Homecomings: A Meditation on Military Medicine and HIV

“I wonder why he’s home.” I was surprised to see Phillip’s small red car sitting in our driveway when I stepped out of the school bus. My brother, now in his thirties, had been away in the Navy since I was six years old, and normally only visited for special occasions. After dropping my books onto my bed, I slipped as quietly as I could into the living room where he and Ma were sitting.

“Hey, Pipsqueak!” Phillip stood to greet me with a gap-toothed grin and open arms. Silly as always, he chose this nickname on the spot to comment ironically on my lanky 5’7” frame. Even though I had experienced a growth spurt since he had last seen me, I would never be as tall as he was. I fell into his chest and hugged him. He felt unusually pudgy.

“What’d you learn today?” He asked as he settled his gangly frame onto the sofa. I felt cold beads of sweat rolling down my back, as his direct attention made me shy. To buy some time, I looked at Ma before answering.

“Hey there.” Ma smiled with a gap identical to Phillip’s. She managed to peel her eyes away from the television screen and look at me just as the soap opera’s cliffhanger faded into a commercial.

“Well?” Phillip’s long arms draped his knees as he leaned toward me. “Anything new?”

Sure, I was learning all kinds of things, but none of it was speakable. The year was 1987 and I was an active member of my tenth-grade class: I ran track, sang in the choir, and wrote for the school newspaper. But lurking behind my nerdy church-girl presentation was an imagination that could gallop like an unbroken mare. Once she was let loose in my dreams, the mare bolted across all kinds of naughty terrain. My body’s eager response to such fantastical rides betrayed my religious upbringing in ways that confused and shamed me. Had my day not been thrown off course by Philip’s surprise visit, I probably would have already taken advantage of having the bedroom to myself while my younger sister Kim worked after school. Usually, I would sit on my twin bed and furiously chronicle, in code, the highlights of the day. Much space was dedicated to recalling what it took to stealthily smell Edith’s skin as she spilled to me her latest adventure with a boy. There was a slew of popular athletes vying for her attention that year, and she was testing out their kissing abilities before deciding which one was worthy. During lunch period or downtime in track practice, she indulged all of my prying questions with delicious detail about whose kissing technique was better or which boy’s hands were allowed to roam further than others. On the best days, she demonstrated with a quick touch of my leg or a brief back caress as part of the storytelling. Undoubtedly that school day had contained an array of lectures and tests, song rehearsals, and life lessons delivered through running metaphors that I might have mentioned to Phillip. Nevertheless, all I had retained was the realization that Edith smelled like cherry almond lotion, even when she sweated.

“I can’t think of nothing interesting, really.” I shrugged and fingered the loose threads dangling from the sofa cushion. “What about you? How long you here for?”
“I changed jobs, Pipsqueak.” He flashed another smile, leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “Here to stay.”

I don’t remember much else. Perhaps I pressed him for details and have forgotten them over the years. It’s also possible my attention was already heading out the door as he explained how his new career as a truck driver was a logical extension of his training in military payroll and accounting systems. Truth be told, the self-absorbed teen that I was then, full of self-loathing and desperate loneliness, carried a feeling of estrangement from him and Ma. They could never know me nor I them. When I think about it now, it didn’t even occur to me to seek Phillip’s counsel before I decided to enlist a few years later. Didn’t ask what it might be like before trading places with him. What I know for sure is, no one uttered the word “AIDS” aloud to me until Phillip was clearly at the end of his life. At the age of 38. By then, I was stationed at a naval base 800 miles away. And for some time, that acronym, wrapped as it was in whispers and innuendo when spoken, was all the explanation I needed for how and why his career was upended halfway to retirement. Until that tiny sliver of information wasn’t satisfactory anymore.

What follows is a work of creative nonfiction that weaves together memory and academic research to tell a story about the Department of Defense’s (DOD) HIV/ AIDS policy and its implementation in a homophobic military environment between 1985 and 2000. This meditation on some of the ways African American men were impacted by these policies focuses on my biological brother, Phillip, just introduced, as well as Christopher and Langston, two chosen brothers with whom I served. Even though I am not in the HIV-positive population, as a black lesbian veteran who served in the era of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, I had the shared experience of working under the ever-looming threat of stigmatization and expulsion, as neither of us understood ourselves as straight. The stories I tell here also touch upon the homophobic environments we traversed in our lives outside of the military — structural, familial, and internalized — that shaped what it meant for us to come home, be home, or make a home for ourselves. This is my testimony of black queer love and struggle amidst such contending forces, and against the backdrop of a changing landscape in which the federal government initially seeks to banish and, later, to regulate queer sexuality within its ranks. I was there. I suffered.

