By Michael Letterlough, Jr.

William Brawner speaks passionately about everything. Whether he’s debating the complexities of religion and faith, or reliving moments of his past as one of the most popular guys in school, no matter what, it always sounds sincere. 

He’s actually a bit of an open book, willing to share some of the most personal details of his life, including his past. So when William stands in front of a crowded room, as he often does at special dinners, banquets and events, it’s really easy for him to tell everyone there he’s 27-years-old and living with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

His story is usually followed with some instant degree of applause—though not out of pity, but because of his continuing spiritual, and physical strength. It’s the confidence he’s gained in the last some-odd years that helps him to testify to a room full of people he barely even knows about a disease he was told to keep secret since he was old enough to be told what it was.

“When I was 18 months I was burned with hot water and I basically had to get a blood transfusion,” he tells me on his way home from St. Christopher’s Hospital in Philadelphia, where he works as a youth projects coordinator, until this summer when he’ll resign to head his own non-profit organization. “My mom got a call from the doctor who gave me the blood, and he told her that the person who gave me the blood had passed and I needed to be checked.”

At that time, AIDS, as it’s known today, didn’t even exist. In fact, it was called the Gay Retro Viral Infectious Disease—since homosexual men were then, thought to be the only ones contracting and spreading the newly fatal disease. 

“Not even all of my immediate family knew,” William explains of the decision his mom made to keep his diagnosis a secret. “It was more so to protect me and just not say anything to anyone. And at a time when no one really did understand it, they definitely didn’t think that I’d be alive as long as I have been. So everybody that knew thought with every cold and every headache, ‘Oh Lord, this is it.’” 

Fortunately, the few family members that did know—which included his grandparents and a few select uncles and aunts—he describes were incredibly supportive.

“My family took me to doctor appointments, and made sure that I was taking my (medication),” he recalls. “If I ever had to stay in the hospital overnight they would even stay with me.”

When he was five, William’s mother finally decided to tell him exactly why he was sick. He remembers the day very clearly, pausing for just a second, as if visualizing the moment before describing it like it had just happened only a few days before our interview.

“We were on 52nd and Market (Street in Philadelphia) and we pulled over into a parking lot and she explained it to me,” he says. “At the time though, I didn’t care, because I didn’t understand, but I remember she said to keep it a secret, and that’s what I did.”
But his mom had plenty of good reasons to want to keep his disease as quiet as possible. At that time, William remembers hearing about people whose homes were getting bombed, kids getting thrown out of school, and families who started receiving death threats and being forced to move away and start a new life, all because they either told, or someone discovered they had AIDS. 

“It was a rough thing for someone to disclose their diagnosis, because other people were just ignorant,” William says. So from that day on, he never told. His teachers didn’t have a clue, and on the playground, his classmates and friends played with him rough and unaware of his unobvious fragile immune condition. As far as William was concerned, there was nothing that made him different from any of the other kids.

Of course, even through the secrecy, there were always risks. “My mom would tell me if I get a cut or something, just hurry and clean it off and make sure that it’s covered up,” he says. “I did all the stuff any other kid would do, like climb, fight, play sports, you name it. I mean, I was supposed to be more careful, but I really wasn’t. Like I didn’t play football for a team, but I played on cement.”

Although as he got older, living with the secret only became harder. At a young age, William, unlike most kids, had to get an early grip on death. He couldn’t just wait for a close loved one to pass on; he had to understand it, embrace it, accept it, and then deal with it everyday for the rest of his life.

“The thought that I may not be able to achieve my goals was hard because of the thought that I may just die at any moment. Like you never know with this thing,” he says. “Even today, whenever these medicines decide that they don’t want to work no more, I’m gone and my body is a wrap, closed casket.” 

His understanding of death, and knowing that, for him, it could possibly strike unannounced at any given time, made him a bit of a risk taker, as well as an extreme extravert. William didn’t allow his disease to stop him from living life, or believing he could one day reach his goals.

“(AIDS) has made me want to pursue my goals faster, and it’s made me want to do whatever it is I want to do—get it in and get it out,” he says laughing.

And William did exactly that. He continued to live life normally with unintentional disregard to his condition. When it came to girls and sex, while he says dating was probably one of the most difficult parts of having the disease as a kid, it still didn’t stop him from doing what he wanted to do.

“You know, honestly I didn’t think I would ever have sex, because of the disease,” he says, admitting he didn’t lose his virginity until he was 18. “I was scared and I tried not to do anything because of the fear of maybe passing it on to someone. But as teenagers, that’s real hard to do, especially once you get that first erection and you find out what to do with it, it’s a wrap. I had a girlfriend in high school and we did end up having sex. She didn’t know I had the disease at first, because still nobody knew, but we really cared about each other, she was like, my first love. So I finally told her and she was actually cool with it, and she was the first person I had ever told.”

