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Clint Walters has a very warm way about him. In fact, when he returned my call he sounded so
chummy that for a few seconds I thought I was talking to some forgotten friend who had
rung out of the blue.
He was much the same when we met in the flesh a few days later. Although I was an hour late for the interview, he greeted me with a forgiving grin and a cup of coffee. As well as warmth, Clint also displays a maturity that belies his age. But that’s to be expected. Having a potentially life-threatening illness tends to make you wise-up fast. |
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Clint was
diagnosed HIV positive over four years ago. He was 17. He reels off the date as knowingly
as if it was his birthday: July 28 1997. "I can tell you the exact time if you
want," he says, almost, but not quite, jokingly.
Having been feeling unwell for a number of months (suffering from diahorea, night sweats and weight loss), Clint had been tested for HIV in a routine process of elimination. At first the doctors thought he had glandular fever, perhaps cancer. HIV never crossed his mind. "I never knew anyone young with HIV, so the risk of getting it never impacted on me." UNPREPAREDCompletely unprepared for the news (he received no pre-test counselling), Clint went into shock. Up until that point, he had only his A-Levels to worry about. Suddenly, at an age when most young people are full of thoughts for the future, Clint was forced to deal with the idea of death. He remembers vague TV images of tombstones appearing in his mind. "I thought: ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die’… I felt that I had let everyone down - my family and myself." In order to try and get to grips with his feelings, Clint attended an HIV support group at Body Positive in London.Although he received plenty of information and advice, Clint found the atmosphere intimidating. "I’d walk through the door and find all these older gay men looking at me; virtually eyeing me up as if the place was a knocking shop," he says. "That scared me because I had gone there for support." At that time, no support service aimed specifically at positive youths existed. As a result, and based on similar schemes that he’d worked with while on an internship in San Francisco, Clint founded HIFY-UK with an aim to "provide emotional and practical support to HIV positive youth and to empower all young people with accurate, age-appropriate information about HIV." Information that Clint says he was never given: "That’s why HIFY exists. To offer young people the things I didn’t have." In an effort to provide young people with information, Clint regularly visits schools and youth centres to tell his story. His adolescent audiences are often "blown away" by what he has to say. As a fierce opponent of Section 28, Clint feels that not enough relevant health education is being made available in schools. "If you’re a young gay kid and you’re not being given any information about gay sex, how are you supposed to protect yourself?" RAISING AWARENESSAs well as raising young peoples’ awareness about HIV, HIFY-UK conducts support groups, offers one to one counselling and provides an emergency around the clock outreach service. At the moment, HIFY-UK is housed in the offices of Brent Community Centre in out-of-the-way Willesden, NW London. Clint hopes that HIFY-UK will one-day have its own offices based at a more easily accessed central site. Somewhere, he says, where young positive people can just drop-in and chill-out.He is also working toward HIFY-UK being able to offer weekend retreats so that positive youths can unwind and offload. But finding funding is proving difficult. Since HIFY-UK’s launch in April 1999, Clint has become (quite literally) a positive role model and writes regularly for the gay press. He finds his ambassadorial role for gay positive youth "weird" but cathartic. "It helps me come to terms with (HIV), it’s a form of counselling for me." From being a ghost in the machine, Clint now views the HIV virus as just an "extra spanner" in the works and has learnt to adopt a positive attitude toward his positive status. "When I was first diagnosed I felt that my life had been taken away. Today I have the power of being aware of how important ‘now’ is and making the most of what I have got. I’m very lucky." You can contact Clint on 020 830 4547 / London@hify.fsnet.co.uk. Or visit the
HIFY-UK website at Christopher Kelly | |