for when I am out of town at workshops or conferences. It’s great but there were times when I couldn't get online at some of the places I was staying.

One of the biggest problems I am having with these new gadgets is learning to be a two-finger or two thumbpecker. The keypads are just too small for me. Back when I was in high school, I learned to type the right way. I use the home row on the keypad and I prefer the full size normal one. I can type fairly fast, a lot faster now than I was able to in high school but I quit during my second year. I went three decades without ever typing again until my kids had computers and introduced me to the internet. Like riding a bike, it all came back. 

I can be all thumbs with a lot of things but when I text I want accuracy so I am forever going back to correct something. It got so frustrating that I went and bought a stylus which seems to do the job most of the time but still, not much speed for getting the message out, so I keep pecking away with two thumbs. 

A couple of weeks ago my computer had an issue. It decided it wasn't going to work for me. It had been running sooooo slooooow for a while but I ignored it. I would defrag it each week, did some virus scans and it would be good for a day or so but then it was back to slow. It was kind of like me, two speeds - slow and stop. It got to stop before I did. Lucky for me I had the netbook and my cell so I could stay online and in touch. Talk about panic attack or maybe it was withdrawal. I tried to hook up the external hard drive to the netbook but I couldn't access anything, I wanted to transfer the pictures from my camera.

Only one thing to do and I hate it. I shut down the computer and went to do a system recovery which took everything back to factory settings. I should kick myself for not having transferred all files to the external hard drive weekly, just in case, or I wouldn't have lost as much as I did. So for the better part of five hours, I had to download all the search engines, messengers, everything I was using. For most of the week I have had to put up with "updates", about 400 of them. 

Now that I have it all back, it’s running fast and smooooooooth, but now the mouse is choking up. It’s a wireless, it takes batteries and those things run out of power fast. I have another one that plugs in but it chokes as well, that’s why it was replaced. It’s getting nuts trying to move the cursor around, even as I'm typing this. If I had more hair I'd be pulling it out. I learned the rechargeable batteries are better, I should have known that too. Why me? 

Every time I get a new gadget I tell myself “this is all I need, nothing else”, then I find that maybe I could get one more thing………… Who knows, maybe I’ll get one of them smart phones one day. I just don’t want to get app-dicted. 

I don't know why I'm whining about all of this. It’s a real different world now, we need these things to communicate today. Through social media, I’m meeting people from around the world on the internet and it’s so much cheaper to text, email or use social media to stay in touch.

For people I see on a regular basis, I prefer to talk to them in person. Thats the way it should be. If there is a way to get together and talk, then we should do it. Some just have to leave the gadgets behind or put them on silent and enjoy the company of their family member or friends.

 

This article first appeared in Bob’s other blog on The Body, which you can find here. 

Not everyone knows this but I used to be a banker.  I wore a three-piece suit and tie every day, and poured over statistics and reports and numbers and, well just bleh stuff, on the fifty-second floor of an ivory (no, stainless-steel and glass clad) tower in the financial district of downtown Toronto.  Not corner office, yet, but close to that. I had a fancy title and a lovely view, but my head was down all day, both literally and figuratively,  so I seldom looked up to enjoy it.

When I was diagnosed on a late afternoon in September 1993, having slipped out of my office but not my suit to get the news, everything changed.  It was traumatic, of course, particularly in those days when you had scant years to live. I didn’t want to die and I was an emotional mess. Inside I was in turmoil, outwards it was all about keeping up appearances. That meant telling nobody but my partner, going in to work every day and pretending I was OK.  I didn’t have Kaposi’s Sarcoma but otherwise it was all very Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, at least the first thirty minutes of that flick, before he got fired.

But an uber-stressful job like that takes its toll. For six months I watched my CD4 numbers plummet. I wasn’t feeling well and I didn’t know what to do. Telling my boss in this bastion of conservatism – they  had no idea that I was gay, even - didn’t seem to be an option.  I was stumped. So I just carried on pouring over numbers, like bankers in ivory towers do, meanwhile ignoring my own numbers.

