Interview with Mark Torgerson

19-02-20-MT.docx




“HIV in My Day,” Mark Torgerson (February 20, 2019)

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“HIV in My Day” – Interview #66

February 20, 2019
Interviewee: Mark Torgerson (MT); Interviewer: Ben Klassen (BK)

Ben Klassen: Great. Just getting started with Mark this afternoon. Thanks so much for being
here and agreeing to share your story with us.

Mark Torgerson: My pleasure.

BK: Just to get started, when did you first become involved in the gay community or start
engaging in gay life?

MT: Well, I don’t know so much gay life, but I came out pretty much officially when I went up
to Manning Park to work at a lodge that was there, that apparently was run by two gay guys. And
got involved with that organization and eventually ended up the partner of one of them. And that
was really officially when I decided that there was—that I was definitely gay and there was no
turning back. Because up until that point, I’d had some gay experiences in the small little high
school I was going to, and—but ended up basically dating women and girls. And up until that
point, I thought, eh, it’s a phase. You know, it’ll go away, maybe I’m a late bloomer. I was like
eighteen, nineteen. And finally, when I ended up at this lodge, obviously ended up having sex
with the guy and it was like a lightbulb went off. And it was like, ah, okay. It’s clear to me now
there’s—it’s a done deal, I’m obviously gay because I enjoyed that way too much. I mean, sex
with women was okay, but no, it was definitely—it’s just, you know it – if you’re honest with
yourself, you know it. Basically stayed up there, in a bit of an isolated bubble because—which is
an easy place to come out, because all their staff of course knew the guys were gay and they had
to be cool with that or they wouldn’t be working there, so I grew up in a bit of isolation and an
easy place to come out.

And so, I was there about a year and a half, I guess, before things sort of fell apart and I decided
I needed to come to Vancouver to get a real job. That wasn’t in the service industry, which
obviously they’ve would’ve been with a lodge and restaurant. So yeah, I came down with my
best friend, who was straight, from the Interior. And we set up an apartment here with co—we
shared the apartment together as roommates. And that I guess was my first real introduction,
exposure, involvement in the community per se. So that was an eye-opener for a country boy,
and like a candy store. You know, it was—in those days, that was pre-AIDS and there wasn’t
anything quite on the horizon, at least in people’s awareness. So, it was a pretty free and easy
kinda gay lifestyle and I found it obviously very attractive to be in Vancouver. And so, I got a
job just about right away after a couple months and ended up working for IBM for a bit, which
was a great job. And met a partner after about four months being here and then—so we moved in
together almost right away, after a couple months. And my straight friend decided Vancouver
wasn’t for him and he went home anyway, went back to the Interior. So, that was the start of my
big gay life in Vancouver. Do you want me to continue with it chronologically?

BK: Yeah, for sure, but what year was it that you came here?






“HIV in My Day,” Mark Torgerson (February 20, 2019)

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MT: That was November 1981, I guess that would’ve been. Yeah and I—shortly after, in
January of that, ‘82, I joined the Vancouver Men’s Chorus which was just barely, just had started
at that point. So, that was actually probably a pivotal moment because I ended up in an
organization that they automatically introduced you to, you know, well, forty or at that point fifty
people. So, that thrust me into, very much into, the community involvement and it was a—yeah,
it was probably quite a turning point. I’m not sure what would’ve happened up until that point if
I hadn’t joined the Men’s Chorus, I may have decided Vancouver was too big and lonely. I was a
bit overwhelmed by the city having grown up in the small-town Okanagan area. So at that point,
oh, about the spring time, I met what was to be my partner in the Men’s Chorus. And we—oh
gosh, we were probably together for, probably for about a year before both of us seemed to get
very sick with something. It seemed to be the flu. Seemed to be something came down, we both
came down with something at the same time and it was – you know, it was pretty bad and we
both just figured it was the flu. And unfortunately, I got better—well, fortunately, I got better.
Unfortunately, he did not fully recover from that point on. And you know, a couple months into
it, three, four months into it we began to suspect, well, there’s something else going on here. It’s
something not right that’s happening.

And at that time in ‘82, there wasn’t much diagnosis or anything at that point, they kinda didn’t
know anything about HIV or their—if they did, we didn’t quite have the specialists here that
could diagnose such a thing. So yeah, he got progressively sicker. We heard rumours of course
that there’s this disease going around where people just don’t get better. They get something that
causes their immune system to collapse. And there was of course the whole rumour it was
poppers that was all behind – you know, the poppers epidemic. Or drug use. Or all kinds of
speculation. They were just—because they didn’t have anything to pin it on, they were just
pointing at all kinds of things. So, we lived with that for quite a few months, with him coming in
and out of it, but obviously not recovering real well, back to normal. And he was a pretty athletic
guy, and he was a gardener, so his typical level of health was really high. But he began to lose
weight and lose energy. And I guess we were in Vancouver for probably about two more years, I
think it was, maybe a year and a half, where he just continued to fail. And ended up in hospital
for a bit and then was, you know, treated a bit, whatever they could do. I’m not sure I remember
anymore what they used to treat them with but there wasn’t anything even as far as an HIV
medication at that point that they would put you on. AZT was on the horizon I think and maybe
it was actually being studied and used in other cities, but that wasn’t available until later in his
progression.

But we ended up moving back to the Interior because the hospital stays were not particularly
helping and we felt that taking him back to a more rural, calmer environment – maybe we could
eat healthier, maybe we could breathe better air, whatever the theory. It was pretty evident that
staying in the city didn’t seem to be a benefit. We could always come for any kind of specialist
appointments. But even then, there really wasn’t – there was an HIV focus and I guess—I don’t
think Montaner was even on the scene then. And so, we decided to move back to the Interior,
which we did. And things didn’t get—obviously—didn’t get any better that way. So, he was
getting much weaker, much sicker. It was pretty evident that he needed intravenous intervention,
he needed medications that could clear out the lungs, that would get the full stuff. There was all
kinds of things that were showing up, and so we were taking—we were driving to Vancouver
fairly frequently for various kinds of, you know, treatments or—but we never did have the





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opportunity of using AZT or any of those earlier medications that—I guess that wasn’t available
yet. It seemed to me by ‘84, I think maybe by then it was. But much before that, I don’t think
there was much that they were offering us. It was just basically, you know, hang in there. And
you come and you’d get some treatments, maybe some vitamin shots or some rehydration or
something. But clearly, he progressed pretty quickly. And he had Kaposi sarcoma all over his
skin and it was pretty evident that he was going downhill fast. He’d lost so much weight.

And ultimately, yeah, we ended up pretty much putting him back in hospital here full-time
because I was up until that point sole caretaker really. I mean, we had friends out in the country,
but you know they stepped in once in awhile but he needed a fair bit of intervention and help
getting around and he got weaker and weaker. So, we ended up coming back to the hospital and
putting him at St. Paul’s, where he probably only lasted about another two or three months
beyond that and ultimately succumbed to that. So that was—yeah, that was a fairly traumatic
point in my life, because at that point I was twenty-five years old. So yeah, that was difficult. But
uh, really it’s—when you see somebody decay with HIV, it’s actually quite, uhm – it’s almost a
relief, you know, to see them go, because it was terrible. Terrible disease. Any questions?