I

Phillip was among the estimated hundreds of thousands of federal employees who lost their careers after the first gay-exclusion laws were established in the 1940s, and his HIV diagnosis overlaps with the height of the AIDS panic inside and outside of military culture. The longstanding logics of sin, sickness, and criminality that governed mainstream institutions’ understanding of gay sex and desire also informed their reactions to the so-called “gay disease.” Journalist Randy Shilts reveals the links between homophobia and AIDS panic in his research of military discharges in Pentagon records. Notably, Shilts found that anti-gay harassment by military investigators intensified between 1986 and 1990, during which the military conducted 3,663 investigations into the private lives of its active duty members. By his estimation, in a ten-year period, more than 14,000 people were “summarily ejected” after it was determined that they were gay or lesbian. Simultaneously, in the midst of this purge, “when the first AIDS cases appeared in the armed forces, the initial response was to simply discharge anyone with the disease on the assumption that if they were sick, they must be gay.”1 The timing and fervency of 1986 is significant because, as of October 1985, the DOD had initiated its workforce-wide mandatory HIV screening program. It was written into the policy that no one should be discharged on the grounds of a seropositive status alone but, as Shilts points out, the understanding of AIDS as a gay men’s disease meant the status was used as proof of other dischargeable offenses.2

If someone with HIV manages to avoid anti-gay prosecution, other aspects of the policy can still jeopardize their/her/his livlihood. While they can remain on active duty as long as they meet the standards for service and promotion, HIV-positive sailors are immediately relegated to a category of restricted workers. Not maliciously so; the restrictions stem from justified concerns for access to sufficient medical care. They are prohibited from serving in combat zones, or overseas deployments, and from assignments aboard ships.3 Consequently, workers in the restricted class become less competitive because they are cut off from training opportunities, and suddenly have fewer prospects for leadership roles or field experience—the fundamentals on which professional evaluations are based. In some cases, being placed on permanent shore duty effectively removes some people from their occupational field altogether.

The DOD policy of creating a restricted class also leads to social consequences. Base commanders, some medical staff, and department supervisors must be notified, albeit confidentially, when their subordinate is flagged for sudden reassignment. But others on the team, by law, get no transparent explanation; they must draw their own conclusions. This m'elange of knowledge-holding and supposition in one location became zones in which investigations into suspected homosexual behavior were triggered, especially in the years between 1986 and 1990, when presence of the “gay disease” is treated as cause for suspicion and evidence of a crime. Add to this how the Navy’s analysis of its own disciplinary data found that black people have the highest prosecution rates among all racial groups and across the spectrum of activities defined as misconduct by the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), and we can see how high the odds were stacked against black gay or bisexual men with HIV.4 It was with this context in mind that I requested Phillip’s personnel record from the National Archives and set out to decode the official narrative.

In January 1987, while stationed in San Diego, California, he was charged with violating Article 108 of the UCMJ because he lost his identification card. Article 108: Destruction of Government Property is a capacious clause that applies to loss, theft, damage, and misappropriation of military funds and materiel, but its use in this context is a red flag. To say this another way, instead of generating the routine paperwork necessary to swiftly replace the card, Phillip’s supervisor apparently found this negligence so egregious as to warrant a captain’s mast.5 Because preparation for captain’s mast necessitates evidence gathering, this was likely the pretext to zealously interrogate Phillip’s social life outside of the workplace. Consequently, within ninety days, he was discharged for the “commission of a serious offence” after being found guilty of Article 108 and two other allegations, which I discuss below. According to the missive sent from the San Diego command to the Bureau of Naval Personnel:

During the investigation into the possible location and cause of the loss, [Phillip] revealed that he was in a place that was off-limits to military personnel, a sex video arcade which he knew was off limits to military personnel. He admits to committing a homosexual act at the arcade. He is sure that his AFID card, which was in his wallet, must [have] fallen out of his pocket while in the arcade. Homosexuality cannot be tolerated in the Naval service. It is a strong detriment to the good order and discipline of the Navy. I strongly recommend [he] be discharged under honorable conditions.

