Paradox. n. seemingly absurd though perhaps actually well-founded statement; self-contradictory or essentially absurd statement; person or thing conflicting with preconceived notions of what is reasonable or possible. Oxford Concise Dictionary
"Look outside," he said. The street outside the cafi was crowded. "The light. It's getting darker. The wind is picking up, see? Look at the tree. There's rain coming."
We were catching up on news over five years, filling in the huge gaps in our information about each other, which had only been sketchily filled in by gossip from people who vaguely knew how close we had once been. There was something in his eyes that had changed. A wariness had gone, and his eyes were full of curiosity; about me, the people around us, and the world outside. He also seemed happier. Which was odd, because we were talking about his being HIV positive.
"I've come to realise it's harder on the people around you." He looked at me. Both his lover and his best friend had left him after his diagnosis; he had been through a hell of loneliness and grief that would have finished off many a weaker soul. And yet, here he was, five years later, full of plans for the future, free of bitterness and resentment. Something happens to the faces of those that have endured terrible hardship and come through with their dignity intact; there shines a beauty that isn't about looks, that, indeed, seems to increase the more worry lines there are, the less hair there is, and the baggier the eyes have become.
It's not about survival. "Damaged people are dangerous," says Josephine Hart, in her novel Damage, "they know how to survive". The quality I saw in his face was not the hunted, haunted look of a mere survivor. It was deeper than that.
pushing limits
"It's as if you have to face death in order to start living," he said. I had a flash of how he had lived before; a pugnacious wheeler-dealer, driving himself to extreme lengths to succeed, to make money, to survive in a world that seemed forever hostile. Litigious and confrontational, he was constantly on edge, pushing limits, pushing himself, coping with demons, both internal and external.
Outside his flat, earlier that afternoon, when I had gone to meet him, there were well-tended flowers in window boxes, in February. When I saw them, it was so unlike the guy I used to know, that I double-checked to see whether I'd got the right address, before I nervously knocked on his door. He guessed my thoughts, and laughed. A laugh of recognition, seeing, in that moment, through my eyes, how he'd learned how to soothe himself, nourish himself over the years. He brought me through the back of the house, to proudly show me his patch of garden, naming each plant, and telling me its story, how he'd treated one for mildew with tea-tree oil shampoo because it was supposed to be antifungal, and it had worked, how he'd planned to transplant another, a little tree, and expressing surprise at how last year's daffodils had re-emerged so fast.
stupid risks
We drove to the cafi, found a place to sit where he could smoke his rollies, and we told each other what had happened in the intervening years; both had tales of loneliness and recovery, both of us were learning to step outside victimhood and blame, seeking a sense of living that wasn't based on the past which was unchangeable but on what was going on right now, and what might be possible in the future. It seemed that despite the bitterness of our parting that some room had been made, in both our lives, to cope with experiences that seemed, at the time, to be unsurmountable, unforgivable, and impossible to digest, for both of us.
HIV and AIDS has always been difficult for me to write about in these pages, mostly because it's been too close to me. But then, that could be said about any gay man who's had sex in the past twenty years; or anyone who's done smack or had sex with someone who has, or lived in Africa or taken it up the arse without a condom (and I'm not talking gay sex here.) In some ways, it could be said about any sexual being. But in our Western culture, in my gay subculture, it's all I know; it's present every time I have sex.
I learn to deal with it, and sometimes can forget it; but there's a price to pay when you numb yourself to danger, as appears to have happened in Sellafield. A weird sort of denial consensus can emerge, when you diminish the problem in your mind and take stupid risks because if you were to really take in the enormity of the mortal dangers inherent in your daily actions and interactions, you wouldn't stay sane for long. It's a defence mechanism, which however understandable, is not the best way to cope with the dangers of sex. Or plutonium.
But I had a sense, talking to this wise and brave man, that somehow he's come alive in a way he wouldn't have, without this experience of facing his own mortality, alone. It's an aliveness and a vitality that isn't aggressive, but serene; a calming sense of enjoyment, of noticing the world. In the same way he'd noticed the rain approaching, he drew my attention, after our chat, to the fact that it had stopped.
"I can see a patch of blue sky," I said. He smiled.
We hugged and parted.