Level 58

What Madonna, HIV, and Another Birthday Taught Me About Refusing To Disappear.

Aug 03, 2026

BIRTHDAY BOY :: Two days ago I reached Level 58.

I’ve been declaring birthdays “levels” for a couple of years now, because it sounds less like a countdown to decline and more like an accomplishment. Which, if we’re being real, is what aging actually is: achievement.

Nobody reaches Level 58 by accident. You get here by surviving, learning, by making spectacular mistakes, recovering from them, loving the wrong people, loving the right ones, grieving, laughing, changing your mind, paying bills, walking the dog, and somehow finding yourself another year older without quite knowing how it happened - and how it all happened so fucking fast.

You grow, in other words. And that growth deserves celebration more than apology.

This birthday had me thinking about Madonna. The Queen of Pop also has a birthday this month, she’ll reach Level 68 on August 16th.

Madonna doesn’t need me or anyone to defend her. She never has. But, every time another recent photo or concert or club performance of hers appears online, the comments seem almost identical.

“Grandma; geriatric; this is sad; she needs to accept her age.”

To that last critique I find myself wondering why. Why does she need to accept her age?

Mick Jagger, now in his friggin’ eighties, is celebrated for still strutting across a stage. Nick Cave has somehow become even cooler with age. Paul McCartney is called timeless. We admire older men for refusing to slow down. Older women, however, are expected to know when it’s their time to become invisible. Even Madonna. And many women do disappear, like they never mattered to begin with.

Madonna has refused this Western societal inanity; she’s been under this pressure for years.

Good. Still trailblazing, as is her wont.

The more I have thought about it, the more I’ve realized this issue with Madonna isn’t really about Madonna.

It’s about visibility.

We’re surprisingly uncomfortable with people who continue taking up space after we’ve collectively decided they shouldn’t. Society wants older women to be dignified and gracious, to even dress a certain way, to grow old with grace.

What does that even mean? Often it seems to suggest, “Please become smaller so the rest of us don’t have to think about getting older.”

I’ve now reached the glorious point where I have very little interest in becoming smaller for anyone. Madonna definitely has.

Maybe that’s because my relationship with aging has always been a little different.

I’m HIV positive. Undetectable. Healthy. Happy.

When I was diagnosed, HIV medicine had reached the point where people were being saved. Looking back, my timing for acquiring HIV was impeccable. It sounds like an odd thing to write, but it’s true. A little earlier and my story might have been very different. I might not be here typing this today, at Level 58.

Still, medicine doesn’t erase memory. I remember times when there seemed to be multiple funerals a day. I remember going dancing with a group of friends one weekend and, by the next, we were down a man because he’d died. That was simply life for so many of us.

Ironically, I wasn’t especially afraid of dying when I was diagnosed.

By then, what worried me was the medication. In those days some of the treatments caused dramatic changes to the body. People developed hard protruding bellies or humps on the backs of their shoulders. The disease announced itself before they ever had to.

I was able to take meds that didn’t do that, thank God.

Today I have a soft protruding belly instead.

Universe has an odd sense of humour. I’ll take it.

I don’t feel old.

I feel lucky. Lucky to still be here, lucky to still have work I love,
to still be curious, to still laugh too loudly.

Years after my diagnosis, I sat across from Matt Galloway in a CBC Radio studio early on a Friday September morning. The AIDS Walk For Life was that Sunday, and as it’s 25th Anniversary Chair, I was there to promote it.

But. I had made a decision before I walked through the doors. It had been co-ordinated between my PR and Matt’s producers: I was going to tell listeners something I’d never said publicly before. I was going to say four words.

“I am HIV positive.”

I hadn’t disclosed to family or close friends. Very few people in my orbit knew. Of course I had told people I slept with. Some super tight friends. But I never wanted to be known as “the HIV-positive” anything - my career as a writer and broadcaster was burgeoning when I was diagnosed, so I kept it private. Over time, something private can begin to bear the weight of a secret. There exists so much stigma around HIV and AIDS still; I was a happy, successful guy - maybe my coming out publicly would do something, however small, to help smash that stigma.

I’ve worked in radio for decades. I’ve interviewed Oprah, Lady Gaga, politicians, grieving parents, people in crisis and people at the very top of their game. Live microphones have never intimidated me.

That day at the CBC they did.

As the moment approached, something happened that I never expected: I wanted to run. Not figuratively, literally.

I wanted to bolt from my chair like a freak, race out of the studio, get in the elevator and disappear before those four words ever left my mouth.

They were caught in my throat.

Matt stared at me, waiting. I had to force them out. My voice shook.

Looking back now, I understand what was happening. I wasn’t afraid of saying I was HIV positive, I was afraid of what people would think of me after I said it.

At Level 58, that version of me doesn’t exist anymore.

Somewhere over the years I stopped organizing my thoughts, my actions, my life around anyone’s approval. I stopped believing that my worth rose and fell with strangers’ opinions.

I stopped asking permission to be visible.

Maybe that’s why I understand Madonna better than some of those misogynist, ageist fools mocking her.

I don’t know what it’s like to be Madonna. But I do know what it’s like to feel the pressure to become quieter, less complicated, and easier for other people to accept.

I also know what it feels like to decide you’re no longer interested in that bargain.

Here’s the thing about Level 58.

I don’t feel old. I feel lucky. Lucky to still be here, lucky to still have work I love, to still be curious, to still laugh too loudly. Lucky to have a rescue dog from Turkey who has no idea how old I am and couldn’t care less.

Lucky to have outlived an era when many of us weren’t sure we’d get the chance to grow older at all. Some of the friends I have loved never got to complain about a sore back, the inability to see without reading glasses, or the few extra pounds around the middle I’m now jabbing with Ozepmic to ward off.

They never got to find out who they might have become at 58.

I did. How bloody blessed am I?

So indulge me as I celebrate another level, and brace yourself as I refuse to apologize for taking up space. Forgive Madonna for doing the same.

Growing older isn’t the privilege. The privilege is still being here.

And once we truly understand that, becoming invisible because of what others expect feels like the saddest choice of all.

Shaun Proulx

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?