BK: I guess there wouldn’t have been support, HIV-related support, available to you in the
Interior at that time, would there?

MT: No, absolutely not. In that time, there was so much of a stigma still that you had to be
careful who you told. Fortunately, my friends were, you know, all pretty liberal people, and their
friend’s friends, so that wasn’t a real big fear that everyone kind of knew that there was some
mysterious disease and they didn’t call it necessarily gay cancer yet or gay anything. But
definitely no support there. And I don’t even—you know, I don’t even remember – I think I
wrote on the form there because I don’t even remember there being much of a support here in
those early days. I suppose there were, but I still had, you know, family and friends that were
pretty good support for that kind of thing. Plus, we didn’t—we could’ve moved back to
Vancouver, I suppose, but it didn’t seem like there was an advantage to going that way,
especially since he had progressed so quickly. There was – I would’ve moved back to the city
probably, and then once he’d gone, I would likely move back to the country again. So, we
stayed. And so, I was—I remained perfectly healthy. I don’t know, it’s just genetics, I guess. But
yeah, I was in good shape, so I continued to stay in the Interior and I worked a fair bit, various
jobs. And ended up meeting someone from the city who came and stayed with me for a while but
ultimately that didn’t exactly work out either.

So, I ended up thinking, well, it’s 1988 at this point, I’m still kinda hanging out in the country.
And I thought, you know, I was twenty-eight at that point, so I needed to get a real job I thought.
So, the only real jobs were back in Vancouver, so I ended up applying for a government job in
the Interior, with the federal government in the weather department. And I got the job, went back
east for six months of training, and they posted me here in Vancouver, so ultimately, I moved
back to Vancouver because of that result. But I remember during that time being so paranoid that
they were going to find out I was HIV positive, because they had me do a physical before I was
signed up, and I remember on the form it said do you have any, I don’t know, life-threatening
illnesses, something like along that line. And I thought hmm, I guess so, I guess I should say yes.
But if you had said, you know, cancer, they probably would’ve been okay with it. But at that





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time, if you’d said, “Oh, I have this gay…”—I don’t even think they called it HIV necessarily in
those—you know, gay cancer or whatever they wanted to apply to it, some horrible term. And I
thought, oh, if I put that on there, there’s no way I’m gonna get a job. So, ultimately I lied on that
piece of paper, which to this day I think, oh jeez, after being in the same job for thirty years, I’m
thinking, boy, if they ever found that out, I wonder if they’d be ticked off, or the insurance
company would go, well. we’re not covering you for the last thirty years of your insurance
because you lied on your insurance form, or your physical. And obviously that wouldn’t happen,
or at least I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t happen.

BK: Well, as you say, there wasn’t much of a choice for you at the time given the stigma that
was out there.

MT: No. No, exactly. If it were ever challenged, I would definitely go to court with it because
it’s, you know – okay, well you put yourself in those shoes and see if you would be upfront
about it. And it wasn’t affecting my physical health at that point anyway, I was perfectly fine.
Obviously, I passed the physical test with flying colours, and tests they did were negative. So, by
all intents, I was a pretty healthy guy. So then at the – yeah, I was back in Vancouver for what
would be a long illustrious career with the federal government, which has been good up to this
point as far as an employer. The job has been wonderful. And ultimately I was concerned about
the whole gay aspect, the whole HIV thing, but it didn’t come to pass that there was any criticism
because ultimately after—I’m thinking about after a six-year period maybe, maybe even not that
long… Oh no, it was less than that, it was probably three years into the job when I thought, well,
I’m not hiding anything. You know, I’d been back in Vancouver, I was bolstered by the gay
community and the sense of pride, and you know, we’re gonna move forward. Even despite the
horrible reputation the gay community was getting for, you know, AIDS, AIDS, AIDS. We’re
spreading disease everywhere, and that was pretty hard to—environment to live in when you
know the media, not so much in Canada, but you didn’t have to look very far to find out that we
were being fingered as AIDS disease carriers. “It’s your lifestyle. It’s clearly because god wants
you to die, so you know, you all deserve what you get.” So, you kinda had to let that sort of just
brush off your shoulders. It’s like, yeah, those are the same people that are racist and creepy
people, so for the most part—but I still – I understand the fear that was in the general populace
when really it wasn’t super clear on how it was spread or at least they hadn’t reassured the public
enough that it wasn’t a danger to the general public. You couldn’t get it from sneezing or
whatever like that. But it took a few years for them to actually prove that and get the confidence
of…

So after—I digress—to go back go back to work, I came out fairly early as a gay man in a very
straight environment. Because the department I worked is you know very butch, and they’re like
electricians and mechanics and that kind of stuff. So, it was a very male, exclusively male
dominated department, and lots of sexism and lots of appalling misogynism. It’s just—it was—I
couldn’t believe that such a place still existed, especially in the government service to be so
against women. So, I thought, oh, well I’d—initially I thought if they figure out I’m gay, I’m just
gonna be like ostracized. It took, like I say, it probably took two or three years, and they you
know, I was doing the work like everyone else was, I was pulling my weight. So, it wasn’t like
they could actually even finger me as one of those fairies, because you know, I’m busy doing
electrical and pounding pegs into the ground and doing all this butch stuff. So, I think that was an





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awakening for a lot of the guys in that department, and they thought, oh, so he’s gay. It seems to
be okay. And I was very clear, I wasn’t hitting on anybody or doing anything the least bit
suggestive. Even though the language they used with regard to women and that was like, oh my
god, my ears are ringing sometimes. So that existed pretty good.

And then eventually I did book off work after about, oh, I guess about eight years into the career,
because I was feeling I think some aspects of HIV. I mean perhaps my—it’s hard to say but my
blood count was like slowly going, slowly. And I felt like I needed a break stress-wise, fatigue-
wise – I was feeling a bit stretched and worn out. I think at that point I went off for about six
months or so, six or nine months, and I think word got around then that it was sort of HIV
fatigue, kind of related. So, I think ultimately everyone at work understood I had HIV, and
surprisingly nobody refused to work with me, which I found, well, surprising and admirable.
Because legitimately, they would have some cause for concern, because like I say, the job I
worked in has—had a great potential for injury. We all had to have first aid because we could be
the only person there when someone gets hurt on the job site. Because it’s off in remote
locations, and there’s lots of times you cut yourself, you bang yourself, you’re bleeding. And it’s
actually interesting that even with that, as far as I know, nobody refused to work—refused to
work with me. Everyone was more than willing, which is good. And that would’ve been, oh,
mid-nineties I guess at that point. So, we were somewhat into the better understanding of it, but
nonetheless, you know. It was okay.

BK: Yeah, that information piece, when you and your partner got sick back in ’82, there wasn’t
much information out there. Do you remember when you started to encounter a little more
information about AIDS or HIV and what that meant?

