AIDS

[Julian Alexander]

Someone once said that the greatest threat to humanity was not ourselves but one small thing, a virus. AIDS has proven to be one of the must deadliest viruses in existence. It the only virus to have touched all continents in our world, all of humanity in one way or another has been touched by this virus, some directly in other indirectly. My generation has grown up with this virus in their daily lives, but they do not always take it seriously because now living with AIDS I not a death sentence. They do not see AIDS in its true form.

 

A virus is not considered alive, but with AIDS it makes it so hard to not imagine it being with thought. It has been able to mutate and make itself more deadly. With the new strain now being seen more, it makes me wonder if we will ever defeat it.

 

I just hope that we will be able to do something soon

[miguelsanchez55]

Please let's all remember to use protection and to remind our readers to do like wise.

 

Eduaction to our youngsters is vital and teens always think "It's not going to happen to me."

 

Take care,

Mike Sanchez :sword:

[reapersharvest]

It;s interesting you should bring that up because I just got back from a day trip into the city (NYC) with friends and one took us to the Larry Clark gallery at the Internation Center of Photography and they had a screening of Kids going on. It had a character with AIDS and it was such a moving and disturbing look at teen sex, drugs, violence, etc. Anyone not familiar with his work should definitely check it out, especially his movies, like Another Day in Paradise, or Bully.

[dkstories]

I was a pre-teen when I first heard about AIDS, and remember the hate and fear the disease caused. As a young adult, I watched several close friends waste away and die from the disease. Since then I've watched more follow.

 

The modern cocktail drugs that keep those infected longer are only a commutation of the death sentence that is AIDS.

 

Those infected live longer, but AIDS will kill them eventually as it has in the past. This is one of the reasons why this disease plays a part of the Do Over series, and YES it will be in the Redux, and many people will NOT like what happens. I know I don't.

 

Remember a simple lesson: The only absolute way to not have to worry about this disease is to not have sex. The next best way is to have a single partner who has never had sex (of any kind) with anyone but you. Using condoms for all sexual contact is a must, and the fewer people you have sex with, the fewer chances you have of catching a disease that WILL eventually kill you, only now it will first drain your pocketbook before you die. (paying for all those cocktail drugs)

 

They aren't nice words, or easy ones to hear, but they are the truth no matter your age or sexual orientation.

[Bill W]

Even though the disease is devastating and the results deadly, as mentioned above, there are ways to avoid contracting it. However, don't give up hope. Just as some of the deadly diseases of the past were eventually conquered, this one will be too. Until that time, be smart, practice safe sex and do all you can to see that money goes to research against this plague.

[Julian Alexander]

The reason i wrote this is because i have a friend that just died of it, And i felt that i needed to do something.

[boy on a string]

1 out of 10 condoms will get a girl pregnent.

 

And you know what is even more frightning than that?

 

My sister used to work for a company that made condoms in Alabama. She told me that -

 

1 out of 3 condoms have holes big enough to leak the HIV virus ...

 

There is no such thing of 'safe sex'. And I find it disturbing that people ignore this.

 

Even Clinton, when he was President, knew this fact, and yet his administration promoted the idea that condoms made you safe from HIV/AIDS.

 

And a condom will not protect you from anything that will spread through genital contact ... such as the scrotum rubbing against another scrotum or vagina. Thus you have the spread of genital herpies and warts, which can't be cured. I have seen commercials advertising how using there products will delay the cycle of outbreaks.

 

So to tell readers that if you use a condom means that you are safe scares me.

 

Boy on a String

[dkstories]

Boy, let me tell you this:

 

As a person who has used condoms religiously since he was fourteen, I put a lot more stock by them.

 

With a history of having six people come back and tell me they were HIV + after we had sex, I've had a few scares. I used condoms each time, and you know what, the last time something like this happened was four years ago and my test results still come out Negative (yes I still get tested twice a year).

 

Sex can be safer, but never truly 'safe'.

 

Most of what you said sounds like stuff right out of the scare pamphlets from the catholic church. I've known people who worked at condom factories and they told me stuff a lot different than your sister. If her factory was producing one out of three condoms defectively, you need to report them to the FDA and they need to be shut down and fined, and their employees investigated for possible malicious endangerment by knowingly producing defective products.

 

Condoms are safer, not perfectly safe. It's best to not have sex until you are ready to commit to a person for life, but if you do, use the condom. Even when you do commit to the person, you should still use condoms, because you can never guarantee they will never cheat on you, no matter how much they love you or you love them.