I’ve told this story many times, but it was actually seeing Philadelphia that sent a major attitude adjustment my way.  In the movie, Tom Hanks, bless him, finally stood up to be counted - and so did I.  Summoning up strength one day, I went to the Bank’s health unit, told them that I had been diagnosed six months ago and, despite appearances, was drowning in worry.  And the universe didn’t stop; rather it went in to high gear. “We’ll take care of anything. You don’t have to go back to work.  We can tell your boss the reason, or not, it’s your choice.  Do you need support? If you want to talk to a psychiatrist, we can arrange that.  We have short term disability, you should take that and then we can talk long term disability options.”

The process was all so easy. I never set foot in my office again.

With disability issues taken care of, I went on a disclosure rampage and told everybody but the mailman I had HIV. Wait, I think I even told the mailman. Anyway, it felt remarkably good. And – bonus - leaving work saw my health improve, and my  numbers edge  up.  So, feeling good again, I decided that while I had all this time on my hands,  I would volunteer at the local AIDS agency.  What a slippery path that was . . . .

Three piece suit and tie were exchanged for black T-shirt, Levi 501s and Doc Martens, an ensemble de rigueur for activists of the day, while conveying a previously missing butchness to my catalogue of looks.  It felt good too working at the ASO, answering phones and directing traffic at the front desk. I felt important for the first time in a long time.

That was 1994. The rest is s history.  I now find myself not counting numbers in a bank tower, but dissecting reports on semen, syphilis and undetectable viral load.  Gay men’s sexual health has become my beat.  In fact I know more about semen than most sex club owners.

The magnitude of the change I’ve undergone never escapes me.

But it’s not just how I spend my time. HIV affects how we think, how we value our lives and those of others, how we decide what is important to us – and what isn’t.  I’m not talking about spending every day as if it was  our last; that’s way too trite, but in the old days, we all said it anyway , like we should all just go to Disney Land, to see Mickey one last time. No, it’s all about an appreciation of what matters that comes from personal trauma

This comes in many colours, of course. My version was wanting to make the best of my life, to make a contribution, to make sure my obituary didn’t just include couch surfing, or being a good flower arranger. I wanted, I guess, to make my mark.

I suppose that’s why I plunged in to AIDS work back then. I was driven to start blogging too. That was in 2003 and I became quite obsessive about it, blogging each day, every day, in order to establish a record of my life.  Self centered though that may have been, it was good for me.  I gained confidence, a voice and an audience.  Look at my LiveJournal blog and you’ll see 2.652 journal entries, which attracted a total of 96,506 comments – forty something a post!

I rattled on about everything in those days - my dogs, my home (then a farm in rural Ontario), my friends, my fascination with American Idol – and HIV.  I wrote a lot about HIV.  It was my little project to educate the world about what living with HIV, a pretty normal gay guy living a pretty normal life, looked like.

All this time, I kept looking over my shoulder at the guy in the three-piece suit working on the 52^nd floor, next to the corner office, who even his secretary didn’t know was gay, yet alone poz.

Fast forward a few years, and I am the Editor of PositiveLite.com, a changed man again, with close tabs on a fast-growing news/blogging empire.  But I’m also still a details guy. Today I did indeed spend hours studying semen - not of the real, sticky in your hand variety, but research related to semen and viral load.  You have to know a lot about semen to go there.  I do.  Call me a semen expert, if you like.

I like this kind of stuff though.  Often, I’m interpreting research in ways that others can understand, all the while putting, I suppose, my personal spin on it. We all do it in the news business.  We get good at recognizing the spin of others too. So besides being a semen expert, I’ve become a spin doctor, thanks to HIV.

Thanks to HIV, I also know a fair bit about social media now too, and how it can work for you.  I bet my colleagues back on the 52^nd floor don’t even know what a tweet is!

I’ve also learned to have opinions – some would say I’m opinionated, and there may be truth in that.  I have opinions on everything, including who will win American Idol. That assertiveness that I did not have in the bank comes directly from the HIV thing, and from wanting, I suppose, to be somebody.

With it too comes respect, at least in theory.  I like to think there are some out there who respect me, even if they are just my three beloved dogs – Dudley, Dougall and Peggy. Well, at least one of those respects me, two on a good day. I’ll write about that another day for I feel the pets in our lives are truly important to people living with HIV who have them.

