14 ▼ March 1— 1 ▼ )— t
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HIV, M on rA m our
Are we becoming a c< immunity split into
HIV positives andi HIV negatives?
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because h e was sick. ,
moved out o f our apartment
l int» a tiny one-
s& n is based <m more than just fear. “If I had a
lover die, and went through that painful process,
I would be wary o f going through that again,” he
about how his own antibody status, and that of
on the course of
Andrew M ille r
■
uncan and I were having dinner at
B enny’s Burritos again. We were
sandwiched in between two tables of
straight couples out on dates. A
table o f football-player types were
just finishing their enchiladas.
Loitering at the door were three gay men who
looked vaguely familiar to me from the two years
I’ve spent covering ACT UP meetings and Queer
Nation dem onstrations and going to parties at
M aria’s house in the East Village.
Duncan and I were deep in conversation
when my eyes drifted over to the cute red-haired
boy wearing a leather jacket. No uncommon
occurrences so far.
He was facing away from me, siuing at the
table where the football players had been. But it
was the back o f his jacket I was staring at. In
fine AIDS-activist, radical-mod fashion, he had
affixed a huge sticker to the leather, right be
tween the shoulder blades. But far beyond the
standard pink-and-black silencc/violence fare,
this manifesto was unlike anything I had ever
read before.
The sticker, printed with its first three words
enlarged and overlayed on the smaller, black-
and-white text, began, “Male/Positive/29.”
“The last one dumped me for a pretty nega
tive,” the text continued. “ Although he was ac
cepting of my status, he said there wasn’t enough
passion in our relationship. I agreed: It’s hard
to feel passion when your partner’s afraid to kiss.
This guy was smart: He knew his facts, but still,
in his heart, kissing me m eant death. OK,
brother, follow your heart, and get the fuck away
from me. Happy as I was to curse him, I began
to worry about my future and my chances o f
feeling passion again. Was the last one truly the
last? For two weeks I fantasized about suicide
and celibacy. Then I met the next one, and we
didn’t talk o f status or acceptance: We talked
about art. And in bed we shared so many kisses,
so much passion, unhesitating. I felt alive and
was alive, and I forgot about the last one, the
smart one, the passionless one.”
That sticker could have been the catalyst for
dozens o f conversations I have had in the past
year, at dinner parties in Brooklyn living rooms, J
on the beach at the Pines, in the locker room ai
the Y and on the telephone late at night from m
apartment on the Lower East Side.
D
I have discussed the implications o f positiv
negative romance with a friend whose lover di
a year ago last spring, after he found out that
boy he was dating had 350 T-cells. I have
lyzed it theoretically with another friend who
been single, and HIV negative, for years.
I have counseled my friend Marc, w
re-
cently broke up with his boyfriend and no
that being 37 and HIV positive takes him
the category of potential-boyfriend mai
have steadfastly avoided talking about the
with two men I ’ve slept with in the past
privately railing against my dissatisfaction
the choices the age of AIDS has served up.
And when I had my second HIV test this
summer after a bout with shingles, I understi
just how radically those test results would
my perspective on all proceeding discussio:
As it turns out, the owner o f the jacket
also the author of the sticker, one Rick Jaco
an administrator at the University o f _________
San Francisco, who works with a n e jM 9 N B H [
gay activist art collective that ¿.alls itself Q
Think
_______________
Rick told me that the c o lle c tiH H ^ H M H H
put out five stickers a m onth from now tihtil
June, when its members plan
with all of their work. The
am report
edly becoming a part of t h ^ m
m
rather quickly.
__________________
Other texts produced by the Bay Area artists
include a monologue b a ii B l I i M M M i l M M l
brother is a drug adi
man describing a
> beeoi iftpiaiim
friends urge hi
“As an
to think
>> í ” vto- ■ ■> î sw, * >
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I can h
the tri
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»i.---liona. Mwmfrm . % p m m I .
next
•
is some
s two.”
ial term s, as
t mat hurt the
: I soil need to
i t ’« m y responsibility to find somebody for
whom it’s not an issue. I t’s not ray responsibU-
And it sometimes works both ways. At an-
W V saga, just after his diagno
sis, Mam was reluctant » get involved with any
body, but especially someone who had tested
negative. Other friends have had similar experi
ences.
“It definitely has an effect on people,” Marc
told me last week. “It's the central sexual issue.”
Just scan the personal ads in any bar rag or
skin mag to discover die topic’s growing popu
larity. Ads f o r ’’healthy guy seeking same” or,
appear more
common
In itially through sexual relations,
¡along those hues is serious
V
M
1011
summer 1
he<
And as H IV has become
lives, w hether it’:
¿m.
friend’s, it has b y :
relationships, too. I’ve
otherwise, and to start ta&iag about how l
a*t have a boyfriend who is
to incorporate it into m y <
: safe sex is that safe
and why.
Safe amt m eat» HIV preven-
“One o f the social issues o f i
distinction between th ep o s
live,” Ride Jacobsen noted v
is positive or has
some respects. And it’s gom_
» have gotten In-
don’t talk about it openly.”
and who
despite the
IfllF r r l
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In an address book that I have owned for
about five years are die names o f 10 rami who
are dead. A nother 20 are HIV positive, and
about a dozen o f them have AIDS, or are sick
enough for HIV to have an impact cm the way
they live from day to day. An old boyfriend o f
mine moved back to his parents’ house in the
Midwest Ian winter, after becoming too sick to
stay in New York any longer.
In my own life, I am beyond die point where
I can pretend that AIDS h asn 't become a part of
everything I do. M y HIV test this past summer
cured me o f that fantasy. Although it was nega
tive, it reminded me that this division between
positive and negative is im precise at best, be
cause for people who are
: he sees as a trend
Ï#
to f ‘
status as f M
choices thty make about
a * | |
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