[DomLuka]

So to tell readers that if you use a condom means that you are safe scares me.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Being an example to our readers by using condoms in our stories isn

[dkstories]

Let's see, abstinence is a great notion, except it's like the old 'Just Say No" campaigns. I know as a teenager that whenever I heard the 'Just Say No' campaign I would laugh and go out to have a smoke, a drink, or a toke, or a line, just to say 'Up Yours' to Nancy Reagan and everyone else pushing it. Every time my dad talked about having sex outside of marriage being a sin that will send you to hell, I got horny and made it a point to 'hook up as soon as I could'. If it was while we lived in Eureka, it was with someone in Do Over Redux after church, in the house before his family left or he'd stay for lunch.

 

When I finally admitted to myself that I was gay (at the age of twenty), I threw myself into sex with a different person every night because that was what gay people did. The concept of monogamous relationships didn't exist for me back then, and I saw almost no examples of such things being possible until I hit twenty-one. Even then, it was an abstract because about half the couples I knew had 'open' relationships.

 

It was a woman by the name of Mary Lou Hacker (sound familiar?) who first game me an idea that monogamous, caring relationships were possible between men. I thought she was just feeding me a bull line until she introduced me to a few couples, and a few singles looking for such a relationship. It was thanks to the campus support group that I met the guy I fell in love with, signed a DP with, and lived with until he 'divorced' me.

 

Now he's my best friend.

 

One of the things I've done with Do Over is present a character who has the concept of monogamous relationships as a central core to his outlook on life. It's what he wants and he will settle for nothing less. He'll decline opportunities for random sex while pursuing his goal. Not because 'abstinence' is his goal, but because he wants to save that part of himself for that someone special.

 

Why do I do this?

 

Because telling anyone, much less a teenager, 'no' and leaving it at that is not going to work. Telling a teenager that they HAVE to wait until marriage isn't going to work (especially gay teens who can only look forward to marriage if they live in Massachusetts). Using 'NO' as an absolute for anyone, much less teenagers, is foolish if you expect things to work. I've seen the crap they put out with the abstinence sex education programs and I've shook my head each and every time at their naivety.

 

What's worse is that I've heard the warped ideas in the heads of teens after they go through those programs.

 

"Why bother using condoms if they don't work." Is the most popular one in dealing with 'protection'.

 

"I ain't gay so I don't have to worry about AIDS" is another false assumption.

 

"A blow job ain't sex." or "Going down on her ain't sex." One I fell over laughing when I heard (from a straight boy) was "If I screw her in the butt we're both still virgins". These were kids who got the abstinence-only package in schools.

 

Guess what, guys, it's sex and you can catch sexually-transmitted diseases from all of the above, including AIDS (although AIDS would be tougher than most diseases to get. For instance, on the blow job, if you have a gum infection, a cavity, loose dental work, or an open cut/sore in the mouth then you're really at risk for AIDS from oral sex. Without any of those, the risk is much more remote. Oh, and if you want to say you pull off before they ejaculate, I know a young man whose mother got pregnant with him because the guy always pulled out before he came and they didn't use any protection).

 

As far as the actual abstinence, having sex with only one person while you're dating them, dumping them a week later and going out with someone else isn't abstinence, it isn't waiting, it's the same as sleeping around. Unfortunately, I've heard far too many kids try to explain that it's what they were told in their Abstinence program and should be perfectly safe. It isn't.

 

What these programs really need to do is explain fully why we, as people, should wait for having sex. What's so special about having sex with only one person in your life when there's so many people out there who are damn good looking. That's a question I tried to wrestle with in Do Over.

 

Lord knows that I'm the last person to use as an example for holding off, and for sticking to only one person for the rest of my life, yet oddly enough, it's something I'm wanting in my life now. Why? Possibly the best answer is the old phrase of the "Grass is always greener on the other side".

 

When you jump the fence you find out the grass might be slightly better, slightly tastier at first, but eventually it gets old and you jump another fence. All that happens is you end up going from one field to another, and every time you see a new field with green grass, you find it easier to just jump the fence. Meanwhile, that first field you came to has become a lush, green paradise that you will never find again.

 

Love, fidelity, trust. honor, loyalty are all just words, but their true meanings are so much more, and are extremely lacking in our society. I'm not a preacher, I'm not going to force people to live by a code, but if you live by those words, you will find that your life, and your world can be a much better place. The only thing is, you can't get love, fidelity, trust, honor, or loyalty unless you give those things first. When you've had multiple partners, or even one partner before, earning those things becomes harder, jumping the fence at the next green pasture becomes easier, and the dream of living forever with a person that you love, and who loves you back, and being happier together becomes more difficult.

 

The fact that only having one partner in your life, who has only had one partner, you, makes catching AIDS or any other STD a virtual impossibility is secondary to the emotional and spiritual well-being that such a thing will give you.