MT: Not really. I’m trying to think when I first started with – I guess it would’ve been Julio
Montaner. But I think even he had a predecessor if I’m not mistaken, that I may have signed up
with. Because I was going for six-month check-ups or something, every now and then, and I
couldn’t tell you what year that was, but it was probably as soon as AZT was starting to hit
mainstream treatment, it wasn’t experimental anymore. And I remember that we would have
great arguments about being on it, and Julio was like, “You must be on it. You have to be on this.
This is the chart and this is the progression and this is the… and you will be here and you will be
here later on in the months,” and it’s like—and after a couple visits, or maybe three, four visits, it
was like, I would look at the chart, and he’d show me the same chart. It would be like, well yeah,
but that’s not me. I’m not progressing that – I have absolutely no symptoms. There’s a slight
decline in my T-cells, you know, but I don’t think they even did viral load back then, I don’t
think that was something they measured. But it was evident that despite the warnings that I’m
going to progress and I’m going to be really sick like so many people were. To be sure, I mean,
he probably saw eighty percent of the people that were progressing and could benefit, so his
recommendation at that point was everyone needs to be on this stuff. But I was much more
holistic, and I just thought, well you know, I don’t feel bad, I don’t think there’s any indication
that it’s affecting me in that way that everyone else has been affected. So, I’m just going to hold
off for a while.

So, every visit for quite awhile after that he’d – “Okay, here’s the new one, the DDI,” or “Here’s
the next one, here’s the next best thing that seems to hold some promise.” But they all had





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horrible side effects. If you didn’t toast your kidneys or your liver, or you know, some organ was
being assaulted by this drug. So, there was a real downside. It’s like being on chemotherapy if
not worse. So, I held off for a long, long, long time and, ultimately, I thought I don’t care what
the recommendations are at the moment, as long as I’m feeling okay. And we started getting
better testing as the years went on, you know viral loads and more accurate testing and stuff like
that. And I thought I’ll just hold on until I—until the last possible minute or until I start to feel
something. And so ultimately, I probably stayed off medication for about twenty-five years,
which has been good. Ultimately, my T-cells did go down to around the two hundred level and I
thought hm, still no symptoms. But at two hundred, recommendations are that you don’t let it go
down to below that. And so that’s when I did say, yeah, okay, let’s start on whatever seems safe.
Because my strain was – what do they call it? Naïve, I think. It was like the first one, so it hadn’t
mutated yet. So, pretty much it worked, any medication on the market would pretty much work
because it hadn’t mutated to be resistant. So, the first thing they put me on immediately took care
of the viral load, and T-cells were slow to come up a bit, and ultimately they didn’t—they
certainly didn’t return to normal. Even now with the medications I’ve been on for eight or ten
years now, even now the T-cells haven’t really come up significantly, about maybe fifty-percent
more than they were without being on the drugs. But the viral load is zero, or undetectable. So,
all’s good. So, that was sort of my HIV history.

BK: It sounds like a big part of your story, your resilience, was having that like ownership over
your own health.

MT: Oh yeah, absolutely. You had to be careful, and I think other than the psychological aspect
of looking after yourself and having some control, which is good for the immune system too, you
don’t want to feel powerless. And because I was active and lived a healthy lifestyle and ate
properly, and exercise, and work gave me purpose and a lot of positivity. I think that all just
added to my overall resilience. Through the years, I probably tried various miracle – well, I don’t
know about miracle but holistic things. I used to take like a whole rack of vitamins everyday. For
several years I kept that up, and that could’ve had something to do with it. And then there was
the odd, St. John’s wart or various kind of herbal remedies that were being—especially in the
early days when there wasn’t a lot of meds that you could take, there was a lot of theories of
treatments that were pretty dubious. You know, drinking your own urine.

BK: I never heard of that one.

MT: Yeah, oh yeah. That’s still being done, not just for HIV – people with cancer are doing that.
I can’t remember the logic but it’s just, whatever it is. It doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t work
either. But there was a bunch of – I can’t remember all the herbal remedies but there were all
kinds of, okay. this has had some really positive results. And you know, true to be told with
regard to the immune system, it does go up and down, depending on your mood, your sleep, your
health. And if you happen to be taking this herb, maybe it does make a slight little difference to
it, but in the long range, it’s not going to win the battle against HIV. I mean, your body can fight
off HIV for a bit, you can bolster it with what you need to, but beyond that it’s not – it requires
real intervention with an effective drug, which they have several now, which is great.






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BK: Yeah, you definitely dodged some bullets by staying off of those early meds, because like
you said, some of those medications just had insane side effects.

MT: Bad for your organs, and it’s not good policy to be damaging your organs. I mean they
essentially, it’s what—they keep you in repair when your body needs to be fighting off
something. If you’ve toasted your organs, it’s—that’s a problem. And so far, so good.
Challenges – I guess even though I’ve been on HIV meds, I think there’s a limit to the energy
you’ve got. Part of it could be aging, but I’ve heard it said that studies or some studies have
shown that having HIV, even if you do keep it under control, will take about ten years off your
life. So, it ages you prematurely. And so, I’m fighting a little bit with that, you know fatigue or
low energy. But you know, I’m getting toward sixty, so I should think that I’ll be a little less
energetic than I used to be. But it’s hard to know, and I guess that’s a question all my life that
when you’re—when you’ve got something wrong with you, you feel sick or you have diarrhea or
you’ve got bad headaches or you’ve got ringing in your ears, and you’re thinking, oh, is this the
start of—you know, is this HIV-related is kind of like the first question you have.

And unfortunately, doctors can’t seem to say yes or no. It’s always kind of a maybe. There’s still
a lot in the role of HIV that I don’t think they understand – how it holistically through your
whole life, and as you age, what exactly is HIV doing, has it done? I mean, I got away with
twenty-five years without medication, but by all reports it still does damage in the background,
even though it might not be evident to you. The HIV is still nibbling away at body parts, I guess,
and causing some damage, so I may have sustained some damage during that time. But I’m
confident that these medications that I’m on too are not exactly innocuous and they don’t study
all the side effects, they look for major ones that are life threatening. But that doesn’t mean that it
doesn’t make your skin dry or blur your vision or different stuff like that, you never know. So
that’s the kind of stuff things that I question on a daily basis when you’ve – like I say, if you’ve
got that ache or pain or that joint that’s sore for a week or something, like, is it attacking the joint
lining or—but like you’re saying, it’s highly speculator. But uh, yeah. I was gonna mention
something about—oh, thought’s gone.

BK: Well, if it comes up, we’ll—

MT: That’s HIV, it’s eating my memory.

BK: If it comes up, we can always circle back to it obviously. So, when you came back in ‘88,
did you get tied back into the gay community here?

MT: Yeah, ‘89 is when I actually officially moved here, July of ’89, because I started the job at
that point. And yeah, it was an incredible feeling. I mean, it really was – it was pretty burgeoning
and well established, it was—the whole HIV thing of course was starting to erode aspects of that.
People’s well-being, people’s fear. I was never cognizant—I mean, I guess I wasn’t because I
already had HIV, I wasn’t caught up in the fear that – even now I’m beginning to realize I kind
of missed out on that whole terror that the community was feeling at that time of getting HIV.
Like I say, because I already had it and I was living fine with it, I didn’t feel afraid of it. It
wasn’t—sounds stupid but it just wasn’t anything I was concerned about. I mean, passing it on
was what I was concerned about. I wasn’t terrorized by it and understand that the community and





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individuals were suffering horribly by that, that fear, I mean just to the point where they just
wouldn’t have sex anymore. Especially in the early years when they’re going, well, it can be
spread through saliva, or it can’t be. Or sweat. Or any body fluid. And I think there was a lot of
people that took the worst-case scenario and feeling, well, I don’t care, I just won’t have sex
anymore because it’s just too dangerous. And the treatment wasn’t there at all, so basically in
early, in the eighties, and that it was a death threat. It was a death sentence if you got it. That was
– well, you could last six months, you could last six years, but eventually it’s going to get you.

