Last May, just eight days before his 20th birthday, Christopher Gordon discovered he was infected by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, the virus that causes AIDS.
When he found out, Gordon said, he didn’t feel anything. His mind and body went into shock and everything went numb.
But that night, Gordon broke down. He cried for the next couple days without stopping.
“I sat in a corner. I didn’t want anyone to touch me or talk to me. I just wanted to be by myself,” he said.
Six months later, Gordon is volunteering for the Eugene HIV Alliance, educating youths about the risks of contracting HIV.
In January, he hopes to begin his first term at the University.
Gordon’s journey to where he is today was a long and difficult one.
It began in the rural town of Cecilia, La., where “there’s still a lot of racism,” Gordon said.
As a child, Gordon, who is bi-racial, said he was shuffled between family members because nobody wanted to deal with him. He was “degraded” and “belittled” by his white relatives because he identified as black. He said his parents favored his younger brother, “who was straight and did sports.”
A student who excelled in high school, Gordon left Cecilia for the Xavier University of Louisiana in 2003. But Gordon, who was supporting
himself financially, couldn’t afford to stay in school and returned to Cecilia halfway through his second semester.
Soon after returning home, his stepfather kicked him out, he said. With his last few dollars, Gordon boarded a bus heading to New Orleans.
For the next few months, he lived on the street, surviving by selling his body for sex. During this time, Gordon had sex with 50 to 70 men. Most of those encounters were unprotected.
Then, a man in New Orleans encouraged him to move to Eugene. He did, but he soon found himself on the streets again.
He was visiting Looking Glass New Roads, a local drop-in shelter for homeless youth, when a representative from HIV Alliance offered him $10 to get tested for HIV.
The test came back positive.
At 18, when Gordon first started having sex, he said, he did it for attention and “just wanted to feel important.”
The first time he had unprotected sex was around Mardi Gras of that year, he said.
“I was more focused on the attention and didn’t feel like putting up a fight about asking about protection or not,” Gordon said. “If he didn’t want to use a condom, we didn’t use one.”
Today, in his workshops with at-risk youths, Gordon stresses that everyone is important enough to ask about protection.
“I didn’t have that,” he said. “It’s too late for me, but I can use my experience and my story to protect someone else.”
Gordon is not afraid of living with HIV, and he wouldn’t change anything about his past, even if that meant never becoming infected, he said.
“Maybe the reason why I’ve gotten it is to save someone else,” he said.
Niki Martin, youth educator and outreach director for HIV Alliance, said Gordon has been a “phenomenal asset.”
“He has done more in six months than I’ve seen been done in a long time,” Martin said.
Gordon said he really likes Eugene and is looking forward to attending the University next term.
“I always tell people that Eugene is the cocoon that’s changing me from a caterpillar to a butterfly,” he said. “And although, like the butterfly, my life may be short, I plan on making it a beautiful one.”
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