[reapersharvest]

I just saw the movie Kids, and it was rife with such sexual miscinceptions. There's a part where it cuts between the girls and the guys talking about sex and it's not even funny to hear, just disturbing. Especially when the two girls went to get tested, the slut and the one who only slept with one guy, and hearing them answer the questionnaires was equally upsetting. The slut who'd had unprotected sex in every orifice, turned out negative, but the other became infected by that one guy. That one guy, in the meantime, is addicted to sex with virgins, so he infects them on ther first time. While she loks for him, he goes out andhas sex with yet another very young virgin. It's at a party that she finds him, but is never able to talk to him because she accidentally drinks something with some date rape drug in it and is raped while unconcscious, thus infecting him too. Out of the five people to have contracted AIDS from unprotected sex by the end of that movie, only one knew about it.

[boy on a string]

Ok, this didn't open the can of worms that I was afraid it was going to.

 

DK, I am glad that you get tested regularly. I am even gladder that you are still negitive.

 

The fact that I sound like a 'Cathlic pamphlet' is beyond bothersom. I am not cathlic.

 

I am concerned about this subject. And I DO NOT have all the answers ... for that matter, I have more questions than answers.

 

I have read many stories online, here, nifty, and other places. A lot of them carry the theme, if you sex, then make sure you are safe, implying the use of a condom will keep you safe.

 

One author here had one of his charactors go to South Americia. He was sent condoms so he could have 'safe' sex.

 

I agree that it starts with education. However I believe that the way we go about it is wrong. It is hard for teen males to open up when the teacher is female ... esp when she is old enough to be your grandmother (as happened to me in 9th grade), not to mention trying to talk/ask questions in front of girls. And would imagine, the same would be true for girls to ask questions if the teacher was male ... and in front of the boys.

 

So would it help to segregate the class ... and have male teachers teach the males and females teach the females? Would that create a more open discussions.

 

And I believe what you said about misconceptions that young people have. They don't have enough information.

 

I do believe in abstanence. I also believe that you should/need to use a condom if you do have sex. It does provide protection. I wish authors could/would be able to express this ... not be at one end - safe sex - or the other end - abstance, but could find a way to express the fact that while condoms help protect, they aren't one hundred percent.

 

The holes I talked about in the condoms were/are microscopic in size. My sister doesn't live in that state anymore, and has a different job now.

 

In the state I live in they are talking about teaching sex education to kindergarteners. And handing out condoms to 2-3 graders.

 

And the last I heard, here, where I live, have sex w/ a condom is called 'SAFE SEX' and will protect you.

 

So, I don't know what to do ... I do know that this subject was started, so I have put in my two cents worth in ... twice, and if nothing else, I hope it will get people thinking. I do think that disscussions like this are important for it causes us to think, and am glad that I wasn't raped for expressing myself.

 

Boy on a String

[reapersharvest]

No matter what, sex can kill you, but then again, a piano could fall on your head tomorrow. Life is a risk, not just sex. At my school, we had a 'Health Day' where they did separate us into boy and girl groups where we were taught everything in an open discussion, everything down to oil vs. water-based lube. I learned a lot, the various methods of testing used, etc. Now, of course, because it's a public school, the governemnt will fund abstinence programs which keep kids in the dark and increase the rate of teen pregnancies and turn the school into a pitri dish of STDs.

[dkstories]

Whew, I was worried you might take my post a little too personally and be hurt. I'm not one of those people that tippy-toe around things. I go right for the jugular and push the main point (right up until I start rambling).

 

Safe Sex is a term from the late 1980's, early 1990's. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you weren't in high school at the time, getting these lectures. In the days before AZT, this country was a different place when it came to AIDS. It was a death sentence, plain and simple.

 

If you've read Do Over, you remember the scene where Davey visits an AIDS ward in 1981 San Francisco. I based a lot of that scene on a real-life incident when my mom was having back surgery in Children's Hospital (located in the heart of San Francisco). Like most SF hospitals of that day, they had an AIDS ward there. It was on the same floor as mom's room, and I slept in the waiting room there for a week while she recovered. The AIDS ward was cordoned off with that plastic bio-hazard door coverings, everyone going in or out had to wear infection disease scrubs, masks, gloves, booties, the whole works.

 

I overheard a lot of conversations between nurses that week. They'd refuse to change bedsheets that had been soiled when a man lost control of his bowels, and it would take threat of termination to get them to change them. One nurse walked out and loudly quit over that, meanwhile a dying gay man sat in his own shit feces for two hours before the doctor got the nurses to change the sheets.

 

Another nurse collapsed when she stuck herself with a needle after giving one of the men a shot. I later found out that YES, she'd just infected herself with AIDS and would die a year later. However, what I remember the most is that none of the other nurses would approach her or help her. They actually turned their backs on her and looked the other way (that was when one of them spotted me and shooed me out of the ward).

 

This was 1985 and I was fourteen years old.

