Looking for dick, or a soapbox?

[I bet you thought I lost my soapbox. Not so, and I'm even hauling out one of my least soapboxed topics, everyone's favorite first thing on a Friday morning: HIV And You.]

[OK, so at an hour a little too wee last night, I was enjoying my home machine's sporadic internet access. (I WILL NOT PAY!) What with one thing and another, I haven't been spending much time on Craigslist in the last year or so, but last night I returned to say hi the folks.]

[Was I looking for a new job to increase my income and self-esteem? No. Was I looking for a shared housing situation in order to decrease my outgo and self-loathing? Uh-uh. Was I gathering likeminded young people together in a political movement to take back America from the forces of greed and ignorance that have it so tightly in a mean, stinking grip? Are you kidding?]

[Don't make me write it out, OK? And get off my back. I was there solely in the eternal hunt for literary novelty.]

[So, I was noticing as usual that at 7PM, people want sex, no expectations, no drugs; at 11PM, they want to PNP; and at 3AM, everyone's a PNP bottom, when this charming exchange caught my eye. "...best to avoid all contact with poz guys sexually, even touching." I almost responded, but then I remembered that there's not any flamewar more pointless and ineffective than a CL flamewar.]

[I'll inflict it on you instead. HOW FUCKING DARE HE? OK, as with my slightly unsympathetic response to Max's "Huh. Bruno Kirby died" email, yesterday, that's a little harsh. Responder ("R.") has every right to protect his negative status as much as makes him feel safe. But R., honey? Let's review, because lots of young whippersnappers and other unfortunates are going to read your words and take them as The Truth.]

[Sadly, with HIV, as with life, there's lots of truths, but The Truth is fairly elusive. From Wikipedia, the shortcut to all knowledge that's probably close to correct, we read:]

["HIV is transmitted through direct contact of a mucous membrane with a bodily fluid containing HIV, such as blood, semen, vaginal fluid, preseminal fluid or breast milk. This transmission can come in the form of: penetrative (anal or vaginal) sex; oral sex; blood transfusion; contaminated needles; exchange between mother and infant during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding; or other exposure to one of the above bodily fluids."]

[That's a good beginning, but I think the author could do a bit more with that phrase "other exposure to one of the above bodily fluids." What means "exposure?" And what are the chances of infection occurring via each of these routes?]

[Author dear does go on to clarify, as you can read yourself (and I hope this info has gotten to you by now by some means). We learn that HIV exists in "low concentrations in the saliva, tears, and urine of infected individuals" and that "the risk of transmission by these secretions is negligible." So, already we have two sets of bodily secretions. Set A (blood, semen, poop), that carries high concentrations when HIV is present, and Set B, above. (And if you can't make some serious fun with saliva, tears, and urine, then you need to practice, young man!)]

[Now, I get the whole desire to select your Sex Monkey du Jour from among your own diagnosis-type. Sex can be (should be!) a rather frenzied experience, and that delicious frenzy is almost always harshed when one is worried about contracting this little monster. I understand that worry, I had it (but not enough) back when I was negative. (My own seroconversion wasn't caused by ignorance but rather by lack of self-respect mixed with a generous helping of denial. Probably...see below.) What bothered me about R.s response was that, by not telling the whole story, by declaring all poz types to be untouchable, he potentially both cuts off the prospect of an awful lot of good sex, and does what the religious right has been trying to do with HIV/AIDS since the beginning: make it unmentionable, disgusting, and a matter of personal sin rather than health. His tone makes us sound like lepers, who were set apart not only because leprosy was thought erroneously to be highly contagious, but because the prevailing wisdom held that lepers were touched by the devil, probably at their own invitation.]

[I can't believe the trouble I've had in disseminating this simple rule of thumb: any new partner is assumed to be postitive, unless proven otherwise, every single time. This goes for sixty-second encounters in the bus station as well as to your husband of thirty years who just got back from the "business trip" to Bangkok about which you've had misgivings. It doesn't matter if he or she tells you he or she's negative. It doesn't matter, because Robert A. Heinlein was right when he said sex is the one subject everyone lies about.]

[OK, so everyone's poz. According to R., that means no sexual touching with anyone new until the test results come in and you trust him/her not to go cattin' around. This was a strategy people actually tried to foster in the late '80s, and it had about as much success as you would imagine. I'm sorry, but when the urge hits, it hits, and waiting weeks for some lab report just won't cut it. What to do? We all have a stake in keeping our negative folks negative, aside from the overriding etiquette aspect.]

[What you do is what you do whenever you leave the house every day knowing you might get hit by a bus on the adjacent street corner: you play the percentages. Is it possible that I contracted HIV by letting someone's saliva into an ingrown fingernail? Yes, but it's much, much more likely that it happened during the many times I let someone not pull out in the four-plus years between negative and positive results. Just as the only way to forestall dying in a car crash is never to go near an automobile, the only 100% sure way to avoid contracting HIV is never to touch another person's bare flesh ever again.]

[OK, so about those percentages. This is where R. could've stepped to the plate, if not on his own cautious behalf, then on that of others. There is no-risk, non-touching stuff that one presumes even R. would approve. There's a whole panoply of low-risk stuff that I don't hesitate to engage in with Tom, Dick, Harry, and/or Aloysius. And there's the high-risk stuff, which I won't do even if he begs. Then there's the medium-risk stuff...]

[Ah, the medium-risk stuff. I try to handle it as it, uh, comes, and to listen to Tom, Dick, Harry, and/or Aloysius's concerns when he brings them up; I feel fairly sanguine that I won't infect T.D.H.&/or A. (those percentages again!), but I do my best to respect his boundaries. I'm still learning how to negotiate this with myself and with T.D.H. &/or A.; Chris was, in this as in many other things, a valuable experience in thinking about the grey areas.]

[So, R., as someone who's dealt with the fear and uncertainty for years on both sides of the divide (I was an absurd thirty when I seroconverted), think. Think about why you have the boundaries you have; think about how you know someone's negative; and think about the fact that there are choices to be made here, not just one choice. And...be safe.]

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