Here is a shocker...H.I.V. Cases on the rise for young gay men!- Page 3

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 1/2/08 at 3:36pm

I played safe.

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 1/2/08 at 3:52pm

I cannot add much to this thread, except one small story.

One of my best friends going up and through my late 30's is a gay man. He lost many friends to AIDS, and swore to me that he would only have protected sex. He, like Diva, assumed he was HIV Positive because so many of his friends (and a couple of lovers) had died from AIDS. For some reason, he was lucky, and into his late 30's, was HIV Negative.

He hit the club scene a little late in life (he has been out since his late teens, but was never into anything other than the music at clubs - that changed) - and became a meth addict. When he was younger, he went to clubs, but I never knew him to use any serious drugs. At the time, I did not know he was using meth, and we had a very bad fight - In hindsight, it was the meth and coke he was doing that twisted him into something I did not recognize.

For a couple of years, he was having unprotected sex while doing meth and lost everything - If he is still HIV Negative, I would be shocked. The drugs and choices he made as a man in his late 30's resulted in him losing his job, his home, living on the streets, and had "people" looking for him who he owed money.
I often second-guess myself and wonder what I could have done to see what was happening, and try to be a lifeline.

He is now living back with his parents (who thankfully, took him back in when he had nowhere else to go) and trying to start his life over again. I only found out about all of this when his frantic family was calling old friends trying to find him.

He knew better. He buried friends. He buried lovers. But all of that did not matter. He started to party, and all common sense fled.

He is now sober, and has been so for over a year. I am still hoping for some reconciliation, and continue to send him emails on birthdays and special days to let him know I care. It is doubtful that we will ever be friends again, but I pray that somehow he defies the odds, and lives a long and happy life.

He knew better, and it did not matter.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/2/08 at 3:59pm

And another odd thing that often comes up in those narratives like the one you shared YWIW?, is that guys like your friend often say that getting an HIV diagnosis is "the best thing that ever happened to them" because it motivated them to reevaluate their priorities, get sober, etc.

Also, there are a lot of services available for HIV positive people, which, to a large degree in this country often overlaps with poverty. In historically big epicenter cities of the HIV epidemic, like SF and NYC, agencies exist that help positive people get affordable housing.

That isn't exactly much of an incentive to stay negative for a small subset of people.

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 1/2/08 at 4:06pm

I don't know for certain that he is HIV positive. He could just be the luckiest man alive. If he is still negative, they should take his blood sample and figure out how...

Before his spiral, he had a loving relationship, worked with a lingerie company, and seemed to be OK. I am not sure what triggered the slide.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/2/08 at 4:10pm

Yeah, and like in PalJoey's story, two guys can have sex with the same positive person at the same time and one can get infected and one might not. There really are a lot of variables and a lot of it comes down to chance.

But I am saying that in a world where people get mixed messages about sex, there really are a lot of HIV survival narratives that begin with an HIV positive person declaring that getting the diagnosis was "the best thing that happened to them."

I'm just pointing out that it's an ingredient in the mixed message stew that can't be overlooked when analyzing how anybody, young or old, navigates his or her way through the epidemic in 2007.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/2/08 at 4:13pm

I can't remember a time I was not tested. I first went with my friend Reed Jones, whose Skimbleshanks picture I've posted here in many, many threads, after a friend of his, a beautiful model from a very homophobic family in Wisconsin, got tested after being admitted to St. Vincents with what turned out to be Kaposi's. Reed'sfriend came home from the hospital and just stayed in his studio apartment until he died.

Reed's test came out positive, which was shocking, since he was the image of strawberry-blond all-American health and dancer-fitness. Mine came out negative, which I assumed was a mistake. I read everything I could find on false-positives and went back and got tested again. Also negative.

Reed said, "I hope you stay that way"--and that was what we both thought: that it was just luck that made me negative, that it was only a matter of time, that whatever was surely inside me came out in a blood test. For a few years, I had no sex at all, like Paul Rudnick's Jeffrey, but once a year, I would get tested. And each time, I felt guilty that I was still "healthy" and my friends were "living with AIDS."

Meanwhile, I went to Act Up meetings and demonstrations and helped my friends get through stomach symptoms and opportunistic infections and thrush and name their last remaining T-Cells (Peter dubbed his "Mary" and "Ethel"--and unsurprisingly he was not the only queen to do that), and go to doctor appointments and memorials. Slowly, I started to have sex again, and date again (in that order, of course), I entered into a few relationships, and practiced "safe sex," until we started calling it "safer sex."

And then Reed died, and then Peter. We had a memorial service for Reed on the set of Cats at the Winter Garden--long before Paul Rudnick made a joke out of that--and Betty Buckley and Mandy Patinkin and Debbie Gravitte (still Shapiro) and Ashford and Simpson performed. And we had a memorial service for Peter at the Little Theater (now the Helen Hayes) and Chris Durang and Sigourney Weaver and Paul Bartel and Paul Rudnick and Jonathan Sheffer performed.

