5 minute read
CRAIG’S THOUGHTS
Always with a Sense of Shame. Or... Do it For Keith. By Craig Hanlon-Smith @craigscontinuum
At the time of reading, we will be a couple of episodes into the latest Russell T Davies series, It’s A Sin. The drama charts the arrival of AIDS in the UK in the early 1980s – a virus that in many countries, including this one, disproportionately impacted gay, bisexual and trans communities. While It’s A Sin is an historical piece, comparisons with our collective current situation are inevitable. Written and filmed before the Covid pandemic, while not creatively intentional, the context of a contemporary audience will inevitably impact how a piece of work is received. Artist Keith Haring said: “Every time I make something, I think about the people who are going to see it and every time I see something, I think about the person who made it.”
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Keith Haring is an interesting reflection as in recent years his jelly-bean graffiti style has been mass printed across everything from mugs and Valentine’s Day cards to Primark T-shirts. In the 2020s he is to high art what McDonald’s is to haute cuisine. And yet when he emerged as a graffiti artist in New York, along with Jean- Michel Basquiat he was considered edgy and progressive. He also worked tirelessly to use his art to educate the world about HIV and AIDS.
His own diagnosis, like many of his generation, meant he would not survive beyond five years. It was as though his shortened time-frame spurred him on to use his craft in a way that mattered, to take up the mantle of HIV/AIDS activism. To help those who would come after.
How many in our community upon receipt of their PrEP consider the journey of our relationship with the HIV/AIDS pandemic? And why should they? I hear (straight) people talk of today’s challenges in futuristic terms: “We’ll look back on Covid and not be able to remember what it was like,” or “we’ll look back and think – wasn’t that weird”. Maybe. Reflection of our earlier pandemic is different for gay men in particular, and of course those of an age steeped in the memory of those early days, which ran a period of almost 20 years before attitudes began to change, a little.
There are similarities of course. Hearing the stories of the gay-cancer from across the ocean and assuming it could never come here. Told by our elders not to have sex with Americans ‘just in case’. That sense of other-worldly from a foreign land and not our problem. The naivety of that. HIV/AIDS was alive and kicking on these shores by 1981 and then seemingly unstoppable. Of course the difference between now and then was that we were a community to blame and ostracised by mainstream (straight) society. I could write a book on how the emergence of AIDS while I was still at school impacted my life on a daily basis. It became a new weapon with which to beat any seemingly gay kid in the sticks. Trust me it was brutal. But don’t take my word for it.
The British press went for the jugular. Gay and bisexual men referred to as time-bombs, the religiously fervent proclaiming God’s wrath upon bottom sex on the front pages and post bags. Headlines more often than not proclaiming an out of control gay plague and the main difference between AIDS and Covid-19 in the public health messaging? There was almost six years between the first UK death and a governmentfunded health campaign. Six years. Sick minorities do not matter to a conservative (small c) government, or they certainly didn’t when it came to gay and bisexual men or people now defined as trans.
The Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) is now a sizeable national charity that, despite its good work, regularly earns the ire of the great and good in Brighton & Hove. How short our memories. Terrence Higgins was an individual gay man, known in his day as ‘Fat Terry’ on account of his body shape. You can always count on the gays to body shame and 40 years later at least we’re consistent. THT was set up by Terry’s mates after his death on account of a total lack of support for those affected by or living with and, regrettably, mostly dying from HIV/AIDS. Friends. Men, just blokes like me who, in the face of grief and despair, just wanted to do something to honour their friend and help those around them who were suffering.
When we see people running in the Brighton Marathon raising money for THT, how many of us spare a thought for Fat Terry? The gay bloke who died from AIDS-related complications in 1982. When those of us in our broadening communities are getting their knick-knack paddywhack in a fuddle over THT versus The Sussex Beacon, how many of us are really giving a monkeys about Fat Terry or any of the other individuals that make up the hundreds of thousands who suffered pain, prejudice and died terrible deaths amidst fear, blame and isolation? These men are our history and our middle-aged or millennial middleclass squabbles belittle them. Our LGBTQ+ history, whatever our age, sexual orientation, biological sex, gender identification, if we’re hoiking our asses to a collective today then without hesitation we are part of a shared yesterday. Know it, learn it, repeat it, and say their names. This is our history. And next time, when ordering PrEP online to ignore Covid-19 rules and use Grindr like an online Chinesetake-away menu for sex on demand, take a moment to thank all of those men who laid this ground. Jesus? Nah mate, it was normal blokes like Fat Terry who died for our sins.
And as for Keith Haring… every time you see something on a mug, a Valentine’s Day card or shitty £3 Primark T-shirt you’re wearing as a ‘Love Wins’ warrior, you should take a moment to think about the man who made it. Who despite sickness, community and societal alienation, extreme personal physical pain wanted to fight a real fight and use his art to act up and fight back. Know your history, even the ugly bits. It’s who we are. All of us.
