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Show: July 31, 2011:
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Checkup: Finding Humor in HIV
Host: Eric Metcalf
To help steer us toward the lighter side of a disease that used to be known as a death sentence, I asked River Huston to be our guide. She became a motivational speaker after her diagnosis of HIV and a bleeding disorder in the early 1990s.
RH: It’s really hard dating, but I think it’s so important to disclose. When I moved to the country, it got really tough. These guys didn’t know anything! I said, you know I have HIV, right? They’re like HIV, what’s that? I got HBO!
EM: Do you ever use the old line during a performance, "I’m dying up here"?
RH: No, no, when I’m not getting a laugh, my line is, "That was so funny last night in my room … alone.
EM: River's first gig was in a county jail. No matter how tough the audience was, from prisons to halfway houses to even high schools, she learned that she could make them cry. But she wanted to connect in a different way.
RH: I felt like I can’t keep going out there and pouring my heart out and tearing the whole audience up and we’ll all need therapy after. I gotta find a way to get this message out for them and for me in a way that can see it for what it is. It’s a virus in my bloodstream. It’s tragic, it’s horrible. But life is life. Let’s have a laugh.
EM: Are you deliberately trying to trivialize HIV and shrink its impact?
RH: You can say trivialize it, but the reality was, it wasn’t that I was making it smaller – I was making it accessible. I was making it something they could swallow instead of something that’s so huge. Suddenly we’re all on the same level.
EM: And when it comes to audiences who also have the disease?
RH: The HIV/AIDS population, they want to laugh about it. They just didn’t know how up to now. Everyone is so darned serious: they say, 'You’re so brave, you’re so courageous.' It’s patronizing really, so giving them a way to laugh is the best thing I can do for them."
I’m Eric Metcalf, and I still haven’t found the humor in baldness.
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Additional Resources:
- Find out more about River Huston at her website.
- Researchers at the University of Maryland find that laughter prevents against heart attacks.
