Season 10: Episode 6: Michelle Lopez

Making Gay History | LGBTQ Oral Histories from the Archive

Making Gay History

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4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2022

⏱️ 25 minutes

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Summary

Women can’t get AIDS—or so Michelle Lopez thought until she tested positive for HIV in 1990. Viable treatments were years away, but the undocumented immigrant from Trinidad would not be defeated. She turned her diagnosis into an opportunity to help others while she fought for her life. Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources, as well as a transcript of the episode. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi History Makers, Eric here. A few months ago we launched Making Gay History's Patreon
0:06.0	channel, a place where we're sharing new video interviews never before heard clips from
0:10.5	my archive that didn't make it into the episodes and more. If you're not a member of our
0:14.9	Patreon community yet, I hope you'll join today. Just $5 a month gets you access to these
0:20.4	Making Gay History extras, and you'll support us as we work to bring LGBTQ history to life
0:26.2	through the voices of the people who lived it. Find out more at patreon.com slash making
0:31.6	gay history, or go to makinggayhistory.com and click on the link in our homepage banner.
0:37.1	And thank you so much.
0:38.3	I'm Eric Marcus and this is Making Gay History. AIDS activist Michelle Lopez is a force of nature.
1:02.1	The share of trauma and hardship she's lived through is beyond my imagination. And in describing her
1:08.1	life, it's easy to lapse into cliches about the resilience of the human spirit. Michelle is a
1:13.7	survivor of addiction, attempted suicide, domestic violence, homelessness, HIV AIDS. But as I
1:20.8	realized the first time I heard Michelle speak, she's a lot more than the sum of her scars. In fact,
1:26.2	she's a riot. I met Michelle nearly five years ago backstage at the Brooklyn Brewery. We were both
1:33.0	featured storytellers at an event hosted by video out in organization that documents the coming
1:38.1	out stories of LGBTQ people. With her passion and humor and Caribbean lilt, Michelle left her wrapped
1:44.6	audience and stitches. But her journey had been an arduous one. That much was clear. Also clear
1:51.8	was that her 10-minute set barely scratched the surface of the story she had to tell.
1:56.5	I made a note to interview her one day to find out more.
1:59.6	Michelle discovered she was HIV positive in 1990. HIV infection rates and AIDS-related deaths
2:07.0	were still on the rise. The advent of the first truly effective treatments was still six years off.
2:13.9	Almost a decade into the AIDS epidemic, scientists had a much better grasp of how HIV was transmitted.
	...

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