In 1980, I was in a relationship with my first partner, Ivor, an Anglican priest. I was madly in love but he was fighting his own homophobia, worried about what people were saying in the parish. Gradually I was ostracised. ‘Do you mind going into your own room?’ ‘Do you mind being out when the Women’s Institute come?’  When it turned sour, I wished I could die. Instead I moved out of the vicarage. It was time to find out who I was.

I first heard about AIDS on a BBC2 programme, as GRID: gay men’s related immune-deficiency syndrome, a strange cancer in New York and San Francisco. I thought, I hope that never comes here. As the 80s unfolded, the newspapers were full of it. What a fuss the media made when Rock Hudson kissed Linda Evans in Dynasty. I kept all the cuttings of that era, realising already there was something really profound going on. It felt close, but I thought it could never happen to me. I was in my early thirties – when you think you’re immortal.
In 1985 I met Alessandro, an Italian; the first guy I really fell for after Ivor. He was 25, a student at a language school in Plymouth. He said, ‘I don’t feel well, I have diarrhoea.’ I thought it was the change in climate.  After he went back I had a letter from him; he’d discovered he was HIV positive. I was terribly frightened. I had two tests then and both were negative. I sighed with relief and told Ivor. We’d remained friends.

The following year, I thought I’d have that test done again. It was the 5th of December 1986. At the Terry Roberts, the clinical advisor said, ‘You look very fit. I don’t think there’s much wrong with you.’ But when I phoned for the result, he said, ‘We’re rather concerned.’
I didn’t sleep. They did another test to make sure. I walked out of that clinic and felt like an alien. I was numb.

They didn’t put me on medications. They said, you might be fortunate. One in ten might go on longer or survive.

I had a job in Plymouth as a portrait photographer, working with Jean and Tracey. They knew something was up. I told them ‘I’m HIV positive.’ I had to tell someone. They took it well, although they cried. I remember feeling that was the first hurdle over. From that day onwards they were marvellous friends. They kept it confidential, loved me and supported me. I couldn’t have done without them. But they didn’t know much about the virus. Jean rang the doctor’s surgery and said, ‘I’d like to know all about HIV, please.’

I put off telling my parents. I thought, I’m not ill, I won’t drop that atomic bomb on them yet. My father had polio and Mum was a tremendous worrier. My nan was coming to stay for Christmas so I had to get myself together. I had a moment of paranoia when we were sharing a meal and she said ‘I’ll have your potatoes; you don’t seem to have your appetite.’

I thought, could it be transferred like that? I felt so contagious. This is how stupid you are.

At the Department Christmas party I looked on, feeling excluded. Everything seemed to be in soft focus. The dating game was over. I felt disabled.

The manageress of a hairdresser near our studio went to a talk about AIDS. When she came back, she didn’t only sterilise the scissors and combs, she did the chair legs, every surface. Men were banned from the toilet. ‘You never know who could have it, do you?’

Dear Tracy squeezed up against me and said, ‘I’m here for you.’

A couple of gay guys hit the Plymouth rag when their house was graffitied with ‘AIDS Scum’. After, they went to the gay disco held once a week at the speakeasy and people said it parted like the Red Sea when they went on the dance-floor.

Alessandro returned to the UK and was working at the London Lighthouse. I visited him in London, but he was very ill and died shortly after.

An Anglican priest helped me write an article for the Plymouth Herald under the name ‘Adam’, explaining to people that you could have faith and be gay. It went down well, but one woman, Cath, decided she had a ‘message from God’ to change me from gay to straight – as if she had divine right. She just kept on. It was bullying. I was feeling vulnerable. Many people of that era took their own life because they were positive and thought there was no hope.

  At the clinic, Terry Roberts, Rosemary Wallace and Joy Scott, marvellous pioneers in Plymouth, suggested I try another group, led by a Roman Catholic priest, Father Ronnie McKench. Ronnie was down-to-earth. He said, ‘God loves you the way you are,’ and encouraged me to see my status and sexuality as a gift.

That was a turning point.

I started working with him. We visited patients in hospitals and ran groups of counselling support. I worked with health advisors. We had training from cancer specialists. I was asked to do talks to nurses about being HIV positive. Joy Scott and her husband John started the Plymouth AIDS support group and Buddy system.  As a Buddy, you supported someone in their home through their illness, tried to reassure them, make them as comfortable and as happy as possible. It was usually till they died. You were a friend, a drinking buddy, everything.

