NEW YORK STORY

I found out I had AIDS in 1994 when I took the blood test for the Morrison visa in Galway, says Tomais O Saoire, a 31-year-old Irish house painter living in New York. I felt that the ground had opened up and swallowed me whole. Everything I had worked for had been destroyed.
Barred from returning to the United States, the devastated O Saoire snuck back into New York and commenced a two-year downward spiral of hard-drinking and two suicide attempts, before slowly rediscovering a purpose in life. Now with new medicines giving him hope for a long future, O Saoire has thrown himself into IDS activism, co-founding a group called Irish AIDS Outreach to combat the still-pervasive ignorance in New York s Irish community about AIDS. In a West Village cafe in Manhattan, O Saoire told his story.
One of nine children, Tomais O Saoire hails from a Galway farming background. After finishing school in 1982, he travelled around Ireland and Europe, during which time he began his sexual involvement with men.
In the 1980s, when I became sexually active, there was no knowledge in Ireland about HIV, he says now. There were loads of gay people, but people were still scared of opening up a gay bar or club. There was no protection, no idea of safe sex.
In 1989, looking for a place to fit in, O Saoire moved to the United States illegally, settling in the Bronx. Through word of mouth, I found work painting, doing fine finishes and trompe l oeil work for businesses, he reveals. He was still dating women as well as men when he moved to New York, but he eventually lived with a series of men.
In late 1993, with many of his friends having already been called back to Ireland for their Morrison interview, O Saoire was concerned that he wasn t going to get his visa. When I finally received my notice, I celebrated for weeks on end, he recalls.
Back in Ireland that March, O Saoire found himself waiting in a clinic at the University College Galway for the results of his visa medical exam.
The doctor told me to sit down. I thought to myself, Ah Jeez, I ve got TB , the other medical reason for being rejected for a green card. Instead, the doctor told O Saoire that not only was he HIV-positive, but he had full-blown AIDS.
In a state of shock, O Saoire went to the US Embassy in Dublin for his Morrison interview. There were 300 people there, and they kept seven of us waiting for five hours while the rest of the people were processed. Several of the other people in this group were crying, I m sure some others were in my position. When I went into the interview, the woman said, I m sorry, you ve been refused [the visa] because you are HIV-positive , meaning that I couldn t return to the US.
O Saoire told the embassy official about the fact that he had a job, his possessions and his life in New York to go back to. I m sorry, there is nothing I can do, she said.
Back in Galway, a devastated O Saoire told his parents that he was HIV-positive. They stuck by me, he says. My father insisted that it was not the end for me.
A friend referred O Saoire to an Irish head nurse named Seamus working at an AIDS facility in London. Seamus demanded that I come over and he took care of me, running a battery of tests. I took the blood test four more times, not believing I had AIDS. I thought I was going to be dead in six months time.
Knowing he was going to be excluded from the United States, O Saoire flew to Toronto, Canada, and called some friends in the Bronx. The friends told him to go to Niagara Falls and rent a hotel room. In less than 12 hours, his friend Mary and her husband John picked him up.
Through a hard rain we drove across Canada to a place near Detroit. John dropped me off near two train tunnels and handed me a torch. He told me it was a two-mile walk through the abandoned tunnel along the train tracks to the United States. The tunnel was dark and filthy. Halfway through, a train came by in the tunnel next to me, filling my tunnel with diesel fumes. Though I was terrified, I remember laughing to myself that the headlines would read, Irishman Found Smothered To Death Coming Back To America .
O Saoire survived the ordeal.
I came out into an old trainyard. My jacket was ripped and I was shaking, but I knelt down and said three prayers for my safe return. I waited in the rain with some homeless people, giving out my cigarettes, until my friends picked me up. I noticed the American flag was at half mast. I found out later Richard Nixon had died on that day.
Back in New York, O Saoire s life fell apart. The next two years were mental hell, he admits. I fell into a deep depression. I hit the bars and developed a heavy drinking problem.
The irony of O Saoire being infected in New York in the early 1990s is that by then, the larger gay community in New York had made tremendous strides in AIDS prevention. And back home in Ireland, groups like the Dublin AIDS Alliance were forming to spread information about HIV and AIDS. But, the New York Irish immigrant community had somehow remained immune to these developments. There is still a lack of education in the Irish community about AIDS, says O Saoire. There has to be a rude awakening.
Terrified of being discovered as an illegal immigrant if he went to seek proper medical care, O Saoire sought no professional help until a friend fixed him up with a false name and social security number, which allowed him to enter the US government programme that provides medication to people with HIV and AIDS.
Still, his depression initially refused to lift and in November 1994, O Saoire tried to kill himself. I took 100 tablets of AXT [an AIDS medication] and whiskey, he remembers. I called my friends and told them I d had enough and said goodbye. One of my friends who had my keys got into my house, pulled me out of bed and ran me around the apartment. At the hospital, they forced me to drink gallons of charcoal.
