1.2 million people in the United States are currently living with HIV, and over 30 states have laws criminalizing HIV nondisclosure and/or exposure. As more people continue to be infected (at a rate of about 50,000 per year in this country alone), and as mortality continues to decline, HIV infection will become an increasingly common, shared experience. Yet, today, in Western countries where effective treatments are easily available to many of those who need them, to disclose one’s HIV-positive status is not as easy a proposition as some may think. A personal narrative of a gay man’s life with ... More

1.2 million people in the United States are currently living with HIV, and over 30 states have laws criminalizing HIV nondisclosure and/or exposure. As more people continue to be infected (at a rate of about 50,000 per year in this country alone), and as mortality continues to decline, HIV infection will become an increasingly common, shared experience. Yet, today, in Western countries where effective treatments are easily available to many of those who need them, to disclose one’s HIV-positive status is not as easy a proposition as some may think. A personal narrative of a gay man’s life with HIV, the book tells a story of diagnosis and adaptation to what is essentially a new life. It focuses on the experience of having one’s own body caught in a catastrophic pandemic and in an intricate web of discourses—medical, legal, academic, moral, etc.—and spaces—urban, institutional, virtual. How does one deal with a disease that is no longer the automatic death sentence it once was but continues to terrify people as if it were? What is it like to live with HIV after 9/11 and the so-called war on terror, when fear and suspicion have become the order of the day? Going beyond personal experience, the book goes on to probe popular culture and politics as well as literary memoirs and films in order to ask deeper questions about our relationships with others.