‘Can I get HIV if we share this sandwich?’

The question arrived without warning – no drumroll, no build-up, just slipped across the table between bites.

A guy I’d known for years muttered it over lunch, eyes glued to the tabletop, suddenly sheepish, as if the sandwich might leap up and infect him on its own.

I nearly choked on my crisp.

‘No, you can’t’, I replied with the careful calm of someone who has explained this before, and will, apparently, explain it again.

After 20 years of living with HIV, I wish I could say I was shocked by his question. But I’m not. 

Shock requires novelty.

These moments are rare but continue to happen, because some people still carry Stone Age ideas about transmission.

They have no awareness about PrEP, which is a daily pill or occasional medication taken before you’re exposed to HIV, or PEP – a 30-day course of medication you take after a potential exposure to HIV. 

In other words: science has moved on but some people haven’t.

Nor do they seem to know that being Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U), as I am, means that the virus cannot be passed on. There is zero risk.

It’s why, over the years, I’ve had people ask if I’m ‘clean’ – as if HIV were dirt, not biology. 

They focus on what I’m doing about it – like whether I’m on treatment, how I got HIV, or what my viral load is – but rarely do they pause to consider what they might do differently, such as take the time to learn about HIV.

It’s part ridiculous, part sad and exhausting. But it also shows why my story matters and just how much work remains.

I was born in 1983, the year HIV was first recognised as a public health crisis rather than ‘the gay plague’. 

But growing up under Thatcher’s Britain – with Section 28 silencing queer education – meant my references came from the bleak Don’t Die of Ignorance tombstone adverts and EastEnders, where Mark Fowler sped off on his motorbike after seeing ‘AIDS Scum’ graffiti.

That’s why the moment I was diagnosed in my early 20s, I panicked.

After being told I was HIV positive by the doctor, the alien phrases – ‘CD4 count’, ‘viral load’ – quickly followed. But all I remember thinking, and then asking was: ‘What does this mean for my sex life? What kind of positions are safest? Can I still do blow-jobs?’

‘There’s a lot more to it than blow jobs, Dan,’ the doctor smiled. How right he was.

A week later, I told the man I’d been with – a one-night stand I’d met on a dancefloor – that he should get checked. He vanished with no reply. 

It was my first lesson in how silence can land harder than words.

For years after I bottled it up, tried to ignore it and even refused to start my HIV medication because I was terrified of the potential side-effects of the medication, such as night terrors, nightmares and pigment loss.

But really, I think I feared what the medication represented – the reality that I could no longer pretend it wasn’t happening.

That’s when my doctor gave me one last weekend to myself before he would support me through a more rigorous and integrated HIV medication plan.

The next day, I collapsed in the shower. My viral load was sky-high, my CD4 count dangerously low. Technically, I had AIDS.

That was the wake-up call.

Having decided to face my fear head-on, my best friend threw a party where we all painted our feet white as a potential farewell to my pigment, danced, screamed to loud music and laughed in defiance.

That was 15 years ago. 

Today I’m undetectable, which means I can’t pass HIV on. I’ve had brilliant lovers; I have an HIV- child, a chosen family of activists and have had the privilege of speaking at Pride with ACT UP London, demanding healthcare for all who need treatment and global access to PrEP.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t continue to face discrimination.

Aside from the sandwich guy, I’ve had a myriad of conversations that were silly, rude and sometimes unintentionally funny.

One time, someone I once worked with whispered: ‘If we share a toilet will I get HIV?’

Then there was a man last year who offered to buy me a pint, because he didn’t ‘know how long I’d got left’ and it ‘might be our last.’ 

I made him buy me a bottle of champagne.

Fortunately, I’ve also had brilliant, heart-restoring encounters – like with the circus performer who laughed when I nervously disclosed my status and said: ‘I think everyone does by now and of course it’s not an issue’. 

My current lover told me before we first slept together: ‘I’m on PrEP. It’s all good. What do you enjoy? What would make you most comfortable?’. 

It was the first time in 16 years someone had asked me that, and it lifted a weight I’d been carrying ever since diagnosis – the unspoken responsibility to protect everyone else.

His words were compassionate and informed by allyship. A total contrast to the man who asked me if he’d ‘catch another strain of HIV’ if we slept together.

But a few shining moments is not enough. I want to see more education, access to treatment for everyone, more compassion, more truth. 

A mentor of mine once said: ‘You can either internalise prejudice and stigma, or you can confront it and say, ‘It’s your fear, not mine – let’s talk about it’, and I’ve never forgotten that.

Stigma isn’t ours to carry. It belongs to a society that hasn’t learned enough.

So let’s teach kids about PrEP and U=U in schools. Let’s talk about HIV without whispering and stop asking if people are ‘clean’.

Above all, we must protect funding to support all our HIV services and our precious NHS, because if that crumbles, HIV will never be a thing of the past.

And if you ever share a sandwich with me, have no fear. The only thing you’ll catch is a bit of my sparkle.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing M.Navarrogriffiths@metro.co.uk. 

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