Abstract:
This article uses oral history to explore the challenges HIV-positive gay men continue to face in the aftermath of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, drawing on a selection of original life story interviews conducted with Australian gay men who were diagnosed when HIV was a terminal condition. While the histories focused on narrators’ pasts, many used the interviews to discuss continuing issues with the debilitating physical effects of antiretroviral medication. Such topics are usually silenced by embarrassment, lack of an engaged audience and suggestions that, unlike many who were also diagnosed with HIV as a terminal condition, they are fortunate to be alive. The article considers how the author’s subjectivity influenced which stories narrators felt comfortable telling and which they suppressed.