(INTERVIEW Part 1) Krystal Kleer on being young and HIV positive

Krystal in a magazine shoot from early 2014.

HIV, and its ugly progressive state A.I.D.S, need no introduction – least of all to the gay community. It tore through the gay and male population in the 80s and 90s, decimating the lives and livelihoods of Gay Men and MSMs (Men who have Sex with Men) across the globe.

These days HIV is treated (but never cured) by a daily cocktail of antiretroviral drugs which, if used effectively, can reduce the infection to entirely non-threatening and ‘un-detectable’ levels. Simply put, thanks to the aforementioned medications and a growing culture of testing regularly and consistent condom use,  HIV is no-longer a death sentence.

Still, there can however be an unfortunate attitude that relegates HIV infection and AIDS to a ‘past event’ or even an ‘older persons disease’, with many younger gay men not paying enough attention to the dangers of unprotected sex and unwise lifestyle choices (such as the sharing of needles). ‘Krystal Kleer’ (alter ego Jasper), a professional Drag Queen from Sydney Australia, found out the hard way that the ‘queer youth’ of today are far from invincible when it comes to the scourge of HIV, so I sat down with her recently to have a chat about what it’s like to be a young and HIV positive man.

So tell me Krystal, first things first – when did you discover you were HIV positive?

“On the 15th of october 2014”

When do you think you contracted it? Can you walk me through how you were feeling in the weeks / months leading up to your official diagnosis?

“I can’t remember the date I contracted it, but I know who it was. I had recently still been sleeping with my ex-boyfriend at the time, but the last time we’d had sex was a while before I slept with he man who gave it to me. I’m a little cloudy about the earlier feelings, but as the weeks before my diagnosis progressed my body was falling apart (as it usually does when you first contract hiv). You become very viral, then it completely drops  or plateaus. My gums were bleeding and I lost quite a lot of weight, also my skin was reacting badly to shaving my face, my legs, etc…”

Did it ever cross your mind that what was happening could possibly be HIV?

“Actually no. Gay men and women tend to look past small details and simple things, like, what the symptoms are for HIV, because they are a lot more subtle than the symptoms for other std’s (syphillis, herpes ect). We tend to only focus on the title and stigma of the disease and not actually what happens to your body when you are first infected (which is really not all that much after the initial bodily shock…it’s like a bad flu, or cold).”

You’ve mentioned there the stigma of the disease – what was your perception, or understanding of HIV before you were diagnosed?

 “My perception was like most peoples’, I was only slightly educated (i knew the difference between HIV and AIDS) but I didn’t know anything about ‘viral load’, ‘detectable’ versus un-detectable. If I’m honest, I was a little bit of a snob when it came to dating ‘poz’ (HIV positive) guys. Now that I’ve been diagnosed, I really do see that its not really a big deal (as long as you’re on top of your health and medication) and I have totally changed my thoughts, obviously. In a country where we’re so behind on “equality”, we really cannot afford to look at HIV positive and AIDS positive people as second class citizens. The only thing I really can encourage the younger generation to do is educate yourselves and learn about this disease and de-stigmatize it….. but of course always use protection.”

Tell me about the day you were diagnosed…

“On the day I was diagnosed, I was shopping for fabric for the Drag Industry Variety Awards (DIVA) and I received a call from my doctor, telling me that I needed to come in to the medical practice. I was about 50kms away and I really needed to get this shopping done (haha). They called me and said “you need to come in”, and I said “can you please tell me?” and they said “no”. After a long winded, and heated, discussion I yelled “Just tell me the fucking results!”, to which the doctor said “You’re HIV positive”, and I just hung up on him.

I fell to the ground dramatically (ha, what else would you expect from a drag queen?) amongst the bolts of fabric in the store. My dressmaker came up to me and asked me what the matter was. I was a wreck. I couldn’t speak. I just kept crying my eyes out. Eventually I managed a couple of words: “I’m HIV positive…”

I now have a much lighter heart when I tell this story, because I do see now that its not the end of my world, but at the time it was.”

But you managed to pull yourself together though? At least enough to start sorting out what to do next?

“After that the two of us went and grabbed some coffee. I said “I have to call Jeremy.” (my very recent ex boyfriend, who I was still very much in love with, at the time). We’d recently had a humongous falling out, but obviously I had to call and tell him. “You need to come to Marrickville, I need to talk to you…” and he responded with “why?”. I didn’t tell him, but I insisted, and I must have sounded serious enough because he came to Marrickville from work…but when I saw him, my world fell apart.

