I grew up in a small suburb in Australia. I remember first hearing about HIV and AIDS on 60 Minutes, a current affairs programme, as a child. It terrified me. I didn’t know what ‘gay’ was. I knew that I was different but I’d never even heard the word before on TV, or had any exposure to gay men. But the programme scared me because I’d had sexual encounters when I was younger. I think I associated that with a thought that maybe I could have HIV because, as a 12-year-old, I didn’t fully understand.

I trained as a graphic artist and also worked in bars. I was working in a bar that got held up one night. I found myself caught up in an armed robbery where I was held hostage for hours with a gun to my head. When it went through court, I just thought it was time to leave. 

I came from Melbourne to the UK, intending to backpack all around the world, like all Australians do. I was supposed to stay for a couple of months but 26 years later, I’m still here.  I also lived in San Francisco for a few years, but I came back to the UK instead of Australia. 

I got involved in the gay scene in London. We used to go to Trade and FF and full-on clubs that are now turning Costa Coffees. It wasn’t until I came to the UK that I accepted it and started to understand it. I came out. I met guys who were HIV positive. I used to go to the LA in Hoxton, The Apprentice and get up to all sorts of things. But I still had a fear of HIV. If I do something that’s a bit wrong or this or that, will I get it? I still didn’t really understand and I wanted to know more in order to stop being scared. That initial exposure via 60 MINUTES had really made an impact on me.

I contacted the Terrence Higgins Trust and began volunteering there a couple of days a week, just working in the office, packing pamphlets to go to the different hospitals and charities, and helping with the paperwork. I don’t remember how I first found out about the Buddy Programme, but it would have been there.

We trained in the countryside somewhere, in a big old mansion for three or four days. I didn’t know anyone.  I didn’t know much of anything.  Everyone was introduced and we had a dinner that night. From the next day we played some games to get to know each other and started to do different lectures and consider different situations. People came in and talked about their experiences. It was very emotional. There was a lot of listening, a lot of talking, a lot of sharing. We were given a lot of information about what we could expect, different scenarios we might encounter. They did something at the end called The Trust Tunnel where everyone stood in a line and you had to walk between them with everyone stroking and touching you. It sounds weird, but it used to make you cry after the whole weekend. By the time you got to the end, someone would hug you and you’d just burst into tears. It was a full on process.

The reality was very different to the training. I joined a Buddy group in 1993. All the Buddies met once a fortnight to share and off-load any stress. It was very group orientated. I didn’t get a Buddy for a while, so I’d go and listen to other people’s experiences. Some people were in situations where their Buddies were really ill and so they were under a lot of pressure.

Then they said they had someone for me and I was to go and meet him in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and take him home. He was in the AIDS Ward. He was 76 years old, an ex-pat. He’d been living in Greece for years and he’d come back because he’d got sick.

None of the people in my group had experience of dealing with someone in their 70s. They all had younger people. I thought, what am I going to say to a 76-year-old man? I was 23 or 24.

He didn’t know what to expect of me either. I think, first of all, he thought I might be his little houseboy for a while! He was getting me to do silly chores, but we worked it out. We became good friends.

I remember walking to the AIDS Ward. It was like I’d seen in the 60 MINUTES interview. It was scary. There were very sick people in there. He was way over in the corner and he had his curtain drawn around him.

I opened up the curtain and said, ‘Arvick?’

‘Yes, you must be Justin. I’ve been waiting for you.’

He was all dressed, ready to go, and off we went. He lived near Earl’s Court and when we got into his flat, he seemed to me like a posh gentleman. His name was Arvick. We just got along straight away.

We sat down and he had these enormous bags of medication: one big plastic shopping bag and another, almost like a bin liner, full of pills.
‘What’s all this?’ I said.

‘Well, these are the medication ones and these are for the side effects.’

‘Well, first of all, let’s have a look at all this.’ We emptied it all out on the floor. There were so many different things including thalidomide and all the trials. There was so much of it. Most people wouldn’t take that much medication in their life, let alone in six months. He told me that one day he got caught short in John Lewis because of all the medication he was on. They had to put a screen around him in the middle of the shop floor. Completely humiliating.

‘Is any of this doing anything? Is it curing you?’ I asked.

‘Well, I just spent the last four weeks in hospital, so no.’

There was no internet back then so you couldn’t look up stuff, just Google it and find out what it was, but I did know from the research and going to the groups, what other people’s medication was and what they’d gone through.

‘Why don’t we just scrap it all?’ I think it was AZT and vitamins he went on after and he became really well. He put on weight. He was up and about. I’d visit couple of times a week, and we’d just talk or see theatre plays. We’d go to cinema and out for dinner together. He introduced me to a lot of different films, cultural stuff, galleries. It was fun. He didn’t have a partner. He was very good friends with writers like Harold Pinter. He wasn’t a great cook, but he had great dinner parties!

I think he was quite proud to have me come to dinner parties with him. He was very generous. He knew I was studying acting and wanted to get into that industry and he had connections and was really trying to be helpful in that respect. It was a very equal kind of relationship.
I looked after him for over two years and then my visa ran out and I couldn’t renew it. I travelled through Egypt and Israel and over to Thailand where I met up with him and we hung out again. Eventually I made my way back to Australia and received a call, maybe three months after I’d seen him, saying he passed away. That was devastating. If I had known I would have flown back straight away but they tracked me down after.

You have training, but emotionally it can’t connect you to that kind of situation. That was a lot for me to deal with. I remember trying to be really adult about it and put on this bravado to get through it. But I was 100% behind the Buddy programme. We got to spend great time with a really nice person and the whole time we were together we never spoke about HIV or AIDS. I think everyone believed they were doing the right thing and everyone was working towards the same goal, to help people. That was the bottom line. People just wanted to help. It was completely positive. I think everyone who did it was amazing. People had their criticism against the programme but I don’t know anyone who was Buddied that didn’t want to be Buddied. They all applied. It wasn’t forced upon them. The people doing it were trying to give back and do something. There was no other agenda to it: it was just about trying to help people.

I found it easier not to say anything to people about what I was doing. I think it was something I wanted to do for myself. I didn’t want people to say, ‘oh that’s fantastic’ in a self-centred way. And you’ve also got to remember back then a lot of people were still frightened and it would freak them out if you told them what you were doing.

I hope I made a difference to Arvick. I think it did. I’m sure everyone else who Buddied made a huge difference. Sometimes you need someone to share with that isn’t connected to you. I think that’s why Buddying was successful. At the end of the day, all you are is company to someone that needs company.