BK: Yeah, that must’ve been terrifying for folks.

MT: Yeah. I’m not sure the effect it had on the community, like ultimately. There’s a certain
amount of that laissez-faire, “okay, I’m going to die anyway, so let’s just party, or do lots of
drugs and party our ass off and have a great time,” because you know everyone’s going to get it
ultimately anyway. They don’t know how to stop it. So, I think there was a lot of confusion. But
it also—it also helped to sort of bring people together in a way. There were small groups that
started up, for support groups. Some of them grew to be pretty large, obviously – AIDS
Vancouver and Persons with AIDS. It formed groups like that, that people could at least gather
around and get support and get – feel like that hell wasn’t breaking loose on earth here. And that
there were—there were support groups that could help you. I didn’t—I wasn’t terribly involved
in a lot of them because I felt I was well supported with friends and family. My entire family
obviously all knew I was HIV positive, and in fact they witnessed firsthand the ravages of the
disease in 1985. He died in October 1985, and so they had already witnessed two years of
someone dying of HIV. So, the family, relatives and friends were well-aware of the whole thing,
so by the time that whole episode happened, I was quite comfortable with sharing all that with
people. It’s like, well, you know if you don’t—if you don’t understand it, that’s not my problem.
You know, go get educated, basically. But I had such a good support group that I didn’t engage a
lot with the ones in the community, other than voluntarily, I would help once in a while. But I
don’t think I really ever went to any sort of support, you know, talk it out kind of groups or even
needed to, fortunately didn’t need to rely on anyone to look after me or my partner at the time
when he was dying of AIDS. It was good that those organizations existed because I know that
some people were very much using their services, and I tried to volunteer my time, and I was
making okay money, so I was donating money as well. Yeah, thank god they were there.

BK: So, for you personally, most of the support was your group of friends, your family. It was
more informal, not relying on organizations.

MT: Yeah, tended to be. And they were by no means shy about offering their support. Because
they kept, you know, I guess wondering when I was going to get sick ultimately. It’s always been
a sort of sit back and wait. Like, “When’s Mark gonna get sick?” He’s in good shape now and it
looks like all’s good, but even so, I mean, as the years went on, it was apparent that it mutated
and that you had to take different drugs and swap off, and do more experimental ones again.
Because it obviously mutated pretty quickly. And so, they were kind of wondering, well,
“When’s Mark getting sick?” And they had all offered, like, well if anything happens, you know,
you can come and live in the basement, or we’ll look after you. So, that was very reassuring. And
then I’m obviously very lucky to have that. A lot of families when they find out that people are
HIV positive, in those days especially, it was like, oh, you’re out of here. We’re not going to talk





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to you anymore, get the hell out. God’s given you this disease and it’s his wrath, so yeah, you
live with your life and we’ll see you later. Which I found astounding. You know, if it’s a family
member that’s dying of a disease, it’s a disease. And they’re not suffering any less than anyone
else. No, I was very lucky that way. I don’t think there was—well, other than one religious
brother that wasn’t so enthusiastic about me being gay, even they choked it up—choked it down
and just sort of swallowed their prejudice for a bit during family events. I was never accosted or
taken off to the side by a relative or a friend. So, I’ve been very lucky that way.

BK: And in terms of your involvement with those organizations, you said you did a little bit of
volunteer work occasionally. What did that kind of look like, just out of curiosity?

MT: Oh, you know, manning the booths or something when they were—I didn’t do really a lot
of hands on stuff, but because I was pretty busy in the early days, I worked a great deal. A lot of
overtime and was out of town for months at a time doing work, so it tended to be just sort of hit
and miss stuff if they needed someone to do something. Yeah. And it seemed like from what I
recall at that time there was pretty good support, at least in the core friends that I had in the city.
They were very socially motivated, and there was a lot of volunteer time offered by my circle of
friends. I felt a little guilty at times, but like I say, I was gone a great deal, but there are certainly
some people in this community that were very strong, strong supporters and really got people
rallied. And kudos to them for doing that in a time when it had to be awfully discouraging for
everyone. Like, what’s the use? You heard—at some point, at its worst times, you would hear,
“What’s the point of doing all this?” You know, the medication’s not working and people are
becoming sick in waves. You know, just waves and waves of people that were sick and dying.
And it’s easy to figure that you’d feel pretty hopeless after period of time. That, you know,
what’s the point? Until they find a cure, we might as well just give up and party and enjoy the
last few months or years. Which I can understand from a certain perspective.

When I first—when I first got my diagnosis, well, it was no surprise first of all because my
partner had died in October of AIDS, and clearly we had sex for the last two-and-a-half, three
years, so clearly I would’ve been infected. So, it wasn’t when I got my diagnosis, it was like,
well yeah, of course, I’m HIV positive. So, you kind of live your life as a bit of a—fatally. It’s
like, well you know, I’m going to die, everyone around me lasts a few months, or maybe a year
or so, so at twenty-five years of age, you’re thinking, well, thirty’s gonna be a stretch. If I get to
thirty, that’s going to be probably impossible, but we’ll kinda like carry on life until you feel
otherwise. Like I said, until I showed up with a symptom, or started to feel some effects of that. I
thought, well, guess I might as well work as hard as I can. But you still conduct your life
temporarily, like I’ll get this job, you don’t think about a career. You don’t even think about
where you’re gonna be in ten years. So, it was very much a point of menial jobs, or service
industry jobs. Like I say, it wasn’t until a few years – three, four years into it – when I was
approaching thirty, and I thought, well damn, I guess I actually better get a job, like a real career
or at least a move towards something, because it looks like I’m going to be around long enough
to work a few more years. So, let’s make it in a good job so at least I can have money and go on
vacation if I need to.

So, that’s basically what kick started me and got me moving from the Okanagan back into this
federal government job. And it’s like, okay, well now I got the job. And I sort of progressed in





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my thirties, still a bit fatalistic, because it’s like, well okay, I’m not taking meds, who knows
when it could all come crashing down suddenly? Because often it can happen that way too. But
then I sort of got into my late thirties and it’s like, oh damn, well now I guess I better start
thinking about retirement or putting money away for retirement. And so that was sort of another
kind of landmark that I thought, oh, okay. But you know, it’s hard to live even as well as I’ve
lived with HIV, it’s hard to live with HIV without thinking about dying in the near – you know,
near to mid-near future. It’s like having a cancer diagnosis – you can do well or you can not do
well. It’s kind of a wait and see. And physically for me, I still have a couple mysteries about my
body that you know obviously I have no physical obvious problems, but you know they did a
biopsy once about maybe ten – no, eight years ago or something and decided, oh, I have Kaposi
sarcoma. Which is normally something that affects your skin, you break out with these horrible
cancers on your skin and I’ve had no sign of that. But they decided it had manifested itself in my
lymph nodes, which sounds horrible, like oh my god, you got cancer in your lymph nodes, that’s
like a death sentence, you’d think. But again, my body seems to be holding it off, strangely
enough with no treatment. But that’s what I mean by when you’re kind of like—you’re kinda
waiting for the other shoe to drop at some point, and so far—so far so good.

