I clearly remember the first time I heard about AIDS. I was probably about 13 or 14, and I recall someone on the television news saying that a new disease was striking gay men and Haitians. Later, in a short, less than one hour, lecture, given to the students at my Catholic high school, someone, I think it was one of the football coaches, who was making the address, said that gay men were susceptible to AIDS because they engaged in anal sex. I listened, but didn’t think much about it. I was still young, and very confused about my sexuality. And, because I was so mixed up, I had decided not to partake in anything sexual with another person, of either sex. AIDS? This was just another reason to remain alone. For myself, I thought I should just stay in the isolated and “safe” world of porn. That was my sexual haven.
By the time I reached 18, I had delved into about every perverse sub-sect of porn that there was; nothing excited me. I needed something new to get my blood churning; the days when just the sight of a Playboy magazine raised my blood-pressure were long gone. Impulsively, I decided to go find myself in the gay environs of nearby San Francisco. In the late-1980s, there was still somewhat of a medical ward mentality in the Castro. Men who were HIV- went to every precaution whenever having sex. I met one man who always insisted on wearing two condoms at the same time. Conversely, those with HIV, cared little for the safe-sex regulations. They did what they wanted. They seemed to embody the lost rebelliousness of the disco era 70's, epitomized by my childhood heroes The Village People. I secretly admired them. As a scared teenager, I stayed within the cult of the condom queens.
After my first receptive sexual experience, I was scared, yet, I lived through it. After that, one followed another, and then another. It got easier, and the risk seemed further away. As the 90s moved along, it appeared that less and less men were dying. I will never forget meeting an enormous bodybuilder, who looked to be the picture of health. We talked, and he told me that he was HIV+. This forever broke my image of the AIDS carrier, that formed in my mind during the late-80s, and early-90s, when I was a mere newbie on the scene: of the sunken cheeked, pock-marked, and emaciated expiring gay guy. At the same time, the effective public awareness campaign to destigmatize AIDS, taking down such notions as catching AIDS from a toilet or a hand-shake, had been a success. AIDS no longer felt like the boogie-man under the bed.
Interestingly, but as far back as the early-90s, I saw a move by the gay policy-pushers and lobbyists away from an HIV-centered agenda to a social acceptance motivated political machine; the first incidence I witnessed was what I thought of as a non-issue: gays in the military; during a time when men that I knew still succumbed to AIDS. Only, this notion of gay personal freedom I saw emerging from a very lilly-white, WASP-ish, upper-class grade of homosexual who disdainfully thought of the bathhouse cruiser as an antiquated 70s throwback who might be better off dead; hence raising the public image of the miniscule population of Betty Crocker stay-at-home same-sex couples. While fairly educated, and securely middle-class, I never embraced this new sanitized gay model. I looked for salvation in promiscuity. Then, nearing the millennium, many in the gay populous, tired of the safe-sex Nazis, decided to abandon condoms altogether; thus the rise of current bareback culture.
After I left the gay scene, I have continued to see this glorification of the so-called monogamous gay male couple. They are the new paradigm. They are the new “Modern Family.” You see them walking in the gay pride parades: in shorts, polo-shirts, and baseball caps while pushing a stroller. Just out of sight, is the gay reality. Nothing has changed. It's one big huge con-job. Remaking the homosexual package into one that Americans will buy. “Look, they are just like us...It's completely unfair that they are not allowed to marry.” These statistics tell a very different story:
In the United States, gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) are disproportionately affected by HIV. MSM represent approximately 2% of the US population, but accounted for more than half of all estimated new HIV infections annually from 2008 to 2010. Among MSM, black/African American MSM -- especially young black/African American MSM -- are at highest risk of HIV. In 2010, black/African American MSM accounted for almost as many new HIV infections as white MSM, despite their differences in population size.