It opened up an entirely new world for William. Already popular in high school (he says he was the only kid in his school driving around in a Saab and wearing expensive designer labels), when it was time to head off to college, he went with the same charismatic, outgoing personality, a new sexual awakening, a newly single relationship status and being just as popular there as he was in high school.

“We couldn’t do the distance thing, so we broke up,” he says. “I was popular, and I had sex with a lot of girls in school. It wasn’t always protected either, but I can count the number of girls I had sex with without a condom on one hand. And everybody I had sex with I was kind of talking to, like as my girl, you know? Later on I did eventually go back to all of them and let them know and I haven’t had anyone get upset with me. So they all got tested and fortunately, no one came back positive. But they’ve actually been more supportive of me than friends I used to have that found out, and that’s because they know my heart. They know what kind of person I am and know that I would never intentionally put them in any kind of danger, because I cared about them...and they cared about me.”

But it seemed as though William had stopped caring about things. Not necessarily about life, but about living with AIDS in general. He had kept his disease a secret for so long, that even in his own mind, he made himself believe there was nothing there anymore. He had already beat the odds, living long enough to make it to college when many didn’t think he would live to make it that far. But the lifetime of secrecy and the struggle of living with the disease was taking it’s toll. At one point, he had even stopped taking his medication all together for months at a time, something he says, is probably the most emotionally and physically draining part of having the disease.

“Taking my medication, to me, was admitting I had AIDS, and I didn’t want to believe I had it anymore,” he says. “And the crazy thing about it is, not once did I get sick—not one cough, sneeze, nothing. Technically, since I stopped taking my meds, my immune system was really vulnerable, and I should have died. But I didn’t. I’m still here. And that made me think that there’s definitely a reason why I’m here on this earth.”

It also made him realize that maybe he finally needed to share his story with others. But after a short lifetime of successfully keeping it a secret, and then being betrayed by the first person he ever told—who sent an email to the dean of his school claiming he was purposely spreading AIDS throughout all the girls on campus—opening up again to share with anyone was hard to do.

“Really, it wasn’t until I had graduated and I was working where I could help people, and then when I finally met my wife, (Bridgette), that I really opened up about it.” he says.

Meeting his then future wife for the first time wasn’t exactly love at first sight either. She was a reserved, church-going girl and William was still living life on the edge. He laughs remembering his first thoughts of her before they started dating.

“We went to the same church and we saw each other in passing a lot, and I thought she was corny...I thought she was a nut,” he says. “I thought she was a stone cold, church going nut. I thought she was just all about Jesus, and that’s fine, but that ain’t what I was trying to talk about all the time. But she thought I was a nut because of the people I hung with, and that I had no job, no life, I had four or five kids.”

He and Bridgette also worked in the same field, eventually, after working together on a few different projects through a program William was running from a city office Bridgette had actually been trying to get into herself, they began dating and within six months they were engaged, and six months after that, they were married. 

They definitely share a weak-in-the-knees kind of love for each other, along with a very strong spiritual bond. But for Bridgette, who also happens to be a nurse on her way to receiving a doctorate degree for research and studies on AIDS in the hopes of one day finding a cure, there were definitely challenges in the decision to marry a man carrying AIDS.

“I have two cousins that passed from AIDS related illnesses,” she says, “and I think that was part of my families initial ‘No, don’t do this’ reaction. And there were a lot of things I had to think about—like, what if I contract it? If we have kids, what happens if he suddenly dies from this disease, because then I’ll be a single mom, can I handle that? And how will other people, like my family, react to us? I know all the risks involved with AIDS, because I study it, so I know what’s safe and unsafe; I know how to protect myself and what things we can and cannot do.”

But they’re happy. And despite some of the crazy things Bridgette says she’s asked by people (‘Is it your plan to contract it because you love him so much?’ or ‘Do you already have AIDS and you just tell people you don’t’), to which she replies, “Are you crazy? That’s just absolutely ridiculous,” Bridgette stands behind William one hundred percent.

“Me becoming positive is not in my future, period, point blank,” Bridgette says. “Outside of our spiritual connection, we’re not stupid. We know what needs to be done to protect ourselves. And as a woman, I love myself and value myself, and I love my husband, and he loves me, and I know there’s nothing he would ever do to me to compromise my health or my life.”

The two also plan on one day having kids, through a process in which the AIDS virus will actually be extracted from the DNA in his semen carrying the sperm, and then injected into her eggs. In the meantime, William continues to live, spreading hope not only through his words, but through the example of his life.

“If there was ever a point where I had said, ‘You know what, I can’t deal with this anymore. This is too many pills, the medication is dogging me out,’ I might not be here, and I damn sure wouldn’t have accomplished all the things I’ve accomplished,” William says. 

“That’s why my message transforms all messages, because regardless of what other people say, what other people are trying to say, or whoever your support is, you’ve got to believe in yourself. And I believe in myself more now than ever.”