The Gay Blade

One of the downers for me about life with HIV is when I meet someone, and they don't know I have the virus. I sort of assume that guys in the scene here know about me, but of course not everyone does. I don't automatically tell every guy I fuck with - I don't have to, I just make sure they know we're going to be having safe sex. If they ask, then I tell. If it's just a casual one-off, then I don't care so much. But sometimes I meet a guy online, we fuck, we have a great time,  discover we have stuff to talk about,  want to see each other again, and then I have to decide "When do I tell him - and how is he going to react?"   Because even for me, telling people about having HIV is still not that easy, even with my years of practice. If I tell people before we get to know each other, they might run before they ever get to know me. If I wait till later, then they can feel like I've been hiding it, and I don't like being thought of that way -...

When I look through hook-up sites (sorry "dating" sites) I notice a lot of ads where guys say they are "non-scene". Isn't gay life online the biggest scene there is now? But I digress...And I say with comfort that I am definitely "scene" - not "non-scene". If we think of it as all the clubs, saunas, bars and fuck-venues, you get a good idea of the scene. It's pretty universal, you can walk into a gay bar or sauna in Auckland, NY, Melbourne, or Paris and see pretty much the same thing. The scene gives us a space where we know the rules, can be sure we're hanging out with others of the same persuasion, and should feel safe. And you might even meet Mr Right. you do need to have a certain number of people to make it work though. In the bad old days, the scene was all there was. There were really no other social spaces to go and meet other gay guys, unless you count the beats and the bogs (Public Toilets). So the scene was central to g...

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...