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♪ Oh ♪

♪ Freedom ♪

♪ Oh ♪

♪ Freedom ♪

♪ Oh ♪

♪ Freedom ♪

♪ Over me ♪

♪ I will never ♪

♪ Be a slave ♪

♪ Go in silence ♪

♪ To my grave ♪

♪ When I go home ♪

♪ I'll be strong ♪

♪ And I'll be free ♪

"No point in crying injustice

- "Shooting off in public places - ♪ Oh ♪

- "They are slack-handed and wet-eyed - ♪ Freedom ♪

"With sympathy

- "Can confession aid the process - ♪ Oh ♪

"The fellowship of mourners

"Propping themselves up

- "On heartrending commiserations - ♪ Freedom ♪

"Brave corners bending

Blank eyes staring."

♪ Freedom ♪

When I found out, I had expected it.

I had taken care of and buried

most of my close friends by then.

And there was nothing they were doing that I was not doing

back in the '70s, early '80s.

So I had somewhat expected it.

And when the counselor told me,

I remember I just smiled and I thought to myself,

"Bitch, did you think you would escape?"

I'm a recovering alcoholic. I have to say that.

I'm in a program of recovery for the past ten years.

And I had just came through the feelings of low self-worth,

no self-esteem, low self-esteem,

and just started building myself back up when I discovered I had the virus.

After I discovered I had the virus, all those feelings

that I had worked my way through, of coming through the Black community,

living through the devastation that I had lived through,

that I felt that I'd lived through, being Black and overcoming obstacles,

it just hit me and knocked me right back down again.

I felt like life wasn't worth living anymore.

It's never been easy to talk about it.

It continues to be a real, um, lesson

in communicating with people

because of, um,

certainly, you know, the obvious things,

stigma included,

but also because of an unwillingness

to... to give life to it as an experience.

Denial is, I guess, what we call this.

But, um, my, uh, reluctance to talk about it

had a lot to do with not wanting to be perceived as sick,

not wanting to be treated as "other."

It was one of the most depressing things

that I had ever heard in my life,

in my entire life.

I was extremely depressed.

And...

...not really having any education about it at the time,

I really thought that I was going to die very quickly or within the year.

And all the stereotypes of the disease came up to me.

And I had a real hard time dealing with it at first. It was extremely difficult.

I remember distinctly one day.

I call this —

Now, I call this "my AIDS panic day."

And I had gotten up in the morning and I was dressing to go to work,

getting ready to go to work, and I was in the house by myself.

I think my lover had left already.

And I turned on the shower in the bathroom,

and stepped into the shower,

and all of a sudden, I just panicked.

And I started crying, you know,

and screaming and hollering by myself in the shower.

And I just felt —

I mean, I had this sense of fear and death

and just overall panic.

♪ I try living alone ♪

♪ And staying with someone, I try ♪

- "Time waits for no man - ♪ Everything ♪

- "It comes for you alone - ♪ I try ♪

"You spit Yank your flaccid member

- "Cry envious tears for - ♪ I try running away ♪

"Young folks caressing

- "At your side - ♪ And holding myself down ♪

♪ I try everything ♪

♪ I try ♪

- "Strike back with amorphous ammunition - ♪ It's not easy ♪

- "Refuse the paisley-patterned despair - ♪ It ain't eased down ♪

- "Take the violate in hand - ♪ Searching for what's right ♪

- "Massage with the oils of your heart valve - ♪ What's right ♪

"Wash your battered spirit

- In the salty extract of self-pity." - ♪ So many voices ♪

♪ So many choices ♪

♪ Makes it kind of hard to decide ♪

♪ I've tried getting high ♪

♪ And wearing natural smiles ♪

♪ I try everything ♪

♪ I try ♪

♪ I try working hard And praying to my God... ♪

On the day that I found out I was HIV positive,

I got a call from my mother that afternoon...

...stating that...

my dog Mickey —

although she had the dog herself,

but that was a dog that I had when I was growing up —

had to be put to sleep,

because he was in such pain and he was an old dog.

Could I come over?

And we took the dog to the vet hospital.

And I remember my mother making a big scene

as they were putting the dog to sleep.

I didn't think that I could tell my mother

because I didn't personally feel like

I wanted to put another burden on her.

