Two Black Gay Men Are Sharing Their HIV Journey On Billboards Across Atlanta
Jeremy Roberts appearing on an “I Wouldn’t Be Here Without Grady” billboard.
High above Goodfellas Pizza at the intersection of Spring Street and North Avenue in Midtown, stands a billboard featuring Jeremy Roberts, 31, accompanied by the words: “I Wouldn’t Be Here Without Grady.” Atlantans will instantly recognize the billboard as an ad for Grady Hospital, a long-standing health care institution that for decades has served Atlanta’s African-American community, including those who are uninsured, underinsured, and or living with HIV. Behind the smile and confidence that Roberts displays for thousands of commuters each day, is a story of a man living and thriving with HIV despite initially having his status weaponized against him.
Roberts tells The Reckoning that a failed offline encounter via the gay dating app “Jack’d” led him on the path towards personal and public disclosure, which gave him the courage to take control of his own narrative.
“This person that I was conversing with, of course, I told my status to thinking I was about to have sex with him,” said Roberts. “That hookup never happened. The next morning I received screen shots of the conversation that I had on Jack’d from the guy that I was dating. He said, ‘you were talking to my ex.’ He sent me these screenshots, and not only did he send them to me but he sent them to a bunch of his friends,” he said. “As crazy as it was, that was the moment that I realized that I had no control over my status. Anybody that knew my status had complete control over me and my life.”
Roberts says it was at that moment that he decided that he had to tell the most important people in his life—his immediate family. He did so after making several trips to the hospital for flu-like symptoms in 2013. It was during one of these visits that he says the idea of being tested for HIV was placed on the table.
“I got sick and had to go to the hospital again,” he said. “That was the very first time that a doctor asked me if I’d been tested for HIV. And I was offended [laughter]. What do you mean? Why would I need to be?”
Only twenty-one years old at the time, Roberts says he believed he was invincible.
“That was the moment. I went and got one of those at-home tests, brought it home and took it,” he said. “It was one of the scariest moments of my life because the test, in my mind, was inconclusive. The test read where if there was one line you were negative, if there were two lines you were positive. My second line was so faint it could have been a false positive. So, I told my brother and he said ‘I’m gonna take you to the doctor and we’re gonna do a real test.’ We went to a clinic and the test was confirmed.”
Raised in a traditionally conservative Christian home in Titusville, Florida, Roberts says his parents and two siblings, one of which also identifies as gay, embraced him and offered support immediately.
“He [Roberts’ gay brother} was my shoulder through the whole process. He held my hand through the entire thing and I’m super grateful to him for that.”
Roberts says he’d been living with HIV for five years before he found the courage to disclose to his parents. He says the fear of his mom and dad being disappointed kept him from sharing his truth. It was a fear that he would soon learn to be unfounded.
“My mom’s reaction wasn’t one of ‘I can’t believe you’re positive.’ It was ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell us.’ And that was the most freeing moment of my life,” he said.” “My dad said to me that day that ‘we would never not be proud of you—we will always support you.”
Roberts hasn’t always embraced living with HIV. He recalls sleeping for two weeks after receiving the news of his diagnosis.
“That’s all I remember is just sleeping the entire time,” he said. “I remember the room being very dark and I would sleep all the time.”
Roberts says he was quickly slipping into depression, while simultaneously battling thoughts of being “damaged goods” and a disappointment to his family.
“I didn’t really think about myself during that time period. My thoughts were much more…I’ve let my family down, I no longer have value amongst my people; nobody’s gonna want me,” he said. “I really didn’t think about myself at all. It’s crazy now that I think about it.”
Andrew Williams appearing on an “I Wouldn’t Be Here Without Grady” billboard.
‘This was going to be my life’
Andrew Williams, 33, a Philadelphia native and small business owner who has lived in Atlanta for six years and preceded Roberts in the Grady ad campaign in 2017, tells The Reckoning that his involvement in the campaign fulfilled a premonition he had prior to making Atlanta his home.
“Before I moved to Atlanta, I would visit and I remember seeing the Grady campaign and it stuck out to me,” he said. “For some reason, it was more than just a commercial, it felt like this was going to be my life. There was a reason for me to see that ad.”
Williams says he was asked to be one of the faces of the campaign by his medical provider.
“Dr. Jeri [Sumitan] was the first doctor I met when I found out I was HIV positive. When I met her I was in a wheelchair. She didn’t judge me—going into Grady no one was judging me. You’re used to feeling like you’re unwelcome most of the time, and when she asked me [to participate in the campaign], I felt like I had to do this,” he said.
It was only a year earlier when a persistent itch on his back that Williams says he and his mother believed to be eczema would lead him to the hospital for a battery of tests revealing a host of health issues, including HIV.
“We went to the hospital and the doctor couldn’t explain the itch, but he did say that I had high blood pressure and my sugar was over 1400. There was a lot going on with me,” said Williams. “They ran blood tests and when I got the results, I learned I was a diabetic and something was going on with my kidneys. They also gave me an HIV test and that’s when I was given an AIDS diagnosis. Not only was I diagnosed with AIDS, but I also had stage 4 kidney disease, and type-2 diabetes,” he said.
It was a dire situation that even Roberts narrowly escaped.
“If I really think about the time frame between 2010 and 2013, I probably was positive that entire time and had no idea,” said Roberts. “When I finally started to receive treatment, the doctor said, ‘you are right at the threshold for AIDS.’ My viral load had skyrocketed. As you can imagine, probably having been positive for two years without knowing it. I’m lucky that I was able to get it under control.”
Williams says he began to show symptoms less than a week after his diagnoses and now depended on his boyfriend and mother, who with his permission was in the room at the time he learned of his health challenges, to assist him with his daily routine as he was too weak at the time to take care of himself.
“She immediately went into action mode,” said Williams of his mother. “What are we gonna do? What medicine are we gonna put him on,” he said she asked his doctor.
While Williams would start dialysis for his kidney disease and antiretroviral drugs to help manage HIV, there was no quick remedy for depression, social stigma, or the isolation that people living with HIV often experience. Williams says he turned to the internet in an attempt to remain connected to people, and it was both a blessing and a curse.
“I went online to a “DL group” and I told them about my HIV status,” he said. “ Some people were saying negative things, ‘you’re sick, you’re going to die,’ and all of that kind of stuff. And then there were people who were not brave enough to tell me in the [chat] room, but they’d contact me through messenger and say, ‘I have HIV…I’ve been HIV positive for 20 years.’ It was people [disclosing] back to back. And all this time, I was thinking I was the only one,” said Williams.
“In 2019, I made a New Year’s resolution to conquer my fear of HIV and to walk in my truth,” said Roberts. Now, one year later, not only can he declare mission accomplished, but he can drive down Spring Street to see a larger than life reminder that it is so.
