Author and Therapist Michael Mancilla Speaks Out About Dating, Disclosing, and HIV-Positive Gay Men

by Dale Reynolds

Michael Mancilla, forty-one, knows well the subject matter of his book, Love in the Time of HIV: how to live and prosper with HIV in your bloodstream. He is a veteran of the HIV wars, both as one who lives with it coursing through his veins and as the survivor of a relationship that ended in 1997 when his thirty-two-year-old lover, Jerry Roemer, a lawyer who for three years served in the Department of Justice during Janet Reno’s tenure, died before protease inhibitors could potentially make a difference.

But Mancilla, born in Chicago, Illinois, and a second-generation American of Mexican ancestry, has strong weapons in his arsenal: a history as a social worker in the field and an ability to write. And he has lived this book on how to maintain love in your life while under assault from the disease: “I tested positive in the autumn of 1993. When Jerry and I came together, it was as two HIV-positive men.” That became the basis for the chapter on “Positives with Positives.”

As is true of many second-generation Chicanos, he has been socialized to blend into the dominant (white) culture. “I address that cultural experience—that disconnect on so many levels—in discussing how those of us who are gay and/or HIV-positive blend in,” Mancilla says. “In the eighties, people who were sick with AIDS were more visible through activism—such as the work of ACT UP and other groups. I’m interested in how those of us who only live with HIV—who haven’t advanced into the CDC’s definition of AIDS—mirror racial minorities’ experience on blending into society.” For example, he details how and when to disclose one’s HIV status to others—sexual partners, co-workers, or family members.

Co-authored by Lisa Troshinsky, the book is an excellent read, combining his sociological understanding of humans with the medical and emotional knowledge that being positive has brought to him. But other contributions have come from his father, Alphonzo Mancilla. “My dad lives the American dream, even to the point of pronouncing his name in the Anglo way, MAN-cil-la,” he says. “He’s an electronic engineer; really, just an aging computer geek. His life has led me to be fascinated by the topic of dominant cultures and their subcultures.”

But being a gay man has also influenced his current state of thinking on the subject of HIV integration profoundly. “Being HIV-positive today is much like it was being gay in the forties, with secret code words and secret parties, but, as a Positive, I can uniquely access that particular underground. Margaret Mead studied and published on the Samoans [during the 1920s], but, ultimately, those studied have to talk about their own culture for us to fully understand them. By using the tools based on my work as an openly HIV-positive therapist, I’ve been allowed unique access to my community.” Seven years ago, at the International AIDS Conference in Vancouver, Canada, he presented a paper: “The Intimacy of Empathy: Reflections of an HIV+ Therapist”—a vibrant “coming out” that led him to write his book.

Mancilla earned a Masters in Social Work from Florida State University in Tallahassee in 1990, years after coming out as a gay person to his parents and classmates during his senior year of high school. He subsequently came out to them as positive before his partner died in 1997, the latter reflected in the chapter on how to emotionally prepare for death: “I call it ‘Tips from Your CPA: Certified Positive Accountant.’ Two of the topics that couples—straight and gay—bring to the counseling process are money and sex, so those are issues that HIV-positive people have to address. Same for non-HIV-positives, too.”

If you should visit Mancilla’s Web site, www.hivandrelationships.com, you’ll find links to cities where there are positives-only get-togethers: “It’s important that Positives be able to find other Positives for socializations. There’s strength in numbers and we as positive individuals have a right to

a complete, loving, intimate—and romantic—life. After the initial diagnosis, there’s usually an isolation and it’s imperative

that we all recognize that we didn’t get this alone.”

Mancilla is prompt to point out that there are increasing opportunities nowadays for positive individuals to meet, especially through the Internet. “My Web site helps us all to recognize how to navigate the initial hurdle of telling someone your status and how to find ways to have a complete and satisfying intimate relationship,” he says.

Mancilla’s continued research has pointed out how AIDS education has evolved over the past two decades: “For so long, there were just two ends of the spectrum: putting condoms on bananas (with the company slogan on the other end) and memoirs of survivors or those who had lost their partners. But no one has done the rich middle which is now increasing in length, of those surviving longer into life and now getting back into dating. By looking at that middle, I’ve seen, also, that those who continue to survive have a renewed confidence about their own relationships.” He continues: “And it’s oddly satisfying to see people leave bad relationships, ones they felt they had to settle for, sort of ‘staying together for the children,’ with some artificial glue. The flip side of this research is that I’ve been given tools for couples on how to maintain their relationships—the longer they live and are together, the more they need the tools.”

True for HIV-positive couples, mixed-positive and negative couples, and, frankly, everyone else out there!

Dale Reynolds interviewed Survivor’s Jeff Probst for the August 2003 issue.

January 2004