By Lucas Fauno Gutiérrez. Pablo Pérez recounted his life with HIV in the book "A Year Without Love" (1998). He also co-wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation. Later, between 2010 and 2013, he wrote columns for Página/12 under the title "I Am Positive," which became a continuation of his first book, but with a more collective tone, blending fiction, doubts, debates, and the day-to-day realities of living with the virus. "I started receiving emails from readers who shared their own anecdotes, those of friends, or asked for advice. Then, in the column, I told some of them raw, others I fictionalized, because I also really like the serialized novel, that format that ends with 'to be continued…', like a written soap opera," Pérez tells Presentes. It's Tuesday, and in a little while, the writer, born in 1966, will be giving his writing workshops.

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Through these 87 columns that make up the book, the author's personal chronicles are interwoven with the stories of characters like L and his relationship with La Masa and La Loba, and the problems of the couple P and T. Issues such as the hope of a new medication appear—"you know how every now and then the vaccine 'The Cure' comes out, or a discussion about X topic, so all of this was alternating, it was a playful thing," he says. The sadomasochistic sessions one night and the hospital bureaucracy the next, describing how to suck a cock or how someone finishes inside him without much fuss, the relationship with BDSM masters and the relationship with doctors—with their differences and similarities—sex and pleasure permeated by fear and uncertainty. From the moment when HIV was a death sentence to the chronic condition of living with this virus, Pablo Pérez writes as he lives. He lives and he writes.

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In his first book, A year without loveThe protagonist, named Pablo Pérez, once diagnosed, assumed he would die on December 31, 1996. “It wasn’t so obvious that I was going to die before the end of the year, but it served as a literary trick to say whatever I wanted,” he says. During the writing of this first text, triple therapy appeared, one of the medications that most helped in the treatment of the virus.A year without love It could have been an act of exhibitionism without literary value, but for me, as long as it had anthropological value, it was fine,” and the result was well received, as were the SOY positivo columns that became part of the history of the virus.

WriteVIHr

Pablo began writing while playing the Ouija board. His aunt had a meltdown and was pretending to be Queen Nefertiti. Eternally young, she worked in bookstores, and in her library, Pablo became a Neruda fanatic. “With the Ouija board, we pretended Neruda was communicating with us and sending us poems, but I was the one writing them. They were my poems, not Neruda's, and they were bad,” the other Pablo recounts. The more than five years he spent in writing workshops with Susana Silvestre ended when he shared his first BDSM story, and his classmates didn't take it well at all: “We were coming out of the military dictatorship, we were in a democracy, but there was the whole issue of torture, so my story was terribly received.” Pérez was writing about a hookup that ended in a role-playing game with some slapping, a real-life story that later became a text. That's how Pérez writes.

Positive, chronic with HIV

“I liked the undated edition, as if they were all short stories of the same length, a decision made by Mariano Blatt and Francisco Visconti of Editorial De Parado,” says the writer about this first compilation of texts originally published in Página/12. Unprotected sex is something that obsesses the couple, P and T. Between chronicle and chapter, we follow this story with its twists, dialogues, other STIs, dating websites, and we understand that all those terms and concepts about HIV are narrated here not with statistics but from the perspective of bodies and identities. In July 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a person on antiretroviral treatment who achieves an undetectable viral load cannot transmit the virus. “This was already being said in doctors’ offices,” says Pablo Pérez and his characters since 2010. “Prevention is always necessary for me. I tried not to take sides, but I’m pro-condom except in specific cases in a relationship with complete trust or where you don’t care. The issue isn’t so much HIV, but also all the other sexually transmitted diseases,” says the writer, who recounts his entire experience with hepatitis and both protected and unprotected sex in the book.

I am positive in 2018

While Pablo Pérez is writing about POSITIVO, President Mauricio Macri downgrades the Ministry of Health to a Secretariat, the director of the former ministry's AIDS unit resigns due to budget cuts that jeopardize the continuity of treatments, and Dr. Albino claims that condoms are ineffective. It's 2018, and Pérez reflects: “What's happening is a catastrophe. My idea in writing SOY Positivo was to keep the issue in the media; simply mentioning it already says, 'This exists, it's not over, there are new debates, it exists.' So, even if the book is poorly written, even if some things are nonsense, it's still worthwhile to bring the issue to light.” In addition to the 87 columns selected by De Parado, two texts are included: “Chronicle of a Foretold Cut” from 2018 and a 2010 interview where Pérez speaks with his infectious disease specialist. From beginning to end, from 2010 to 2018, these two texts contain the 87 columns. They read with almost the same timelessness as the entire book, since unfortunately, at the beginning and end, many of the problems and complaints remain relevant, they are repeated, they return. “It’s funny, because when we refer to our HIV-positive status, we say 'I’m positive,' and, in my opinion, after twenty years of living with the virus, I can say that this is the attitude that saved me,” Pérez narrates in his first chronicle and on the back cover. He opens and closes positive.