You’ll note that most (all?) of these changes I’ve mentioned are positive things. So yes, I’m part of the HIV gang – we must be dreadfully annoying at times – who continually point out how HIV has changed us for the better.  This must confound prevention experts who would rather we bemoan how awful are our HIV-riddled lives.  And let’s be clear; it’s no picnic for many.  For some of us though, the lucky ones, HIV has been a good thing.  It’s shaken us up.  It’s made us smell the daisies.  (Or is that roses, I can’t remember, but no matter.)  It’s made us make something of our lives.

Anyway, time to get back to my semen studies. Until next time . . . 

In the Summer of 2008, I received a curious package from Bonnie Goldman, the editor of TheBody.com. Inside was a Flip video camera, what was then a new-fangled device that allowed you to take video footage with a camera the size of a pack of cigarettes.

It came with a simple note. “I think you should try this,” it said.

How did she know? I wondered. I had never mentioned to her that I once taped a special for my newborn niece, back when video cameras were the size of footballs and editing consisted of painstakingly recording segments from one VCR to another. “Carly’s Video” consisted of magic tricks, songs and a dramatic reading of “Yurtle the Turtle.”

And yet, Bonnie had the notion that I might have some fun documenting my life as a gay man living with HIV. Immediately, I bought editing software online and started to learn it. But I had my doubts.

There wasn’t anything particularly special about my life, I complained to her in a phone call to her New York office. And a lot of it, like my ongoing struggle with drug addiction, was downright seedy.

 “Tell the truth,” she said. “The more honest you are, the better it will be.”

I trusted her judgment. In my writing for TheBody over the previous years, Bonnie had always demanded the best of me. We regularly debated topics and my approach to my written pieces, and anything that sounded too easy, that contained more platitudes than honest emotion, was questioned. The same would hold true for the video episodes that I quickly began producing.

In September of 2008, “My Fabulous Disease” premiered on TheBody.com. The first episode was an introduction to my life, and already I was being playful with the camera and the potential of video. It concluded with the mantra that Bonnie had instilled in me. “I can’t promise this will always be entertaining,” I said. “But I can promise I will always be honest. So. Let’s see what happens…”

Since then, plenty has happened. When I spent time in Michigan caring for a brother dying of cancer, the camera was there. When I was treated for facial lipoatrophy by getting injections of facial filler, I brought the camera. For everything from my thoughts on barebacking to touring a gay sex club to drug relapses to HIV criminalization to the international AIDS conference in Vienna, I documented everything using the inventive gift sent to me by Bonnie Goldman.

When Bonnie left TheBody a few years ago, I missed her counsel and her friendship. She was maddeningly hard to reach in the two years after, and I wondered if our friendship had been purely professional.

And then the news, in January of 2011, that Bonnie had died after a long struggle with cancer. She had fought it privately, and I felt ashamed for having wanted more contact during what was clearly a difficult time.

Only now, more than a year after her passing, am I finally writing about her death, something so deeply felt I haven’t found the words. I am searching for them still. Life keeps showing up. New people populate it, projects come and go, video episodes of My Fabulous Disease are made. And it has been too long since I have said her name out loud. Bonnie. Bonnie Goldman.

We all come across things, tokens from a person, from a life we treasured but has faded from view. A photograph on a shelf that we pass in the hallway. A shirt in the closet. A book. A recipe.

A broken video camera that has outlived its purpose, that I cannot bear to throw away.

This article first appeared on Mark's blog, My Fabulous Disease.

The month of August went from one lazy hot day to the next. I had gone to the beach a few times. I was also invited  to join my friend and her family on a trip they make each year to the Izu Peninsula. It was such a great feeling being in a family setting with such good friends and their kids. We did lots of snorkeling in the ocean. The water was so clear you could see all kinds of fish and plant life.

It was the first time to be away from my home since being diagnosed, and I worried about staying on schedule with my meds. My friend knew my situation and said she too had to take pills every day, and she would help me to stay on track.

