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Antigone, 1995.
Antigone Hodgins
Her Apartment, Upper Tenderloin
June 17 and August 19, 1995
I volunteered to coordinate the Speakers' Bureau, because I had spoken a million times, and had so many bad experiences speaking. I felt like other people shouldn't have to go through that. I was taking calls at my house and working out of a binder. I was getting 15 calls a day. It started to grow, and I began to have money to pay people. I was also a peer facilitator for the Monday night group and started the Newsletter REALITY, because I felt that on a national level, it was a way that people could share their experiences without having to disclose who they were.
I'm meeting every Friday night with BAY Positives people, and working at Project AHEAD. I had to pull away a little bit from BAY Positives because it's always been a male-dominated organization. A lot of the guys were agro towards women and straight people and because I was dating men then it was really hard. They have a right to be angry at straight society, but they took it out on me. I had to struggle and fight around women's issues. If I wanted to talk about something in a group about women's issues, I'd get really hideous comments. I was getting really tired of it.
I went off BAY Positive's board and continued to work at Project AHEAD. But I was still, of course, involved with BAY Positives. Then BAY Positives got a SPNS (Special Projects of National Significance) grant. I had accomplished what I wanted with the Speakers' Bureau, and I was ready to move on. So I applied for a job as the Executive Director of BAY Positives. I was one of a handful of young HIV positive people working in the field. They hired me and I went to work there April 14, 1994.
For the past five years, I've made youth and HIV my focus. I chose this work because I felt I had a mission. In a lot of ways I feel like it's been a way to get outside of myself. BAY Positives keeps me going, so that I don't have to stop and look at issues around my own infection. People ask me, "How can you work in it?" But it's easy because it's not me.
I need to look at what it means to me to be HIV positive. I did that in the beginning and then I put it off, by getting involved in the work. What do I want out of life? Is it really working in youth and HIV? I don't know. What does Antigone want to be when she grows up? If I were to die today would I be happy with what I've done? HIV tips the scales in certain ways. You think oh, now I'm positive, and I have the answers to life. No, you still have to take the bus you still have to do normal things. You're told that you have a life-threatening disease and you feel fine. What are you supposed to do with that?
I have a lot in my life. Why can't I be happy with who I am today and with what I have today? I was so bored when I was drifting and drinking. I had nothing to do. I had no place.
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