AIDS – Willy Or Won't He

AIDS DAY 2022

As I have done every year since 2006 I am posting a blog entry that was written on World AIDS Day in 2005 by Christopher, a self-admitted London party boy. He wrote of his adventures in Everything is Not Real, a long-abandoned blog. When he wrote it the authorities had just begun to admit that this was a disease that was affecting the general population not just a marginalized section of society. Sadly 16 years later there are still people who, and places were, this is denied, ignored, or as it would seem like today in the mainstream media, forgotten.

December 1, 2005

I have lottery fantasies.

I dream about being able to buy fast cars and designer clothes until they come out of my ears. I want houses in London, New York, East Hampton and Rio. I want to be able to travel first class and work out at The Third Space and get reservations at Annabel’s just because of who I am. I want to be able to take hot dates on tours of the National Gallery. When it’s closed. Because I’m one of it’s biggest benefactors.

Needless to say, twice a week, I am disappointed.

This morning, on the way to work on the tube, I was reading a Times article, written by Annie Lennox, about the millions and millions of people in Africa who are suffering with HIV and AIDS, and dying, and how the governments of the richer nations, such as the one I live in, have pledged support over an eight year period. And how they absolutely must stay committed to this goal.

One of the kids she spoke to on a recent trip to Africa was dying of AIDS. But before he got sick he lost his mother, father, brothers, sisters and pretty much everyone else he cared about to the same disease. He was totally alone in the world. With no hope. And certainly no dreams of fast cars or a nice comfortable house, anywhere. And that shit isn’t even near the important stuff.

There are approximately 6,450,000,000 humans on Earth.

Most of them are not 33 year olds who have careers which afford them access to guest lists to the best clubs and bars the city has to offer. They don’t have friends who will stick with them no matter what (and slip them Jil Sander dress shirts every now and then). They don’t have housemates who have Thai cuisine prepared and ready to eat when they arrive home. They don’t have comfortable beds to sleep in at night.

6,450,000,000.

When I think about it I kinda did win the lottery.

Christopher – Everything Is Not Real

As always this is in loving memory of those lost: Gary, Brian, Lawrence, Doug, Bill, Andrew, Pierre, Jim, Don, Billy and so many others. And for those who may have lost the lottery but continue to fight the battle with our help, love and hope.

World AIDS Day – 2021

Though it would appear that the media and most people on social sites are largely ignoring it, today is World AIDS Day. In 1988 it was designated, by the WHO, as a day to remember those who died of AIDS, those livings with AIDS and to educate people about AIDS. And though the AIDS pandemic is still infecting, affecting, and killing people it seems to be forgotten by the press and the public. I only wish that I could forget but that would mean forgetting friends who died in those early years and friends who have fought this disease across the last four decades.

Yes it has been four decades since the first known cases of AIDS were reported in the USA – four decades! In that four decades it is estimated that 80 million people have contracted AIDS and 37 million have died.* In 2020 it is estimated that 37,700,000 people were living with AIDS, 680,000 people died from AIDS, and 1,500,000 people contracted AIDS. Yes the numbers are dropping and there are drugs available to make living with AIDS bearable; but there is still no cure or vaccine, and AIDS is still very much a threat. And it is not just a threat to one community, as so many people still stupidly believe, it is a threat to every community.

As I have done every year for the past 15 years I am posting a blog entry that was written on this day in 2005. Christopher, the author, was a self-admitted London party boy who wrote of his adventures in Everything is Not Real, a long ago abandoned blog. When he wrote it the authorities had just begun to admit that this was a disease that was affecting the general population not just a marginalized section of society. Sadly there are people who, and places were, this is still denied, ignored, or like today, forgotten.

December 1, 2005

I have lottery fantasies.

I dream about being able to buy fast cars and designer clothes until they come out of my ears. I want houses in London, New York, East Hampton and Rio. I want to be able to travel first class and work out at The Third Space and get reservations at Annabel’s just because of who I am. I want to be able to take hot dates on tours of the National Gallery. When it’s closed. Because I’m one of it’s biggest benefactors.

Needless to say, twice a week, I am disappointed.