The reference to off-limits zones is the result of a long history of the military’s efforts to control the off-duty behavior of its members. The influx of the Navy workforce in the aftermath of WWII created a strong economic dynamism in California’s port cities, and was central to the development of men’s social spaces and gay enclaves.6 By the time Phillip was transferred to San Diego in 1984, the naval police force had three decades’ worth of expertise in identifying and declaring certain queer-friendly establishments and geographic zones as forbidden to sailors. Surely he had been warned. So, why didn’t Phillip lie about his whereabouts in order to keep his job? Lying just beneath the surface of the flat, curt prose of the official narrative hides the coercive practices that often enabled such career-ending confessions. In a book that resulted from Shilts’ initial reporting on the subject, he surveys the interrogation techniques outlined in military manuals and finds that “Army, Air Force, Marines, and Navy all indicate that homosexuals are dealt with as the worst kind of criminal suspects.”7 Citing directly from one of the manuals, Shilts details how folks in this category of suspects were to be treated as “the most nefarious criminals” who, when interviewed, are to be

convinced by the investigator that his guilt can be easily established by testimony or available evidence. The investigator should point out to the suspect the futility of denying his guilt. The suspect should be confronted at every turn with testimony and evidence to refute his alibis, that his guilt is definitely a matter against no lies will defend.8

Such instructions lead one to wonder how many convincing lies the investigators told Phillip. He revealed, the master narrative states. How many witnesses did they concoct to persuade him they had already discovered where and with whom he had been? He admits. How long was he able to hold out under such pressure? He is sure. On these significant details, the official record is silent.

The other offenses included in the conviction were Article 126: Sodomy, and Article 92: Failure to Obey a Lawful Order; the latter offense is likely connected to his HIV status. My conjecture here is that since Phillip’s status was already known to his upper-level supervisors (as is required), his sexuality and morality were already questionable. My suspicion is based on notations in his record that signal his reclassification into the restricted group. Within two years of arriving, he was transferred from his initial shipboard assignment in San Diego, to a ten-day inpatient stay at the nearby naval hospital. A thirty-day gap then appears between the transfer from the hospital to his check-in at an adjacent shore-duty command. Following Shilts’ findings, once someone in the investigative division was made aware of Phillip’s health-related reclassification, they would have assumed he was also a “nefarious” sexual criminal. And this is how a simple ID card replacement can be transformed into an opportunity for career sabotage. Also worth noting is his prosecution in 1987 occurred when legal systems nationwide were beginning to single out (from other sexually transmitted and incurable infections) acts of exposure and transmission of HIV in ways that continue to ensnare people with legal problems today.9

The Article 92 charge could simply be piled onto the others because Phillip visited one of the gay-friendly zones of San Diego. However, in cases like these, the disobedience charge sometimes alludes to violation of the “safe-sex order,” which is part of the counseling procedure that accompanies notification of the positive test result. The servicemember signs a sworn statement in which they agree to 1) verbally disclose their HIV status to all healthcare professionals when being treated; 2) to also divulge to all potential sexual partners in advance of any sexual act; and 3) when participating in sexual activities, to use appropriate prophylactic barriers. The safe-sex directive effectively functions as a universal and perpetual restraining order against sexual freedom that renders the consent and bodily autonomy of the military person’s sexual partners as worthless. As far as the UCMJ is concerned, the fact of the sexual partner’s desire to take risks with their/ her/his body is irrelevant and cannot be used to lessen the severity when charges of exposure are brought against someone. This logic has been reinforced through several court cases; military prosecutors have successfully garnered convictions of serious charges when the safe-sex order was in place, such as aggravated assault or reckless endangerment, even in heterosexual situations with informed, consenting partners and regardless of whether transmission had actually occurred.10

In the broad view of Phillip’s situation, we can see the confluence of racial, sexual, and HIV discrimination, whereby the black sailor is statistically more likely to face charges, the queer sailor is “confronted at every turn” with presumed depravity, and the HIV-positive sailor is always already a source of deadly contamination. This is why he would find himself back home in Texas. I wonder if he was able to find sanctuary there.

In my mind’s eye, I see myself and Phillip bypassing each other in revolving-door fashion. He entered Ma’s house in disgraced manhood, searching for redemption. Or, perhaps, yearning for his mother’s tenderhearted company as he settled into civilian life again. I, on the other hand, exited in quiet desperation, slinking away in a blue mist of failure. Notifications of academic suspension and revoked college scholarships stuffed deep into my pocket. It was a tiny town but it was my whole world rolling past me in the large windows of the Greyhound bus as I headed to the military processing station in Houston. The year was 1990.

