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Frontline soldiers on the AIDS battleground: A profile of community activists Felix and Paula Sirls

By Brent Dorian Carpenter

DETROIT – When it comes to sounding the alarm about the twin scourges of drugs and AIDS and their impact on the black community, there are few more powerful voices than those of husband-and-wife activists Felix and Paula Sirls. In war terminology, they are four-star generals embroiled in hand-to-hand ground combat. Their authority comes from personal experiences forged in a white-hot crucible of despair and near-death. Married seven years, both entered the union HIV-positive.
On any given day, they are likely to be found plying their life-saving message in arenas where the demographics of HIV infection are climbing fastest – in high schools, prisons, senior centers and homeless shelters. Today they are found at Mt. Neeby, a small church on Detroit's east side, facilitating a weekly group called Positive Support Organization. In the audience are twenty-five HIV-infected and affected persons, many of whom are concurrently grappling with the devastating issue of drug addiction recovery.
"A major challenge for us is to stay on meds and stay off drugs," Felix states forcefully. He understands this fact with absolute certitude. His back-story is apocryphal. As a paramedic and nurse in San Francisco in the early 1980s, he was a first responder to some of the very earliest cases of what was then known only as "gay cancer," or gay-related immune deficiency (GRID). He would become even more intimate with the disease years later as it ravaged his small frame, reducing him at one point to a mere 89 pounds and a technical state of clinical death.
"I got it from a working girl who was working for me," he explains his mode of infection euphemistically. "I had a dope house/whore house." The reformed addict is now a certified HIV and chemical abuse counselor. By day he works for the Detroit Health Department, but much of the balance of his outreach work is unpaid. Felix works with SEMHAC, Gospel Against AIDS, Michigan Rehab Council and serves on the boards of more organizations than he can readily name off the top of his head.
What Paula, whom Felix lovingly refers to as his "domestic goddess," lacks in official titles, she more than makes up for in raw guts, knowledge, dedication and experience. Her infection in 1997 came along a somewhat more traditional route – a previous partner of 20 years. She tells of her initial reluctance in stepping onto the activist stage, occasionally selling herself short as her husband's powerful counterpart.
"I never thought I'd stand up before thousands of people and tell them I was living with AIDS. Now, he drags me all over the place," she says jokingly, "So I have to be educated in whatever he's doing and I have to be aware of it. If they call him to do something anywhere in the world, they just assume I am a part of it and put me on the program."
The counseling session is unstructured but interactive. The participants' problems run the gamut from Hepatitis-C, schizophrenia and former imprisonment in state correctional facilities. Several of the women are old enough to speak of their grandchildren. These are the new faces, privates in the army, of the war on AIDS: heterosexual African American females.
The Sirls met, not so ironically, at a counseling session not unlike this one, and are themselves, collectively, the parents of nine children and nine grandchildren.
"Three are mine," Paula explains, "and the rest are his. But we treat them all the same. We're the Brady Bunch!"
Three of those children have followed in their parents' footsteps and have established careers in the field of HIV outreach.
Felix says one big issue for many HIV-positive persons is they have never done anything "wrong," such as drug use, prostituted themselves or been unfaithful to a spouse. Husband and wife both agree that erasing the stigma of the disease is one of their top priorities.
"As you see, this room is full of heterosexuals," he points out, "or people who profess to be heterosexual. They may be bisexual, and this is one of the few places where they feel safe in coming. When they go to other groups, there's a mix of people, and so there's a perception of guilt by association – that everybody who's positive must be gay or a dope fiend. So there's a stigma which is huge."
So problematic, in fact, that a woman in the audience, a parolee whose identity is concealed for confidentiality reasons, speaks of inmates who refuse HIV anti-retroviral meds in prison to conceal their status. And that's on the rare occasion when medical treatment is even available to prisoners.
Halfway through the session, another woman painfully shares with the couple her story of guilt and reconciliation.
"I say why me? My counselor says 'why not you? You are putting yourself at risk!' I first thought that was cruel, but I now realize he was right," she confesses.
"Nobody in this room deserves to be infected," Felix reassures her. "We have to be examples to save people."
He reinforces this message of responsibility again and again. To another gentleman, he states, "I've been positive for going on 23 years. You've been positive for 16 years? You are here for a reason, brother." The man beams with newfound confidence.
"The fight boils down to staying clean and self-esteem," says Paula. "Too many of us are dying because of depression and feeling alienated."
In this war, the only credentials that matter are the enduring scars earned on the field of battle, and those brave soldiers willing to pick up the arms of fallen comrades and carry on the good fight.

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