I’d already met Anthony at a club. We’d had a few dates. One day he walked in looking very ill. He said, ‘I’ve got the Big One. I’m going home to tell my parents. Can I stay with you tonight?’  I had a tiny bed and didn’t get a wink of sleep. It wasn’t a night of passion, it was just holding a very ill person. The next day I dropped him in the depths of Cornwall. I wasn’t allowed to go to his parents.

Terry Roberts, the clinical manager, said, ‘Kevin, we’ve got a young man we think you could help. He’s having trouble with his family. He’s come from London to face them. He’s going to die shortly.’

Sure enough, it was Anthony. I visited him in hospital. I don’t think the nursing staff even half-understood what he had. They actually had an AIDS manual out on the desk.  He came from a religious family. Some of his siblings had an evangelical bent and thought if he had an ‘exorcism’ of homosexuality from one of their religion’s Elders, it might cure him. The clinicians were adamant this shouldn’t be allowed and devastated when it took place. The Elder came to the hospital laid hands on him. I think it was desperation to save his life, but Anthony was helpless and vulnerable. He had no say and was taken advantage of. I saw Anthony that evening.

‘Am I damned now?’  he said. ‘Can you lie with me in bed?’

I checked with the nurse who said, ‘Draw the curtains.’ This went on for weeks before I was called away to work. When I came back he’d been moved to a respite home which was really for elderly people. It was full of prejudice and bigotry. Some nurses wouldn’t touch him. He went through hell before he died.

Ivor was seriously ill and wouldn’t tell me what it was, until November ‘89 when he said, ‘I’ve got the same as you.’ He got worse and worse through late 1990. The stigma as a vicar with AIDS was enormous. He was on the run as well as having a terminal illness. I visited him at Charing Cross where a priest friend gave us Holy Communion together. He moved back to the John Radcliffe.  On a Sunday in January ‘91, the Sister said, ‘Kevin. Ivor is dying.’ I sat with him all day. At one point he woke up and mouthed, ‘I love you.’ Those were the last words I had. The nurses were lovely. They said, ‘We’ll put a bed in here and you can sleep beside him. He died four days later. I cried to my parents, who only knew Ivor as my friend; I hadn’t come out to them.  We couldn’t share our sexuality, nor this terrible illness. It was like we didn’t have normal right like others had; those with cancer, or a brain tumour. We had to be ambiguous or tell untruths. Later I got to know heterosexual people as well as gay people who were involved with HIV and AIDS. I remember one sister-in-law saying to me, ‘It really is a very lonely illness, not just for the person affected but the whole family. We’ve had to keep this secret for years. We’ve always got to pretend it was some other disease.’ They felt the isolation and loneliness too.

The respite home, Bethany, in Bodmin, Cornwall was in the embryonic stage.  The Sisters of Mercy were Sheila Burke, Sister Damian, Nora, Veronica, Anna Burke and Sister Brendan. They started receiving people who had AIDS or HIV in their annexe. Terry, Rosie, Joy and John planned to take over an old Children’s Home next to the annexe. It cost £5000,000 in 1990. We wrote to people all over the world, licking and sticking these letters. I had cheese and wine parties and we would make £500 selling raffle tickets. It sounds minuscule now but it all helped. There was great camaraderie between everybody who shared the belief that we were going to raise enough money. It was like the Hilton when it was built. it could take fifteen to seventeen at a time. Princess Diana came to open it and went around the gardens. You could donate trees and plants to your partner, not gravestones. The ethos was love and support. You were there to live your life. There was no religious judgement. It was a safe place for people to have a break. Being there was like coming home. It was wonderful to feel I was one of those little bricks.

My mother became ill in ‘92. Initially, we didn’t know what was wrong with her.  They’d missed that she had melanoma cancer. She died in January 1994. I’m glad I never told her, kept the lid on the atom bomb. I gave up going to Bethany so much when I had to support my father in 1995.  I’d been through too many deaths. My dad, Tony Kelland, left me a poem he’d written called Bethany.

Many friends were made and yes, still stay,
from Bethany’s conception day.
Though time moves on and faces change,
the challenge to us all remains
to accept love as the precious key
to the end of intolerance and bigotry.

 

I think he wanted to say he understood everything. He never said much, but it’s an acceptance from him. He knew all along, I think.
I was ill in 2001. They suspected pneumocystis and treated me for several days in hospital before discovering I had a ‘normal’ pneumonia. I was lucky to go twenty years, until 2006, without anti-virals, even after having the pneumonia. I was the one in ten who went on longer and survived. When I met my partner, Steve, I said, ‘There’s something you must know.’ I told him I was HIV positive. We’ve been together for ten years and celebrated our civil partnership.

There are happy endings.