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name: will baker blogrollin' other sites: |
it's good to know you're making a difference
Consider: everyone wants to believe that he or she makes a difference. I do this work because I want to make a difference. The low pay, chaotic working conditions, and grueling workload are, to my mind, adequately balanced out by the opportunity to be a part of work that saves lives. Or that's what I tell myself every single day. A few weeks back, I was stuck in the airport in Atlanta overnight because of a cancelled flight. The whole week-long trip to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been fraught with travel problems and filled with complex issues around the monitoring and evaluation of federally-funded HIV prevention interventions. So there we were, stuck for one more night. And my friend Melvin said, "The funny thing is, this is all about getting people to use a damn condom." And this has all felt a little surreal ever since that moment. I'm looking around my office: a desk snowed under papers and binders and folders...books and binders stacked everywhere...a computer and two servers...walls covered with maps and diagrams and flowcharts...whiteboards bearing witness to the action items from a thousand meetings. And this is all about getting people to use a damn condom. Perhaps it shouldn't be this difficult. Perhaps the fact that there is an HIV prevention "field" in which we all work is a soaring monument to the profound irresponsibility of the American people. On one side of our building, we work long and hard trying to convince people that it's in their own best interest to maybe think about using a rubber sometimes if it's not too inconvenient. But trust me, you can't tell anyone anything. Speaking collectively in the voice of South Park's Eric Cartman, sexually active America says "whatevah! I do what I want!" as it gives us the finger on its way out the door to get just as drunk and pregnant and diseased as it possibly can. So what brings on this little rant, Dear Reader? I'm so glad you asked. A colleague of mine and I have been doing a little exploration of Internet sex and "hook-up" sites. This is partly research into the possibility of doing safer-sex education online (a fascinating idea that has so far not been as effective as many had hoped), and partly just keeping an eye out for new behavioral trends and risk patterns. Just one more thing we're trying because, hey, we're coming up on 20 years of this fucking epidemic, and we've tried just about everything else, so why not? So there I was, Dear Reader, on bareback.com (DEFINITELY not a work-safe link!), which is pretty repulsive in many ways, but I wasn't overly exercised about it. I mean, I can at least understand the impulse behind barebacking. No one is denying that penetrative sex without condoms feels better than penetrative sex with condoms, all other things being equal. So yeah, barebacking....retarded, but not incomprehensible. Or so I thought. Until I stumbled onto this little gem on a message board. Before you read it, Dear Reader, let me make something crystal clear: by posting this, I do not mean to pin the "tail" of sexual irresponsibility too firmly on gay men. I have surveillance data on my desk which suggests that my very own city is crawling with 20-something women infected with (and spreading) Chlamydia. Presumably, those young ladies are capable of having unwanted children by the very same activities that got them Chlamydia. So let's not get too hysterical about the bug-chasing faggots. Still.... *sigh* ***BEGIN PASTE*** Topic Subject: Infected loads. So why is it that some guys get turned on more by poz tops? I've been in a relationship with a poz guy who's been fuckin me raw for 3 years, now i find sex with neg guys just isn't as good as with a poz top. There's something much hornier about an infected load of jizz shooting inside of me. Anyone else agree? SW1cumdump, Posted: 4/19/2005 11:52:40 AM There are 4 replies to this message: It's like an addiction man. I know that after I converted I became much more of a top than I ever was. Shooting a charged load into a raw ass us an unbelievable high. And for me is just as intoxicating having a charged load blown in to me UnCutInTx, Posted 4/19/2005 11:44:40 PM see, the thing is, when a guy becomes poz the whole thrill of gettin pozzed up can't happen anymore. Or can it? I still test neg so still get majorly turned on by a highly charged load being dumped inside me. SW1cumdump, Posted 4/21/2005 11:57:01 AM Addiction is a good word for it!!! all_shaved, Posted 4/21/2005 6:31:50 PM I hear you mate. I was a bb btm for 18 months and just couldn't get enough toxic dirt shot inside of my hole. Used to go to the Fort and other clubs in London looking for it and taking every nasty load I could find. Finally succumbed to a guy in Chicago and now love fucking as a top and looking in a guys eyes as I shoot my filth into his hole. Nothing hornier than knowing you are passing it on.
***END PASTE*** "Nothing hornier than knowing you are passing it on." Yeah. I could go on and on being all flabbergasted and appalled, etc. But at this point, I'm wondering if a new approach isn't called for. Dan Savage got publicly spanked by the "AIDS community" earlier this year when he suggested in his syndicated sex-advice column that men who knowingly infect others with HIV should be required to bear part or all of the financial burden for the medical care required by those they infect. People acted like he was crazy. Or at least, the people in the HIV establishment did. Ask people to take responsibility for the logical consequences of their actions? Don't be ridiculous! They're all victims, haven't you heard? What they need is support groups and counseling and publicly funded social services. Etc. Well, bah. This isn't 1985. HIV isn't a mystery anymore. To anyone. And I'm beginning to wonder...would "Roar" and his ilk find it so incredibly hot to "pass it on" if when he's "looking into the guys eyes as " he "shoots [his] filthy load into his hole," he saw the long arm of the law there, reaching out to grab his wallet. Because at some point, something has GOT to give. Some of us are really tired of this epidemic. Some of us dream of a day when gay life and gay culture might have some other content besides "HIV/AIDS". Some of us are ready for some new memes and a new agenda. I'd like to some community effort go towards promoting wellness among GLBT youth, among other things. As matters stand now, gay kids are invisible to this culture unless they get HIV as quickly as possible, and if that's not just self-evidently wrong, I don't know what is. But in the final analysis, I just resent these tired, narcissistic queens who somehow imagine that sexual liberty means doing whatever you want, to whoever you want, however you want, and then expecting your fellow citizens to pick up the tab for whatever catastrophe follows. Because there�s one truth, that�s inescapable (however unpopular in our suffocatingly religious, hyper-psychologized, post-rational culture)�the end of HIV, like all beginnings and ending in this world, will be the product of human choice. It will be the work of our hands, because those are the only hands we�ve got.
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