Soon after enlisting, I developed a political awareness because Bill Clinton campaigned for the presidency on a promise to end anti-gay investigations and to outlaw enlistment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Was it true? We wondered. We hoped. But it was not to be. By the time of Phillip’s passing in 1993, the recently elected Pres. Clinton had hit “the wall of tradition.”11 It was too risky, this tradition held, to intentionally and overtly treat straight, gay, and bisexual employees as equals under the law. What we got instead was “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” (DADT), a law that coerced us into the same silence and duplicity that had gripped previous generations.12 Although this ostensibly meant that new recruits and active duty members could no longer be compelled to reveal their sexual orientation or histories, we were still obligated to present ourselves as straight (in word and deed). The responsibility fell on us to avoid provoking suspicion. As one contemporaneous New York Times editorial points out, if the goal was fairness and protection for the gay/bi military members, the compromise of DADT failed. The author argues that missing from the law was a correlated set of “good comradeship” guidelines that would spread the responsibility for upholding the fiction of a straights-only workforce to everyone, and carry equally heavy penalties if broken. Not only should it be unbecoming to intrude on someone’s privacy by asking outright about their sexuality, he writes, but the law should also prohibit related behaviors, such as: “Don’t surmise. Don’t betray. Don’t traduce. Don’t blackmail. Don’t coerce. Don’t impede [and] Don’t demote.”13 Unfortunately, this version of fairness and fidelity was neither encouraged nor expected in military culture. By 2009, more than 13,000 individuals were discharged for their unacceptable sexual orientation.14

II

I met Christopher in a naval hospital in Florida as DADT was still being debated in Congress. Before our lives intersected, he had already endured two separate investigations. Adhering to the advice of others who had survived it, Christopher held strong against the investigators. Yet the mere existence of the accusations was enough, he believed, to mark him in the gossip mill as ‘probably gay,’ and thereby negatively impact how he was treated in the workplace. The third time he was unsuccessfully investigated, it involved me, our small circle of work friends, and some poorly chosen words in an intranet email message. Although these distressing and embarrassing experiences did not hinder us from maintaining a gay/lesbian social life, we became worn down, embittered and unconfident at work. We grew to hate being subject to the Navy’s control, even as we clung to it for financial survival.

Our disenchantment manifested as small rebellions that we called “pulling stunts.” The term was used in black gay culture to refer to a spectrum of deviant or outlandish deeds. I would, for example, wear brightly colored panties under my see-through white uniform, when the regulations plainly stated I should wear white ones. Perhaps because his disillusionment was further advanced than mine, Christopher’s stunts were also on another level of defiance. His work ethic began to slouch. For example, it became routine for him to report to work 15 minutes into his shift, when the norm was to arrive fifteen minutes before it began. We immaturely and laughingly skipped together through a self-defeating cycle of mischief, reprimand, malcontentment, misbehavior, and more reprimand. The church girl in me would quickly grow weary of the negative attention I was reaping. Deep down, I desired to be forgiven and brought back into the fold. Soon, my rebellious spirit fizzled out. Although Christopher was raised by church folk, he could not relate to my need for absolution. His damaging reports continued to accumulate, to the extent that he was recommended for administrative discharge due to behavioral issues. However, the recommendation would not finish meandering through the bureaucratic process before he was diagnosed with AIDS and awarded a medical disability status. His fingernails were chewed down to bloody tips in the days leading up to his return to Louisiana.

“You coming next week, yeah?” After some months back home, his accent was thicker than I’d ever heard it. He was was sticking “yeah” at the end of every other statement in a way that was peculiar to his neck of the South. We were planning my second visit.
“You know it!” I confirmed. “And this time, have your pallet ready before I get there.”

We cackled at the memory of my first visit to his grandmother’s house. Being reunited made us so giddy, we gave no thought to sharing a bed so we could gossip deep into the night. It would feel like the carefree days of dropping off to sleep next to each other after a night at the club. So, upon my arrival, he plopped my bag in the corner of his bedroom. When evening set in, I showered and pulled out a book to read in his large bed, waiting for him to do the same. When the sound of running water stopped, he hardly had time to dry off before Mrs. Simmons called him to her room at the end of the hallway. When he reemerged a few minutes later holding a bundle of linens and a pillow, he signaled with a toss of his head for me to follow. Once in the living room and hopefully out of Mrs. Simmons’ earshot, he dramatically reenacted the conversation. (Apparently, she likes to repeat words for emphasis.) She needed him to know she felt disrespected—Disrespected! By the outrageous notion that we would sleep together. Together?!? Under her roof? Since she didn’t want company to hear her use profanity, she directed him to close the door before releasing a string of curse words longer than Christmas lights. He knew instinctively to hang his head low and murmur apologetically that she had raised him to know better. In closing, she waived a righteous, red-polished finger in his face to punctuate her warning against any ‘funny business,’ before ordering him to make a pallet on the living room floor. We would have to create privacy the next day by sitting in my car in the driveway.

