(Image via David Russell)

Sia's manager David Russell, a friend of mine thanks to my blog, speaks about living with HIV for POZ in a piece published the week HIV turned 35 years old.

Russell, who tested positive in 2002, says:

I had come out of the closet [as gay] at 15, in 1991 and had grown up in “the Age of AIDS.” So I was more than aware of the treatment options in 2002. My immediate fears weren’t for my health and safety—a huge blessing, I know—but, instead, for my social life and personal well-being. I was terrified of dating at that time, and it really had a major effect on me for the next 10 years. I suppose in some ways it always will.

But PrEP has changed the conversation quite a bit and in ways I never thought possible. It has played an enormous part in my starting to see myself as a sexually viable human being, even with HIV. For that I’m hugely thankful and feel very lucky. But there is still a lot of reticence from within the gay community about exactly what PrEP is and if it “works”—and the stigma attached to those of us living with HIV The idea that we are somehow unclean or dirty.

Read the whole interview to find out the special roles Prince and Belinda Carlisle have played in David's life.