This morning, on the way to work on the tube, I was reading a Times article, written by Annie Lennox, about the millions and millions of people in Africa who are suffering with HIV and AIDS, and dying, and how the governments of the richer nations, such as the one I live in, have pledged support over an eight year period. And how they absolutely must stay committed to this goal.

One of the kids she spoke to on a recent trip to Africa was dying of AIDS. But before he got sick he lost his mother, father, brothers, sisters and pretty much everyone else he cared about to the same disease. He was totally alone in the world. With no hope. And certainly no dreams of fast cars or a nice comfortable house, anywhere. And that shit isn’t even near the important stuff.

There are approximately 6,450,000,000 humans on Earth.

Most of them are not 33 year olds who have careers which afford them access to guest lists to the best clubs and bars the city has to offer. They don’t have friends who will stick with them no matter what (and slip them Jil Sander dress shirts every now and then). They don’t have housemates who have Thai cuisine prepared and ready to eat when they arrive home. They don’t have comfortable beds to sleep in at night.

6,450,000,000.

When I think about it I kinda did win the lottery.

Christopher – Everything Is Not Real

As always this is in memory of those loved and lost: Gary, Brian, Lawrence, Doug, Bill, Andrew, Pierre, Jim, Don, Billy and so many others. And for those who have lost the lottery but fight the battle with our help and love. I haven’t forgotten.

World AIDS Day 2020

In the middle of the second great pandemic of my lifetime I am once again posting a blog entry that first appeared here in 2006 – 25 years into that first pandemic. AIDS had been largely ignored during that period. By 2005 the powers that be had begun to pay attention to a virus that had to that point claimed the lives of 20 million people – 1.7 million in the previous year (2004) alone. Now it was being seen in the general population rather than in just a marginalized section of society. Despite progress that pandemic is still going on: in 2019 over 1.7 million people became newly infected with HIV and 690 000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses.

Christopher at Everything is Not Real was a upwardly mobile London party boy – if his posts were to be believed – who wrote frequently about his escapades on the town. Every once in a while he would write a post that cut through the frivolity and hit at the heart. This post did that on December 5, 2005 and continues to do fourteen years later.

December 1, 2005

I have lottery fantasies.

I dream about being able to buy fast cars and designer clothes until they come out of my ears. I want houses in London, New York, East Hampton and Rio. I want to be able to travel first class and work out at The Third Space and get reservations at Annabel’s just because of who I am. I want to be able to take hot dates on tours of the National Gallery. When it’s closed. Because I’m one of it’s biggest benefactors.

Needless to say, twice a week, I am disappointed.

This morning, on the way to work on the tube, I was reading a Times article, written by Annie Lennox, about the millions and millions of people in Africa who are suffering with HIV and AIDS, and dying, and how the governments of the richer nations, such as the one I live in, have pledged support over an eight year period. And how they absolutely must stay committed to this goal.

One of the kids she spoke to on a recent trip to Africa was dying of AIDS. But before he got sick he lost his mother, father, brothers, sisters and pretty much everyone else he cared about to the same disease. He was totally alone in the world. With no hope. And certainly no dreams of fast cars or a nice comfortable house, anywhere. And that shit isn’t even near the important stuff.

There are approximately 6,450,000,000 humans on Earth.

Most of them are not 33 year olds who have careers which afford them access to guest lists to the best clubs and bars the city has to offer. They don’t have friends who will stick with them no matter what (and slip them Jil Sander dress shirts every now and then). They don’t have housemates who have Thai cuisine prepared and ready to eat when they arrive home. They don’t have comfortable beds to sleep in at night.

6,450,000,000.

When I think about it I kinda did win the lottery.

Christopher – Everything Is Not Real

Each time I prepare this entry for posting I am reminded of how many of us have won the lottery. And perhaps this year it has an added meaning with this current pandemic. I am relieved to say that I only know two people, out of the many I know around the world, who have contract COVID-19.

I only wish that I could say that of the AIDS pandemic.

In those first bleak years I lost and wept for colleagues, former lovers, friends and friends who were as close as family. Other loved ones contracted the virus but fought and survived, not an easy fight in those early days. Some of those fighters finally lost that fight but other continue their fight and have vowed to live to 100.

