My life revolves around four little creatures. I love my dogs dearly, but they also really annoy me. Bella is my baby. She has been the stability within my unstable life, living with HIV.

I’ve always had a very artistic flare and I like to experiment with things.

I love the fact that I’m an openly HIV-positive man who doesn’t care what people think about my status. I became HIV-positive by having great condom-less sex, with somebody who was positive. Nothing more, nothing less. You can actually never wash away HIV. For me, the attempts that I’ve made to wash away HIV have just brought me closer to it.

I take twenty-nine tablets a day as a result of being HIV-positive. I have a very difficult relationship with medication, but I’m also very grateful. I struggle with the fact that, as a spoiled westerner, I have access to medication and some people in the world don’t.

I wish that, along my journey as a young person, somebody would have spoken to me about being able to negotiate sex. I think that being positive has changed my life. I feel like I’m a better person. I just want to say to everybody out there, if you have preconceived ideas about positive people, just forget them. We are sexual beings with rights. I choose not to be stigmatized. I say pants-in-the-mouth to stigma.