Hey, I’m Chris and I’m from Memphis, Tennessee. 

I kind of always realized that I was a little bit different. You know, in school I was always called gay before I even knew what gay was, just because I was always a bit different.

In searching and learning more about this community –  I’m in high school now, and so there was this website called Black Gay Chat Live. It was like the Grindr before the Grindr, you know. I would go and I would read stories and read people’s fantasies and communicate.When I graduated and went to college, which is when I really started to explore. And so I started to date men. I started to party. 

So there was this one time during my senior year, I went out to a club, met somebody and the next morning I woke up in the Motel 6. I woke up in the bed, by myself. Half-dressed. And I was trying my best to, like, figure out, like, how I got back there, but everything was like going blank. Like, I remember preparing to go out that night, but beyond, like, leaving my house, like, nothing was like coming to me. Like, nothing could click. 

I realized that I had been roofied. And I know what it feels like to wake up from a drunk night. And this was completely different. Like, I knew something, somebody had did something to me. 

I managed to get myself together, call somebody to come pick me up, take me home. I kind of put that behind me. I didn’t say nothing to nobody. I just kind of like, you know, dealt with it. 

Maybe around like the next week, I guess see like, like maybe like three or four days. I had got sick. It was like I had caught the flu. I had made a doctor’s appointment because I hate being sick.I went and they did a HIV test on me. They asked me everything. I told ’em about the situation, what had happened, and they did a test on me and she came in the room. And she looked at me, she was like, “Well, I got something to tell you. You tested positive for HIV. And gonorrhea.” I paused in a moment. I can remember thinking it was like… Fuck.

She looked at me, she was like, “Well, I got something to tell you. You tested positive for HIV.”

And at this time I really kind of, like, didn’t know too much about HIV or anything. Like I knew what they told you in school, right? But like, I didn’t know about PrEP. I ain’t know about treatment or none of that. 

She was like, “Is there anybody that you need me to call?” 

I said, “No, you ain’t gotta call nobody.”

She was like, “Do you wanna report what happened to you?” 

I said, “No, I don’t wanna do that.”

I got in my car and I drove home, and on the drive down I just broke down. I was just crying and I went through a phase of depression. It was like I had to weight… the weight of the world on my shoulders. 

And so I was like, you know what? What I’m gonna do is that I’m gonna leave Memphis and I’m gonna go to a big city. And I graduated college May 13, like May 14th, 2017, and I was in Dallas by the 4th of July. The job that I had got was in research, but I really just didn’t know like what type, and come to find out the research that I was doing was that I was collecting data for the CDC’s National HIV behavior surveillance.

It’s a qualitative data collection to where you’re surveying folk and asking them about their stories, their life. So like literally we was going out on an RV testing people, but also, like, listening to their stories. 

There was this one guy, older, black, gay guy, life of the party. He came on the van because he knew if we tested him, he was gonna get $75 just to tell us his story. He already knew his status. He said, “Y’all gimme $75 cash money to tell my story??” And so this man just told me his story, like, these questions like, you know, “How often have you had sex in the past few months? You know, have you ever felt hopeless? Or how do you feel?” 

So I’m asking him these questions about his mental health. I’m asking him these questions about his job, his love life. 

And he was like, “Yeah, and I’m positive too, baby. It ain’t stopping shit. Look at me, I look fabulous!”

And I was like, “You know what? You do!” It was that one experience. But then just like the multitude of experiences of people who are also HIV positive and it was just like, okay, I’m positive and what? And I was like, You know what? If they can do it, I can do it too. 

That job really honestly, like changed my life. It opened up a door of opportunity to like a field of work that I never knew existed. My colleagues at the time that I worked with, you know, they were researchers, so they were anthropologists, they were so, and they was like, “Have you ever heard of an MPH?” 

And I was like, “Well, what’s that?” 

And they was like, “A Master’s in public health.”

So I applied to an MPH program and I got accepted. While on that job, I went from being a part-time temporary data collector to being the field supervisor. One thing led to another and I left there and I went to go work at pharma and then now doing capacity building and training and like public speaking and like case management and direct service, and now finishing my, my doctoral degree in public health.

And most people would think that, like, being diagnosed with HIV is like the worst thing that happened to them. And when it happened to me, yes, I was in that moment. But now looking back, everything that has happened to me in life, good, bad, ugly, indifferent, those things I like about myself, those things I try to hide away and those things that I have yet to come to understand.

I appreciate them because they got me to this moment. A public health advocate. Doctor Do Good. Your favorite hood doctor. All of these things. Chris Walker, the ballroom daddy, the advocate, the model, the mogul, the communicator, the leader… but had it not been for that moment of adversity, I probably never would’ve grown up to be the powerful man that I am today, to accept all of my identities, no matter what the world may perceive about those identities, to accept them and find value in them.