As we planned for my second visit, he expressed some ambivalence but did not articulate why. And I didn’t probe too much. I assumed he was in another one of his depressive moods and feeling unworthy of the time he would ‘steal’ from Ma; I was stopping over to see him on my way to Texas for Christmas. Our conversations during this period were crowded with his complaints about how, as his physical appearance changed, Mrs. Simmons increasingly concealed him from the outside world. She no longer allowed him to drive and she refused to take him to church or other community events with her, even though she was heavily involved in civic organizations. To make things worse, the one other gay man he knew in the neighborhood had stopped returning his calls. This state of affairs reduced his social life to speaking to me by phone and occasional visits from his younger sister Charity. A recent LSU undergrad, Charity lived with her adoptive parents in a different part of town. Although they maintained a close relationship, he would eventually become too discouraged to visit Charity in her residence when, tearfully, she disclosed how her parents applied disinfectant spray to her mattress, and insisted she flip it over after she had permitted Christopher to take a nap on her bed. Still, she made time every few weeks to drive him around town so he could observe the scenery from the passenger window.

When I finally stepped out of the car for my second visit, I was confronted by the reality from which he had sought to protect me. The Cross Colours hoodie that once complemented his broad shoulders now shrouded an emaciated frame. His dimpled cheeks, forehead, and neck were overrun by a raging rash of poison ivy. Eyes too big for such a taut angular face followed my reaction while I took it all in. Legs like twigs jutted out of the knee-length pantlegs into his Timberland boots. Signs of the rash were visible on his shins, too. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until he wrapped me in his arms and rubbed my back.

“The sickness is taking a toll on me, yeah.”

Later, he talked incessantly while I nodded in agreement, only half hearing. Maybe he could tell I was struggling. Hearing the familiar tone of his voice calmed my racing heart but, for the first time in my life, words failed me. From that initial encounter with his physical deterioration and in several moments over the course of the weekend, a scream would rush up from the bottom of my throat and try to push its way past my tightly closed lips. I can only describe it as a creeping horror that threatened to consume me. I was insomniatic for the entire 2-day stopover.

“There aint nothing and nobody here for me.” Christopher complained, as he flicked his cigarette butt out onto the well-manicured lawn. We sat in the front seat of my car with the doors of my car open. Both of us sat with one foot touching the cement pavement. “Sometimes I wanna swallow that whole goddam bag of pills, yeah. Just so I don’t have to look at alla them looking at me.” He scratched his thigh through the denim pant leg for a bit, then retrieved another cigarette from his pocket and lit it. Deeply inhaled.

I never knew how to respond when he was low like this, because the list of grievances was long. The side effects of the drug cocktail caused abdominal pain that regularly disturbed his sleep. His appetite for Mrs. Simmons’ cooking was a distant memory, and any prolonged activity, even when he used the assistive walking device, caused dizziness and stumbling. Charity was becoming unreliable and sparse in her visits. The disability check delivered in a brown government envelope every month was the only thing to look forward to, but lately he just turned it over to his grandmother. Knowing this, I couldn’t scrape together any convincing reasons for prolonging his life that didn’t involve my own fear-driven need for him to always answer the phone when I called. I just sat there. Fatigued from lack of sleep and plotting my early-morning departure. Christopher would not see his twenty-ninth birthday. He was gone by April. The year was 1996.

Like the rest of the guests at the repast, I was a captive audience to the nonstop tales of his childhood that spilled from the tear-streaked birth mother. A recovering alcoholic still new to sobriety, Colette sat leaning over the round coffee table, shuffling through a stack of photos of Christopher at various stages. Each image triggered a new anecdote. She no longer stopped to ask if we wanted to see any of the pictures; she just handed each one to the nearest person, as she moved on to the next in the stack. Staring at her profile from a chair in the corner, I was reminded of how Christopher’s voice broke as he reminisced about the weekend they spent together shortly after I last saw him.