She had nine children.

My oldest brother had been murdered a few years ago,

and so she had to go through that whole issue of his death

and trying to accept that.

And then I had a couple of other brothers

who were going through drug addiction problems and...

So I felt like, you know, sharing this knowledge, my knowledge, with her,

at that point, was going to be another burden.

And here was my mother going through a trauma at the vet

on the day that I found out I was HIV positive.

I couldn't tell her, I couldn't disclose to her...

what I had just found out.

And I kept extremely cool,

almost disassociating myself of what was happening.

Trying to be objective.

Trying to be a support for my mother.

And I remember when we...

held the dog on the stretcher and...

bid him goodbye.

And my mother was just in tears.

And somehow, in my mind, I kept imagining what it would be like...

for my mother...

the day I die.

I was 30 years old

and my mother's only child.

That hurt.

I finally have told my mother.

I told her, actually, last week

in a letter,

which, to me, I really had to think about how I was going to tell her.

So, I really didn't want to bring up

a feeling of obligation,

in that, I didn't want to be treated like a patient

or treated in some way.

Um, I just wanted it to be heard, what I was going to say,

so I decided to send her a letter,

and I felt that that was the best way to tell her.

My mother ultimately found out from one of my aunts, her sister.

My mother passed away two years ago of cancer.

And when she was going through

some of the early stages of that, actually when she was going through

chemotherapy and radiation and stuff like that,

we would talk almost daily

and she would always say to me,

"You know, baby, they're doing some wonderful things with AIDS,

and they're doing some wonderful things with cancer.

And we can beat this.

We just have to be strong and we have to hang on."

I'll never forget her for saying those kinds of things to me.

I was really face-to-face with my mother

and saying, "This is really me. This is what I'm about."

Um...

Excuse me. "I'm...

I'm not going to hide about this,

and that I don't want to be treated like an invalid,

and I don't want your responses to be

because you feel you have to be my mother.

It's that I really am asking for a person-to-person response."

And it was really pretty honest,

and it was the first time I'd really leveled honestly with her

and said that this is really what my life is about, without any kind of apologies.

My mother has had a rough time.

Because there is an element of shame.

I'm from Haiti.

And although AIDS is epidemic in Haiti...

But we're not supposed to talk about it

in the kind of social class

that we come from in Haiti.

But I'm, like I said, open.

It's not something that I'm going to be made to feel ashamed of.

It is a virus. It is a medical problem.

People are not made to feel ashamed when they have cancer,

when they have a heart attack, et cetera, et cetera.

No! I'm not going to be ashamed.

This is a virus. Let's deal with it from that fact.

♪ Oh, no more silence ♪

♪ No more silence ♪

- "Shore up the heart - ♪ No ♪

- "For the thankless task of living - ♪ More silence ♪

- "Breathe through your nose - ♪ Over me ♪

"Taste fruit with your tongue

- ♪ Once before I was a slave ♪ - "Loiter at crosswalks while crowds pass by

- "And laugh at the rush of euphoria - ♪ Now I'm free ♪

- "When your mother calls you - ♪ From the shame ♪

"From a sweaty sleep

- "Yawn loud - ♪ When I go home ♪

"Make noise

- "Make love to the body you have - ♪ I will go strong ♪

"Now bathe it in African oils

- "Now dress it in royal cloth - ♪ And free ♪

"Now lay it in a single bed And listen for it

"Digesting raisins and bananas

"Full of yourself get

"Ready to battle a raging fool

- "A venom-dripping motherfucker - ♪ No more weeping ♪

"Lurks behind a green door

Of shame and pain and guilt and bullshit."

♪ There'll be no more weeping for me ♪

- I had seen, in the church... - ♪ Once before ♪

- ...maybe about seven years before that... - ♪ I was a slave ♪

...or eight years before that,

a young man come to church and sit in the front row.

And I had seen him begin to dwindle away. He became emaciated.

And then he wouldn't even go up to take communion.

The priest would have to go to him.

And I had seen the people shun him.

And I knew that this could happen to me.

The fact is that we Black gay men live in the world as well,

um, in the same world that, you know...

writes off people with HIV,

writes off people with AIDS.

It's not just people that are, um, dying.

