Kai Wright, The American Prospect
- The hope in Tracy’s voice was contagious. He had just come out of Alabama’s state prison system and was looking forward to starting over. He’d gotten some part-time work and secured a comfortable, if sparsely furnished apartment. He was a classic Southern hunk — a handsome, stout, mocha-skinned man with a slow drawl and a natural charm — and so had no trouble finding women to date. That was exciting but also scary, because Tracy had newly committed himself to confronting his 12-year-old HIV infection.
He beamed with pride at the progress he was making. “I talked to one,” he bashfully boasted to me about his coming-out process to would-be girlfriends. She’d been pressuring him to have sex, and he knew he had to disclose first. “She appreciated my honesty.” Things were going well.
I wanted to be hopeful for Tracy, too. After more than a decade of writing about AIDS, I’ve come to recognize the liberated look on his face — the relief that shines in someone’s eyes when he gives up on fear and shame and starts figuring out how to live with — rather than in spite of — an HIV diagnosis. But I knew Tracy would get little help on what was going to be a hard road to wellness, because his story arc is sadly typical of the epidemic that is now raging around him — years of denial masquerading as optimism, followed by a mad scramble to patch things up when it’s already too late.