I had dreamed he would one day take me back, but it dawned on me (even in the early stages back then) that if I was HIV positive it would (most likely) never happen. I told him the whole story. He begged me to ‘give up the joke’. He said, over and over again, “That’s not funny. That’s NOT a funny joke…”. When it hit him I was serious, he started to cry, and gave me a huge hug. He paused for a second and then asked “What about me? I have to get tested…” It was probably not the response I wanted to hear, but it’s the exact response I would have given if the shoe was on the other foot. So, we went and got him tested at ACON (AIDS council of NSW), and believe me that was the longest 45 minute wait I have ever experienced (and I suspect for him as well), but, eventually he came out and said “all clear” and I collapsed and cried some more – surprise, surprise.

The only thing worse than catching the disease at that point would have been giving it to my best friend. After we had taken some time to process that, we went and visited my other best friend, who was bar tending at a local gay nightclub. So, we went and got a little bit drunk.”

This was part 1 of a 2 part interview I did with Krystal (some months apart).

– JB

To stay tuned for part 2, like Pocket of Clarity on Facebook

Krystal Kleer is a professional, performing Drag Queen operating out of Sydney CBD and suburbs. She can be booked for stage performances, club-nights, film and TV acting, hens-nights and bucks-nights by contacting her through private message HERE.

Oxford Street Has A Sexual Assault Problem – Can We Talk About It?

It’s 1am on a Friday night. I’m somewhat tipsy. Okay, well, I’m a lot tipsy. So what? I’m dancing on the floor on the top level of the Stonewall Hotel, one of the most iconic LGBTI venues in Australia and my personal favourite. My friends dance with me in the oversized birdcage that sits near the entrance to the floor, we’re gyrating and jumping about in a fashion that would look (and feel) absurd to any sober participant or observer.

Sure enough, like clockwork, my overfull bladder cries out to me and I make a dash to the bathroom. Being afflicted with an unfortunately stubborn bout of ‘stage fright’ I step into a cubicle, shutting the door behind me. No lock. Oh well. It’s shut, should be fine, right? A good ten or so seconds into my – ahem – ‘stream’ a man steps in behind me, and before I can bark “taken!” he wraps his hands around my waist and tries to grab me. While I’m still pissing. Maybe this would be funny in a movie – a drunken college frat boy stumbles into a gay bar (the horror!) looking for a toilet and ends up molested by a drunk, horny queer with an attitude problem. Frat boy freaks out. Gay man gets sassy. Everybody laughs. End scene. This isn’t a movie though. This is a standard night out on Oxford Street, the heart of Sydney’s Gay and Queer clubbing scene, and it’s the third time I’ve been sexually assaulted. Tonight.

Call me Jay. I’m a white, 24 year old bisexual who, after two years of dating men and exploring my sexuality and freedom on Oxford Street, is still no closer to understanding it – or being truly comfortable with this culture’s occasional tendency to veer towards vanity, narcissism and aggressive sexuality.

The incident detailed above ended abruptly, with my ‘angry, dangerous straight guy’ persona taking over and me literally driving my assailant from the venue. I played it aggressively as I could. I wanted this guy to think if he ever came near me again I’d put his face through a wall, which I’m not so certain I wouldn’t have tried to do had he decided to continue his advances. I have the privilege of being just tall and wide enough (I’m a consistent weightlifter) to look like I’m far more menacing than I actually am, when I want to. It’s my go-to defence mechanism. The same defence mechanism I used when a different gentleman grabbed my rear on the same dancefloor without my permission not a half hour earlier. An hour before that I was also grabbed (and breathed on, for whatever reason) whilst waiting at the bar for service.

These incidences are not playful. They’re not an expression of free sexuality. They’re not just something inevitable on a night out in Sydney, or at least they shouldn’t be. They are sexual assault. It’s plain and simple. To grab, molest, touch or sexually intimidate any person, male or female, without their express consent is sexual assault, and it happens all the time on Oxford Street. All. The. Time.

I might be lucky to be built in a way that prevents me from ever being physically incapacitated in a random act of sexual violence, but that doesn’t mean I’m not affected greatly each and every time it happens. I have social anxiety. I have a severe panic disorder. I have self-esteem and confidence issues which are a sociological constant in my life. When somebody grabs me, from the front or behind without my permission, it hurts me. It makes me scared. It makes me feel powerless or defenceless. When I’m treated like the bad guy for reacting aggressively, or I’m told to ‘just relax’ because ‘it happens, forget it, get over it’, it makes things worse.