It was a great trip for me and it was so nice to have a change of scenery. 

September had arrived and I was excited about the tweetUp coming up. But this month had taken on new meaning for me.  I couldn't help  thinking how sick I was a year ago, not knowing the full extent of my  illness. Such a year, but I had come so far!  I had returned to health and had put on twenty pounds.

Many nights I would reflect on my past situation and felt compelled to write about it. I would have gone to my twitter friend @viraloadwarrior for advice, but he had stopped tweeting and I couldn’t get hold of him. He wrote for Positive Lite.com and I thought maybe I could tell my story there. Another good friend from there was @WayneB54.  Wayne really grabbed my attention when on Fathers Day I tweeted "Happy Fathers Day!" and he was the first to reply back with "Thanks son!"  It threw me for a loop because in real life my fathers name is Wayne, last initial "B."

He was very supportive of the idea of writing, so I contacted two other guys I knew were with PositiveLite.com, Bob and Brian. They  replied back with the go ahead to write my first draft.

I'm not sure if I was expecting such great support of, but now felt like I really should do it. But the more I thought about it, the more I didn't want to do it. These were painful memories.

In any event, the tweetUp was coming up and it made for a convenient distraction. I had got a reservation for holding it in Shibuya  at RED.  I told the manager maybe around ten people. He was fine with my vagueness, since he was a friend. People started tweeting back and forth about it and Frank (left, with Brian)  would refer some of the twitter people to me for details. Kim too was on board about promoting it and, needless to say, my followers on twitter were growing. I was getting really excited about all the people that were taking an interest in it.

For me it was more than just a tweetUp.  It was me celebrating my health. It was me returning to a social life with new friends. It was me thinking of a bad day one year ago in September and it was me making a choice not to let that memory bring me down.

About that time, the company that fired me for having HIV, contacted me about returning on a temporary basis. The teachers were not so keen on the person they found to replace me and  they all wanted me back, once a week, for teaching some of the little kids in the morning  and two after school kids in the afternoon. It was an awkward request. I had much bitterness after they had let me go, but over the course of a year a lot of those feelings had gone. I knew the extra money would help so I took them up on it.

It was strange at first but I soon snapped back into teacher mode.

The day before the Shibuya tweetup I went to RED to update the manager.  I told him I thought the number might be over ten now but less than twenty. He seemed not too concerned and told me we could have the whole area around the bar.

The next day, I wanted to get there early to greet people as they arrived.  Most people stayed on their feet, going from one group and conversation to the next. It was a great social atmosphere. First there were ten, then twenty, and before the night ended we had over thirty people. It was so great to meet so many new people and forge new friendships. There was such a buzz of people visiting it was hard to hear at times.

I felt so excited at the success of the tweetUp.  Many peoplesaud that it was one of the best ones they had ever attended. One twitter friend called @Locohama even wrote about it the next day and posted a video.  The prospect of doing another was already being talked about for around Halloween.

Before I could think about that I knew I wanted to start writing my story. At first I thought I could do it in just one article for PositiveLite.com. However the more I worked on an outline the larger the story got. I was talking about a year’s worth of stories, and this being my final installment, I can say many were never shared.

I was doing so well at the time with my health, mental frame of mind, new friends, etc., that I was finding it difficult to go back and remember much that had happened in that year.  I would write a few sentences and then need to put it down and catch my breath. I wanted my story to be about the people I met, the support I received from family and friends, and how God carried me threw it.

I have met so many great people through this chapter of my life. I am not sure I would change anything. To the people here on twitter and at PositiveLite.com, you have all been truly awesome. You have my forever grateful heart, respect, and prayers.

Thank you!

One final point: I struggled a bit with how to start Part One, and as dorky as it sounded to me, I began to write...

"Pt,1 My first year with HIV . . . I'm just your everyday guy, I'd like to think."

Editior’s Note. Brian, it's been a delight to work with you on this series. We’ve all learned so much along the way, us about Japan, you about grammar. (Kidding). But honestly it’s been a real treat to see you blossom while responding to adversity in such an open and endearing manner.  From all of us here at PositiveLite.com, we send much  love across the miles.

