I went into full denial and just shrugged it off. I’d known we’d been cheating on each other for a long time, so the possibility wasn’t a surprise, but it’s strange how the mind works. At the time I was completely numbed by it.
He’d been at the piano bar where you’d sit around singing with drag queens and he said he had something to tell me – that he was HIV positive and that I needed to get tested. I remember being in bed when he got home, and he was absolutely smashed. He was another one that I met and fell in love with straight away. He was the same height as me – 6’1” – and always wore diamonds in his right ear. He was so handsome, with a massive smile, dark brown hair and big brown eyes. He was an artist who would work on interiors – he would create huge murals on people’s walls and floors. We’d been together for three years and as well as being funny as fuck, he was so, so talented. He was American and was one of the funniest guys you could ever meet. And we just turned a blind eye because the last thing you wanted to do was admit that this was what was going to kill us.ĪIDS really hit home when Tom Hammond, my boyfriend of the time, came back to the flat one night and told me he’d tested positive. There would be no last-minute reprieve, it was game over. You saw the pictures of people wasting away in the media and you knew they were going to die. It was so different to now – people were terrified of getting a positive diagnosis so didn’t get tested. You found out you had it and then you were gone. There was no drug that was going to cure it or buy you more time. You were diagnosed, it went to full-blown AIDS and then you were dead. You have to remember that you couldn’t have HIV and live with it for years like you can now. At first, you didn’t think it would affect you, and then one person you knew would get it and then someone else, and then it steamrolled and you’d suddenly realise this wasn’t a passing phase – there was no cure, and it was here to stay. The whole scene went from fan dancing to mourning. People were having the time of their lives, and all of a sudden this new word – AIDS – came along and it shook everyone to the core. Guys wore condoms so they didn’t knock a girl up, they didn’t wear them with guys.
The club scene was so hedonistic, there were so many clubs that were men only and that were essentially sex clubs, and there was no such thing as safe sex back then. People liked to think that they were keeping it to themselves, but we lived in such a crazy little bubble that everyone knew everyone else’s business. It was awful because it was such a terrible thing to be happening, but still it was fodder for us all.