I mean, I guess technically – or not technically I should say – I mean, I’ve most assuredly had
HIV since 1981, despite the ‘86 diagnosis. Because that’s basically—basically, I can pinpoint the
person in San Francisco I got it from and—and we both became sick shortly after that, like with
the flu-like symptoms and that. So, it’s been thirty-eight years, so it’s—you go, well, I have a
really strong body and that’s the meds working really great and stuff like that. But then you
always think, hm, you know, how much longer? You know, the meds can stop working, or as
you age, you know, your body doesn’t do quite as well. So, you’re always—that’s the back of
your mind, and like I say, you’re always wondering what role HIV is playing in your overall
well-being from day to day. So, it’s something you live with, it’s—I’ve been very lucky and I
guess ultimately at this point I think, well, I’m living on borrowed time. And so far, I’m going to
hit sixty, it’s going, well shit, life’s been great. I haven’t been in any hospital, I haven’t had
anything that’s really affected me from physically to a point where I can’t still hike and ski and
bike and be active, so I mean that’s—it’s amazing, I think.

The only issue that I’m dealing with now is mental health issues, because of the stress, and work
is sort of finally taking its toll, I think. So, I’m off at the moment for—well I’ve been off for a
year, just over a year. And I can’t help but think, well, it’s maybe – maybe it’s a bit, you know,
post-traumatic stress syndrome or something. And a little bit of just, life sometimes gets a bit too
much and—but and sure, like I say, the HIV has had it’s—there’s a certain amount of studies
that show that your cognitive and your mental capacities change with an HIV infection as well.
So, it continues to obviously affect my general health, I think. So yeah. And it’s been – you
know, I’ve had the best kind of treatment and the best access to services living in Vancouver. It
would be hard—it would be really hard to maintain the level of health I think without a constant
sort of support. Especially through St. Paul’s, for the specialists that I see. And having easy
access to pretty much anything I need, and if there’s—you know, if there’s a bump or a lump or
a lymph node that’s looking weird, I don’t have to wait weeks and weeks to get it checked out.
That’s great to know as well, that you have that kind of support, medical support. As stressed as
they are trying to keep up, I have very few complaints about over the years the response to my
disease treatment has been anyway. It’s been really great.





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BK: Despite some arguments with Doctor Montaner.

MT: Well yeah, yeah – well, that was about ten years of bitching, but after that, then he actually
did to say to me, he said, “You know, you were right.” I said, “Well ,you know, I know my own
body. Don’t tell me I need to take this poison if I’m feeling okay.” But not to disparage him at
all, he’s obviously a very amazing guy.

BK: That was one of the big things that people living with HIV at the time were really arguing
for was their own expertise over their own bodies, so that’s a really important thing for us to
document as well.

MT: Yeah, because you know, you do have to take ownership, but it has to be muted a little bit
and blended with your knowledge versus their knowledge, but also you priorities versus their
priorities. Because the medical facilities do have a bit of an agenda, and like, to write
prescriptions for pills because it’s the recommended treatment. But it’s the recommended
treatment for some people, not everyone. And that’s the thing that you can’t just blanket the
whole population, that okay, this pill is going to be great for everyone. Or this treatment regime
is going to be great for everyone. And I think that’s where the individual has to—despite the
confusing information you can get—you have to at least look as best you can and research as
best you can what a good path for you might be. And you know, I may have done a certain
amount of damage letting my T-cells go that low, and it certainly wasn’t recommended. But
who’s to say? I mean, I don’t know. You know, here we are eight or ten years later and I still
think I have a pretty good immune system. I don’t get sick often, and when I do, I get over it
quickly. So, my decision not to go on it right away was good ultimately. Maybe my timing was a
little off, but yeah.

And I do that with all medications that I take, even now if it’s HIV related or not I just—I would
like to—I would rather not take pills if I can get away with it. I actually did about a year and a
half ago, took a drug holiday from the HIV meds. Because I was thinking, well you know,
wonder what would happen if I went off the meds. Would it be a significant difference, would
my body plunge into a progression or would it sort of slowly go back to normal? And I was
wondering about – I was having a few various physical issues that were manifesting themselves
that were a bit unexplained, skin rashes and that. And it was like, well I wonder what’s going on
there – like, is the body is reacting to something? And we tried swapping a few medications
around, HIV meds just as a bit of an experiment, and nothing sort of mitigated the effects I was
having, and so I thought, well, let’s just stop and see. For four months I think it was. And see
what happens to these issues – did they get better, did they get worse. Ultimately, my little
experiment proved that nothing changed, basically. I didn’t feel any worse, any better, any more
fatigued or less fatigued, sleep was about the same. And I thought, well, evidence is that if
you’re on the HIV meds you will probably progress less, and do less damage to your body
overall. And I don’t have side effects anyway that I can determine, so I decided to go back on.

But you know, that’s kind of an example – despite the medical profession, you sometimes have
to counter them just for your own comfort, or your own sense of control. Because they absolutely
across the board say you shall not go off of HIV meds, you know, this a terrible idea, you





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shouldn’t do it. We don’t support this. And of course, they can’t – it’s not a supportable position,
because they have to go by the recommended treatment regime. But I would encourage everyone
to take full control if you can of your medical with their advice.

BK: Your group of friends here in the gay community in Vancouver, were there other folks in
that group that were also HIV positive?

MT: Friends here, for sure. I have quite a few relatively long-term progressers as well. But yeah,
probably – I don’t know – well, probably twenty, twenty-five percent of my friends are HIV
positive. And nobody that I know that’s as long as I have been, but some pretty long-term
survivors as well. Yeah, there’s no shortage of people I can talk to about it, or discuss it with. It’s
surprising though when you talk to younger people and their perspective on HIV and that, it’s
quite different and it’s funny how it’s just so much of a non-issue almost now. Younger
generation with the medications and the treat—it’s basically a chronic disease for most people,
I’m sure that there’s some out there that are freshly infected that don’t do very well. But the
overall impression is that eh, it’s no big deal, it’s HIV, you can take a pill for it like anything
else. Because I’ve had—I’ve had a fair bit of sex with people that are not concerned in the least –
it’s like, no, we can play normal, unsafe. They don’t have any problem with it, and I guess that’s
just on the, well, you can take pill and it will go away. Sort of. It doesn’t really go away.

BK: Is it partially because people have an understanding of undetectability and U equals U? Do
you think that is part of the…?

MT: I think they feel that it’s just worst case scenario is that you get the disease and then this—
well, first of all, it’s prophylaxis, the PrEP that some people are on, but there’s also you know
after the fact if you aren’t on PrEP and you can take medications. So, they figure, well, if you do
play unsafe, you can just go ahead and take the pills for a month or whatever the
recommendation is now and you’ll be just fine. I mean, probably the majority of people get away
with that, and to be fair, if you’re undetectable, you know, a lot of people just treat that pretty
much as a green light. Which, I don’t know, it’s always risk assessment, you know how much
pleasure do you get out of it versus what’s the cost, or potential cost. I don’t know how I would
feel. I’d probably go along with the mainstream if I wasn’t HIV positive, it would be like, yeah,
okay, I mean, if you’re undetectable, I’ll take the chance. And you know we can have unsafe sex,
or unprotected sex I suppose I should call it.

