The Gay Blade

So World AIDS Day is coming up again, and we'll get a little flurry of articles and some notice in the mainstream media: Not much, but some. In the latest UNAIDS Report there is a bit of good news : the global infection rate has begun to fall - a little - and let's wait a few years to see how solid this trend is - but it's good news. New Zealand barely rates a mention: we get bundled into Oceania. We have one of the lowest infection rates anywhere, and as they note, as is typical in a high-income country, the majority of our new infections still involve men having sex with men, and most of those are men who report getting infected here in NZ. We are a small country, with a small population, and what is by most countries' standards a tiny population of HIV+ people. Even when you include those who have died we have only had about 3,000 people infected - and roughly have 2,000 living with it now. We don't get a hell of a lot of attention from the g...

I saw this piece in Poz saying that 65% of US gay men think anyone HIV+ who barebacks (has unsafe sex in other words) without disclosing their status should face criminal prosecution. In other words, if two or more guys decide to go without condoms, and one is Positive and hasn't told the other(s), he has committed a criminal act. Now in NZ, if you know you're Poz, you don't have to disclose your HIV status to sexual partners, so long as you take every reasonable precaution to protect them. That means use condoms. But we should all use condoms. I'm just a little bit torn on this. On the one hand, yeah, if you know you have HIV, (and remember, about 30% of HIV + people DON'T know they have it )  you do, I believe, have a greater moral responsibility to protect the people you have sex with. So, in the first place, if you're poz you shouldn't be barebacking anyhow, unless maybe it's with someone else who is poz too, but even then, it's not recomme...

I have really loved the whole It Gets Better project - I think it's so important to reach young gay/queer people and let them know that in fact the terrible shit we often have to deal with as teens doesn't last and life can in fact be pretty damn good even if you don't fit the normal patterns. Some people have criticised it for being too simplistic, for not acknowledging the crap and bullying that can happen all through our lives, or for being too white and middle-class, and while I get that point, I think it ignores the fact that for most of us life does get better. I've wondered if there would be any point to doing something similar but about living with HIV. Because, as shitty as it is to have this virus in us - and it is - it does get better over time. And again, there are exceptions to be kept in mind - it's not a bed of roses, but it's not as bad as it was in the old days. Now I don't know how I'd cope if I were living in a small town and h...

Hmm, haven't been here for a while have I ? Life has been busy - and I'm not complaining about that, well, just a little. But the big news I turn 49 tomorrow. It's big news for me anyhow. In 1988 I was told by a Dr in London that I probably had 2 years to live, so I'm glad I'm still here. I've been so lucky compared to so many. I was talking the other day with a family friend, a woman in her late 70s, who buried her son in the early 90s, before HAART came out, he died about the time I was told I'd die in fact. I always enjoy seeing her, she's a lovely woman, and she always asks me how I am. We were talking about her son's situation compared to mine, and agreed it was nothing more than luck. I was able to just hold on long enough until the new meds came through in 1996. I was already very ill by then, and without them I would have followed him to the grave by now I'm utterly certain. I don't believe in destiny or fate. I don't beli...

Because there is something we're not really dealing with in Homoland . It's not HIV, but I'd argue a lot of our new HIV infections are caused by it. I'm talking about the generally poor state of gay men's mental and emotional health. Britain's Attitude magazine recently did a story on it, which got picked up by The Observer . I see no reason to doubt the situation is any different here, in fact what I know of my own life and the scene I move through confirms this for me. A few weeks ago I was talking with a gay man here in Auckland about the same problems. Gay men have higher than average rates of depression, of drug and alcohol dependency, of STIs, of emtoional and mental health issues in general, and, tragically, of suicide. Yet it's a topic we don't seem willing or able to address. I've been to far too many funerals of friends who have committed suicide. And I confess, it's something I've thought about often myself. That began for me as a...

Me.I have never entered a competition like this before, and I very much doubt I ever shall again, but I have to say it was a lot of fun. It was the persistent bullying of the owners while I was in a mentally weakened state that pushed me into the contest in the first place "Go on... ! Go on!" - that and my admission I can fit into my leathers again - with a good belt to help things in place. The thought of winning a free trip to Melbourne to represent NZ over there was tempting, but the thought of having to compete again was less appealing I have to say. I do not have a gym-toned body, as much as that may surprise some of you, and feel my advancing years keenly. And the winner in Melbourne gets sent to IML (International Mr Leather) a contest that's been going for 32 years, in Chicago. But the cool thing about the leather community is that it is very broad in how it defines itself and who its members are. This year, the winner at IML in Chicago, Tyler McCormick, was the f...

I haven't written about sex in oh, at least an hour, so why not start again. Actually, it's part of my job, doing my PhD, writing about sex and how gay men have sex - and I usually enjoy it - the writing I mean. Oh, and the fieldwork. I've been thinking about what it was like when I was a baby-gay, back in the 70s when I was in my teens and coming out. Nearly all my initial contacts were sexual, until I was about 17 and started making gay friends, and as a teenage boy getting all that sex, I was very, very happy with that. Young, dumb and full of cum, as they say. Yes, I also wanted a boyfriend, and love, but like most teenage boys, I tended to think with my dick. Suddenly there was a whole world of fun in front of me. And Gay Liberation actually had the message of sexual freedom at its core. We aren't heterosexuals, so why form our social and sexual patterns on their models? If you want to go and fuck till sunrise every day, well why not? And a lot of guy...