‘I’m Not Going to Stop Being Me’

On Nov. 7, 1991, Magic Johnson announced that he was HIV-positive and was retiring from the Lakers. Since then, he has returned to the team twice and retired again twice. He has toured the world with an all-star basketball team and become a Laker part-owner and a successful businessman, opening a movie theater complex in the Crenshaw district among other ventures. At the request of The Times, he provided this reflection on the last five years.

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For me, HIV isn’t anything to think about. You know it’s there. You just live with it. There is so much to do in a day and a week and a month and a year.

But my son Andre is 15 years old, and he wants to know about it. He doesn’t ask me if I’m going to die. He asks me, “How are you dealing with this? Are you going to be around for a long time?”

That’s his way of asking if I’m going to die, I guess.

I tell him, “I’m going to be here because I want to see you grow. I’m building these companies for you. I want you to go on and take them from there.”

At first I was scared. I think anybody would be scared, but I was confident too. Just like I am today. That’s why I’m doing so well.

The only low points over the past five years for me were when I didn’t know if Cookie was going to stay with me and whether my baby was going to be all right. Other than that, there were no low points.

When I was coming home from the doctor after finding out (the test results), the question was: How do I tell Cookie and how is she going to respond?

You don’t know. I’d be a fool to sit here and say I just knew she was going to respond a certain way and that she was going to still be there. Nobody knows how someone will react when you tell them you have HIV.

When I told her, I said she could go if she wanted to.

Pow! I got hit in the head.

“I’ve been with you through everything,” she said. “I told you I was going to be with you through everything. I love you so much. I’m not going anywhere. We are going to do this together.”

That was it. I knew then that HIV would be no problem to deal with. But if I didn’t have her, then I don’t know where I would be right now. I needed her.

All my life, I really haven’t needed anybody. But I realize Cookie was the only one who understood Earvin. She knew me before all this happened. She knew which buttons to push to make me click, what to do when I’m in a certain mood and so on because we know each other so well.

It’s beautiful to have the person you love most in this world, along with your parents and your children, sitting right up there with you.

Everything I do now is for them. I’ve had my glory, the championships and all that. Now all I want is for my children to have everything I never had as a child. I want to give Cookie the life she deserved a long time ago.

You got somebody like Cookie at your side, and then you’ve got them three little ones yelling, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” you can’t help but make it.

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I don’t feel sick or tired or anything. I start at 7:30 in the morning. I work out at the gym. Then I go play basketball from 9 to 11. Then I go into the office, where I might have four or five meetings scheduled in a single day. Unless we have a social engagement at night, I’m probably in bed by 10:30 or 11, but I don’t get to sleep until after I watch my sports. So it’s maybe midnight by the time I get to sleep. Then, I’m up at 6 or 6:15 and back at it again.

I work out five days a week. I’ve never gotten sick. I’m not worried about that. You know what you’ve got to do. You stay healthy, you work out all the time, which I love to do anyway, you eat right, you take your medicine and you just deal.

I wasn’t a sickly person at the beginning. My immune system has always been strong. And it has stayed strong all the way through. That’s the key right there.

If I couldn’t play basketball for two hours straight, if I couldn’t lift weights for an hour, then I would know that something was up.

My work schedule keeps me very busy.

I’ve got to look at how much popcorn we sold at my theaters and how many customers came through the door. I’ve got to see how we can increase that business. Now my Atlanta theater is opening. Houston is getting ready to open. We are trying to start 10 others around the country, so now I’ve got meetings with mayors, meetings with council people, meetings with community leaders and new sponsors, and so on.

Then there are the Lakers. You’ve got to make sure that these guys take care of business. You talk to them: “How are you doing?” “How does it feel to be with the team?” You watch them closely to see if everything is going right. If it’s not, you see where you can help, but, at the same time, staying out of the way to let them get their own identity.

Then I look at my shopping centers and try to figure out how we can increase the business.

Then I’ve got my T-shirt company and I have to keep track of how many football T-shirts were sold. And there’s the tennis shoe company, MVP. OK, where can we fit into the market? Where can we get our little niche?

Then I go to marketing shows, this show in Atlanta and this show in Germany and this show in Chicago.

So it’s one thing after another. I love it because I’ve always wanted to be a businessman. But one thing I always make sure I have time for is the [Magic Johnson] Foundation. You look up and there are always functions that I attend or checks I present to people who represent other HIV or AIDS organizations, but might not have the ability to raise money that we have.

I’ve accepted everything that goes along with HIV. I’ve accepted being a person who is going to be out in front, leading the cause. I’ve accepted fighting other people’s battles, like the military situation when they were trying to take their benefits away.

I love going to the forefront for people. I love talking about discrimination against people who have HIV and AIDS, whether it’s them losing their jobs or people trying to kick them out of their apartments.

You are talking to a guy who has big shoulders, a guy who really enjoys being out there on the front lines. I have no problem with that.

What people have to understand, though, even in the HIV and AIDS communities, is that Magic can’t be everywhere. I’m only one person, trying to do it all. So you disappoint people over here, you disappoint people over there because everybody wants a piece of you.

I think that’s the most difficult thing, that I still have a problem saying no. I probably wear myself out sometimes trying to do everything possible.

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One thing that has helped me is my competitive attitude. I’ve always enjoyed challenges. I never, ever accept losing. That’s why I think I’m doing well. That and my family and God. God’s been blessing me and taking care of me.

I’m not a down person. I’ve never been one. I’ve always found something to grab onto each and every day.

When I take my youngest son [Earvin III] to karate or I watch him play soccer or I come home and look at him already sleeping, I can’t get down.

My daughter, Elisa, wakes up every morning and asks, “Where’s Daddy?”

She finds me shaving.

“What are you doing, Daddy?”

“Shaving.”

“I just want to stand by you.”

“OK.”

She follows me everywhere. That’s Daddy’s girl.

My son Andre’s different. He’s 15, so I can talk to him about sex and about HIV and about drugs and about gangs.

When you can relate to your children like that, you shouldn’t have any bad days because there is always something good that they do.

But I do think that all the people I’ve met who have had AIDS and passed away have affected me. I think the hardest though is all the beautiful children, who are innocent and got it because their parents were using drugs or got it because of a bad needle, or bad blood. I think that hurts you the most.

What’s also hard to take is when grown-ups who haven’t educated themselves tell their own healthy children that they can’t play with Susie or Johnny because they have HIV. They are not educated enough to know that nothing is going to happen to their own child if he or she plays with a child who has HIV.

Which makes the HIV child go around feeling like they are bad in some way. Discrimination hurts children more than it does grown-ups like myself. It really hurts children.

I have not experienced discrimination, but I think those situations would be more behind your back than in your face.

But you are always going to have those kinds of people. Just because I don’t get it doesn’t mean that the other people who have HIV don’t run into it.

I’m a big hugger and kisser. That’s how I greet people. You could see people were a little wary after I made my announcement five years ago. But that’s their thing. I’m not going to stop being me.

It’s less now, but we still have a ways to go.

But that’s life. You continue to fight and you continue to educate people.

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ALSO

* STUDYING ASHE: The journalistic issues involving the final years of Arthur Ashe’s life are still being discussed today. C10

* BILL DWYRE: The fact that Magic Johnson is still his old happy, robust self remains a cause for joy. C10

* NO MAGIC: The family of Bill Goldsworthy wishes the former hockey star had put up more of a fight against AIDS. C11

* HOPE: Recent medical advancements have given doctors effective weapons to use in the battle against the disease. C12