BK: The evidence is pretty strong around undetectability, so maybe that’s entering into some
people’s weighing of risk.

MT: Yeah, I think so. Well, I think going to the figures, it was ninety-six percent or something,
you’ll get away with it ninety-six percent of the time. I mean, personally, my own experience at
least with my strain is it didn’t seem to be very infectious because the one partner I had was HIV
negative and we had great discussions about having sex unprotected and ultimately he just said,
“Nope, I don’t want to have anything do with a condom. We’re gonna have sex, it’s gonna be
natural, because I love you.” And you know, when you’re all in that, you go, well okay, it’s not
like—I felt, okay, it was an informed decision on his part and we were all upfront about it and if
he’s willing, if that’s the way he wants to do it, then it’s like, oh, alright. But you know what





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might ultimately happen. And this was actually when I was not on meds, unfortunately. Before
they had come to the conclusion that it had—actually well before that. And so we had—oh it
was—took a year before he finally seroconverted to positive. So, it took him—that was an awful
lot of exposure for it to manifest itself in his body, which may just have to do with the fact that
my strain is old, and old one, a simplistic one. I don’t know. Don’t know. But sometimes I think,
ah, that was a pretty dumb thing to do ultimately because you know you split up after a few years
or whatever and then the person has HIV that he didn’t when he got into the relationship. Yeah,
sometimes I think that’s pretty dumb, but you know, when you’re in your thirties or whatever,
you’re pretty randy. Do all kinds of stuff that you shouldn’t do.

BK: Well, there’s a lot of different factors to weigh into that decision. Like you were saying,
intimacy. It’s complicated.
MT: Yeah, it’s not simple in the heat of the moment, and even with best intentions, you’re
going, okay, we’ve got the condom sitting right there, but you know, do you want to? Ah, no.
Well, just this time, we’ll not use it.

BK: Again, thinking of this period in the late eighties when you were back here, ‘89, into the
nineties, were people using condoms frequently at that point? Was it a well-known way of
preventing HIV at that point?

MT: I think so, yeah. I think that when a person was afraid enough, it was like well—like I say,
there was a whole bunch of people that just stopped having sex. It was like forget it. I mean the
treatment is horrible and the infection rates are going up and up and up, and it’s sort of an
epidemic. A lot of people just said, ah forget it, but I think a lot of people—certainly a lot more
than now—used condoms. It was like, that was just normal, that was just what they had to do,
and they did. And good for them, because obviously they probably stopped a lot of disease
spreading. Before I was on meds, other than my partner, I would use condoms as well pretty
much, unless they totally insisted. But I was always upfront and said I’m positive, so whatever
you know about that, and hopefully you’re well informed and that, but you can be infected. And
pretty much most of the time it went, “Oh, okay, thanks for telling me. Are you gonna use a
condom?” Or some guys would go, “No, I’m cool with the risk,” or possibly they were positive
as well and just didn’t want to say it. And I think I only had one, there’s only one incident that I
remember where I mentioned it to him and he just like shoved me. Just like physically, get away
from me. And I was like I guess we won’t be having sex.

BK: That stigma was, I’m sure, out there in some parts of the gay community as well.

MT: Oh yeah. Well, but it was amazing how many people would go to the bars and you know
they would—clearly going to have sex, like if not in the bar, they were going to have it as soon
as possible, and they were so driven. And yet they seemed to be really naïve about getting HIV,
or that how many people were HIV positive maybe. Because it would be like, almost like the
assumption that everyone was, or most of the people were not HIV positive, but you talk to them
and it would be, well, that’s not the point, it only takes one. You know, you don’t need—if a
hundred of them in a bar are all HIV negative and you happen to choose the positive guy, well, it
doesn’t matter. It’s a roulette. And they would seem genuinely surprised when they’d find out
that people were positive. Like, oh wow, geez, I didn’t know that. Well you know, I don’t know,





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do some more reading or something because there’s a lot of people that are HIV positive and not
using condoms. So, you need to be aware of that, and if you’re not willing to take that risk
because they may not tell you, and if you’re not using a condom, then you’re more or less
saying, well it’s – you know, I’m free to go, let’s go. You’re opening yourself to some pretty
high odds of infection during that time.

BK: Yeah, even if the information around safe sex was out there, how people actually used that
information to make their own decisions is kind of another matter, right?

MT: Yeah, well, and you get a few beer in you or whatever and you get – your judgement goes
out and it’s like, well, but the guy, he’s like really hot. Yeah, but he could be your worst
nightmare if he infects you, and if you’re not prepared for that, don’t go naïvely or drunkenly
into that kind of decision. Unless you’re one of the people that are, well, the bug chasers as they
said. Or those people that are just really naïve about it and go, oh, there’ll be no problem, I’ll do
it this one time—one more time—and I’ll use a condom next time. I just think there was—
especially in the heat of it all, when there were the treatments coming in and some were working
and some weren’t, and the numbers though were climbing pretty fast for a period there. And I
think that you’d have to be super, super naïve not to go in a bar and think that, geez, probably
twenty-percent of the people were HIV or AIDS as they used to call it back then. Wasn’t just
HIV. I remember when they flipped—they stopped calling—they really put a campaign on that
you’re not supposed to call it AIDS anymore, it’s supposed to be HIV positive. I suppose it’s
supposed to sound—maybe trying to distance ourselves from the early days when they called it
AIDS.

BK: Yeah, that seems like an important distinction, because if you had AIDS, then you were
quite sick. And if you’re HIV positive, you might not be at all.

MT: Yeah, yeah it was. Well, and they just – it was just AIDS was so much in the publicity back
then and it was just like a bad word. You might as well put death. AIDS was death. It was in the
beginning, for sure.
BK: Well, we’ve talked a little bit about medical responses, mainstream kind of conceptions of
HIV. Do you have any recollections about how the government was responding in the early
years?

MT: A lot of heel dragging, that’s for sure. I mean there was a—I suppose it was based on the
lack of evidence for a lot of – well, whether it was drug treatments or diagnoses, or you know
there was—and of course government works slow anyway. It seemed to me, my recollection was
that any kind of programs that were proposed or—especially in the early years, they were like
come on, let’s get this information out there. Even if it’s not factually a hundred-percent correct,
we need to start informing the community and the public in general that these are the facts, this is
the infection, this is how it’s spread. We think it—in the early days, it seemed like it was a little
bit over the top. I mean, you were supposed to use dental dams when you’re kissing, and you’re
supposed to not swap any kind of body fluid whatsoever. And you know, you could—I mean,
there was a lot of speculation that was like over the top, that really wasn’t true. So, they started
off with a little bit of overkill, but I think getting the information out into the general public was
a difficult task for them. It was an uncomfortable thing to talk about. And like I say, as soon as





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you threw the AIDS word in there, people just sort of covered their ears, they didn’t want to hear
about that. “That’s a fag disease, and you know, what’s it got to do with my community.” And
yeah, I think it was formidable for them to try—the government—to try to get the information
out effectively. It was slow. And even in the gay community, the information was changing
really rapidly but there was a lot of ignorance circulating within the gay community as well.

