Why is an old man like me preparing to ride a bike from San Francisco to Los Angeles?

Last Sunday was my birthday; I was 73 years old. If you asked me why an old man like me would try to ride a bike from San Francisco to Los Angeles, I wouldn’t be surprised or offended. I also question my sanity.

Since joining this site in 2006, I posted, just before my birthday, about my continued participation in AIDS/LifeCycle, a charity bike ride that raises money to support San Francisco AIDS services Foundation and the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s. Jeffrey Goodman Clinic. This year will mark my 25th year participating in this event as well as the California AIDS Ride that preceded it and which benefited the same organizations, and TogetheRide, a year-long event that served as a substitute for the era COVID in which we committed to running a certain number of miles locally, while socially distancing (with workouts, runs, walks, etc. counting towards those miles). Together, these organizations are important providers of medical and other support services for people living with or at risk of HIV. I have been HIV positive for over 43 years. Unlike many of my peers, I remained healthy, had a job, and had access to employer-provided health insurance, followed in a timely manner by access to Medicare. Many of the Foundation’s and Center’s clients are members of one or more marginalized groups who have not had the same access to care as I have. An integral part of both organizations’ missions is to not only provide immediate medical services, but also to work toward equitable access to health care in general.

I became HIV positive, unknowingly, much later, in the late 1980s. I was 29 when I was infected and saw the whole pandemic unfold around me.

Normally I would post this story before or on my birthday, but the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend isn’t exactly the best way to get attention. That’s why I’m posting it that day After Memorial Day and two days after my birthday.

Follow me before the fold and I will tell you precisely why I continue to feel passionate about this particular subject and why therefore, even though I am now 70 years old, I continue to cycle and participate in charity rides in the goal of ending HIV and AIDS.

It always amazes me how many people think that HIV and AIDS are no longer a problem. Some even (and yes, I have seen people observe it innocently) even think that HIV has been eradicated. I had a conversation a while ago in a hospital elevator where the person I was talking to literally said, “Oh, I thought they cured that.”

According to Dr. Monica Gandhi, who teaches medicine at UCSF and is director of UCSF Gladstone AIDS Research and medical director of the HIV clinic at San Francisco General Hospital, known as Ward 86, there has 1.6 million new HIV infections each year and currently more than 39 million people. worldwide who are living with HIV. The number of new infections translates to 4,383 new HIV infections every day.

In previous years, usually on World AIDS Day, which is about halfway through the current calendar, I have documented the likelihood that I had contracted HIV at the start of the month. December 1980. I am one of the oldest HIV survivors I know. No more than about two percent of the people who contracted HIV in my time are still alive today. I grew up in a time when gay people were universally ostracized and gay bashing was considered a sport rather than a hate crime. Even though I came out to New York several years after the Stonewall riots, I was still closeted in many ways, not to mention having few to no civil rights and being surrounded by homophobia ( but not in my family). I have a long history of substance abuse that HIV finally forced me to confront and luckily I did so 36 years ago. I was what those of us in the know call “high bottom,” which basically means everything looked good on the outside. I was still employed and employable when I hit rock bottom, had a decent apartment, a decent car, and a primary relationship that mostly worked. But things were going in the wrong direction. And there have been ways in which I’ve been lucky. Unlike many of my friends, I was never exposed to crystal meth even though I could have been seduced by its appeal. But it was a close call. I cannot imagine a scenario in which my life and health would not have quickly collapsed. In other words, there are many reasons why I should die.

Because I was an adult when HIV first emerged, I experienced all of the losses that the LGBTQ+ community suffered during the worst days of the pandemic. I have lost approximately 160 friends, neighbors and colleagues to AIDS. My partner Mario Luna died in December 1992; my former partner Bob Framo died the following April. So many people who had a major impact on my life have been lost. And that’s just me personally. Multiply that by the millions of people who knew and cared about someone who died from an AIDS-related illness. That’s an incredible amount of loss to face.

Added to this is the stigma surrounding HIV which still persists today. I don’t think I will ever forgive President Reagan for refusing to say the word “AIDS” in public for years after its onset. Records of staff meetings during his presidency, which treated AIDS as just another homophobic joke, are widely known. And this is no exception. At the start of the pandemic, people who thought they had no risk of contracting AIDS were not the only ones who had great fears about it. Many gay men who should have known better carried with them – and still carry – all sorts of absurd ideas about HIV and AIDS. Ask virtually any HIV-positive gay man and he will tell you that even in big cities with thriving gay communities, he still gets slight shunning for being honest about his status.

HIV transmission is even more common among marginalized populations: young gay men and men who have sex with men (but do not identify as gay/queer/bisexual), people of color, and professional sex workers, particularly transgender sex workers. Arguably, white, gay, cisgender men like me are no longer marginalized, but strictly speaking, this is true in relatively few places, mostly big cities. And even then, there is a class bias. Despite the efforts of the Affordable Care Act, many people living in poverty struggle to access any type of health care.

The AIDS pandemic is believed to have officially begun on June 5, 1981 when the CDC’s weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report included a brief entry on a group of illnesses affecting gay men between the ages of 25 and 45, illnesses not typically associated with people. this age. In early 1982, this constellation of illnesses became known as GRID (“Gay Related Immune Disorder”) and later that year it was renamed AIDS. There is evidence that HIV, the cause of AIDS, has been circulating in the gay community and probably elsewhere since the early 1970s. The median time taken to progress from infection to full-blown AIDS in the absence of treatment is estimated at about 11 years old. So some of those who were diagnosed at an early stage had clearly been infected for several years.

Forty-three years later, we have no cure or vaccine. At this point, a cure seems unlikely. A vaccine seems more promising. Although the COVID pandemic has set back the record for HIV, the technology developed to create effective COVID vaccines may well prove effective against HIV as well. It will still take time for this to come to fruition. In the meantime, the only weapons we have to fight HIV are treatment and prevention. And that’s why services are so important and access to services is so important.

AIDS/LifeCycle is raising funds to support two organizations that provide prevention and treatment services aimed at ending new HIV infections. This includes not only things like housing assistance, substance abuse treatment, help accessing other social services, but also advocating for the health needs of marginalized communities. And as the median age of people living with HIV increases, it becomes increasingly important to meet the needs of older people living with or at risk of HIV.

In 2016, I was one of the runners featured in the Cyclo-défi media. I have had the opportunity to speak to the press on several occasions. As part of the overall publicity for the hike, this video was filmed the day before that year’s hike and the first day of it and was shown at camp the following evening. I have to hand it to the producers; they made me look coherent. The visual aspect gives a bit of a perspective of the actual experience.

I hope I have informed and inspired you enough to encourage you to make a donation. I set a goal consistent with the amount of money I raised each of the last three years. To be honest, this goal is quite high. But I think it’s worth a shot. Here is a link to my fundraising page.

And if you STILL need more inspiration, here’s this…

Thanks for reading!