We don’t care anymore. The antiretrovirals went down the toilet.

These meds have become our life, and as such, it’s not a life. AIDS is a fatal disease. Bring that motherfucker on.

They call us the hard to reach. They spit on us.

Keeping the river of HIV meds flowing is a 24-7 JOB. How do you keep a REAL job, and do this.

Maybe a poster will revitalize us. Not. 

This is difficult for gay men to understand. They are more compliantly connected to the system than we are. There is nothing in it to be connected for us. Our experience is not their experience. These meds are highly regulated. There is more demand than supply. That helps to keep the prices up. Up, up, and away. Gay men do not believe the government wants them dead. 

I don’t give a flying fuck what you believe. Believe what you want.

We believe that the government would like to see us die. We cannot be convinced otherwise. We also believe from the bottom of our hearts that it was the US government that unleashed the AIDS virus. Most people have no idea the extent to which the American government is malevolent.

Oh, but no.

Oh, but yes.

We do not care if you believe it. We believe it.

I do.

When your entire life is spent in pursuit of HIV drugs, you can easily become exhausted with the imprisonment of the process. It is all consuming. We are tired of being treated like a piece of turd.

We are fatigued. It is a constant state of – now what. We want to be released from these chains.

Keeping the river of HIV meds flowing is a 24-7 JOB. How do you keep a REAL job, and do this.

They WANT you to fail. Failure is built right into the system.

The pills swirled in water just like shit.

It’s like watching someone else become reduced to the status of a thing.

You better do what we say or else.

This is the same dog and pony show refrain we have always had thrown at us and we are quite good at recognizing it.

You are a thing, now.  The someone else is you.

The authoritarian attitude we are treated with is not the way to reach us. Or anyone. We want out. Just out. They cannot make us take those medications unless you want to hold us down, shoving that fucking crap down our throats. We don’t want to be here. Our suicide is on us.

Us.

The constant medical appointments we cannot make because the one and only HIV clinic in the state is just so far away. Simply getting out of the mountain snow to an Interstate highway is often an overwhelming effort especially when the snow drifts are twice the size of a jeep.

Most communities do not want an HIV clinic anywhere near them. The stigma is breathtaking.

The AIDS Orgs will tell you that the whole process is easy. A piece of cake. HIV can be managed.

This is disingenuous. HIV will manage you.

Federal funding depends on how well the AIDS drones tell their smiling lies. They are a dime a dozen. There is nothing they can say that would cause us to believe anything that comes out of their disingenuous pie holes.

What they care about is their nonprofit jobs. 

They have nothing going on for the hard to reach. They want you to go away and die like a compliant, good little corpse.

Fine with us. We just don’t care. 

We are tired of being told by the HIV pharmacy that there are no antiretrovirals today. Come back another day. Maybe another week. Go back home to your rabbit hole. This having driven there in four-wheel-drive (slowly) for hours. You cannot call them because their phone number is a secret. We do not always come back tomorrow because the price of gas prohibits it.

We are tired of having some idiot’s finger shoved up our ass at every turn.

We are tired of hospital gowns.

We are tired of being told to shut the fuck up.

We are tired of cops with guns roaming around the clinic halls. This makes African-American boys in our group extraordinarily nervous. Cops with guns are inappropriate in a clinic.

We spend a majority of our time just trying to get the antiretrovirals. We are uniformly depressed and dog-weary with it.

Keeping the river of HIV meds flowing is a 24-7 JOB. How do you keep a REAL job, and do this.

We are tired of the financial cost.

We are tired of begging at the Big Pharma gates of shattered deliverance.

We are done with it.

Fuck this. It’s not a life. It’s a rat race with a government that wants us to bury ourselves. Problem solved.

The real problems have not begun.

Keeping the river of HIV meds flowing is a 24-7 JOB. How do you keep a REAL job, and do this.

You don’t. If they tell you that it’s as easy as playing frisbee in the park with the dog, they’re lying through their teeth again.

There is very little quality of life living with and procuring these medications. It’s difficult to impossible.

If it’s quality of life you’re looking for, think about death with at least some dignity.

It might be the only thing you do that’s worth it.

https://tim-barrus.format.com/about