Okay! I am an AOL whore. I spend way too much time on the Internet. However, most of the time spent surfing the web is looking up information about HIV and sex. Recently, I came across an article on PlanetOut.Com that really bothered me. It talked about how there is an increase of HIV among gay men. "The results of recently released studies show HIV infection rates are up in several major metropolitan areas among gay men. The draft report released from researchers and experts predict the new infection rate will be 2.2 percent, up from 1.04 percent in 1997 in major cities. This is an unpleasant forecast for the rest of the country. The reading of these new numbers, made me think about one of my closest friends.
I remember the day when he told me he was HIV positive. He'd been to D.C. and met a guy who had lied to him about his age and failed to mention his HIV status before they went to bed. They had been mixing alcohol with amphetamines their unsafe sex was perhaps spurred in part by the heat of that ecstatic concoction.
Some time later, after the news had sunk in, I held my friend in my arms and cried until my tears also flowed down his face, saturating his cheeks. It wasn't out of pity that I was crying for my friend, it was out of love and awe.
He took it all in his stride, changed his situation, reorganized his life and just kept flying. It has done nothing to erode his capacity for giving, his schoolboy playfulness and exuberance for life.
He is the most warm and gentle man I know. He's never been a promiscuous gay man, just someone who got caught off guarddealt an unfortunate hand on the spinning wheel of chance. We all knew it could have been any one of us.
That was two years ago. Now he's 23.
I am part of a generation that has never known the visible threat of AIDS, never born witness to the emaciating flesh of our friends in the community, rarely had to organize funerals for our loved ones, our extended family. AIDS almost seemed to be part of a different world from which we had miraculously escaped.
Like the shiny new prodigy of the post gay liberation movement, kids of my generation organized queer weddings at university campuses, and some even felt comfortable taking their boyfriends/girlfriends home to meet mom and dad.
After all, it was the '90s and we'd all grown up a bit. But amidst all the positivety, passion and newfound strength in a modern, fluid, queer identity, something else happenedcomplacency, abandon, risk taking. Now we have a new AIDS crisis on our hands.
According to John Day from People Living with HIV AIDS, "What is really central here is people's perceptions around HIV AIDS. Instead of seeing HIV positive people as the problem, as they have so often been painted, there must be more consultation with the HIV community about finding solutions."
There are roughly 30 million people living with HIV or AIDS globally, of whom 10 million are under 24. According to the United Nations World AIDS Campaign briefing paper based on young people aged 18 to 24, five young people are infected with HIV every minute.
According to a leading U.S. gay writer, Michelangelo Signorile, in a recent editorial in the Advocate magazine, the safer sex message is increasingly getting lost in a new "over optimistic" climate around realities of life with AIDS.
"There was a time when being safe was what was hip," Signorile said. "That was back in the late '80s, when the late downtown New York street artist Keith Haring was designing safer sex posters and AIDS groups were producing condom ads so sexy that they were sometimes banned. Now, in the midst of what seems like a full-scale escalation of the epidemic among gay men, it is unsafe sex that is often put forth as the hot thing to do.
"Why has it come to this? Because one little four-letter word has fallen out of the safer sex equation: fear. Because we've had some successes in both public relations and medicine, the reality of sickness and death has become abstract and removed for a whole new generation of young adults."
Now, in some quarters, unprotected sex is not only fashionable, it's considered sexy. The practice of "bare backing", a term that evokes the daredevil world of rodeo stunts, translates to unprotected anal sex among men. The practice has come to be fetishised, particularly in the US, as the ultimate wild ride.
The February issue of the HIV positive living magazine POZ features a front cover image of a young, naked, smiling man depicted atop a saddleless horse, with a cover line that refers to the "boys who bareback." This cover has raised a storm among AIDS workers and activists for glamorizing and fetishising unsafe sex.
In the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S., the practice is mainly contained to the HIV positive community who are viewing it as being a way to decrease HIV transmission while participating in unprotected sexual practices. In the classified sections of The Blade, Philadelphia Gay News and other gay press, advertisements have also begun appearing for such groups.
In places throughout the region and many other metro areas, a range of sex clubs and saunas are dotted throughout urban streets and back alleysplaces where men gather to have largely anonymous sexual encounters. These places, darkly lit hollows, are where men engage in some kind of secret choreography of the flesh, wandering through mazes looking for a partner, or venturing upstairs to the harness rooms where men wait, strapped into position, until a suitable taker arrives on the scene.
In exchange for the entry fee of about $20, patrons are given a condom, lube and tissue pack.
"People sometimes find bare backing to be sexy and dangerous," says one 33 year old Washington gay man. "John," who is HIV negative, occasionally frequents gay sex clubs
and "beats" (places where men meet for anonymous sexual encounters). He says he is often shocked to see the abandon with which young men engage in unsafe sexual practices.
"... if any guy wants me to do it unsafely, I automatically assume that guy is HIV positiveor will be soon. To engage in that kind of random unsafe sex is a little like hopping into a car with a drunk driver," says Peters.
But according to AIDS experts, these venues have been a crucial part of the success in controlling HIV AIDS by providing a focus point for education campaigns.
If it weren't for these venues the type of meetings these men are having would be pushed underground and the problems exacerbated. People are having sex in their homes, in all sorts of placesit's an oversimplification to suggest that the new transmission figures are coming from any one source.
David Menadue, 42, a Washington HIV positive gay man, says that now is certainly not the time for complacent attitudes regarding HIV transmission.
"Somehow, the sense of crisis has gone and people are a little bit hoodwinked by the invisibility of AIDS. But I've been to two funerals in the past few weeks," Menadue says. "Learning to say no to unsafe sex can be difficult. If you're going through depression or low self esteem, or you're on drugs, it can become difficult to maintain that resolve. I guess a whole range of factors have led to a situation where people don't believe that AIDS exists anymore."
However, as these new figures clearly testify, HIV AIDS not only still exists, but for the first time in more than a decade, it is on the rapid increase.
What we have to focus on now is targeting different messages to different groups. People's attitudes toward unprotected sex have changed. Scare tactics will not help here. Fear has very limited currency with regard to changing
people's behavior. It's far too simplistic.
What we have to change is people's perceptions about HIV. That is what will ultimately guide people's behavior.
We need the community to come together and to respond as a community.
Sal Seeley is director of CAMPsafe, an HIV outreach project of CAMP Rehoboth. He can be reached at 302-227-5620 or by e-mail at SalvatoreSeeley@aol.com.