My friend Bob used to say, “If years from now you’ll look back and laugh, you might as well laugh about it now.” I don’t think he meant to be flippant. He didn’t know it at the time, but Bob gave me my most essential coping mechanism.
Humor is not about not taking things seriously. Humor can empower us at our weakest or most difficult moments.
It got me through HIV and anal cancer and all the embarrassing, painful episodes that come with them. There are few things more powerful—and empowering—than looking at something (or someone) in the face and laughing back. Or making light of a situation when you would otherwise feel embarrassed or awkward. Humor can be subversive, disarming, determined and wickedly clever. Humor can be resilience.
I’m going to share with you words I’ve never put to print before. I was bullied all through eighth grade. The turning point came near the end of the school year, when I finally stopped taking one bully so seriously and I laughed back at him. Others saw he wasn’t so intimidating after all. And suddenly, I started to feel less afraid, less ashamed and less alone.
Using humor in all its forms to make people laugh is how I create my safe space. I want people to laugh with me or because of me; I just need to know they aren’t laughing at me.
As people living with HIV, we’ve used humor from the beginning—to protect ourselves, to educate, to protest, to whistle past the graveyard during the darkest times. That’s why when my friends Charles Sanchez and Mark S. King suggested a humor issue—I think they were half-joking—I took them seriously.
This issue’s cover feature is a chat between two comedians living with HIV. Daniel G. Garza is a gay 54-year-old Latino who’s been living with HIV for nearly 24 years. Andy Feds is the stage name of a 31-year-old straight Black man who was born with HIV. They pepper their conversation with jokes as they compare notes and ask about each other’s lives, read it here.
In “Butt of the Joke,” Dr. Ina Park uses humor to help educate physicians, researchers and public health professionals about potentially awkward subjects such as sex and sexually transmitted infections. It’s part of her effort to make medical professionals more sex-positive.
“If you can get somebody to laugh, and if you can use humor without stigmatizing or making fun of any type of population, then you hook people in,” she says. “It’s a [better] way to get people’s attention to deliver a more serious message.”
People can bond over comedy. That’s what contributing writer Christopher Hetzer discovered as a first-year nurse who found himself caring for T.K., who was in his final days of living with AIDS (READ Reaching T.K.). Their small talk evolved from T.K.’s one-word answers to conversations, and then one day he asked if they could have a movie night together to watch the Mel Brooks sci-fi parody and cult comedy classic Spaceballs. I’ll just say that Christopher shows how humor can be poignant.
Elsewhere in the issue, associate editor Enid Vázquez and contributing writer Larry Buhl report on the significance of some of the developments announced at CROI 2024, the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections held in March in Denver.
In “Two pills a week or two shots a month,” Enid writes about how two drugs—islatravir and lenacapavir—show early promise to become the first complete weekly regimen, and how the long-acting injectable Cabenuva has been shown to be effective for people with a detectable viral load and who may have challenges with adherence to oral meds.
Larry looks at the long road to a cure, but with various promising strategies to get there (READ HERE). And while semaglutide (the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, which are used to manage diabetes and encourage weight loss) has made headlines for also reducing liver fat in people living with HIV, Larry takes a step back to ask about long-term implications (READ HERE).
Larry also talks with pediatrics professor Deborah Persaud, MD, about the news at CROI of four children who achieved “HIV remission” as a result of receiving antiretrovirals soon after birth (READ here). It leads to a discussion that examines the concept—and vocabulary—of what is an HIV “cure.”
Daniel G. Garza reappears in the issue, this time talking about being a survivor of anal cancer (READ Anal cancer awareness). Anal cancer is rare in the general population, but it’s one of the most common cancers affecting gay and bisexual men, who are 20 times more likely to develop anal cancer than heterosexual men. The reason is HPV, which can be transmitted through bottoming. But in a sidebar (READ HERE), Enid explains why women are also vulnerable to anal cancer—regardless of anal sex.
Living with HIV is often serious business. That’s why we need to laugh—out loud!—when we can. As Bridgette Picou says in her column (READ Being Bridgette), “Comedy brings laughter and laughter is hope.”
To borrow another line from Bridgette, “Have a laugh, have some hope.”
You are not alone.