Two years ago today, I was diagnosed with HIV. Having managed to remain negative throughout the first 28 years of the epidemic, here was I, in my sixties, suddenly finding myself HIV-positive. The diagnosis itself was not unexpected - I had made some decisions to have unprotected sex - but the shame of having to admit that I had seroconverted was difficult for me to reconcile with the self image I had of myself. And with the image others had of me. After all, here I was - an educated, aware gay guy who’d lived through the early years of AIDS, a social worker who’d worked within the gay community for over thirty  years - now having to deal with the shame that I’d allowed myself to become poz.

But I was well-connected in the community and had the support of a wonderful life partner and some great friends. They, along with the excellent care I was receiving from my GP, who is also an HIV primary care physician, enabled me to handle my emotional turmoil. And because I have a natural curiosity, and because I wanted to learn as much as possible about HIV and what it meant to live with it, I began to read voraciously about every aspect of it. I found a great deal of help and useful information at a number of websites, particularly Canada’s CATIE,  Vancouver’s Health Initiative for Men  and the UK’s aidsmap.com. 

Then I found PositiveLite.com. This website was a revelation - a Canadian online HIV magazine by and for people who are either HIV-positive or who are our friends and supporters. Here were women and men, both from Canada and elsewhere, who were writing openly about their lives as poz people. And they were writing not just about living with HIV but about all aspects of their lives, which were as rich and as varied as those who were not living with this chronic illness.

But there was more. They were also writing, from their own lived experience as HIVers, about issues of importance to us all - the best approach to take in the 21st century in preventing the spread of HIV, developments in treatment, about stigma and discrimination, about how to manage disclosure and deal with the increasing criminalization of non-disclosure, about aging with HIV and about how, paradoxically, HIV had changed their lives for the better.

I was so impressed with what I read on PositiveLite.com that last summer I wrote to publisher Brian Finch to tell him so. He was very gracious in his response and asked if I would be interested in providing more specific feedback about the website, which was about to undergo a major redesign. I said I would. Before I knew it, I had an email from PositiveLite.com editor Bob Leahy inviting me to write for the magazine the story of my seroconversion.  I agreed to do so, anonymously. I was not quite ready, at that stage, to have my name, face and the intimate details of my life plastered all over the internet for all to see.

I guess Brian and Bob must have liked what I wrote, because they arranged for my story to be picked up by aidsmap.com. So it was not long before Bob started using his considerable charm in encouraging me to become a regular contributor and to write more about what I was learning. I took some time to say yes, because I’d just retired from my long-time job and was looking for volunteer opportunities that would provide me with the chance to to work with people face-to-face and to make new friends - writing, after all, is a somewhat solitary pursuit. But, in the face of Bob’s persistence, I overcame my hesitance.

So before I knew it, I was actually starting to enjoy sharing my experiences as an HIVer and my increasing knowledge of HIV with PositiveLite.com’s community of readers. Through doing so, I quickly decided that I no longer wanted to remain anonymous. I was ready to stand tall and proud as an openly HIV-positive gay man. For this I have to thank Brian and Bob and the opportunities they provided me to share my thoughts and experiences with others. After all, coming out as a gay guy when I was in my early twenties had been a liberating experience and I reckoned that coming out as poz should be equally as liberating. And so it has proven to be. I now feel a great sense of freedom and liberation living as an openly poz guy.

It was not long before I began to attend HIV community events and do interviews for PositiveLite.com with other people who who had interesting things to say. Then, at the beginning of this year, Bob offered me the position of assistant editor. And now, just three months later, I find myself as publisher. Never in my wildest dreams did I think, on March 15, 2010, the day I received my HIV diagnosis, how having HIV would change my life in a such a positive (pun intended!) way within two short years. 

As he wrote here yesterday, Brian has come to the decision that it’s time for him to pursue some new opportunities and that he’d fulfilled his job of creating PositiveLite.com. Last week, he asked me if I’d consider taking over the position of publisher. How could I say no? I’m in awe of Brian and what he’s created here. He’s a guy who’s lived proudly and openly with HIV for over half his life. He’s a true survivor with a passion for enabling HIVers who may not otherwise feel they have a voice to have the opportunity to be involved in a discussion about what it really means to be HIV-positive today - the rationale behind PositiveLite.com.