He and Colette had grown up together as siblings; the truth of his parentage was kept secret from him until he was fifteen. In the same breath, he learned his favorite cousin, Charity, was actually his sister. Afterwards, he began to perceive his entire family as a cast of imposters in the longest running prank ever staged and blamed them for his difficulty in building trusting relationships. But he was able to reach something akin to peace with Colette that weekend in the recent past. She had slept in bed with him. Held his hand. Massaged his scalp. Opened herself to his searing questions. Those tender nights took up residency in his memory and soothed him, long after she packed up the tiny car with the roaring engine and drove it back to Shreveport.

III

Some of us did not die. I was there. I saw.

Langston and I became coworkers circa 1994, shortly after I returned to Florida from an 18-month stint in Illinois for pharmacy technician training. With the advanced specialty, I was able to avoid the rotation around the various hospital departments that Christopher and I had grown to so abhor. From the first day in my new workstation, I had sensed Langston was ‘family.’ Sure enough, within weeks, we happened upon each other on what was fondly called ‘black night’ at the gay bar. We’ve been kinfolk ever since.

There’s a saying: “Uncle Sam will get what he wants from you, so you better get yours, too.” People I knew used it as shorthand to address the sense of entrapment one can feel when the truth of your arrangement with the government crystalizes in your consciousness. Not until you enter basic training is it explained in detail how this field of employment requires you to relinquish many of the rights your job purportedly exists to defend. The most glaring loss is the ability to terminate the job contract, should you find military life unsuitable. Once locked into a term agreement, you must uphold your responsibilities until the commitment is met, or be punished. The difficulty black queer folks face is, as I hope I have shown, we are a population too easily and too often pushed out of the armed forces, even when we prefer to remain. You cannot decide for yourself to leave early and others decide whether you will be allowed to stay. In this context, “get yours” counsels the listener to seize as many entitlements and benefits as possible to enhance your life — and to make whatever compromises you must to exit the military with your dignity intact.

In many ways, Langston modeled this way of thinking. Even though he’s four months younger than I am, he had been in the service a year longer and had already traveled overseas when we met. He was also a homeowner and part-time college student. For sure, I was not the only person in our workplace with a notion about his queerness, but those murmurs were quieted by his impressive efficiency, productiveness, and leadership skills. In corporate speak, he firmly established his value to the organization. Admired by peers and supervisors alike, Langston blew into muster every day in a breeze of Cool Water cologne, commanding respect in a stiffly ironed uniform and gleaming black shoes. His inner fashion queen, which bloomed outside of work hours, was only hinted at by the choice of garish Gucci sunglasses and flashy diamond jewelry. In vernacular expression, he was un-fuckwidable. Needless to say, he and I perceived of ourselves and were perceived by others very differently.

Over time, his affection and mentorship would help restore my sense of ambition. I, too, he reminded me, needed to get mine before Uncle Sam was done with me. As a result, I enrolled in a nearby college. Made new friends. Expanded my social circle. Uhauled with a new lover. Even ironed my uniform once or twice. Sometimes my life in black lesbian culture overlapped with Langston’s immersion in gay male social circles — trips to Freaknic and Atlanta Black Pride come to mind — but mostly we made time for each other one-to-one. We commonly say we grew up together; leaned on each other through the ‘second adolescence’ of our queer coming of age. We also lived together intermittently over the years; usually when one of us was between relationships. We were bushy-tailed twentysomethings when his crushing news arrived.

Langston’s diagnosis was devastating, but the prognosis was hopeful. By this time in 1997, HIV treatment protocol had shifted into the post-AZT era, characterized by protease inhibitors and new understandings of viral loads.15 The killer plague was now a chronic manageable condition for those who had access to the most recent therapies, which included the military population.

Mercifully, Langston’s experiences dwell on the upside of military medicine. The institutional changes helped diminish the antagonistic environment in which Phillip’s diagnosis took place, for example, even though systemic anti-gay discrimination would not be curtailed until the repeal of DADT in 2011. Plus, unlike Christopher, Langston had not been stigmatized and disheartened by multiple investigations. Rather, he was able to attain his bachelor’s degree and excel in his occupation, in spite of the innuendo and speculation we knew floated around the Pharmacy Department. Also, when the diagnosis occurred, he was not added (as far as we know) to anyone’s target list in the office of investigative services for evidence-gathering purposes. Instead, Langston was restricted to shore duty, as was protocol, and placed in a confidential clinical trials cohort in the National Naval Medical Center Bethesda, MD, part of the broader Military HIV Research Program (MHRP).

