Friday Gay Blogging, Sunday Edition

This post by Eric Leven is the kind of thing I'd like to see more of.

Two years ago I made a somewhat jarring, somewhat controversial (although I had no intention of it being so) advertisement that deals with second guessing the choices of your sex life when you find yourself at the STD/HIV clinic awaiting the results of your next test. The ad was both well-received as well as criticized for its level of "fear campaigning."

In the writing, producing and directing of the ad I never once sat down and said to myself, "Ok. How can I scare people?!" Never the case. Not once. I took an experience as a modern, sexually active, sexually positive gay male and translated it to film with the hopes of encouraging others to slow down, think before they act and take their sex lives seriously and responsibly.

On that note, check out this post at Joe.My.God about the sharp increase in new HIV infections. As Joe points out, this is in part due to more complete reporting, but. . . .

Keeping in mind that this spike is fueled in part by better reporting, the news is still sobering, to say the least. I probably should rattle off the "get tested, play safe" mantra, but maybe it's more useful to remind you that by far the most infectious person is the freshly-seroconverted guy who truly believes he is negative.

It doesn't matter how often or how recently you've been tested. Even with "rapid testing" the average time between infection and detectable antibodies is still 25 days. If you are regularly sexually active and somebody asks if you are HIV+, there are only two possible answers: "Yes" and "I don't know." Those guys that trumpet the date of their negative test in their hook-up profiles must believe in time travel. Treat every "negative" partner as if he were just infected yesterday. Because if he passes the virus to you, he probably was.

I haven't written much about HIV, despite the fact that it's still with us and still very much a part of our lives. That's mostly because I don't have anything new to say about it, except to point out that, even though it's a treatable disease and can now be handled like any othre chronic illness, it's still a chronic illness that's going to affect your life in fundamental ways, starting with the fact that you're going to be on meds for the rest of your life. That's something I personally detest. I'm on medication for hypertension and cholesterol right now, and my great goal is to revise my habits so that I'm off those damn things asap. They're not fun (I'm prone to side effects anyway, and these are choice), and I hate the idea that my continued good health is dependent on popping pills.

And then I think what it would be like if I really had to take the pills to avoid lingering illness and an ugly death. I've already lost too many friends. I don't want to be the next one.