At the Cafe, a bar on Market Street that draws a younger gay crowd, a 21-year-old man says he has never known anyone who has died of AIDS. He worries about becoming infected, but he sometimes forgoes a condom anyway. "It feels good," he said, "because there's no rubber." For him, and for others like him, exhortations about H.I.V. are like cautions about cigarettes, illicit drugs or driving too fast, warnings from "old people" about distant dangers.
Older men have seen AIDS do its worst work, but some are weary — weary enough to take bigger chances. "The prospect of going through the rest of your life having to cover yourself up every time you want to get intimate with someone is an awful one," said John, 44, who found out in March that he was H.I.V. positive. John spoke on condition that his last name be withheld for fear it would cause difficulty on his job. "Now I've got H.I.V. and I don't have to worry about getting it," he said. "There is a part of me that's relieved. I was tired of always having to be careful, of this constant diligence that has to be paid to intimacy when intimacy should be spontaneous."
You know, I understand the part about not having seen anyone die, and not understanding for that reason. I understand the weariness. I understand making mistakes.
The part about being somewhat relieved that now he's positive and doesn't have to worry about being careful anymore, that part I don't get. After all, clearly he's not monogamous with his partner. He doesn't care about maybe infecting someone else? How does it not continue to be his problem? Yes, it's the responsibility of any individual to protect themselves. How does this relieve someone who's positive of any responsibility whatsoever? With any other STD, the social onus is also on the person with the disease to protect others from it, or at least inform them so that they can make choices; why on earth should it be at all different with AIDS?
I understand the viewpoint that asking someone to use condoms the rest of their lives is not a reasonable thing to ask. Somewhere I read that if we had asked straight people to do the same thing, AIDS would be cured by now. (Which, among other things, struck me as an intensely narrow-minded view, and extraordinarily US-centric. After all, it's only in the West that it can be considered "a gay disease". In the rest of the world, it's emphatically heterosexual. And they don't use condoms. And they die at truly appalling rates; half of the adults in southern Africa are estimated to be positive. HALF.) In fact, heterosexual adults in this country have shown themselves to be remarkably uncaring about such things; after all, there's still hepatitis, chlamydia, gonnorhea, syphilis, herpes and all sorts of STDs out there, known to be quite prevalent, and yet most heterosexuals take no precautions at all. That said, it's no excuse.
The problem is, using heterosexual behavior as, if not a model (definitely not a model), then a window on the future, what's likely to happen eventually is that most people will just shrug and take their chances. Yes, it's still, for the most part, a fatal disease. Yes, the risk is at least somewhat controllable. But humans don't like controlling their behaviour any more than they absolutely must. And doing it without deviation or hesitation over a lifetime, as any diabetic could tell you, is more than most can manage without incredibly strong motivation. It seems that, "If you don't do this, chances are that you will get very sick, and it will be long and drawn-out and ugly, and you may well die," is not motivation enough.
Thing is, nobody notices the missing generation of gay men. Partly, that's because it's not entirely missing. There are a certain number of people in their 40s-60s about, of course. But because the culture is so youth oriented, and the subculture even more so, they're marginalized. And, of course, the key element is that they're missing. Absent AIDS, there should be nearly twice as many gay men in that age group around. When there aren't many, aren't enough to be a constantly visible presence, it's easy to forget why they're not there.
I would imagine that maybe in five or ten years, if some researcher decides to take a look at the average life expectancy of the American gay man, it will again have dropped precipitously down into the 50s or 40s or maybe even the late 30s.
Replies: 2 comments
The article says nothing about "John, 44" taking risks with other lives. (It does, however, mention that his partner is also HIV positive, which suggests one reason John, 44, might be relieved.) No reason to bring out the spitting-in-the-reservoir banners against John, 44.
Aside from that, well pointed.
Best,
Posted by Ray Davis @ 08/21/2001 03:51 PM CST
True enough. I misread that section of the article.
And thanks!
Posted by iain @ 08/21/2001 03:58 PM CST
Ray
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
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