And still I got tested, year after year. As the years went by, I started getting tested for 40-something things, like cholesterol and blood pressure and prostate and colon cancer. Whatever it was that was going to get me, I wanted to know before it got me.

Then I met PalJoey'sPal in 1994. He had just spoken at the memorial service for one of his best friends, a doctor, while his other best friend was getting sicker, an astonishingly tall, muscular drag queen with beautiful Cherokee-red and African American black skin.

And a year later, there were protease inhibitors, and the dying ended. People were doing "drug cocktails" and they just stopped dying. And a year after that, the party drugs changed, and people were doing "alphabet drugs" like C, E, G, and K. And then came T.

And that was when the curve reversed--and the infection rates and seroconversions started going up not down: the drugs that were keeping people alive were encouraging others to get infected.

And, honestly, I don't think anything will change until the vaccine comes. If it ever does...

Updated On: 1/2/08 at 04:13 PM

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 1/2/08 at 4:15pm

I can only imagine the survivors guilt when that happens. Watching the Jerry Herman documentary last night made me think of that when he talked of his partner dying so quickly, and that while he was HIV Positive, he found a way to manage the disease with experimental drugs.

I think there is some truth to the argument that young people believe HIV is treatable, just like Diabetes or other diseases. Who would have thought that Magic Johnson would still be around - no one sees all of the drugs and expense of trying to keep AIDS at bay. I honestly wonder how many people under the age of 20 even know that Magic is HIV Positive.

[robbiej]

Posted: 1/2/08 at 4:17pm

(I've told this story before...but I guess it couldn't hurt to repeat)

The first time I took an HIV test (for which I tested negative) I was offered a chance to join a group of other men who tested negative and wanted to stay that way. It was really the first support system I encountered for HIV negative men. It was incredibly helpful to discuss issues of sex and with assessing risk, which is probably the most important tool I took away from the group. As Namo stated above, making all sexual activity the same 'risk level' is terribly damaging. It becomes overwhelming and can cause one to take inaction. By discussing with trained medical professionals the types of behavior we were engaging in and their risk levels, we were better able to make a plan going forward to remain fully sexual active as well remain negative. It was wonderfully helpful and really caused me to change my views on sex.

[Elphaba]

Posted: 1/2/08 at 6:37pm

"but when you grow up thinking "WHEN" not "IF", that's how I decided to deal with it. I'm not saying it was right, but I figured if I found out I was positive, it would destroy me, so I was just going to live my life until I got sick."

and Diva, while that is very common, it can also take away your ability to live.....I've had many friends who did just that, and when they finally were diagnosed, they were dead rather quickly.
I'm glad you got tested......

trust me, finding out I was positive did not destroy me (but everyone is different)...I had one "oh woe is me day" and got on with my life.
and.....(as Namo mentioned) it is the single best thing that has ever happened to me. Why? Because I was a jerk, full of myself, not a nice person to be around....for whatever reason I felt the world owed me.
Becoming positive made me re-access my life, made me realize what was and was not important, and made me realize I didn't like who I was, and I have spent the last 18 years changing all of that.

Now would I ever want anyone to be positive so they could become a better person? ABSOLUTELY NOT........while I am totally ok, have never progressed past HIV, have more t-cells than the population of Andorra, and am (apparently) due to my Scandinavian ancestry have never had the problems that others do, I would never wish this on anyone.

To me, the real killer is the mind......many stopped fighting, and with no support early on, many had nowhere or no one to go to.

I refused to let it affect me that way (of course in 1990 in Michigan it was only slightly better) and moving to San Francisco gave access to wonderful organizations.

As with any horrible disease it's the mind that can kill you long before the disease could....

anyway.....I do think it's up to my generation who lived through the beginning of this to not give up imparting the stories of what the beginning was like.

Updated On: 1/2/08 at 06:37 PM

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 1/2/08 at 8:08pm

"and with no support early on, many had nowhere or no one to go to."

That was a point I didn't get across.

Thanks.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 1/3/08 at 1:12pm

And then I see this in the paper last night...
Documenting The Toll Of AIDS

[Elphaba]

Posted: 1/3/08 at 5:18pm

Reading that brings everyone and everything back......it hurts my heart. Too many dead who didn't need to die...too many laying in beds and being ignored by ignorant hospital workers......

and now, WAY too many who think it can't happen to them...



"Dr. Marcus Conant, a dermatologist who was among the pioneers in treating AIDS patients...."

He was one of my doctors when I lived in San Francisco.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/5/08 at 11:18pm

And Sunday's NY Times has an article on "The Graying of AIDS":
AIDS Patients Face Downside of Living Longer

[Elphaba]

Posted: 1/6/08 at 11:24am

thanks for posting that, Joey

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 1/6/08 at 12:23pm

Wow. What a truly excellent discussion this has been.