Today, he is a small business owner on the west coast. To get his input on this piece, we arranged a video chat that I recorded and transcribed. In what follows, I use excerpts from our conversation to provide an insider’s view of the MHRP. We also discuss how and why he accessed informal support networks after he was discharged with medical disability.

The MHRP began in 1986, in tandem with the mandatory HIV testing protocols. In a 2010 report published in AIDS Research and Therapy, Vincent Marconi summarizes the significance and uniqueness of the program as one of the few sites of universal access to comprehensive care in the US:

The military medical system provides comprehensive HIV education, care and treatment, including the provision of antiretrovirals and regular visits with HIV clinicians at medical treatment facilities at no cost to the patient. Mandatory periodic HIV screening … allows treatment initiation to be considered at an early stage of infection. Active duty personnel are required to attend the military treatment facility at least twice yearly for formal medical evaluations. Following retirement from active duty, or separation for medical disability, all individuals retain health benefits and may continue participation in the cohort study while receiving their primary HIV care either within or outside of the military healthcare system. [ … ] Thus, many of the factors which typically hinder the clinical response to HAART [highly active antiretroviral therapy] in most North American cohorts, such as IDU [injection drug use], homelessness and unemployment, are minimized or eliminated in the military setting.16

Following the initial counseling session and safe-sex order on our base, all of Langston’s medical treatment would take place in Bethesda. From 1997 to 2000, he was sent there on 7-day duty assignments on a quarterly basis.

The first exchange we had is about how the culture of confidentiality was reinforced and his memories of privileged access to comprehensive care:

Langston: First of all, you would walk on the side of Bethesda Hospital that is strictly for the HIV unit. So everybody who went there probably knew that’s what it was, because only certain people, if you were part of the Jackson Foundation,17 could go to a certain side as a security measure. Inside, they had all this information around about HIV. They assigned you to a counselor. They took your blood. They had just started [paying attention to] the viral load, so they were testing for that, and they were getting medications that people on the outside weren’t getting. So, when you checked in, you would see your counselor—everybody had a social worker— and you had to answer questions about your sexual activity, the people you had sex with, and you had to sign an agreement that you would not say anything about the people who were coming inside the clinic. It felt very good because you had a specific doctor who you would talk to. It was a doctor that you knew; they would call you back at home and check on you to see what meds you were on. It was intensive and I thought it was good because they were checking everything on my body: fingernails, skin, urine, and up to eight vials of blood.

MM: Other than checking on you emotionally, were they giving you feedback on the tests?

Langston: Yes. Every time you’d go there, they give you feedback on the tests. They were doing genotyping; so, they were looking at the genes and the strain that you had. Luckily, they knew [from blood analysis] that the person I had contracted it from already had HIV drugs in their system, because of the different DNA, so they knew certain drugs weren’t gonna work [on me]. So, they gave me a drug cocktail and then when nothing happened, then they wanted to see me again. They wanted to put me on something else because they wanted it to (snaps fingers) zap out to a zero viral load. The one-stop shop became a support system and I could tell them anything. It was nice and I made some lifelong friends.

MM: When you say you could tell them anything, what do you mean? Because we were still deep in the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell period …

Langston: Yeah, but behind those doors, they wanted to know. They needed raw information.

MM: How many different prescriptions would you say you’ve gone through since the initial stages of when they were trying to figure out your strain?

Langston: That whole time, I think I went through four different sets of medicines. During the first three years, they were actually getting me sick [with side effects] and my last change was maybe six to seven months ago. It’s just one pill [now]. I’m so used to taking three pills [at a time] for so many years, and they’re saying everything is good but I’m thinking, “Am I really okay?”

MM: You’re wondering, “Is this one gonna do it?”

Langston: yeah, girl (laughs). I wanna make sure I’m good.

Soon, Langston would meet Gregg and Rico in this cohort. They had been diagnosed in the same testing cycle as he was, were from similar family backgrounds and, it turns out, were also stationed on the same large base in Florida. A friendship quickly formed and, as the bond intensified, their social lives became entwined outside of the clinical space. However, the fear of raising eyebrows and presumption of guilt-by-association caused them to keep their special companionship private:

We ended up becoming best friends. These are people who I know were from small towns, who I know how their parents think, and who know how it feels to be black and gay and trying not to be out in the black community. And we were in the military; we couldn’t stand out [present as gay] there either! So, we kept our uniforms pressed and we were friends on the low.