I’m both honoured and humbled that Brian has entrusted his creation to me. His are enormous footsteps to tread in, yet I fully intend to ensure that his trust in me is justified.   I can do that only because Brian will be remaining an integral part of PositiveLite.com as our founder and I will continue to benefit from his wisdom and wise counsel. I’m also supported by our knowledgeable and indefatigable editor, Bob Leahy, and by an amazing community of writers and contributors, who are at the heart of PositiveLite.com. Without them, the magazine would not exist.

I have a strong sense that this three-year-old, PositiveLite.com, is poised to continue its progress beyond its early years as it becomes an increasingly important and respected part of Canada’s HIV community. And while we are indeed Canadian, and will continue to reflect the Canadian experience, we remain open to the world - indeed half our readers and many of our writers now come from outside our nation’s borders. We welcome that diversity of experience. Yet we are equally committed to reflect the increasingly diverse face of HIV, both in Canada and elsewhere.

At present, most - but by no means all - of our writers are gay men who write about HIV and their lives from that perspective. This reflects the historical nature of HIV in countries like ours. Gay men still account for the majority of HIVers in Canada, and their experience of HIV will continue to be portrayed in our pages. But the face of HIV is changing, a reality that all of us here at PositiveLite.com are committed to reflecting. Thus, we’re actively engaged in increasing our coverage of HIV as it affects women, First Nations, transpeople, those from countries where HIV is endemic, injection drug users and others. By the same token, by the middle years of this decade it’s estimated that 50% of all HIVers in North America will be aged 50 or older. This reflects the reality that, thanks to anti-viral medications, HIVers are living longer than anyone ever expected only 15 years ago. There are also an increasing number of people who, like me, are seroconverting in later life. These realities will continue to be reflected in our pages even as we continue to tell the stories of younger people infected with and affected by HIV.

We will always remain faithful to our mandate, to be a place for HIVers and our allies to talk about the reality of our lives. Sometimes we will be funny, sometimes angry, sometimes controversial, but always honest.

As I said earlier, you, our readers and writers, are at the heart of what we are all about here at PositiveLite.com. I hope you continue to enjoy, be inspired by and encouraged by what you read here. And if you think you have something to say yourself, then why not consider writing about it here on PositiveLite.com. It may be that you just want to comment on something you’ve read here, in which case I invite you to share it in the comments section at the end of each article (currently an underutilized resource). Or it may be that you want to contribute your own thoughts through submitting a post of your own. In that case, I invite you to contact us through our facebook page, via email to our editor Bob Leahy at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by sending me a tweet @John_McCullagh. 

Thank you all for your support. And Happy Reading!

I didn’t know one person who was HIV-positive before I walked down that long hallway to get the results of my recent-exposure HIV test. I didn’t know one person who was HIV-positive before I made a decision, on December 18, 2011, to have unprotected sex, based on my assumptions about someone’s character instead of my knowledge of their status. But everything changed for me on January 24, 2012. On that day, the answer I have given for my entire life - that I’m negative - changed.

Hello, PositiveLite.com readers. I’m Josh Robbins. I’m 29-years-old, I live in Nashville, Tennessee, and I just found out that I’m HIV-positive.

Growing up in a small town in western Tennessee, I had big dreams. I was very active in my non-denominational church—a leader in the youth group. I loved playing basketball and found tremendous comfort performing community theatre on a massive stage. Both socially active and educationally grounded, I felt invincible, that the world was my stage. 

Yet I knew at a relatively early age that something was a bit different for me — that I was attracted to men. But if this was the worst thing about me, I could keep it quiet from my friends and family. Actually I was quite great about leading a double-life, even when I moved to New York City a month after graduating high school. I was free, I thought.

It was in New York that I was first openly introduced to safer sex. I was in a group discussion about sex and I was asked to participate in a game where I had to name a condom. It was uncomfortable but amazing to be able to have a dialogue about something that was never really discussed earlier in my life—sex. I named my condom “Camouflage” because “nobody would see me coming.”  Of course, I realized I was a natural at comedy. Or so I thought.