I wonder if the world had taken notice or cared then the way they are doing with this new pandemic how different things would have been. But that is idle speculation – past conditional – and perhaps even given the current situation an unfair comparison. What unsettled me today was what seems to be a return to indifference towards the AIDS pandemic. Nowhere on the news today – radio, websites even the Google doodle – could I find a reference to today being World AIDS Day. A day when we should be bringing attention to and education people about a pandemic that has devastated families, communities, and the world for the past 40 years. Yes I received reminders from several AIDS organizations and Broadway Cares but from the mainstream not a word. Have we become so complacent about it that AIDS no longer merits consideration. And yet it continues to spread – there has been an increase in cases of 25% in the last four years in Canada alone. We cannot allow indifference and complacency to diminish the seriousness and impact of a disease that has infected over 57.7 million people and killed upwards of 32.7 million. Because we have won the lottery does not mean we can forget those who lost.

The word for December 1st is:
Indifference /inˈdif(ə)rəns/: [noun]
^1.1 Lack of interest, concern, or sympathy.
^1.2Unimportance.
Late Middle English (in the sense ‘being neither good nor bad’): from Latin indifferentia, from in- ‘not’ + different- ‘differing, deferring’ (from the verb differre ). Extended sense of “apathetic, no more inclined to one thing than to another” first recorded early 15c.; that of “neither good nor bad” is from 1530s, on notion of “neither more nor less advantageous,” but since 17c. it has tended toward “rather bad.”

World AIDS Day 2017

Every December since 2006 (the first year I was blogging) I have posted this entry on World AIDS Day. It was written in 2005 by, if his blog was to be believed, a hedonistic young Londoner who partied the nights away with the assertion that Everything Is Not Real. Despite the image that Christopher cultivated on his blog there was often a serious side to what he wrote – and no more than in that December 1st post twelve years ago.

With that first quoting eleven years ago came the hope that there would be a cure discovered and that there would be no need to remind myself or any of my readers of what this disease has done to, not just my world but the entire world. No need to remind anyone that it has devastated cultures and communities on every continent. No need to remind people that there is still prejudice, and misinformation out there that has only helped to spread the virus. And no need to remind people of how lucky so many of us are when we remember that we have “won” Christopher’s lottery.

But maybe every so often we need to be reminded:

December 1, 2005

I have lottery fantasies.

I dream about being able to buy fast cars and designer clothes until they come out of my ears. I want houses in London, New York, East Hampton and Rio. I want to be able to travel first class and work out at The Third Space and get reservations at Annabel’s just because of who I am. I want to be able to take hot dates on tours of the National Gallery. When it’s closed. Because I’m one of it’s biggest benefactors.

Needless to say, twice a week, I am disappointed.

This morning, on the way to work on the tube, I was reading a Times article, written by Annie Lennox, about the millions and millions of people in Africa who are suffering with HIV and AIDS, and dying, and how the governments of the richer nations, such as the one I live in, have pledged support over an eight year period. And how they absolutely must stay committed to this goal.

One of the kids she spoke to on a recent trip to Africa was dying of AIDS. But before he got sick he lost his mother, father, brothers, sisters and pretty much everyone else he cared about to the same disease. He was totally alone in the world. With no hope. And certainly no dreams of fast cars or a nice comfortable house, anywhere. And that shit isn’t even near the important stuff.

There are approximately 6,450,000,000 humans on Earth.

Most of them are not 33 year olds who have careers which afford them access to guest lists to the best clubs and bars the city has to offer. They don’t have friends who will stick with them no matter what (and slip them Jil Sander dress shirts every now and then). They don’t have housemates who have Thai cuisine prepared and ready to eat when they arrive home. They don’t have comfortable beds to sleep in at night.

6,450,000,000.

When I think about it I kinda did win the lottery.

