expressed herself without concern about judgment.
Denise was fifteen when she began dating a twenty-one year old man. She was convinced that she was in love. He gave her things that she wanted and said nice things to her and about her. He saw how attractive she was in every way and encouraged her. He also read the poetry she wrote, and really understood it.
When her mother forbade her from seeing this man, Denise became defiant. She wasn’t about to give up the positive attention she was getting. So she ran away again, this time for four months.
Denise was eventually caught and placed in a Youth Detention Center as a runaway. Though she tried to explain herself and her situation to the staff, it was no use. Finally, Denise figured out that if she just said what the staff wanted to hear, such as, “I’ve been bad, but I promise to appreciate my mother,” she would be sent home.
When Denise went home, she had had that four-month taste of freedom. And when she was sixteen, her mother turned her over to this same young man.
Denise says that there was really no one to talk to about any of this. She had been emotionally abused, and had had no help with the trauma of the assault. She wondered if her mother had ever even wanted her.
Denise tried to make a life with the young man she now lived with. There was a lot of drinking, but no drugs. She had been a brilliant student, but living on her own, staying up late and being wild ended her academic success during twelfth grade. It wasn’t until many years later that she finished high school.
With the inevitable end of Denise’s relationship, she decided to enter the military. She was intrigued by the idea of the GI bill for education and signed on with a recruiter. Denise was not quite eighteen years old when she passed the entrance exams with high marks. The military doctor who had performed her physical called her back. With absolutely no emotion in his voice, he informed her that her tests indicated that she was HIV positive and was unacceptable for military service. “You’ll be dead in a year,” the doctor announced impassively. The rape she survived at thirteen had come back to haunt her in the form of HIV.
Denise went back to her apartment in shock. When her landlord got home, she asked him to go to the liquor store for her. Teetering between numbness and terror, her drunken state became the norm and soon she began to associate with the neighborhood cocaine dealer. This began a year of unimaginable degradation.
“Cocaine eventually led to crack,” Denise says. “I was running all over and could not land. I was becoming more and more degraded, and I crossed every moral line you can imagine. I would have occasional moments of consciousness, and then lapse back into that dark, dark world of crack addiction and alcoholism.”
Denise awoke from her fog one morning to realize that she was twenty-one years old. The doctor had said she’d be dead and she wasn’t. “What happens if I live?” she wondered. She had never considered this possibility and had hidden her pitiful state from her family.
“I really wanted to live. I thought it might be great to live, to write again, to listen to music, and enjoy the sun.”
Denise went through several treatment programs trying to get clean and sober. She kept relapsing. At one point, someone had broken her jaw and she was found wandering the streets of Atlanta.
Finally, her stay at The Fulton County Drug and Alcohol Treatment Program, followed by living at Saint Jude’s Halfway House allowed Denise to obtain and maintain her sobriety.
“I loved the 12-Step work,” Denise says. I talked and talked and talked, and everyone listened. It felt so good to share. I had been waiting a long time to have people to relate to and talk to. There was real dialogue, and it was a power base for me.”
One day, a woman named Dottie came to visit Denise at the treatment center. Denise told her about being HIV positive. Dottie told her that there were many women who needed to hear her story and arranged for Denise to meet and encourage other women facing the same challenge. Because her health was compromised, she was able to receive disability payments to survive during this period of time.
Denise began doing outreach work as a peer counselor at a local AIDS clinic, where she eventually served on the board. She delivered culturally sensitive HIV/AIDS education, incorporating messages about addiction and recovery. She says that she constantly rode the bus here and there for speaking engagements related to AIDS education. She tried to convey to infected people that they had a right to live productive lives despite their HIV status.
When Denise had been sober for three years, she received what she thought was a crank call. The person on the telephone said he was a White House aide and asked if she would be interested in working in Washington, D.C. for the Clinton administration, advising the President and other government officials on AIDS policy. He went on to say that her name was on a very short list of possible appointees. “I thought it was just some weirdo,” she says. But, very soon a packet of papers appeared in the mail that made the offer official. Her appointment to The National HIV/AIDS Advisory Council began to be noticed by the press and she received numerous notes of congratulations from various government officials. People approached her and asked, “Now that you have the ear of the President, what are you going to do with it?”
Denise thought about her constituency of disenfranchised people with HIV and AIDS. Some had addiction problems. Many had been hurt by homophobia and/or racism. She knew that what she wanted to do with “the President’s ear” was to represent these people. She wanted the President to know about the problems they faced. She says that she focused on writing sound policy and making sure the focus was on practical help and getting things done.
Denise says that from 1995 until 2000, when her term ended, she put her whole heart into this work. “My integrity spoke for itself and my voice was heard,” she says. She goes on to say that President Clinton was attentive to the issues she presented and appreciated her.
“This is how I finished growing up,” Denise says. “I went from the crack house to the White House and I found my womanhood. To this day, I can go to the White House website and pull up speeches I gave. I am proud of what I was able to do there.”
Denise has continued her public speaking engagements. She has spoken at two Democratic National Conventions, including one for nominee John Kerry. She is a regular speaker at NFL Rookie Symposiums and on Black-Entertainment Television’s, Rap It Up, HIV/AIDS education programs.
“I tell my story,” she says. “I don’t like telling people what to do or not to do, or how to behave. I just tell them where I’ve been and what I’ve done. People melt into the feelings and they relate to the feelings. I want them to be introspective and realize how their decisions affect themselves and others. I let people come to their own resolution.”
In addition, Denise is an emerging writer, with work contributed to James Adler’s Memento More —An AIDS Requiem. She has released a spoken word project called Elevation.
In reflecting on her life, Denise says that she sees the connection between having no father and being attracted as a teenager to an older man. “It took me a long time to let go of my father. I had no consistent father figure and it left a hole in my identity. I had no idea about how to do a relationship. But, I now know what I want and where my lines are. I won’t move my lines for anyone.”
She goes on to say, “My life had begun to unravel even before I knew I had HIV. With the diagnosis, I became immobilized. When I realized that I would live, I had no idea how to live. I just knew I didn’t want to hurt inside anymore and that there were things I needed to learn. I had spent so much of my life trying to get my mother to love me. I tried to earn her love and this spilled over into my other relationships. It just didn’t work.”
“So, I realized that I can’t be who I am if I don’t know who I am and I set about to find out. I found my passion in life and that’s when I found myself. When the noise in my head stopped, and I got other people’s voices out, I could just really be me.”
Victoria Rowell