But after living in the Big Apple during September 11, 2001 and its aftermath, I decided to move back home to Tennessee. It was at that time that I realized how extremely close I was to my family. My sister became my best friend.

Because of my closeness to my family, and because of my ability to allow the world to be my playground, I made the decision at age 25 to come out as gay to my family and every one of my friends. But I revealed the news in a very matter-of-fact way. I never asked for their approval, because I felt I didn’t need it. I took the power of the conversation and said to every one of them that if they couldn’t or wouldn’t still love me, then I would choose for them to not be in my life. It was sharp, I must admit. But it was how I felt.

Almost every important person to whom I came out to as gay remains close to me to this day. Little did I realize at that time that the power that I’d mustered during those conversations would again be tested when I decided to reveal my HIV status.

The words that I heard when I got my test results - “It is a positive viral load” - still remain ingrained in my memory.  It’s very ironic how six simple words could literally take the breath out of me, even though I’d prepared for the possibility of this news for over three-and-a-half weeks, while waiting for my test result. You see, I’d been very active in local HIV awareness campaigns. I’d become the poster boy (literally) for an HIV vaccine study, with my face being on club-goers’ bathroom walls, beaming awareness and activism, in a very visible campaign, educating others about safer sex.

But the message didn’t seem to affect me personally. I thought I was invincible. And now I’m infected.

I felt alone—not knowing even one person who was HIV-positive. I felt scared and I didn’t want to die. So I made a decision. I would not allow myself to go back “in the closet” because of my status.

With this determination and personal decision not to remain silent about my status, I wondered what it would be like for others to actually hear the words from the hospital staff that I was either negative or positive. So, I armed myself with my phone camera and documented the long walk from my car to the actual clinic, keeping the recording going in my pocket. This was really important to me—documenting and recording the experience that so many fear or refuse to really consider. If I heard the news that I was HIV-positive, I wanted to both educate and make real the process others have, will or, hopefully, won’t go through. [You can view Josh’s video made on the day he got his test result at the end of this article. — Ed.]

Then, two weeks after I got my HIV-positive test result, I bought the domain imstilljosh.com.  The decision to start my blog at this site was simply that I wanted a place to put the video online, as well as be in control of the message that others may or may not hear about me in my hometown. I wanted to control the release of information and lead my personal narrative. Within three hours of the purchase, I wrote a very simple blog—“I’m Josh. I’m HIV Positive. So What? I’m Still Josh. You still be YOU!” And I posted on my blog the video of me going to the clinic to get my test results.

Simple enough, right? Well… not really. I had to get the word out that I had a blog, so I made a very simple status update on my personal facebook – just the link to the blog. I guess it went well—the blog had over 1,800 views within 24 hours. I don’t even know 1.800 people, let alone have that many virtual facebook friends. Well, the cat was out of the bag—and it feels great!

My thinking is pretty simple—the world continues even though I’m HIV-positive. My cell phone bill is still due at the end of the month. And if I don’t work, I can’t pay my car loan. But, I’m changed. I’m changed not only because of my HIV status, I’m also changed because I now realize that, before I became infected, I was mistaken in not allowing the message about HIV prevention to impact me. I’m also changed because I have a love for the other gay men in my city who also believe that they’re as invincible as I once thought I was.

So the journey starts, the fight continues, and humor is how I’ll continue to make it through. When things get stressful or people start acting crazy around me, I simply say. “You’re raising my viral load!” They get shocked; I laugh.

Because I blogged openly and candidly about being HIV-positive, another positive guy here in town made a video announcing his status that I posted on my blog. And more are on the way—the emails are rolling in from other HIV-positive men in the area willing and ready to share their stories as well. It’s all quite inspiring.

I’m still Josh. You still be YOU! And check out my blog imstilljosh.com.  http://imstilljosh.com

You can also follow Josh on Twitter @imstilljosh and friend him on facebook www.facebook.com/joshuarobbins 

Images courtesy of Out & About Newspaper". www.outandaboutnewspaper.com