Queer Eye fame superstar, Jonathan Van Ness, has revealed he is HIV positive. The 32-year-old talked about his condition for the first time in his new book, Over The Top. He hopes people like him coming out will reduce the stigma surrounding this grave illness.
The hairstylist who rose to stardom on the Netflix rebooted show told the New York Times: “I’ve had terrible visions every night for the past three months because I’m terrified to be this insecure with people.”
He also revealed he has been mentally prepared for most of the summer for the release of the memoir in which he also mentions about being an addict and a survivor of sexual abuse.
Coming out open for the first time, the previously “Gay of Thrones” host reveals about being sexually abused at a young age at church.
“There was this boy older than me who taught me to play a game called ‘Doctor,'” Van Ness writes. “I would often end up in a closet while missing a few of my clothes and not quite confident of exactly what happened — but I felt a heartbeat that I haven’t usually felt in my chest, and a nauseating rush inside that left me feeling a great deal of shame that I’d never experienced before.” The trauma from this abuse would lead him into adulthood and put him in rehab for both sex and drug addiction.
When it comes to his turnaround from addiction, he says he feels he was able to change things around his underlying issues and that he no longer takes his trauma and puts it against himself like he previously did.
“I just feel like I have a very mixed and healthy sex life and my relationship to weed is beautiful. And I don’t do drugs apart from weed,” he says (save for a “beautiful little sippy-sip of alcohol” on occasions)