 

When my father learned I was staying on the same floor as the AIDS ward, he drove to SF to take me home so I wouldn't be contaminated by those men or their disease. My grandmother almost refused to go see her daughter because she was on the same floor, and it took a day to convince her that Mom wouldn't come with 'that' disease.

 

See, I'm rambling now. My main purpose of this post was to talk about 'Safe Sex' and the condom. You see, as far back as 1981 we were learning that this disease was transmitted MOSTLY through casual, unprotected sex between men. The CDC and doctors wanted bathhouses, where most of the infections were happening to shut down, and they did their best to get gay men to use condoms. At first they were ignored and ridiculed for trying to do those things. Gay men responded that the bathhouses and anonymous sex were 'our' culture, the culture we made because society had rejected us.

 

Our pride killed many of us, including some of the best.

 

The 'Safe Sex' campaign finally started to take root as the hospitals filled up with the dead and dying. When we finally figured out there was no cure, and we were killing ourselves, some changes had to be made. The truth was that calling it "Safer" wasn't going to work. We wanted to be safe, so the people trying to save our lives let out a sigh and just used the word "Safe". During the early nineties, they tried to change it back to "safer", and lord knows I've used Safer more than Safe in discussing this over the length of my life, but it has not really taken hold (reason: Safe is one syllable word while Safer is two syllables. It's easier to say Safe than it is to say Safer, and people are inheritently lazy).

 

So, if you're going to use the monkey, cover him.

[reapersharvest]

In the movie Gia (wow, does all my knowledge of AIDS come from movies?), when she got AIDS from an infected needle (she was a heroin addict), it was at a time when doctors approached her in Hazmat suits with the plastic door coverings. And then she died bald and in her own blood feces. I saw that movie at an age old enough to undertsand their misconceptions about the disease, but still young enough for it to be my equivalent to your 1985 story. We actually read a book when I was in seocnd grade about AIDS, as a disease of course, and it stayed safely away form the gay issue. I didn't even know how much more prone to it gay men were for years.

 

PS. Plugging your story in your response? How doctor Phil )

[dkstories]

Well, people will understand the plug when they get to chapter 11, 12, and 13.

[boy on a string]

I graduated in 1979. In the 80's, I was in the army, and they had manditory classes about hiv/aids, trying to get the facts across. I have also watched 'The Band Played On' (I believe that is the name of the movie). It was about cdc and their fight to recognize aids and delt with shutting down the bath houses in SF. It was an enlightning film. (Alan Alda was in it ... that is the only actor I remember by name.)

 

I remember one of the doctors - he was gay, and caught aids despite using condoms. And I will be the first to admit that it is possible that he got it some other way than sex, and the movie is ambigious about that, but I don't think there is/was any way to find out exactly how he got it. I do remember his ex-boyfriend showing up to help comfort him.

 

And I don't think 'safer' went to 'safe' because people are lazy. I think that happened for a couple of different reasons. One, being, that people were not responding to 'safer' but they did to 'safe'. The second is because of a darker reason ... people didn't care if gays died from this, so it was easier to mislead them/us by calling it 'safe'.

 

Boy on a String

 

And like you, I tend to state things bluntly. If people respond badly, then I don't respond/post about the subject again. I just move on.

[DomLuka]

When I was in eighth grade I remember that for two weeks our last class of the day was canceled and we were divided into groups guys/girls. For the first week we had police officers coming in and talking about the effects of drug use and even diseases you can catch from needles, all that stuff. The second week was sex ED. Maybe it

[reapersharvest]

Not only in school, either. At this summer camp I went to, they had this lecturer who was a gay man who'd had AIDS for a couple of years. The whole discussion was just about HIV/AIDS, not even safe sex or any other STDs. I leared sooo much, and it was really helpful.

[Bill W]

BOAS, I'm sorry if what I wrote in my story offended you and what I said was 'incorrect', as you see it, but I was trying to be responsible. I'm not sure I agree with all the data you've put forth, but it does give one something to think about.

[boy on a string]

That is what is I hope all this discussion will do, get people to think.

 

bwstories8, I was not trying to pick on you personally ... if that is how it came accross, then you have my deepest appologies. That is why I didn't mention your name or the story. I do admit, now that I have re-read what I wrote, that I probably could have been more vauge. Again, my appology.

 

Boy on a String

[Bill W]

BOAS, my first thought was that if you had noticed I made what you considered a major error in fact, then why didn't you email me or PM me and tell me that. I was surprised that you would bring such a thing up in a public forum, when you hadn't taken the time to address the issue in private. I know that if I thought someone was factually misinforming people, I would have tried to bring it to that person's attention in a personal correspondence, along with the appropriate documentation to support my claim.

 

Although I appreciate the fact that you did not pesonally mention my name or the story, I still felt that a sufficient number of people had read CH and would know specifically to whom you were referring. That's why I felt a response was called for.