And that's certainly the equation —

well, AIDS and death mean the same thing.

But also writes off people to the extent that there is...

little they can do for you, little they can offer you.

And, um, quite simply put,

it's, you know, a comfort zone, so to speak,

wherein not sharing that information

means that you're not among those people that are dismissed.

There are so many things that the Black community has not acknowledged,

especially the church community.

They're saying, "These things don't happen."

They're saying, "Our men don't participate in homosexual episodes."

Which is not true. I am living proof.

I was — I was —

Now I can say this.

This is something that the epidemic has done for me.

I was in the closet for...

It's 40 years before I came out of the closet,

before I could go amongst my own peers and feel like I was somebody.

Coming out around sexuality was, um...

a real challenge, I mean, as it is for everyone, I think,

in a culture that is so down on, so hard on people

who speak about sexuality at all.

Um...

but coming out about HIV, um...

is very different because of what this culture is doing —

continues to do, to my surprise.

I think sometimes that we are past certain milestones in understanding,

um, uh...

you know, as a culture.

But the culture continues

to equate this disease, this state of health,

with these grand moral issues,

and, um, that people are,

uh, made to apologize for their health.

It's something that society...

wants you to think is dirty.

It's something that you ought to be ashamed of.

It's something that you got through sex.

And "sex" is a dirty word

in our so-called Puritanical society.

What coming out about HIV has meant, then,

is to come out on one side of these sort of —

all of this moralizing that's going on.

We now have celebrities apologizing, so to speak,

for being infected with a disease.

And there's some real problem with that for me

because no one's choosing to live with this disease.

But it's circumstance.

Um, and, um —

So, again, coming out around it and talking to people about it

means to come to terms with everyone's individual responses

and moralizing and judgments

around what it means.

And that is probably

the, you know, hardest part of it to me.

For me, a lot of people know —

Because I have this public persona about my HIV disease,

there are a lot of people, publicly, who know that I have it.

I never hesitate to put that forward

as who I am.

You know, that's a part of "the Reggie Williams," the public person.

And so, I know that there's a large array of people out there

who know about my HIV status,

not necessarily because I told them,

but it is sort of public knowledge.

But there's a fear that I have of, you know,

since all of these people publicly know

that I'm HIV-infected, you know,

do they still see me as a desirable person,

someone that they might want to be intimate with?

Somehow, the HIV had also affected,

like, old religiosity that I had about sex and the taboos about sex,

and it kind of, like, stirred up so much

that I had to kind of reanalyze my perceptions about what sex really is

and about relationships between honest human beings,

um, as opposed to how a relationship looked

or how a relationship is supposed to be.

So, I really, honestly, isolated for quite a period of time.

My, um...

sexual self is enormously diminished by the experience of HIV.

My right to sex and sexuality feels,

you know, something I have to battle for.

Um, I feel that my, um...

And then the physical experience,

actually, of the disease,

um, creates a sort of anger almost

around my body not being —

not responding, not being what it once was.

I gave up sex in 1983

because I knew that AIDS was a sexual disease.

I knew that you could catch it by having sex.

And I didn't — I wasn't diagnosed, but I didn't want to kill anybody.

I knew that there was a possibility that I would give it to someone else.

Then I also knew one other thing.

I knew that — I knew what I had,

and in the back of my mind, if I might have something.

But I didn't want to catch anything else.

I didn't want to catch the related diseases that went with it.

I didn't want to catch herpes. I didn't want to catch meningitis.

I didn't want to catch another infection, another cold from someone else.

So I just decided, well, sex was not the most important thing at that time.

Sex, I felt that I could do without.

I was into the telephone,

a lot of things, a lot of phone sex,

things like that to really avoid intimacy.

And now I find that...

It's like I feel like I'm waking up again.

And I guess that's sort of the reward of really being honest with myself

and saying that there's no reason for the shame.

And I'm real tired of that kind of shame.

What caused the transformation, uh...

It's just being out and being exposed to guys who did have the virus,

and knowing more about the virus

and knowing that, uh, I could —

that I could practice safe sex and not hurt anybody,

and not hurt myself also.

And learning more,

going to seminars and studying human sexuality, which —

I am a sexual person.

Just because I have a virus does not mean that I can't participate.

