A rant

I was going to write a lighthearted-ish post today about the state of my love life, but then I read something this morning that made me so mad and, at the same time, very sad. I don’t very often use this as a forum to really rant, but I want to get this off my chest! I’ll come onto what it was that made me write this shortly, but here is a bit of background.

When I arrived in New York, just over two years ago, there was a lot of discussion within the gay community about a Rolling Stone article which discussed an emerging trend within the gay community called “bug chasing”. While there are complicated issues around the concept of bug chasing, the practice is very simple: HIV- men actively seeking out HIV+ sexual partners with the hope of becoming infected with the virus.

The Rolling Stone article was very disquieting, as I am sure it was for many people, both gay and straight. It is unthinkable and horrifying that someone would actually try to acquire such a dangerous and life altering virus. However, soon after the article appeared many gay organizations such as GLAAD released statements that basically eschewed the Rolling Stone article, based on the very unreliable and misinformed statistical evidence that was cited within.

The most problematic statistic was gleaned from a comment from Dr. Bob Cabaj, director of behavioral-health services for San Francisco County, a comment he later refuted. He apparently said that 25 percent of all newly infected gay men fall into that category of guys consciously or subconsciously seeking the virus. The article said that every year there are 40,000 new infections in the US, which meant that if the 25% statistic is true, then around 10,000 of those new infections are attributable to bug chasers.

It doesn’t take a great deal of logic to see that this is a highly dubious claim. For a start, that 40,000 figure is not only comprised of gay men – it includes intravenous drug users and heterosexuals. In fact the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that only 42% of those infections occur in men who have sex with other men, which means that new infections in gay and bisexual men each year is more along the lines of 17,000. So if you apply that 25% statistic again, you get a figure along the lines of 4,200.

So, in short, the Rolling Stone article was dismissed as being sensationalist, alarmist and overly creative with the figures. Something I felt happy in believing.

But of late I have become aware of a few things, which lead me to believe that while those statistics may be inaccurate, there may, perhaps, be some truth in the madness.

The first thing is that while that afore mentioned 25% figure may, or may not be, true or you only have to look at any gay dating / hook up website or free gay newspaper to see plenty of ads placed by men who flout the use of condoms, preferring instead to “bareback”. Their motivation is very simple – to experience sex without the hindrance of condoms. While they are not “conscious” bug chasers per se, they still feel content with the idea of becoming infected to go ahead and be exposed to the risk.

The second thing that made me rethink was a gay porn DVD that a friend of mine had recently purchased, entitled “Breeding ... (some guy's name - not going to give it any fame here)”. When he bought the DVD my friend was unaware that “breeding” is a term used by gay men who are seeking to be infected with HIV: Bug Chasers. What he saw appalled him. I saw it recently – it is a documentary style porno focusing on the movie’s name bearer, a cute young guy who spends his time being mercilessly screwed by a whole bunch of HIV+ men, in the hope that he will be infected with the virus. For me, what I felt watching that movie was probably not far from what it must be like to watch a snuff movie. The ramifications of what this guy was doing, and what all these other guys were potentially doing to him was so disturbing that I just couldn’t get it out of my head for a good few days afterwards. And the worst thing was that this movie was not sold on some illicit website – it was sold to my friend at a mainstream gay sex shop in Chelsea in New York. It’s very existence and the fact that it was so readily available has very obvious implications. In actual fact, you only have to check out your local gay video store to see that there are entire sections devoted to non-condom movies and not all of them are old pre-condom Falcon movies. Many of them have been made really recently.

Then yesterday I read a story in The Times about Erasure front man Andy Bell and his recent announcement that he is living with HIV. This is what I was referring to at the beginning of this post. Within the story there was a quote from Andy, where he said that “while people might think this strange, I always wanted to get HIV because for me it is part of what being gay means.” I really don’t get that – Andy Bell is of the age where I am sure that he lost many friends and loved ones to AIDS. He must have seen at some point the way that the virus can literally decimate it’s victims in any number of horrible ways.

Or maybe he hasn’t.

Fortunately I am HIV-, but I have both dated people and have many friends who are living with the virus. I know, from being party to my friends’ experiences, that while the anti-retroviral medication available today can be very effective at managing HIV, a positive status is still far from being a bundle of laughs. ARV’s are toxic – before they make you “better”, they often make you feel very ill. One of my old school friends takes a combination of drugs that often make him nauseous at quite inopportune moments. Another friend, while he hasn’t suffered from nausea, has extremely lucid dreams, so much so that often times he suffers with confusion in his waking life as to what is really happening to him. Another friend has had more visual physical problems – he has gained very high muscle definition in his legs, chest and arms, but at the same time suffers with what he calls his “Buddha” belly – a very inflated stomach. So the idea that someone could be aware of all of this and yet still deliberately go out and try to become infected is terrible.

Through discussions with some (really only a few) of my gay male friends I have sometimes garnered the impression that in a fucked up way they actually “like” the idea of knowing someone who is HIV+. It’s almost as if being exposed, albeit second hand, to the virus is some kind of right of passage. Some of them talk about their HIV+ friends with something akin to pride, reminding me of straight people who feel the need to validate their “cool-factor” by announcing that they have “loads of gay friends!”

If you follow that thought process through you could come to the point of view that some may view the positive community with a degree of reverence. Before I get anyone’s back up, I am not suggesting that HIV+ men and women do not deserve compassion, respect or help. Clearly I am not suggesting that. But in itself having HIV is not something, to me, that can be, or should be revered. If you want to revere anything about HIV, revere the admirable way these people who are infected have often learned to make important step changes in their lives. You don’t have to get HIV to learn from people with HIV and apply those ways of living to your own life.

Back to the bug chasers – there will always be people who take things to extremes, who have so little respect for themselves or others, who are so emotionally detached from everyday life, that they will resort to terrible measures in order to fit in or seek random gratification, in whatever form that takes. I think it is easy to take what is, in all probability, an extremely small minority of the community and sensationalize them out of all proportion. But from what I have been hearing there are more and more people who are just not scared anymore. There are so many gay men now who don’t use condoms. Maybe that’s because of lack of education through poor funding, or because of irresponsible media reporting on ARV medication, citing the drugs as “miracle cures”. I don’t know.

But here’s it is: if I take every single thing I have learned, all my experiences - being gay, the education, the two occasions where I stupidly didn't use a condom where I then had to suffer weeks of doubt before I could get tested, seeing my friends learn that they have HIV and then seeing how that has affected their lives – if I take all of that information and I distill it down to one simple rule, it's this:

Use a condom!

It sounds like such a cliché to say that now. But clichés are clichés because through all the pointless things we say in life, they are words that hold the truth.

I’ll finish with this. It’s from a speech which American gay activist Larry Kramer wrote and delivered at the Cooper Union in New York at the end of last year. It’s a really long speech, so I printed it off and read it on the way home on the tube. There is much in the speech that initially made me cross, mostly Larry’s alarmism. But I’ll concede that is sometimes required to force people to sit up, take notice and subsequently take action.

”’Ah’, you say, ‘aren't we to have a little fun? Can't I get stoned and try barebacking one last time?’ Are you out of your fucking mind? At this moment in our history, no, you cannot. Anyway, we had our fun and look what it got us into. And what it is still getting us into. You kids want to die? Because that's what I sometimes think. Well, then, die.”