But as far as overall, in BC, I think the response couldn’t be faulted too much. I think it was—it
was pretty good. I mean, certainly compared to provinces like Alberta or Saskatchewan or other
parts of Canada. And certainly, America was just – oh, it was a mess. A lot of the states there
that just refused to acknowledge it and furthermore it was great if all the fags got killed by this
disease. So, talk about intentional heel dragging, I think that was absolutely an agenda for a lot of
people. Not just the small ones, there was a bulk of people, and they weren’t all whack jobs
either. They figured that, yeah, that sounds about right, it’s god’s wrath. You know, these people
are screwing each other in the ass and they deserve to die. So yeah, thank god I didn’t live in that
particular kind of community – Canada of course being so much more liberal. I don’t really
recall being a victim of some major discrimination, even with regards to renting, or getting your
car loan, or getting a house loan. I’ve been really lucky that way, I would say. I didn’t say that it
didn’t exist in Vancouver, but I don’t know, maybe we’re just a little more informed or tend to
be more informed about public issues like that. Yeah, of course living in the gay ghetto, you can
be quite isolated as well, I realize that, for sure. You can be sheltered by all the bigotry and all
the negative comments, and it doesn’t happen anymore in small towns, but in small towns, god,
you wouldn’t want to show—you wouldn’t want to hold hands with anyone years ago, it was
like, nope, you can get fag bashed. I think the only public incident I had was somebody threw a
beer bottle at my partner and I on Davie Street actually, out of a pick-up truck, four-by-four.
They fired it. And it just missed us. “Yeah, “You fucking faggots.” Well, where do you think you
are? You’re on Davie Street.

BK: But apparently that was something that people just did back then. People would come in
from the suburbs and come and harass the fags?

MT: Yeah, come and harass the gays in their four wheel drives. Just—and you gotta, what is
behind that? I mean, it’s obviously not very gratifying because they’d have to hit and run, they
couldn’t stick around or some drag queen would come and slap them across the head. It was
always a bit weird. I had a Puerto Rican boyfriend for a while and we were holding hands on
Davie Street and some guy in a four-wheel drive was going to pull out and go, “Hey, you fucking
faggots.” Well, he picked the wrong people, because he was a New York born and raised Puerto
Rican, so out of the slums basically. He runs over to the pick-up truck and he slams his fists on
the hood of the truck and he goes, “What the fuck did you say to me?” The guy was going,
“Whooo!” Let me tell you, he didn’t get out of the truck and stick around. He thought, you
know… I’ll always remember, that was so funny.
BK: Yeah. Even hearing your experience in small town BC, like the Okanagan, we’ve heard
some other stories of people from other places like that, that have not been nearly as positive. So,
it’s good for us to hear that there was a varied experience, even with some of those smaller
places.






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MT: Yeah, a lot of really negative stuff, yeah for sure. No, even when I lived in the country, it’s
been good. It’s surprising, you know, well, at least in Canada, I think it’s a little less that way,
but it’s surprising how people come around when—like when I was there with my partner, we’d
have big lawn parties with all our friends and dress up in silly pink, and put flamingos all over
the lawn. And shit like that. In a rural community like that, and people would invite friends of
friends, so people that were relatively naïve of what’s going on, and this was, you know, eighties
or late eighties, mid to late-eighties, and it was evident that we’re a couple and this was our
place, but all the friends, the close family and friends of course, this is normal. And people that
they happen to bring in second-hand, like [inaudible] bring in Joe at the party, or whatever. And
you’d look at them, and they’d go, oh, and this little lightbulb would go off, and go, oh, this is
weird. But when they look around and they see everyone sort of just having fun and enjoying
themselves, and people just partying, just friends. And they would—suddenly, it was like all the
prejudice and all the things they’d been taught just sort of flew away. And maybe go back and
re-think about it, but from that point on, anytime you’d meet these people, it wasn’t like they
were weirded out or freaked out about the whole situation. It was almost like they got educated,
almost like a relief for them, they’ve been misinformed all this time.

So, I can’t help but think that those kind of incidents are responsible for—and the internet—have
been responsible for making things better in small towns. You know, when you treat it like it’s
not so weird, and you know, you should not be fag-bashing people, that’s not a normal
behaviour. I think that’s been a really momentous thing in changing people’s attitude in small
towns. And so nowadays, when I go to small towns ,I mean we hold hands in places like
Enderby and, well, certainly Kelowna or Vernon you can get away with it, Penticton. Logger
towns. It’s just not an issue any—some of the northern towns, maybe. Even Prince George has a
gay bar, and that’s up in lumber ranch land, so yeah. It’s changed a lot. It’s changed so much,
that’s fortunately—projects like this I think are good to let people know what it used to be like.
And millennials of course now have things good, pretty darn good. At least living in Vancouver,
there’s no reason to not be outwardly gay and express your emotions and your full love for your
partner on the street. So, it’s—it certainly wasn’t always thus, and not that long ago. And it’s
important to document historically how that’s come about, and the process that has happened.
Because there should be an appreciation for the pioneers, you know, the drag queens and all
those that went ahead, that took a beating every now and then to stand up for the rights. So, it’s
important to recognize that it’s a hard-earned battle, with the stigma of HIV thrown in there as
well, with a devastating disease that just really annihilates a big generational gap that we’ve got
going now, which is another subject that I could talk about.

BK: Well, by all means do so. Yeah, I think that’s an important thing to talk about in the context
of this conversation, but obviously you and your partner moving back to a small town, that was a
form of pioneering too in a way, right?

MT: Yeah, a bit. A bit. There’s some, you know, you never know quite what to expect. And
ultimately, it’s amazing how many of my friends, gay friends, did move back to that little valley,
and to the Okanagan in general, to retire. Which is a bit surprising, but it’s—there’s a lot to be
said for small town life and if it’s not – if you’re not threatened or if you’re not under any kind of
threat from the community or even individuals, it’s easy to live in a small town now. It’s quite
normal. I’m thinking, I mean, Keremeos is a tiny little town, like five hundred people, maybe a





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thousand people at the most in the valley, but jeez, you know, I’ve been to several high school
reunions and stuff now, which are really boring because nobody’s done anything with their life.
But the fact that you’re there at these high school reunions with your partner its just a no-brainer,
nobody—some people might just come up and go, oh my god, I didn’t know that you were gay,
that’s fabulous. You know that’s—so happy for you. And that really tells you that’s come a long
way in rural communities. You know, like I say, internet, TV, it’s done its part. The gay agenda
has worked in rural.

BK: Whatever that was.

MT: Well, it’s to convert as many people as possible obviously, to our fabulous lifestyle
perhaps.

[end of 19-02-20-MT]
[start of 19-02-20-MT2]

BK: Great, so yeah, I was just asking about how this impacted the community on a larger scale,
and perhaps asking about the generational impact.