I believe in safe sex and I believe in condoms.

And, uh, just getting used to having the disease

and living with it a day at a time.

It's a virus and we have to constantly remind ourselves...

it is not sexuality that is the problem.

Go and have as much sex as possible.

Go and have...

relationships.

I do believe in one-night stands.

I do believe in... extended one-night stands.

My lover and I always had an open relationship.

But be safe.

Use a condom.

And there are so many facets to sex, to sexuality.

It is not just...

fucking, fucking and sucking.

There's the whole element of jerking off,

of talking dirty...

of listening.

Discover new facets, explore,

and you'll be surprised at what you find.

So I say, go ahead, worship each other's bodies.

Love them.

♪ This little light of mine ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ Oh ♪

♪ This little light of mine ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ This little light of mine ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ Let it shine, let it shine ♪

♪ Let it shine ♪

I told my pastor immediately after I became positive,

because I knew I would need a support system.

I had supported quite a few other guys before this,

and I knew that they had died quietly in the closet and very angry.

And I didn't want to die like that, and I didn't want to live like that.

We have the example of many leaders

in our gay and lesbian community...

dying of HIV illness...

without the community ever knowing...

that they were ill.

They deny...

by keeping silent about their illness,

the community a chance to reach out to them.

But the strange phenomenon is that...

they are usually outed in their obituaries

as if they died gloriously of this disease.

Nobody dies gloriously of this disease, but you know what I mean.

When you pick up an obituary and you see such-and-such writer,

such-and-such designer died of AIDS,

then you say, "But wait a minute. This person never came out.

This person never disclosed his positivity.

This person could have done lots of good."

And we have the examples of the famous choreographer,

the famous designer, the famous writers,

and so on and so on, the famous singer...

sometimes coming out on their deathbeds.

Shame.

I say, "Shame."

AIDS and HIV have, um...

brought up in this culture so many issues

that, you know, cross a lot of boundaries

around class and gender

and, um, certainly homophobia.

And what we do in response,

as people living with the infection,

as well as the rest of the community,

is, um, critical.

Well, I feel it's so important that people know

that it is all kinds of people with the virus,

that it is not just one basic stereotype.

It's not only Magic who has the virus.

It's not only, uh, uh...

young people, old people, homosexuals who have the virus.

It's all kinds of people who have the virus.

One of the major crossroads for me was,

um, telling people about it and having them respond.

And now that I've started to do that a lot more,

I'm finding it a lot simpler than I thought

and finding the response, even in the community, to be...

less, uh, distant.

I find that...

in a funny way, the less I hide,

the more I find out the other side of the story

and I find out that other people are HIV,

that there are a lot of HIV people in the world.

There are a lot of people who have AIDS.

It's much larger than America likes to fantasize.

It's a much bigger issue.

It's affecting a lot of people's lives much more than they really know, that, um...

♪ No more weeping ♪

In one way, I want to end that myth.

♪ No more weeping ♪

♪ There'll be no more weeping ♪

♪ For me ♪

♪ Once before, I was a slave ♪

♪ Now I'm free from all the shame ♪

♪ When I go home ♪

♪ I will go strong ♪

♪ I will go strong ♪

♪ And free ♪

Sometimes I think

that it would be nice to stop

and to just take time to deal with me.

Uh, but then I — This epidemic is —

is, uh —

It continues to ravage our community so badly

that I feel that if I stop and take time to deal with me,

then it's going to catch up with us and consume us all.

And so, it's like that constant need to — to — to keep going.

I've become more involved in the work of...

AIDS education, personally.

You know, the learning experience of being submerged or emerged in...

in the field, so to speak, has taught me an enormous amount.

And my silence in that work

didn't seem really sensible to me after a point.

Um, but likewise,

that, um, you know, the challenge —

the challenges to my health, also,

um, made me, you know, have to deal with the reality of it.

And talking about it was inevitable

as I started to do battle with different symptoms and the like,

and having people to support me

and understand what that experience was all about.

So, it required me, also, to talk about it more.

I started meetings for HIV people there at the church.

And so, knowing that people had some knowledge of what was happening,

that, when it came to me, they would accept it like they did.

No one even questions me now. No one has ever even approached me on it.