Due to debilitating side effects during his treatment trials, Langston would eventually qualify for a medical disability discharge. In 2000, he transitioned to the Veterans Administration health system in New York City, where he found a disappointing contrast to Bethesda. His experiences underscore Marconi’s point above regarding the exceptional quality of information, access, and care active-duty patients receive in the MHRP. Langston remembers experiencing “culture shock” at what the average civilian patient might call the usual routine: “I was so used to having everything on the planet! The VA [medical care] did not have counseling; they just weren’t up on knowing. For a while, I was going to both the VA and the [Bethesda] Jackson Foundation, and I could pass on to the VA what the Foundation was saying.”

He would relocate multiple times in search of the right city in which to launch his business. As he did so, he also encountered the VA system’s inconsistencies. “In Atlanta, it was better because they were also teaching and doing research, and it was more of what I was used to,” he recalls. “In LA, they just review my profile and read the charts. I was used to them checking under my nuts and my fingernails! (laughs) But here, the doctor reads the chart before they come in the room, and they tell me to keep doing whatever I’m doing because my viral load is at undetectable levels.”

To compensate for the discrepancies, Langston learned to rely on a whisper network among black gay HIV-positive men to find other avenues of assistance. The way it works is, a newcomer to Brooklyn, for example, is linked with someone knowledgeable about state-level programs who could advise about housing programs and food benefits, and which treatment centers or individual practitioners provided the best delivery of services. Or, the person might caution against specific office locations because of the homophobic reputation of the staff. In the early 2000s, in his thirties, Langston was considered a sage elder in the informal HIV support network of Atlanta. He recaps some of the ways he was furtively approached:

Friends have taken me around other people they know. And while we’re all together, they may mention something like, “Hey, you should talk to Langston.” They would then share the dreaded news. Then, I would tell them they need to know which doctors to go to; they need to find out about this foundation over here; and they should check into some benefits online. It’s almost like a secret network because you can’t tell people’s business, but you can say, “Langston would know.” Some people, when they find out about a new person, they just point to me and say “Hey, you should be okay because he’s healthy.”

His story exemplifies what can happen when black men who love black men are generous and tender with each other in times of danger. They design and pass down survival strategies. They make a world together. And he’s right: he is a model of optimism for people living with HIV and for those of us who love them. Better yet, he’s thriving on multiple levels of professional and family life. Nonetheless, as our conversation wound down, a familiar melancholy rose up between us. Our sojourn through memory lane always requires that we pass the graveyard, doesn’t it, Langston? Too many headstones in our path. Phillip. Christopher. Randy. Louis. Derek. Gregg. Serapis. Henry. Jose. Maybe Alice Walker was right to declare the way forward is with a broken heart.

IV

As for how things turned out for me, I finally figured out how to get mine. The first four years in ‘the service,’ as Ma would say, were the shedding years. I was able to shed most of the miseducation passed down by well-meaning people who loved me. They had taught me to fear and reject the wild mare of my imagination, when what I really needed was to mount her and let her find her stride. When I did, she transported me to ideas, relationships, and locales that would reintroduce me to better versions of myself. And let me find my stride. The last tour of duty encompassed the preparational years. A community of women in the black queer military underground fed, protected, and surrounded me with wise counsel. I left their nest with a set of intellectual, emotional, and financial tools sufficient to plan a life and civilian career of my choosing. On my own terms.

V

My testimony here blends first-person and family memories with a scholarly exploration of antigay military culture, Department of Defense HIV policy, and the impacts on African American men from 1985 to 2000. Certainly, the government can only reflect the people who occupy its halls. So, depending on the period of service, the era of knowledge about HIV/AIDS, and developments in pharmaceutical therapies, the environment inside the military was no more or less toxic than civilian employers regarding hostility toward same-sex behaviors and lesbian/gay identities. Some of us lived with don’t ask, don’t tell in our family dynamics long before joining the Navy, which made it hard to be “at home” in those relationships, too. However, once inside the belly of the callous, sluggish, monstropolous beast of an institution, we marshaled the emotional richness or, to borrow from Kiese Laymon, the black abundance that endows our homemaking and homekeeping practices. We dwell in our connectedness. May we always be homecoming.