MT: Yeah, I find that it’s going to be very interesting for our community to age into old age. I’m
obviously starting to approach retirement age and there’s—I think it’s very perplexing what
they’re going to do about it and how this is going to manifest itself, because I think it’s really the
first openly gay population that’s come as a demographic into retirement. And you can’t easily
just throw us in with the rest of the aging straight population. I don’t—I’m not saying it’s
incompatible, but it’s—it’s difficult because we have quite different histories, and quite different
lifestyles, clearly. And most of the time we don’t have grandkids, kids and grandkids. So, there’s
a whole populace that’s moving into this age and I don’t see it being a very positive move from
the people that I’ve seen. I have friends that are well into their eighties, are getting into their
eighties, and it’s a pretty lonely lifestyle when you don’t have kids and you don’t have that
support group, and maybe even a lot of your friends have already died, if you’ve outlasted some
of your friends that have passed on. There is a real sense of a vacuum in place of where family
and friends should be to support you as you age. And I don’t look at it with—I don’t relish the
future for sure. I think it’s going to be a problem. And I know there’s people that are sort of
working on it, to a degree. Retirement homes for gay and lesbian, or the alter, the other group,
that aren’t main society. And I can envision something that’s like a group home where you all
kind of support each other like a family, but I’m not sure. And I think that when I’ve talked to
people and developers that have actually planned, or are thinking about planning some of these
communities, it’s not clear how we’re going to achieve something like that. I don’t know if our
bonds are strong enough to hold. Like, you can have a pretty good social group that’s very
strong. When you’re younger it’s fun, it’s easy, they get out and they do things. When it
progresses into old age where it’s more of a caretaking aspect of it, maybe your friendships
aren’t quite strong enough to withstand that.

I don’t—like I said, I don’t know how far it’s going to take. I do worry about that, even though I
have sisters and brothers and family and stuff, and my sister said, “Whatever happens, we’ll look
after you in your old age.” Whatever, you know, she’s older than me. But yeah, I don’t—and I





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really haven’t been to any seminars or planning meetings that have any concrete plan of what
we’re going to do about it. I find that a lot of my friends that have retired tend to really pull back
and live a bit solitary lives, to the point where it’s really difficult to get them out of their
apartments. You know, when you’re single and tend to get depressed, and you tend to spend all
your time alone and the world becomes a scary place, it’s a bit concerning to me. Because I
mean, gosh, I hope I’ve got another ten, twenty years in my future, and I don’t want to spend that
as a lonely recluse that’s sad and depressed. And it is kinda like the first time this has really
faced our society. Gay men typically would either just stay closeted and they had wives and
family, or they had family and kids who went on to have kids. They’ve kind of been forced to
live with all the others, with the mainstream society in retirement homes. And just either shut up
about it, or it was limited knowledge and who knew you were actually gay. I’m not sure, I don’t
know what’s actually going to be done about that.

BK: Yeah, I mean it’s certainly a bit of a new frontier for the community.

MT: Yeah, and I sense that. I mean, it’s there for the right kind of model. Like, a community
setting where you each have your own little room or something, and a common area. Not unlike
a retirement home of sorts, but just geared towards the gay senior. Whatever that means, exactly
I don’t know, but maybe just the freedom to be—to do what you want, or dress how you like and
be a drag queen until your last breath. I don’t know. But it’s going to be interesting. And there’s
definitely money for it, I mean I think as well, there’s an awful lot of affluence in single, aging,
gay males. There’s a fair bit of cash. At least in the community that I was in, and the friends that
I have. I mean they’ve worked all their lives and they have excellent retirement, and they’re set
up. So, the money is there to set up a properly, a suitable gay environment retirement home. But
I’ve seen a couple people that have looked into it and even as far as sort of simple plans on a way
to build them. And I know in the US, there was some organizations that were putting them up,
but they sort of dropped off the radar. I have not seen whether they were successful or not. I
don’t know. We shall see. Other than that, I don’t know. Any other aspects that you need to
know or…?

BK: I feel like we’ve covered a lot of ground and a lot of different areas. One of the questions
that we always like to ask near the end is what advice you might have for younger folks out there
in the community based on your experience as a very long-term survivor, in your case. Any
wisdom to impart?

MT: I don’t think so. I think the older I get, the dumber I think I am. There are no black and
white solutions, that’s what I’ve learned in my – when you’re younger, things are much more
black and white. Clarity of thought, clarity of purpose is there, and as you go through the
decades, you pick up a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience, either your own experience or
experience that other people in your life have had. And it all tempers your overall view of the
world, and life in general. And I don’t think there is a great gay book of successful life, just like
there isn’t a great gay book of successful love. I don’t know, I think you know, fall in love when
you can, don’t be discouraged if you’re not falling in love all the time. There are people—there’s
somebody for everyone, that’s what I’ve learned. And there’s lots of really great people in the
world, and I would say, you know, don’t expect perfection out of anyone because you’ll be
looking a long time. If you’re looking for that perfect relationship, I’ve had a few, let’s say that,





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and they’ve all been different. They’ve all been different kind of people, some high energy, some
solid as a rock and grounded, and I don’t know, you just have to be confident in your own, what
you bring to the table. It’s not always pretty, but you know, be confident that’s the person you
are and offer that as openly as you can to your prospective boyfriend or partner or whatever. Just
be upfront, seems to have the best policy, then you’re not covering up messes later on in life.
Yeah. No, that’s probably about all I would offer. I don’t think anyone has the perfect wisdom of
way to run your life. Life has too many angles and changes. And you just never know what’s
going to happen. Just, I was given a life when I was expected not to have a life, and then there’s
people who their life disappears, is taken from them much too early. So, you know, you have to
factor that in, that you know live your life as fully as you can, and responsibly. I mean, you can’t
just party and do drugs all the time. You have to live it with a certain amount of balance. And
yeah, resilience, and you get through it. I mean even if it is bad news or medical problems, life is
still good. Yeah.

BK: Any advice for folks that might be newly diagnosed?

MT: Oh, newly diagnosed. Well, I sure as hell wouldn’t panic. It’s—I mean, compared to what
it was before. I would be, well, it’s too bad, shit happens. But chances are you’ll be okay, and it’s
certainly such a treatable disease now that if you’re on the medications and you’ve got a strain
that isn’t resistant or something that’s new, which I’m not sure that even exists much anymore.
But I mean, it’s treatable, so I mean, it’s certainly no worse than having severe diabetes or cancer
or any number of things, mental health issues or—there’s, yeah, don’t panic, you’ve certainly got
lots of time. There will be a point at which they finally do away with HIV altogether. So, with
the treatments that are there now, more than enough coasting space to get to that point where
they’ll cure it. Yeah, don’t panic. Just treat it as something you have to deal with and carry on.
It’s important to be positive, it’ll be your best—one of your best lines of defense is staying
mentally positive and doing—eating well, and doing the yoga, and doing the meditation if you
need to. Just look after yourself, and you’ll be fine.

BK: Great. That’s some sound advice. I don’t really have any other questions to ask. We always
leave a little bit of time at the end to ask if there’s anything that we didn’t ask about that you
wanted to impart or share, or just anything you wanted to expand upon.

MT: Yeah, there’ll probably be things I’ll think about later, but I think I touched base on most—
is there an opportunity to come back and talk about anything else?

BK: Yeah, absolutely. If you walk away from here and you feel like, oh, there’s this whole
domain of my story that we didn’t touch on, then we’ll just schedule another interview.

MT: That’s my whole other schizophrenic side that you haven’t seen.

BK: Yeah, if there’s more to cover, we talk again.
MT: No, I think there’s generally one of me in here. Sometimes it seems like there’s two, but
yeah. No, I think that’s all I had to get off my chest. If there’s more, I’ll let you know.

BK: Great. I will stop these recordings then.





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MT: Okay.