The Disorienting Quiet of a Post-AIDS Reality

This post is sexually explicit and very AIDS-y. Two states older gay men know well. Those adhering to the standard narrative I wrote about in my last post will find this content disquieting. 

So, with that warning, here goes.   

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A few months ago, on my knees, among hundreds of bodies writhing around me, a cock in my mouth exploded with a rare load in the G-dosed molly-spiked energy of a dance party dark room. I looked up and smiled with gratitude at the guy, who nodded down at me with a satisfied grin. 

No thoughts of death or disease, just the pure ecstasy of pleasure. 

No awkward whispers of HIV status. No recent funerals. No belongings to sift through. No forever friends with months, weeks, or days to live. No wondering who will die next. No wondering if it will be me. 

Just raw pleasure thanks to drugs that now shield us from transmission–from drama. 

And as I make my way back to the main party, it hits me that this is it. This is as good as the celebration of the end of the plague is going to get: a gaping void of drama. 

It makes me wonder if my nightmare memories are true. 

Did a male nurse sit across from me in the San Diego County Health Office in 1986 and tell me that I had less than eighteen months to live and I most likely would not see the age of 23? 

That same year, did a scumbag named Lyndon H. LaRouche get Proposition 64 on the California ballot that would have placed HIV+ people into concentration camps? 

Did my best friend Alvin die the next year? Did I give my first eulogy at 22?

Was I getting bloodwork done every three months, for free, at the Edelman clinic in West Hollywood, where the new library is now? In 1991, did tears steam down my face when I looked at my chart and saw that my T-cells were about to fall below 200, the point at which all the opportunistic infections that pave the way to death begin? 

Was I the only one there to take care of my boyfriend Tony until he died because his parents couldn’t cope with finding out their son was gay and had AIDS all at the same time? 

Did I give my second eulogy at 26 on the baseball diamond of Poinsettia Park without their permission after Tony died? 

Did I hook up with a guy, use a condom to fuck him, and then a few days later see him on the street in front of the parking garage where I work when he asked casually, “You’re negative, right?” 

Did that happen again with another guy, in bed, right AFTER sex? 

Was there a constant debate about who should disclose first? The negative guys thought it should be the positive guys. After all, they had the deadly concealed weapon. The positive guys thought it should be the negative guys. Hey, you guys have the most to lose. I was always honest, always used a condom, and thought the person who cared the most should start the boner-killing conversation. 

Did I start having sex exclusively with HIV+ guys because of all that drama and the weight of possibly infecting someone else? 

Yes! The drumbeat of AIDS-driven fear was ever present. 

Like, when two guys with British accents took me into one of the cock sucking booths at the Zone sex club in Los Angeles. The sexual heat between the three of us was fierce, and I loved that they took turns using my ass. I’m still perplexed by the look on one of their young faces after he came. It turns out he wasn’t wearing a condom. His load was inside me. Was that an expression of guilt, fear, shame, or something else? It certainly wasn’t ecstasy. 

For those of us who were positive, the drumbeat pounded like a metronome: every three months, bloodwork, results, doctor visit, repeat – bloodwork, results, doctor visit, repeat.  

The guys who were HIV-negative got tested when they thought they should. Having a negative result was a reprieve, tempting these men to stretch the time to the next test when the ax might fall. 

Finding ways to get off with another guy without causing more death led to lots of jerking each other off, in-person voyeurism, and dry humping. 

Eros and death were constant companions. 

Finally, a rich and famous straight guy named Magic Johnson was infected and was willing to talk about it. This normalized the disease enough for non-gays to start understanding. “Oh, you have what Magic has,” is what a friend of mine reported his brother saying. 

Magic is how my husband, who’s almost 17 years younger than me and was born the same year AIDS was identified, learned about HIV. Hiding in his parents' room, he watched a kid