O Saoire allowed himself to be put under psychiatric observation for two weeks. When I got out, my father and brother came over from Galway. It was their first time to the United States, so I insisted that we go sightseeing, he says, smiling at the memory.
Slowly life improved for O Saoire until January 1996, when his friend Hessie was killed by a police officer in the Bronx.
Hessie had been there for me when I was in the hospital. He d told me at the time, Tommy, there is no need to hurt yourself. There are many people who care for you and their hearts are ripped to pieces by what you do to yourself .
His friend s death drove O Saoire back to alcohol and he also started smoking cigarettes and marijuana. He tried to kill himself again, swallowing twice as many pills, as in the first suicide attempt. This time his life was saved only by having his stomach pumped.
After this close shave, O Saoire finally found the right psychiatric help and was put on the anti-depressant Prozac for a few months. He also joined an HIV support group named Body Positive. My group is all gay, composed of decorators, architects and news reporters. Many of them are long-term survivors some have had HIV for the past 10 years.
Medical advances in the fight against HIV also boosted O Saoire s morale. Though he has never suffered any of the destructive opportunistic infections common with AIDS, he is taking the new protease inhibitors, which have knocked the presence of HIV in O Saoire s blood down to undetectable levels. The drug therapy costs roughly $15,000 a year, but is paid for by the US government.
Optimism abounds in the American press over the new AIDS drugs. AIDS is not seen as a death sentence anymore at least for those who can afford the new drugs. In fact, O Saoire s own HIV support group has moved from weekly to monthly meetings because the members need less emotional support and want to get on with their own lives. Only time and medical progress will tell if the rosy outlook is justified.
Tomais O Saoire got involved with AIDS activism when he heard that Brendan Fay, an Irish gay activist from Drogheda, was setting up an AIDS group in the Irish community in New York. Fay was one of the founders of the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization, a group that has tried to march in New York s St. Patrick s Day Parade since 1991, but has been excluded by the Ancient Order Of Hibernians who run the parade. After Fay received publicity for his involvement with ILGO, he was fired from his job as a Catholic school teacher.
I know of dozens of Irish and the children of Irish immigrants who have died of or are living with AIDS, says Fay. We are getting together so that people living with AIDS do not have to live in isolation.
It is not just a gay problem, he adds. We have young Irish immigrants going into the bars and taking off their wedding rings. We also want to deal with women and children living with AIDS. Our goal is to give people the information they need to live happy and healthy lives in New York.
Founded in September, Irish AIDS Outreach (IAO) now has 14 members. The group is composed of Irish and Irish-American men and women living with AIDS, social workers and several relatives of Irish who ve died of AIDS. We ve set up a phone line and I am getting referrals about young Irish who are HIV-positive with no support, O Saoire explains. I tell them, for God s sake, we are here for you.
Irish AIDS Outreach has set up a men s and a women s support group. It also plans to co-ordinate HIV education campaigns, organise volunteers to help people living with AIDS, and take part in events around World AIDS Day on December 1st. IAO has also planned a community meeting entitled Stories Of Hope In The Time Of AIDS for December 5th at Flannery s, a West Village bar. It will be a relaxed environment, with tea and scones, and pints, smiles Fay.
Although he has received a lot of verbal support for the new AIDS group, Fay notes that representatives from Irish immigration organisations and church groups have yet to attend IAO meetings. One notable exception is Sister Edna McNicholas, an Irish-born nun who works with at-risk teenagers in the Bronx. One of the Irish immigration leaders said that AIDS is not an immigration issue, Fay notes. What about Irish immigrants being barred from the US because they are HIV-positive?
Recently up in the Bronx on Bainbridge Avenue, Tomais O Saoire went to the D.O D s bar to speak with the owner Regina and put up posters for Irish AIDS Outreach. Regina is from Cavan and has known O Saoire since he came to New York. When I saw him after he came back from Ireland, he was very pale and had lost a lot of weight. I didn t have to be told it was HIV. I kinda knew, says Regina. But he has friends here now who don t care if he is HIV-positive, if he s gay.
Regina says that many of her customers still scoff at the AIDS issue. Men come into the bar, construction workers, and they think AIDS is a big joke, she rues. Even as Regina is talking and simultaneously serving the lunchtime crowd and dodging beer salesmen, an older customer reads the Irish AIDS Outreach poster on the wall. He makes an obscene comment and sits down at the bar.
To gain more medical benefits, O Saoire has taken part in the voluntary departure programme of the US Immigration And Naturalization Service, which would require him permanently returning to Ireland next year.
O Saoire is still upbeat about his future. He wants to take his new boyfriend Des back to Ireland for his brother s wedding in the near future. My parents don t know that I m gay yet, he chuckles. Though after what I ve been through the past two years, I am not afraid of anything. n
Irish AIDS Outreach can be contacted in New York City at (212) 340-8065. The mailing address is Suite 64, 345 East 204th Street, Bronx NY 10467.