I, too, have spent life since the age of 20 feeling certain that I was going to become positive. The When not If rings so true. Every time I have been tested, I have been terrified of the results--even when I knew that I was bound to be negative given my actions within the last window, but especially when I made even one mistake. especially when I made a huge mistake. And, thus, I also relate to the feeling of guilt that I am negative while less slutty friends have tested postive.

But there lies a big mistake--connecting 'sluttiness' to risk. Risk is risk. Not sluttiness done smart.

When I was 20, I was certain I had it despite now knowing that I had done nothing risky at that point and could actually count my sex partners on 1 hand. I was paranoid to paralyzation when it came to sex.

I agree that we have to think of sex in different levels of risk. we have to know what isn't risky at all. we can't even think of sex as 'what not to do' but 'what we want to do' because we know it feels good and makes us feel good after--being sex positive. This is something I learned from the Geffen Clinic/GMHC when I was tested and expressed all of these feelings as well as the fact that I constantly made mistakes. A terrific woman who works there enlightened me greatly.

I, too, am not certain what will get through to people. but, I have come to the conclusion that living in fear only fuels things negatively.

and chastizing people definitely does nothing productive. we all make mistakes. we all learn.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/6/08 at 12:29pm

"sluttiness done smart"

That's going on my business cards.

And I totally agree with your post, jrb.

[Corine2]

Posted: 1/6/08 at 2:08pm

Hi. I hope they find a cure, very soon. A girl I grew up with was one of the first women from a prominent family to get AIDS.
Her name was Ally Gertz. We were in school together. My family were very involved with trying to help from the start. My Mother was very involved.
Ally died many years ago and everyone is at risk.
The sad thing about AIDS is it made me very cautious. I wish they would find a cure because love and sex are a beautiful thing.

Hoping they find a cure in 2008. Make love not war but ALWAYS WEAR A CONDOM.

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 1/6/08 at 2:35pm

The sad thing about AIDS is it made me very cautious.

Alright, it's a new year and I vowed to be nice. And actually, I know what you mean although it's a tad egocentric, no? I'm touchy because ironically I spent the morning reading and thinking about the worldwide AIDS crisis. It's a disaster on so many levels. And there are so many things to be sad about. That people who thought they were being careful buy just participating in low risk behavior turned out to be the 1 in a gazillion who contract the disease. It's heartbreaking because many younger people don't realize it's a REAL threat to them (gay and straight). Internationally, it's a flat out horror because of the unimaginable numbers of adults, in vast parts of Africa, for example, who are not just infected, but dying of AIDS because they have no access to the medications that would allow them to live with the disease. And what's even worse, is that they are leaving behind countless HIV-positive orphans who will fare no better, but WILL probably live long enough to spread the epidemic.

You *should* be careful, Corine. We *all* should be careful. One CAN enjoy sex in a responsible way. But we also need to keep in mind that this isn't just a nasty little sexually-transmittable social disease which is largely treatable in countries affluent enough to provide treatment. It's a worldwide tragedy leaving a generation of sick and parentless children behind to die lonely and untreated.

Damn...my first "high horse" post of '08...

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 1/6/08 at 2:36pm

Wasn't Ally Geertz the girl who contracted HIV through dental treatment?

Posted: 1/6/08 at 2:44pm

when i lived in sf, the people i hung around with seemed to be TRYING to contact hiv; it was like some kind of status symbol.
& their big slogan was "theres no such thing as negative, only pre-positive!"

that attitude was one of the reasons i knew sf was *not* the place for me.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/6/08 at 2:59pm

You're thinking of Kimberly Bergalis, iflit, the virgin (with anal warts) who had to have gotten HIV from her dentist because she was a virgin (with anal warts).

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 1/6/08 at 3:05pm

Thanks for those links.

Although one line stuck out.

“You folks are the first to go through this and we’re learning as we go.”

Which always makes it scarier.




And Namo,

Perfect post^^^^^

[Jane2]

Posted: 1/6/08 at 3:24pm

I vaguely remember the girl named Gertz who supposedly contracted the disease through dental instsruments, also.

[blueroses]

Posted: 1/6/08 at 3:26pm

No, Alison Gertz said she contracted AIDS via sex.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 1/6/08 at 3:27pm

Alison Gertz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Born Alison L. Gertz
1966
Manhattan, New York
Died August 8, 1992 (age 26)
Manhattan, New York

Alison Gertz (1966 - August 8, 1992) was a prominent AIDS activist in the late 1980s and early 1990s, who died from the disease in 1992.

Gertz was first diagnosed with AIDS in 1988 and later found out that she had contracted HIV from her first sexual encounter in 1982. She became an AIDS activist, appearing on numerous television shows and also speaking with teenagers on the subject of safe sex.

During her time as an activist, she was voted Woman of the Year by Esquire magazine, received the Secretary's Award for Excellence in Public Service from the United States Department of Health and Human Services, and a film based on her life starring Molly Ringwald was released.

Gertz died of complications arising from AIDS on August 8, 1992.