Louie Ortiz Fonseca at the ViiV Healthcare plenary “Beyond Belief” at USCHA.
During the 2025 United States Conference on HIV/AIDS (USCHA), I watched a speech that may rank as the most beautiful speech I have seen in thirty years of attending this conference.
Louie Ortiz-Fonseca, Director of LGBTQ Health and Rights at Advocates for Youth, stepped on the stage as part of the ViiV Healthcare-sponsored opening plenary, “Beyond Belief.” Since the conference theme was HIV and aging, there was a parade of survivors telling personal stories about their long lives, many of them utterly unexpected, and of living and working in the HIV arena.
Louie’s speech hit me differently than the others. It was a brutally honest depiction of poverty and the crack addiction epidemic of the 1980s, but also something more. It was about finding mentors in unlikely places and the wisdom they impart. It was about admiring someone with whom you share an unspoken “otherness.” It was also a bit of heartbreaking wish fulfillment, as Louie reached back into the past and spoke to someone who touched him more deeply than they may have realized at the time.
There were celebrities onstage at USCHA. There were fiery speeches, calls to action, and standing ovations for national figures. And then there was one man, alone with his simple story and his truth, who just gutted me.
Here is the text of Louie Ortiz-Fonseca’s speech at USCHA, delivered on September 4, 2025.
It was the late 1980s. Yes, yes! And the height of my mother’s crack addiction.
And if I remember correctly, it was the height of the neighborhood’s addiction. See, the crack epidemic was like a kind of equalizer.
My mother had friends who were lawyers, business executives, blue collar workers, and even bikers. And all of them would go in and out of the room that we rented.
I never paid that much mind because I knew that if I got too newsy, I’d get my ass kicked.
But it was my mother’s friend Tina that always left me mesmerized. Tina was tall, black, striking, and beautiful. And unapologetic about her five o’clock shadow. She called it her daytime look. And I studied her the way I should have been studying my math homework.
She was magical. And I thought that I could just find a way to figure out what made her so magical so that I can conjure it up myself.
Tina visited my mother twice every day. Once after work, where she showed up in her hard hat, jeans, and combat boots, and then later that night after transforming into our neighborhood’s own Donna Summer.
That transformation marks me. It taught me that beauty isn’t discovered; it’s created.
One night (because I’m newsy), I overheard Tina and my mother talking. More like whispering. So, I peeked through the sheets that we used as a curtain to separate a large room into two spaces. And I saw that Tina was bloody. And even in my young mind, I knew that she had gotten beaten up for being herself. The same way that I was getting beat up at school for being myself.
Tina and I developed our own friendship years later. We talked about Janet Jackson, fighting homophobes, and AIDS. She recalled that night that she showed up at my mother’s house bloody. She said it was the first time and the last time that she had to stitch herself up back together. She said, if you want to fight for your life, baby, make it the fight of your life.
Then she made me promise to never do drugs. And then she made me promise to not get AIDS. And I promised. Because back then, that was the only prevention you could give young gay boys like myself. Don’t get AIDS.
I didn’t quite understand what she was telling me, but I knew what she meant. She was giving me a roadmap on how to thrive, how to endure, and how to survive into the future that she imagined for me.
Tina died of AIDS complications in 1996. She passed away quietly like so many others. Because by then AIDS had hollowed out our community. Grief was muted, and we only spoke their names in the stories that we told. Kind of like I’m doing now.
So I speak Tina’s name and I bring her into this room with us. And I want to take it a bit further. And I want to talk to Tina for the first time in decades. So I wrote this for her.
Tina, it’s been decades since your passing. I still remember the promise I made to you. I didn’t technically keep it. I have tried drugs. I discovered they weren’t my thing. I prefer a Long Island with pineapple juice. Remember that.
And I’ve been living with HIV for over 20 years. I’m undetectable. And if this were 1996, this would all seem like science fiction to you and a young boy you knowingly and unknowingly saved. I realize now that you weren’t asking me to promise abstinence. You were asking me to promise life. You were willing my survival.
And I’m still here, Tina. I’m now older than you were when you passed away. And that alone feels like a gift and a burden. So many of us who have survived then were never expected to age with HIV. We weren’t all given blueprints for what it would mean to grow into our bodies with both trauma and resilience.
Aging with HIV means speaking the names of those we lost while navigating a future that you imagined. It means keeping the promises we made.
Tina, you would be so proud.
I still talk about Janet Jackson. I’m still fighting homophobes. And we are still fighting AIDS. I have learned like you to stitch myself back together when stigma and shame try to rule me. And throughout my journey as a father and advocate, I have the privilege to provide all the young people in my life the same guidance you gave me. That is what aging with HIV means. Not just surviving but living fully in the world that you imagined.
Maybe I did not break that promise I made to you. I have lived. I have aged and I am thriving.
And after all, Tina, that was the promise: to exist beyond belief.
(Video courtesy of ViiV Healthcare. Editing and transcript by Lynne Rhys.)