Not many people — a few people at the church who I sit down and talk with.

But other than that, they haven't.

We even did the Quilt project there recently.

I brought the Quilt project there.

And we did the Harlem Week of Prayer.

And, uh, we participated, helping out,

and we brought people from other churches into the church,

and we got the clergy involved.

And this is how I figured I could broaden their awareness of what was happening.

Now, in my life, it's really about trying to be honest,

in that, it's really honest for myself.

It's not about disclosure as much as for myself, really.

In one way, it's really about trying to...

...really have relationships in my life that are valuable and honest.

What I do see all the time

is that people are impacted, um,

mostly and most deeply by...

the personal,

that there's enormous power in — in talking about,

um... you know,

talking about I, me,

and people find places to connect to it.

You know, my hope is that by doing this,

by talking about what's happening with me,

that somebody else is able to say,

"Okay, well, that means something to me.

That helps me in some way to function with HIV

or to care for someone who has AIDS,

or to, you know, take to the streets as an activist."

I mean, whatever it is.

And I don't share it thinking that it will necessarily do all of those things,

but, um, with the hope that it means something to someone else.

♪ Oh ♪

♪ Freedom ♪

- "Fight back with stuff that lasts - ♪ Oh ♪

"The melody in your head That massages your insides

- "The name Jesus in repetition - ♪ Freedom ♪

"Toenail polish on sandaled feet

"Fight back with roughage

- "Personal spinach - ♪ Oh ♪

"Spiritual broccoli

- "Call on herbs - ♪ Freedom ♪

"Ginseng for heartache

"And seamoss coats the lining

- "Of an empty stomach - ♪ Over me ♪

"Hungry for full-mouth kisses

"Medicate the time

"The hours

"The moments

- "With the mantra that - ♪ I will never ♪

"Grows in your temples

- "And radiates your fibers - ♪ Be a ♪

- "Your busy weekdays and quiet evenings - ♪ Slave ♪

- "Your own arms - ♪ Go in silence ♪

"Against a sea of trouble

- "Take them - ♪ To my grave ♪

"Wrap them

"Round and round

"What belongs to you, and

- "Hold tight - ♪ When I ♪

- "Hold tight - ♪ Go home ♪

Hold tight gently."

♪ I'll be strong ♪

♪ And I'll be free ♪

♪ Ain't gonna let no virus ♪

♪ Turn me around ♪

♪ Turn me around, turn me around ♪

♪ Ain't gonna let no virus Turn me around ♪

♪ I'm gonna keep on walking Keep on talking ♪

♪ And marching up to freedom land ♪

♪ Ain't gonna let no virus Turn me around ♪

♪ Turn me around, turn me around ♪

♪ Ain't gonna let no virus Turn me around ♪

♪ I'm gonna keep on walking Keep on talking ♪

♪ And marching up to freedom land ♪

♪ Ain't gonna let homophobia Turn me around ♪

♪ Turn me around, turn me around ♪

♪ Ain't gonna let homophobia Turn me around ♪

♪ I'm gonna keep on walking Keep on talking ♪

♪ And marching up to freedom land ♪

♪ Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around ♪

♪ Turn me around, turn me around ♪

♪ Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around ♪

♪ I'm gonna keep on walking ♪

♪ Gonna keep on talking ♪

♪ I'm gonna keep on marching ♪

♪ Gonna keep on marching ♪

♪ Marching up to freedom, marching ♪

♪ And I keep on marching up to freedom ♪

♪ Marching up to freedom ♪

♪ Marching up to freedom ♪

♪ Marching up to freedom ♪

♪ Marching up to freedom ♪

♪ Marching up to freedom land ♪

♪ Marching up to freedom land ♪

♪ To freedom land ♪

♪ Keep on marching ♪

♪ Freedom land, to freedom land ♪

♪ Keep on marching ♪

♪ Freedom land, freedom land ♪

♪ Freedom land, freedom land ♪

♪ Freedom land ♪

Yes. I was part of the sexual revolution and I have no regrets.

I did it all.

The baths, the bars.

The trucks.

In Europe, in Africa, in the United States, in Canada.

I did it all and I regret nothing.

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ Let it shine, let it shine ♪

♪ Let it shine ♪

Amen.