Christopher – Everything Is Not Real

According to UNAIDS:

There were approximately 36.7 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2016. Of these, 2.1 million were children under 15 years of age.
An estimated 1.8 million individuals worldwide became newly infected with HIV in 2016 – about 5,000 new infections per day. This includes 160,000 children under 15. Most of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa and were infected by their HIV-positive mothers during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding.
Currently only 60% of people with HIV know their status. The remaining 40% (over 14 million people) still need to access HIV testing services.
As of July 2017, 20.9 million people living with HIV were accessing antiretroviral therapy (ART) globally, up from 15.8 million in June 2015, 7.5 million in 2010, and less than one million in 2000.
1 million people died from AIDS-related illnesses in 2016, bringing the total number of people who have died from AIDS-related illnesses since the start of the epidemic to 35.0 million.

In Memoriam: Pierre, Lawrence, Bill, Jim, Don, Andrew, Brian, Doug, Donald, Billy and the many others that we’ve lost but still love and hold in our hearts. And for my friends who may have lost the lottery but won the battle.

World AIDS Day 2016

Eleven years ago on this day in 2005 Christopher at EVERYTHING IS NOT REAL, a long dormant blog, posted a thoughtful and sobering piece that struck a cord with me. The following year I reposted it and have done so every year since.

I have lottery fantasies…
Needless to say, twice a week, I am disappointed…
When I think about it I kinda did win the lottery…
About 33 years ago.

Those first few years I’d would post it in memory of the friends I had lost in those first years of the epidemic; always with the hope that I would have no further names to add to that memory list that year. Well I have reached that point but sadly that is not the case in much of the world. Certainly advances have been made in the world I inhabit though I sometimes worry that those advances and the way they are marketed means that less precautions are being taken. When I see ads in gay publications lauding the “healthy lifestyle” that can be led with the new “wonder drugs” I fear for the young people who fall for the pharmaceutical companies pretty pictures. I would not want us to go back to those days of living in fear and uncertainty but as those times recede in memory I worry that we will become complaisant both sexually and in our quest for an answer to a way to eradicate this horrible disease.

December 1, 2005

I have lottery fantasies.

I dream about being able to buy fast cars and designer clothes until they come out of my ears. I want houses in London, New York, East Hampton and Rio. I want to be able to travel first class and work out at The Third Space and get reservations at Annabel’s just because of who I am. I want to be able to take hot dates on tours of the National Gallery. When it’s closed. Because I’m one of it’s biggest benefactors.

Needless to say, twice a week, I am disappointed.

This morning, on the way to work on the tube, I was reading a Times article, written by Annie Lennox, about the millions and millions of people in Africa who are suffering with HIV and AIDS, and dying, and how the governments of the richer nations, such as the one I live in, have pledged support over an eight year period. And how they absolutely must stay committed to this goal.

One of the kids she spoke to on a recent trip to Africa was dying of AIDS. But before he got sick he lost his mother, father, brothers, sisters and pretty much everyone else he cared about to the same disease. He was totally alone in the world. With no hope. And certainly no dreams of fast cars or a nice comfortable house, anywhere. And that shit isn’t even near the important stuff.

There are approximately 6,450,000,000 humans on Earth.

Most of them are not 33 year olds who have careers which afford them access to guest lists to the best clubs and bars the city has to offer. They don’t have friends who will stick with them no matter what (and slip them Jil Sander dress shirts every now and then). They don’t have housemates who have Thai cuisine prepared and ready to eat when they arrive home. They don’t have comfortable beds to sleep in at night.

6,450,000,000.

When I think about it I kinda did win the lottery.

About 33 years ago

EVERYTHING IS NOT REAL – Christopher

It is estimated that 35 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses since 1981 the year that such deaths began to be recorded; that includes over 1.1 million in 2015. But despite these figure there are still countries were authorities tell us that it “doesn’t exist”, that if it does it’s a “foreign disease”; countries where people are ostracized, and where there is no care of any sort. The vast majority of people living with HIV are in low-and middle-income countries with Sub-Saharan Africa being the area most affect. In 2015 it was estimated that 25.6 million people living with HIV and that 66% of new infections occurred in the region. Despite all the advances made in the knowledge of HIV, its prevention and treatment and efforts by the global health community most people living with the virus or at risk do not have access to information, prevention, care and treatment.

As I live in a society were information, prevention, care, and treatment is available I am no longer adding names of friends “in memoriam”. Like Christopher, I and so many people I know have also “won the lottery”.

On this day in 1988: The first World AIDS Day is observed.