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Who is your "best friend" and how has being HIV+ impacted that relationship?

13 | September | 2011
Shawn

My best friend is undoubtedly my partner, Gwenn. We met because we are both HIV educators. She became interested in HIV issues after someone with HIV spoke at her college. Gwenn took a class specifically on HIV issues, and began volunteering her time at AIDS Service Organizations. Without my being HIV positive, it is certain that we would have never met. Shortly after beginning our relationship, I got very sick and had to start on HIV medications. She took up the task of making sure the prescriptions were filled and going to my doctor’s appointments with me just to make sure I didn’t miss any vital details. It was a lot for a 24 year old to take on, and she did it. Now it’s a decade later, and our love and friendship has only grown. Today I’m a healthy man who has traveled a long road since my diagnosis as a kid. But even in those early years, as I hoped for a relationship and wondered if I’d ever be able to disclose my status, I couldn’t have dreamed of having a partner as kind, generous and loving as Gwenn.

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Infected with HIV as a child through the contaminated blood products used to treat his hemophilia, Shawn learned early in life about discrimination. Within a month of testing positive for the virus, he was kicked out of the 6th grade. By all accounts, he wasn’t expected to live five years. During his freshman year of high school, he met his favorite band, Depeche Mode, through The Make-A-Wish Foundation, and lived to see graduation. At age 20, he opened up about his life with HIV after a decade of silence, creating one of the first "poz blogs" in 1996. After humorously describing his life, he caught the attention of Poz magazine and began writing a column entitled "Positoid", a word he created as a way to describe himself as someone living with HIV.

In 2006, his memoir, My Pet Virus: The True Story of a Rebel Without a Cure, was published by the Penguin Group. Today, Shawn is happily married to his wife partner, Gwenn Barringer, and the two speak together as a couple, educating about how they keep her HIV-free in their safe and healthy relationship. (Hint: condoms.)

In his spare time, Shawn drinks iced mochas and fronts a synthpop duo, Synthetic Division. In 2010, he released a CD to commemorate the twenty-year anniversary of his dying wish to meet Depeche Mode. He lives with Gwenn in Charlottesville, Virginia.