It is a culture explicitly ingrained into the Gay nightclub and party scene. It happens everywhere, to a lot of people, especially those like me who happen to stand out as something out of the ordinary or exotic (in relation to ‘the scene’, that is). Many drunk gay men seem to have an ownership complex over every ‘attractive’ person they see, combine that with a culture that consistently misappropriates ‘freedom of sexuality’ into excess and aggressive hedonism and you’ve got a losing combination that promotes sexual intimidation and violence as just another extension of queer nightclub culture. There’s a serious, endemic problem here folks.

Despite the obvious severity of incidences like this, I’ve come to expect it as readily as I expect to have a drink splashed on me by an unapologetic punter, or as I do to be hit on obtusely by someone forty years my senior. Women can be offenders too, though admittedly not as much, but it’s just as likely to make me feel seriously uncomfortable. What is it about drunk straight women who think they can just touch and prod a man because he’s gay? Or in my case, bisexual (but they don’t know that)? Why is it okay to run your hands all over a drag queen when she’s put so much effort into being seen, not molested. Is the prospect of sexual safety in a gay club really enough to make a woman throw all social queues to the wind and say “fuck it, I’m going to grab some queer butt, because they don’t mind!”?

I digress. It seems to me that the cause of all this is an excess of comfort and ‘accepting culture’ that skips on the social niceties in fear of coming across too demanding. After all, many, if not most members of the LGBTI community live in a semi-perpetual state of hiding on a social level. Hiding their sexuality, hiding their affectations or moods – it’s no wonder they tend to throw any and all caution and self-imposed restriction into the winds when they’re in the safety and freedom of their ‘own kind’. It must be empowering – but one cannot simply live or play in any environment where the safety and wellbeing of others is compromised for the sake of a perceived ‘freedom’. There are limits. It can’t just be all or nothing.

Surely, surely this cannot be anything other than a step in the wrong direction for the queer nightlife. It strikes me as wholly counterproductive to creating an accepting and inclusive culture for all members of the LGBTI community. Why allow it? Why persist in the ideologically disingenuous notion that sexual assault of LGBTI persons is morally reprehensible but it’s okay to grope somebody without permission? At what point do we ask ourselves “is this really an acceptable or ignorable aspect of our culture?”?

Let me finish with a hypothetical. I don’t imagine that this story will ring anything other than true for a lot of people. Imagine a boy. Newly 18, still in the closet to his family and most of his friends, who decides, for the first time in his life, to explore both gay culture and his sexuality in one fell swoop. He heads to Stonewall first with his one queer friend. He starts with a few cocktails, thinks about having a dance, shyly observe the attractive men shuffling around him. On his third trip to the bar, a large man, many years his senior leans in and slides his hands down the young boy’s pants. He wasn’t invited. He wasn’t given consent. He wasn’t even seen as he approached from the back. The boy turns, jumps back, and shouts his disapproval. He’s is promptly told to “chill out and stop being a prude”, and for the remainder of the night he is harassed and groped by the same stupid man. Maybe he reports his assailant to security and maybe they kick him out. It doesn’t matter. The damage is done. That boy’s first exposure to ‘gay culture’ was marred by a severely negative experience. He’s hurt, he’s upset – and it’s not a first-impression that will ever go away.

Now, a caveat.

I LOVE Oxford Street. I’m there maybe twice a week on average. I saw my first drag show there. I met my first boyfriend there, now my best friend and companion. To me it will always be a place to let loose and forget my troubles. I wouldn’t dream of ever trying to ‘unwind’ there, in the traditional sense at least. There’s too much going on and it’s far too vibrant a community to simply spectate. You must always be switched on, always involved. In the two years I’ve spent traversing the Gay scene I’ve met, and kissed, and danced with such interesting, beautiful and wondrous people. It is because of this love for Oxford Street that I come out (pun intended with zero regrets) with such a direct criticism – groping and sexualised touching without permission is sexual assault. This cannot be argued. It’s a fact. Ethically and legally it is wrong, and therefore is unbefitting a culture that can be so incredible, so powerful and so unifying in its best aspect. We all know the troubles faced by women in the hyper-masculine world of ‘straight clubbing’ – sexual assault and a culture of sexual aggression permeate ever layer of its existence. So why are we apathetic and complacent here?

It’s not that hard. Let’s cut it out.

– J