Stefaaans Brummer
THE mere fact of another young man in Pretoria testing HIV-positive was not what caused the news to spread so rapidly through the city’s sizeable gay community last week. Too many have already had contact with the condition to take special note.
But in the case of 25-year-old student Martin Erasmus it was different — for Martin was the “victim” of a boyfriend who knew he would infect Martin, and who is thought to have infected at least two others, apart from Martin, since learning of his HIV-positive status almost a year ago.
There has been anger, and some have insisted attempted murder charges be laid against the boyfriend, James Lockyear (23). Martin has not been among those asking or retribution. For him — and for James — it is enough that their example be used as a warning to others. Both agreed to tell their stories.
In the few short days since learning he had the precursor to Aids, Martin has become a master at confrontation: confronting his own feelings, confronting the fact of a diminished life, and confronting the pain that it was his own boyfriend who knowingly gave him the virus.
“I felt it was a total breach of trust. I still feel that way,” says Martin about what, in rational terms, can only be called his lover’s deadly deceit. But even that breach of trust was not enough to mean blame had to be apportioned. “It was a loving relationship and it still is.”
That is the contradiction Martin lives with. He loved someone, and that person returned a promise of death instead. Yet he does not blame him, to the extent that they have remained friends.
“I understand it (his earlier realisation that he had the virus) put him completely out of psychological balance, that it was a psychosis. He was not in touch with what was happening to him. He was in denial.”
That contradiction between what has been done to Martin, and the apparent absence of thoughts of retribution, make it sound like Martin is confused; that the full implications of his testing HIV-positive less than a fortnight ago have not sunk in. Maybe they haven’t. But Martin does appear to be confronting his condition head-on.
He is seated on a couch opposite me, at his Pretoria commune, and we talk.
James Lockyear, the one we are talking about, enters the room and flops on the couch next to him. I say: “Look, I have dealt with dead bodies and splattered brains in my journalistic career, but now I feel uncomfortable. I have not been in a situation like this before and I have not interviewed death this slow before. I want out.”
“Nonsense,” Martin says, and he pins me down with a defiant stare — a stare that surfaces repeatedly. “It
Why all the pity? Why won’t those around him (and why won’t I) deal with something he has accepted he has to
So the interviewee, the “victim”, deals with the interviewer’s discomfort for him. We continue and we get to what Martin feels needs to be said, a message that is partly the reason he is prepared to talk about something most people in his position would share least of all with the media, and if they do, rarely with their real name, warts and all.
Martin is the victim of someone he trusted. James and he come across as most university students in their early or mid-20s do: intelligent, reasonably well- adjusted, normal, healthy young men — the type most youngsters would not mind taking home to meet their
Martin had not had a steady relationship for about three years before he met James. As always, he had safe sex when this relationship started in September last
“Then I asked him if he was okay, and he convinced me. He said he regularly donated blood and they would have told him if he were infected … I went for a test myself, and I tested negative.”
So the safe sex bit was dropped. Had it stayed at that — the absence of a condom — Martin might have had a chance. But soon James introduced “blood games” into the relationship. Kinky, yes, but also the type of thing David and Jonathan of biblical fame might have done to prove their trust in each other. This time, the trust was one-sided.
Late last month James confessed to Martin that he was HIV-positive. He had known since last April — almost a
Says Martin: “I first thought it was a joke. Then I phoned his sister. She said, ‘We thought you knew.'” While his friends and parents were prepared to suspend belief until he was tested again, Martin knew it was true. On Monday last week he was told. It happened.
“In Aids awareness campaigns, the most important fact is always left out: that someone who is positive is more likely to lie about it than to tell you. I have since discovered that James is not the only who has done this. There are others.”
Martin suspects James has infected three people, including himself, since James became aware of his condition. He also knows of two men in Pretoria who have been spreading the disease intentionally, and he knows some of the victims, who number perhaps as many as 100.
For too long, silence has been on the side of the killers, and Martin wants the story told.
# James’ story
I UNDERSTAND that the only reason I am writing this to you is because it might reach someone that is as isolated by what they have done as I am. About 11 months ago I tested HIV-positive. At the time I was in a relationship with someone who had the whole of my heart and mind.
Testing HIV-positive was not the end of the world then; his not being able to handle it was my private
So far everyone involved, my boyfriend, parents, even my doctor, advised me not to go around telling everyone — it was a personal matter and to be dealt with as such. Also, life must go on. Suddenly being HIV- positive should not be allowed to change a thing.
In my mind, without even realising it, I was already being isolated by my own defenses and those who now shared my problem. The way I “coped” was to internalise the problem — I made being HIV-positive my own private world. I still believed I was all right. I love my life, I don’t blame anyone and I will carry on living. I was so successful at being “all right” I even started believing that I was all right.
When I met Martin, I knew about the implications of being HIV-positive and about the danger I was to him. >From the first time we slept together, as far as he was concerned, we were both quite all right.
I was beginning, quite honestly, the hell I am suffering now. So successful was I at internalising my being HIV-positive that it didn’t exist anymore in my reality. How could I have been doing anything wrong? I was denying there was anything wrong with me, first to myself and then to Martin.
I read this again and it seems like I am making excuses for myself. So again, I must say I knew I was HIV- positive and I knew that I was infecting Martin. I don’t have an excuse and even though I knew what I was doing, I obviously didn’t.
Through the six months that I have known Martin, I have come to love him, but all the time I could not make my problem surface. I knew this and things were getting
Then one day, totally out of the blue, a friend , someone totally ignorant of what was going on, said to me: “There is something out there that you must handle to be free.” Three days later I told Martin the truth.
Martin tested HIV-positive and now I am no longer a person. I am probably doing more damage than good by writing this, but I am sick in my heart and I hate myself to the core. It is making me angry and confused — I don’t even cry.
Good, you may say, you have murdered Martin, you deserve everthing bad that happens to you.
I know, it is killing me. I don’t want to save myself anymore because I don’t deserve to. I want to run away because I am too scared to kill myself. But I have to stay because I deserve this pain that I cannot
What about Martin? But what about me? I don’t want to die either.
We need to understand the unity of things: that the creator of all things is love and that everything of which we are conscious is in all its infinite number of forms a manifestation of that love, planet or pebble, star or dewdrop …
It may be possible to get a glimpse of this conception by thinking of our creator as a great blazing sun of beneficence and love, and from the centre an infinite number of beams radiate in every direction, and that we and all of which we are concious are particles at the end of those beams, sent out to gain experience and knowledge, but ultimately to return to the great
And though to us each may may appear separate and distinct, it is in reality part of that great centre sun. Separation is impossible, for as soon as a beam of light is cut off from its source it ceases to exist. Thus we may comprehend a little of the impossiblity of separateness, as though each ray may have its individuality, it is nevertheless part of the centre power. Any action against ourselves or against another affects the whole, because causing imperfection in a part reflects on the whole
In finishing this whole essay I have just seen a lesson. I thought that my chances were up — who knows, maybe they are. I have hurt another and therefore the whole. I was happy to leave it there but now by my own understanding, if I hurt myself, I am hurting the whole even more.
Therefore, suddenly I will be all right, and although I cannot fix what I have done, I will start being better from right now. I still love my life and I do want to